Vivid, isn't it?In Part I, I told about Orson Scott Card’s idea of a Speaker for the Dead. I liked it very much, but in order to work for me the way it worked for him, I would need Andrew Wiggin, ancient in the way only time travel will allow, and a top of the line computer system. I don’t have either of those, but I do share Card’s idea that a memorial service ought to involve the telling of the dead person’s story.
This post is about how to do that with the limited resources at my disposal and imagining myself to be the dead person. I specify that I am to be the guest of honor because, frankly, not everyone would want to have his “story” told in this way. I think I would like it—prospectively, of course—but I also think it could be justified only on the grounds that the people attending the service would be benefitted by it.
That brings me to my two questions for this post. The first is: for whom is the memorial service? The second is: is there a way to approximate a Speaker for the Dead?
There is a cheap answer to the first question. The service is for the survivors. Who else could it possibly be for? Not for me, certainly. But that simple answer leads, as they often do, to a more complicated question: what is it that will benefit the survivors? The service needs to be about my life. That is, after all, why people are there. All the people who come, with the exception of a very small number of young people, will have one eye on my life and death and the other on their own current lives and approaching deaths. So whatever happens in the service ought to be the kind of reflection on my life that helps them appreciate its true significance. (I defer, briefly, the question of what its true significance was.) In that way, it ought to help them think about the true significance of their own lives.
In saying that I would like to help the survivors “think about” their lives, I don’t mean anything teacherish. I mean only that if my story is told properly, it will be richer and more complex than anyone there knew. It will be brighter and darker than they knew will be more vivid and it will feel more “true.” [ Footnote 1:In this point, I am relying on a fairly dicey notion of true. On the other hand, nearly everyone has had the experience of finding out the full story of some event and comparing it unfavorably to the version of that event that was available at the time. When you heard the current account of that event, it was unsatisfying. It felt flat; without adequate features. When the full story comes out, it doesn’t feel flat anymore. The “missing” features—the ones you had no names for—are restored. It is at that point that you realize that somewhere inside you, you had a “feeling for the truth.” You couldn’t give it a name or describe its shape, but you knew it well enough that when it is presented, you recognize it as the “truth” you were missing. That’s what I mean by “feel more true.”
I think people will be helped to understand that their own lives are like that. They themselves are seeing only one face of it and when the fuller story is known it will be more than they could have known it to be. “More” includes both better and worse. No one benefits from a candy-coated life.
So, to review, the survivors will sense as they hear the full and vivid story of my life, that there is a full and vivid story of their lives as well and that they should be open to every intimation of just what it might be. They might want to try to live into it a little.
But, beginning on the second question now, all this relies on my own life being told. The model we are working from requires a Speaker for the Dead and we don’t have one. I think we can come close, though. If the story of my life could be told in a way that took into account the very different perspectives of the people who knew me, that story could rich in a “Speaker for the Dead” kind of way. Again, that sounds easy but if you have ever seen it tried, you know it is not.
Picture forty people, each waiting his turn to toss some anecdote into the pot. A lot of these stories are not about my life, except by distant reference. They are about the life of the teller, who is truly grateful for this opportunity to “share.” And speaker ten said just what speaker twenty wanted to say, so speaker twenty has to wing it. [Footnote 2: There would actually be a delicious irony if that came about. So many of the events of my life have been just like that and, put on the spot, I said things I had never said and had never heard before. Sometimes they turned out to be important for me and for some others as well. To have that happen at my memorial service would be worth a large communal laugh over beer afterward.]
For these and many other reasons, a “you'all come” story fest doesn’t work.
My best solution so far is to have someone whose job it is to shape those materials into a narrative. I asked my son, Dan, some years ago if he would do that for me and he said he would. And he could do it, too. Dan is like a really good tight end. He’s got good soft hands, so the ball doesn’t have to be right on target. And he can take a hit and get up and run that same route again without flinching. Those are pretty rare, together. And, he has known me all his life, which ought to count for something.
Dan would be accountable for the vividness of the story. If you want to think of the story as a tapestry, Dan would actively invite the holders of red threads and blue threads, etc. to make those threads available. He would seek out, if necessary, the black threads. That’s why I need someone who can take a hit. He doesn’t search for the black threads because he wants to emphasize the dark parts of my life. Only an enemy would do that and Dan is a friend. Dan searches for them because he knows I want a vivid tapestry and it isn’t going to vivid without dark threads. So it is friendship that sends him out looking for the holders of dark threads. Dan is lucky, in a sense, because he can find quite a few dark threads withouteven going outside the family. It will be a short commute for him.
I’m not counting on Dan to be my Speaker for the Dead. I am counting on him to believe three things: a) that my “real life” was richer (or at least, more complicated) than any of the participants knows; b) that if he doesn’t actively intervene, his father’s life is going to be presented as superficial and unpersuasive; and c) that he has my blessing to go wherever those threads are that my tapestry is short of. Since his father was a Duck, he will know where to go for the yellow and green ones, but who knows where the burnt umber threads are? The battleship gray threads? The dark and stormy night threads? Who will bring them into the public view, if asked, in order to make a richer and more vivid (and more honest) tapestry?
This post is about how to do that with the limited resources at my disposal and imagining myself to be the dead person. I specify that I am to be the guest of honor because, frankly, not everyone would want to have his “story” told in this way. I think I would like it—prospectively, of course—but I also think it could be justified only on the grounds that the people attending the service would be benefitted by it.
That brings me to my two questions for this post. The first is: for whom is the memorial service? The second is: is there a way to approximate a Speaker for the Dead?
There is a cheap answer to the first question. The service is for the survivors. Who else could it possibly be for? Not for me, certainly. But that simple answer leads, as they often do, to a more complicated question: what is it that will benefit the survivors? The service needs to be about my life. That is, after all, why people are there. All the people who come, with the exception of a very small number of young people, will have one eye on my life and death and the other on their own current lives and approaching deaths. So whatever happens in the service ought to be the kind of reflection on my life that helps them appreciate its true significance. (I defer, briefly, the question of what its true significance was.) In that way, it ought to help them think about the true significance of their own lives.
In saying that I would like to help the survivors “think about” their lives, I don’t mean anything teacherish. I mean only that if my story is told properly, it will be richer and more complex than anyone there knew. It will be brighter and darker than they knew will be more vivid and it will feel more “true.” [ Footnote 1:In this point, I am relying on a fairly dicey notion of true. On the other hand, nearly everyone has had the experience of finding out the full story of some event and comparing it unfavorably to the version of that event that was available at the time. When you heard the current account of that event, it was unsatisfying. It felt flat; without adequate features. When the full story comes out, it doesn’t feel flat anymore. The “missing” features—the ones you had no names for—are restored. It is at that point that you realize that somewhere inside you, you had a “feeling for the truth.” You couldn’t give it a name or describe its shape, but you knew it well enough that when it is presented, you recognize it as the “truth” you were missing. That’s what I mean by “feel more true.”
I think people will be helped to understand that their own lives are like that. They themselves are seeing only one face of it and when the fuller story is known it will be more than they could have known it to be. “More” includes both better and worse. No one benefits from a candy-coated life.
So, to review, the survivors will sense as they hear the full and vivid story of my life, that there is a full and vivid story of their lives as well and that they should be open to every intimation of just what it might be. They might want to try to live into it a little.
But, beginning on the second question now, all this relies on my own life being told. The model we are working from requires a Speaker for the Dead and we don’t have one. I think we can come close, though. If the story of my life could be told in a way that took into account the very different perspectives of the people who knew me, that story could rich in a “Speaker for the Dead” kind of way. Again, that sounds easy but if you have ever seen it tried, you know it is not.
Picture forty people, each waiting his turn to toss some anecdote into the pot. A lot of these stories are not about my life, except by distant reference. They are about the life of the teller, who is truly grateful for this opportunity to “share.” And speaker ten said just what speaker twenty wanted to say, so speaker twenty has to wing it. [Footnote 2: There would actually be a delicious irony if that came about. So many of the events of my life have been just like that and, put on the spot, I said things I had never said and had never heard before. Sometimes they turned out to be important for me and for some others as well. To have that happen at my memorial service would be worth a large communal laugh over beer afterward.]
For these and many other reasons, a “you'all come” story fest doesn’t work.
My best solution so far is to have someone whose job it is to shape those materials into a narrative. I asked my son, Dan, some years ago if he would do that for me and he said he would. And he could do it, too. Dan is like a really good tight end. He’s got good soft hands, so the ball doesn’t have to be right on target. And he can take a hit and get up and run that same route again without flinching. Those are pretty rare, together. And, he has known me all his life, which ought to count for something.
Dan would be accountable for the vividness of the story. If you want to think of the story as a tapestry, Dan would actively invite the holders of red threads and blue threads, etc. to make those threads available. He would seek out, if necessary, the black threads. That’s why I need someone who can take a hit. He doesn’t search for the black threads because he wants to emphasize the dark parts of my life. Only an enemy would do that and Dan is a friend. Dan searches for them because he knows I want a vivid tapestry and it isn’t going to vivid without dark threads. So it is friendship that sends him out looking for the holders of dark threads. Dan is lucky, in a sense, because he can find quite a few dark threads withouteven going outside the family. It will be a short commute for him.
I’m not counting on Dan to be my Speaker for the Dead. I am counting on him to believe three things: a) that my “real life” was richer (or at least, more complicated) than any of the participants knows; b) that if he doesn’t actively intervene, his father’s life is going to be presented as superficial and unpersuasive; and c) that he has my blessing to go wherever those threads are that my tapestry is short of. Since his father was a Duck, he will know where to go for the yellow and green ones, but who knows where the burnt umber threads are? The battleship gray threads? The dark and stormy night threads? Who will bring them into the public view, if asked, in order to make a richer and more vivid (and more honest) tapestry?
That’s really all I know. As a way of easing my way back down from the limb I have climbed out on, however, let me offer two additional points. The first is that my life has not been all that vivid compared to a lot of the lives I myself have seen or have heard about. I’ve never been famous or infamous; never notably rich or poor; not notably saintly; not notably scholarly. I have dearly loved the life I have had and I have no complaints about it, but when I ask for it to be told “in full color,” so to speak, I need to say that I know it may not take much color to be full color. On the other hand, as one of you is sure to point out, according to my view, I don’t know how colorful it “really was,” no does anyone else, so who would know?
The second point is that as a Christian, I do believe that the whole of my story is known. And I believe that the most truly significant truth of my life is whether I really did consent to play the part that moves God’s story on toward its providential conclusion. And not only did I consent, but I also trained for it and gave it my full attention. I believe that we can’t know those things, so as we remember those who have passed away from us, we ask the best questions we can and give the best answers we can and call it good enough.
Good enough sounds pretty good to me.
The second point is that as a Christian, I do believe that the whole of my story is known. And I believe that the most truly significant truth of my life is whether I really did consent to play the part that moves God’s story on toward its providential conclusion. And not only did I consent, but I also trained for it and gave it my full attention. I believe that we can’t know those things, so as we remember those who have passed away from us, we ask the best questions we can and give the best answers we can and call it good enough.
Good enough sounds pretty good to me.
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