For the purposes of a blog post that I'm still composing, I needed to mention that someone I know passed away recently. It occurred to me that this might lead people to feel the need to express their condolences, so then I added "Don't worry, we weren't close." But that sounds horrible and awful and callous! But the fact of the matter is, we weren't close. Emotionally, he was an acquaintance. He was elderly, in poor health, and the death was not unexpected. Emotionally, I'm not bereaved or grieving.
To actually say this makes me sound especially coldhearted. But the reality is, this sometimes happens, and sometimes it's useful to be able to tell people that you aren't grieving, that they don't need to worry about your emotions. For example, when this death occurred, I thought I might be expected to attend the funeral. If I had been expected to attend the funeral, we would have had to juggle some things at work so I could have taken the time off on short notice. In a situation like that, it would be useful to be able to tell people "Don't worry, you don't have to manage my emotions, just my workload. I can still work at 100%, I just need a day off to put in an appearance at the funeral."
Let's make this socially acceptable.
3 comments:
En chinois, on dit “Jie ai shun bien ”(节哀顺变), ça veut dire « économiser le chagrin et laisser tombé ».
This might be filed under great ideas that will never happen. The whole condolence thing is so ingrained socially, I can't imagine it ever fading.
I have found it annoying too. When my father died, I told very few people, for just this reason. I couldn't bear to be over-condoled (?) for someone who I was mostly relieved to finally be rid of.
@Du: Cool! Il me faut apprendre comment prononcer ça. (Je ne connais rien de la prononciation de la transliteration normalisée du chinois.)
@L-girl: It's not that I even minded condolences, it's just that I didn't need people wasting their emotional energy or worrying about my emotional energy. The deceased was irrelevant to me. See, I can't even say that, it sounds too cold-hearted.
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