Nobody ever dies, according to the local media. No one is ever killed.
Anyone who gets offed “passes away”. Doesn’t matter if they were Grandma Barker, 98, congestive heart failure. Or Fred Kelly, 26, blew own brains out. Or Mike and Phil Connors, 32 and 34, drowned in a frozen lake. Everyone “passes away”. No one dies suddenly or accidentally. No one gets killed. No one is murdered or commits suicide. Everyone, everyone, “passes away”.
I WANT THIS DAMN PHRASE BANISHED FROM THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
People are really uncomfortable with the concept of death. They hate it, they’re afraid of it, and they want to believe that no one ever goes about doing it unpleasantly. Trying to cope with death is one of the main reasons religions got started.
Complaining that people are uncomfortable with death is like complaining that the tides go up or down, or that the sun rises in the east. You’re never going to get it to change.
On the bright side, when it comes to media, people are supposed to die. No one is supposed to pass away, or slip into darkness, or go gently into that good night, or whatever. Journalism professors and the AP stylebook are very clear on this issue. The problem I suspect you’re seeing is with TV news, which is a separate issue, because those people never went to J-school.
Have no fear, everyone will be confronting the issue at one point or another.
I think “passing away” is kind of nice. “Grandma is dead” sounds so final and cold. “Grandma passed away” is much less harsh, almost comforting. I think that’s the point. I think it’s out of respect for loved ones who don’t want to picture their dearly departed as a corpse. I see no problem with it. I like euphamisms actually, look how many there are for masturbating (another greusome fact of life). It just makes it easier to talk about such things.
Another euphemism: “lost.” Like, “I lost my husband last year.”
I always get the strange image of the husband sitting forlornly at the Customer Service desk at K-mart despondently licking a lollypop while a kindly employee calls over the intercom, “Mrs. George Schmidt, Mrs. George Schmidt. . .”
Another one is unelaborated use of “shot.” As in, “The robber shot the store clerk.” Was the clerk pronounced dead at the scene, treated and released, or somewhere inbetween those extremes? When people are shot they do not automatically die.
Then there is the misuse of “alleged.” The Texas Seven did not “allegedly” escape from prison, as one report said. They are alleged to have killed the store clerk but they DEFINITELY escaped from prison. There is no reason to use the lawsuit dodge that “alleged” provides.
I prefer the phrase “bit the green weenie.”
I also like “shellacked,” and “caulked” (embalming references)instead of the ambiguous “arrangements.”
ex.
“Chester Barker finally bit the green weenie last night after a protracted bout with cancer. “We will miss him terribly,” said his wife of 27 years, Emily. Caulking and Shellacking services are being handled through the Elysian Fields Funeral Home. Services Sunday.”
A friend is having her cat euthanised next week. We’ve talked about having him “put down” and “euthanised,” but neither of us, thank goodness, has said “put to sleep.”
This always struck me as very creepy. After my grandmother died we got a sympathy card reading, “She is not dead. She is only sleeping.” My first reaction was, “oh, shit—we BURIED her!!”
For some people, it seems, even “passed away” has become too direct.
Now they say “passed”. As in “My mother passed last June”.
I always think, passed what?
Passed on?
Passed by?
Passed out?
Passed Dale Earnhardt in the straightaway?
Of course, I understand the human reason behind using this language, but it does seem to be taking areasonable thing too far. What’s next, we don’t mention her at all?
Rest assured that your finer J schools (Go Mizzou. Rah.) continue to pound this into the skulls of budding journalists. What’s more, we say “coffin” instead of “casket” and “burial” instead of “interment.”
I’m a proponent of “kicked off” and “planting,” as in “James Jones kicked off Thursday afternoon at age 50. His family planted 'im Saturday in Memorial Park Cemetery.”
I prefer not to deal in euphemism when discussing death. To me, the attempt to shield the family from the loss is more painful than the actual loss, because the euphemism denies the reality of the situation.
In discussing my son’s death, I seldom use the expression “passed away” unless I know I’m dealing with a Tennessee Fainting Goat. He’s dead. Changing the language doesn’t change the reality.
I’ve often toyed with the idea of collecting some of the truly dumb things people say to mourners. Maybe I still will.
My grandma died in November this past year. At the wake and funeral, people said all those “proper” things. So many people said to me, “Well, don’t feel bad for her. She’s better off where she is now” (or something to that effect), that I finally said to one person, “Yeah, great for her. Sucks for me, though, doesn’t it?”
Also, everyone was very concerned that she went “peacefully” (which she did). I told my husband that when I die (and I hope I do go peacefully), and people ask, I want him to say, “She was kicking and screaming the whole time. Her last words were, ‘If I’m going down, I’m taking you all with me’”
The worst use of the “lost” euphemism I’ve ever heard was from a woman who was describing how some teenagers put flowers by the spot where their friend died (he was hit by a car). “The day after they lost their friend they went to the place where they lost him…”
If it hadn’t been such a sad story I’d have been sorely tempted to say, “If they knew where they lost him, why couldn’t they find him again?”
