JUNE 12
And then the idealization. Another distortion. Idealizing her
in a way antithetical to her nature. Bella was no lofty
madonna, no enigmatic Mary, no mater dolorosa. She was a
flesh-and-blood lady who got her hands wet, whose life en-
compassed pain and suffering. A human being with human
flaws. It’s a betrayal to remember only the good parts,
—TOBY TALBOTNot only is it a betrayal. It takes a lot of energy to maintain
these faulty illusions—energy we need to attend to the rest
of our grieving and the rest of our lives.
We may think we are honoring the dead by exaggerating
their good qualities and dismissing what was less admirable.
There is a precedent for this in the Latin admonition, De
mortuis nil nisi bonum. Of the dead, nothing but good.
But it doesn’t wash in the long run, if we are trying to re-
member in their fullness people we were close to and whom
we loved.
What would we want for ourselves? To be remembered
as some kind of paragon? Or to be remembered in full di-
mension as the people we are?
I celebrate the life of the one I loved—in all the fullness of his or
her human qualities.