Almost my entire life has been spent in cities large enough that the freaks, the weirdos and the socially inept can both blend in and find ample company. The exception was the time between my eighth grade and senior years when I lived in a town smaller than some big-city high school classes. This was a benefit in that I could participate in just about every activity I set my heart on; also I graduated first in my class. It was a drawback in that every damn fool had to know every other damn fool’s business; also I graduated first in my class. Small town life in no way prepared me for the rigors of even a moderately challenging state university, and the unwelcoming nature of my particular stretch of the prairie meant that everyone looked the same, worshiped the same, had sex the same. Or at least gave off the appearance of such.
I was taught to hold myself apart from the doings of the town. Other people were trashy, low-class, hillbillies. Slights from decades in the past prevented socialization in the present, and darn near everyone under consideration for my friendship was found to be sorely lacking. Oh the stories I heard! The tales of cousins’ thefts, of grandparents’ drunkenness, of former-sisters-in-law’s-step-sons’ cheating. It was the stuff of legend and operetta, writ small. I believed every word of it, of course. When the people providing your food and shelter tell you what to think, you think it — or risk going without.
But time passes. People I graduated with have by now carried their reproduction out to the second degree; they show off grandchildren older than my children on Facebook. And in the past couple months the other extreme also has flashed across my screen in the form of a handful of deaths of my classmates’ parents.
It amazes me to see what people say in these situations, which is really just a way of saying that it amazes me how much these dead were loved. Page after page of condolence scrolls by and I marvel at it. Of course we glorify the dead. It’s unavoidable. From the grave they have no more power to hurt; it is therefore safe to speak of their strengths without fear of encouraging their faults. Nevertheless there is a disconnect in my mind between the overwhelming lauds and the messages I remember hearing.
These dead were nothing more than trash to my family, and yet they were loved. They were loved — are loved! — by my townsfolks, who now share tales of their generosity, their kindness, their openheartedness. They speak of them so highly I wonder what I missed in not knowing them more.
And I wonder what I’ll read when my own parents pass. Will they be glorified or ignored? What sort of impression have they, so negative toward most, garnered for themselves? And will it be more upsetting to read of their glory, or nothing at all?
