This is awesome.
I was pondering this as I was waking up this morning, and I think I see the problem: That thread wasn’t the “wake”, at least not at first. It was the announcement. It was the “oh, my god, did you hear?” thread. It was the buzz, and that’s buzzy, and shocked, and denial ridden and speculative. It’s the first 4 stages of grief all rolled into one and it’s complicated and confusing and messy.
The wake generally comes a couple of days later, after people have gotten some of that out of their systems. That wasn’t allowed here, and that’s what feels ham handed about the moderation - the moderation that I agree with, remember, given that it had indeed morphed into a “wake” thread. I think the error in moderation was allowing it to become a wake thread in the first place; that should have been a second thread. But that’s water under the bridge now.
It’s not a party until somebody pukes, and I’m at least halfway there.
There is a Fine line between acknowledging a deceased’s character quirks, and challenging the pleasant remembrances of those closest to them, who are hurting the most. And that difference is discretion, in my opinion.
While her family is trying to celebrate all that was best in her, is not really the time. In the presence of those deeply hurting, is really not the place. It’s a free country and anyone is free to say anything, of course. But adults demonstrate maturity by exhibiting discretion. Out of respect for those in mourning, if you cannot muster as much for the deceased.
Say whatever you want just do so in an appropriate place, that’s all that’s required really. When you choose to do otherwise, you seem kind of attention whoring, to me. Just my opinion, of course. And worth what you paid for it.
I volunteered to proofread her vampire novel (remember when she was starting a billion threads asking for advice on what to name her characters and which martial arts specialties to give them and whatnot?). I quit halfway through, partially because I had a bunch of other commitments come up that were sucking up my time, and partially because to be honest the book wasn’t that great. But I thought it was cool that someone who was clearly talented/gifted in one area of the arts was trying her hand at another one. I wished her the best of luck with finishing her novel, and I meant it. I wonder if she ever did.
As for the other thread, it is a fairly long-standing tradition here that someone’s death announcement thread will be their memorial/eulogizing thread, and I don’t understand why that should be any different in this case. Yes, it is a dick move to come prancing into someone’s death announcement thread to make sure that everyone there knows just how much the dead person annoyed you when they were alive. Serious lack of home training, people.
The other thread has become, I think, the receiving line at the funeral, where you murmur words of sorrow and comfort to the loved ones left behind.
When grief is still that raw, you tone down what you say, because what would have been an innocuous comment under other circumstances now becomes “that person you’re crying over? They were crap, and you’re an idiot.” Fighting words. And it wouldn’t be the kind of Friday night tavern brawl that everyone dusts themselves off afterward and they’re still friends. It would be an eye-gouging, nose-biting, vicious debacle leaving unnecessary scars on people who really don’t need more anguish to deal with.
So, we bring it here, and when others are ready, they’ll join us.
I went to check the Fathom site, and it’s down due to traffic, so I don’t have a link to post. But I’ll share one of my Opal stories.
Opal, as you know, was as omnivorous a learner as you’ll ever meet, and she regurgitated anything she found interesting. She had a low threshold for interesting and an even lower threshold for appropriate. I was exploring her site once, all the nooks and crannies, and I found a handful of pages with diagrams, explanations and instructions. One of them was an explanation of how swamp coolers work. I’d grown up in a very humid environment and had just moved to a desert, so I was encountering swamp coolers for the first time.
My favorite though was (and I’ll put it in spoilers, because in true Opal fashion, it’s a bit TMI) . . .
[spoiler]Instructions for how to deal with a constipated bowel movement. It only works for women. You see, the sigmoid bowel has a crook in it, and the bolus of poo can get caught having gone around the last corner but not getting lined up quite right with the end of the rectum. By inserting fingers into the vagina, you can give the bolus a nudge and get it lined up for easier expulsion.
I shit you not.
And yes, it works. Where she learned this, I have no idea. Why she decided not just to post it, but to give it its own page AND draw a diagram showing the mechanics, well . . . that’s just our Opal.[/spoiler]
…and now phouka is on my LMHNSYCAB list.
Let’s Make Hot Nasty Sex, You Charasmatic, Abstruse B*tch?
Not saying I’d turn you down, but I like to know what I’m signing up for.
Oh dear God- is it permitted for you to link that? That’s wonderful!
Yeah, let’s go with that.
I’ve been lurking since ~ 1999, and I’m going to miss the occasional “Hi, Opal!” at the beginning of threads/posts.
Jill, for what it’s worth I got what you were doing in that first post…the one about why you think she couldn’t have possibly killed herself. It made me smile and actually feel a little better somehow. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with recognizing the foibles and quirks of a person who has gone, but yeah, what phouka said. Time and place. If the community as a whole wants to keep that thread for the niceties, why not let it go that way? Doesn’t stop you from remembering Opal the way you want to, nor from talking/posting about her elsewhere.
How I would approach this whole wake/remembrance thing is: Don’t be a dick.
That’s all.
I am looking for the original page, but Fathom is very slow loading, for understandable reasons, and it looks like the site map has changed since I last saw that page. It was years ago.
It boggles my mind that Opal was a damn novelist too. When I hear that someone is a successful and popular web designer, blogger, painter, sculptor and then got the nerve to write novels on the side…I really feel like a lazy ass loser.
[QUOTE=MsWhatsit]
Serious lack of home training, people.
[/QUOTE]
Ha, anytime I hear the term ‘home training’ I hear it in my grandma’s voice. “You betta act like you got some home trainin’ gal!”
FWIW, I never minded that Opalcat would ask for advice and then not take it. If she wanted the easy answer, she wouldn’t have had to ask for advice in the first place. If she didn’t like the advice offered, why should she pretend she did? She had specific likes and dislikes, and what advice was offered wasn’t to her tastes or what she wanted to follow. I saw no reason for people to get all upset over it. We knew she had her quirks.
But the buckeye thread - that was classic!
As I mentioned briefly in the ATMB thread I’m not sure what kind of wakes everyone else goes to. I’ve never been to one in which stories good and bad (but usually not terrible) have not been brought up. And this is at a wake with the corpse laying there in an open casket with people who actually knew them well for decades in real life. We don’t wait till the after party.
Loach, it may just be my culture but the wakes I’ve been to have been very quiet, somber affairs. We young people were expected to quietly offer condolences to the bereaved and to be very respectful and subdued. The funeral was a lot of wailing and sometimes falling out and just making a spectacle with the grief. But yeah, afterward, at a cousin’s house… That’s when we got to REALLY remember the person. Different cultures, different customs.
Faithfool, I also used to think it was fine for Opal to reject advice that didn’t fit her needs. I honestly didn’t get the problem that posters had with her there.
Sorry I called needscoffee “faithfool”. Tried to edit to fix it but my stupid phone made it too hard."
I’m not saying it was a party but there is no problem with telling stories about their quirks. That’s with both the Italian side of my family and the German/Irish side. Though the Italian side tended to have more guilt.