Say Something

I went to a celebration of life for a Tommy Bahama enthusiast last Saturday.

Got that mental picture yet?

My father's cousin passed away unexpectedly last November. He was in Las Vegas having a lovely trip with his lady friend, and then, BOOM. Emergency surgeries. The ICU. People flying in to say goodbye, because it had been determined that this was the end of the line. It was a shock to everyone. And, of course, a great loss. There was a family-only service a short time later, which meant the rest of us had to wait to pay our final respects.

Our time finally came. A family-style meal at a favorite Italian restaurant, an open mic, and eleventy bajillion Tommy Bahama shirts. It was...floral, to say the least. Now, I don't own anything from the particular shop in question, so I went to the shed and dug out the button-down that my grandmother made for my dad in 196-something from a bolt of fabric a relative brought back from Hawai'i. It was close enough. And, you know, floral.

So, there we all were. Being floral. Eating, and kibbitzing, and 'oh-how-did-you-know-him'-ing. Well, my dad was, anyway. My mother and I retreated to a corner and stayed put. We don't do parties. Eventually the food settled, and the talking started.

Here's the thing. I think it's lovely that we all wax poetic about a person when they're gone. It's a need. It's a stage of grief. It helps us cope with the loss. Everyone who stood up to say something had a lovely story to tell. But what I want to know is how many of us put that kind of effort into actually telling people these kinds of things when they're still with us? How many of us can consciously stand up and say, "I have said to a person I love something that I would also say at their funeral"? We allow ourselves to speak those hidden inner truths once the person is gone because we feel like that's when we're expected to--and we should still do that. But we should also make the effort to say things before we're left behind.

"Oh, c'mon. That's soppy and weird."

Okay, so make it fuckin' weird! Normalize that shit! Sit your humans down, make solid eye contact, and tell them exactly what they mean to you.

Because they won't know unless you tell them. And who knows? You might get the same in return. And how nice would that be?