Spoken Last

Dear Kate,

I've just been to the most extraordinary memorial service.

I can't stand weddings: they are all extraordinary.  Too much money spent, hope pledged, goodwill given, for the spectacle celebrated to be anything less than one-of-a-kind.  Many well-intentioned lies will need to be told, false sentiment exuded, gossips taken as gospels, in the name of love (and return-on-investment).

In a funeral, the same thing could happen—and might as well would, if not for the meaty fact of a cold dead body being warmed over for the last time.  "Speak now or forever hold your peace."  Knowing that peace could be held by your speaking, de mortuis nil nisi bonum ("Of the dead, say nothing but good").

The deceased's best friend spoke last.  Or maybe not.  What I meant is whatever speaking came after hers was mere footnotes.  And whatever came before stood being clarified, rectified, electrified to shock back to life the material truth of a warm, yearning body, the spiritual reality of a peace that was less than lasting, a human legacy at best ambiguous.

At the end I almost wanted to give this friend a standing ovation.

I am sure the idea of "speaking an authentic tongue" never crossed her mind.  She wasn't there to frustrate our would-rather-bes.  A contrarian she wasn't, though many of the polite, good words spoken about her friend she flatly contradicted.  She had no record to set straight, other than the bloody fact that the record wasn't, with her name too on it.  Why are we so bent on untwisting a tangled-up she once tangoed with? she seemed to ask.

A bravura in the name of, yes, love.  And truth.  And what's meant to last forever.

What's meant to last forever?

Yours, Alex