In Continuum.

The idea of obituaries is strange to me, I wonder who came up with it in the first place. I bet it was a very rich businessman, or some politician, someone who wanted the world to know that he was dead. More than that, however, he probably wanted people to know just how great he was a person in life, and was probably aiming at making the readers feel a sense of loss and perhaps sympathy too. I can imagine him on his death bed, telling his son to put his picture in tomorrow's morning newspaper, and make sure they use fanciful languages to describe his efforts in life and the moments before his death. Everybody wants to be remembered in a positive manner, nobody wants to be remembered as the "tyrant", or the "dictator", or simply "that old bastard". So the editors at the publishing house probably had a hard time coming up with variations of the word "good" just to describe this rich businessman - let's call him Ralph. Ralph probably wasn't that good a person in life, truth to be told. He probably drank too much and was a wife beater. But hey, everything can be forgiven in death, everybody becomes "honorable" and "admirable" in death. That magic of obituaries, they make the nastiest people sound like saints.

It just sounds like the product of a narcissistic man, someone who loved himself a tad bit too much. He wanted everybody to love him too, even those that never knew him in life until the morning when they flipped open the newspaper. I don't get the idea of obituaries at all, but it is not stopping people from putting their dead relatives or friends in them every morning in the newspaper. It seems like a guaranteed source of income, which is probably why the publishers are willing to spare a few pages just for black and white pictures of dead people. Of course, black and white pictures coupled with a bunch of fancy words and phrases. They are usually nice words to describe the dead people, although their pictures never look too happy to hear those words. You'd expect them to be somehow grateful, to know that people are going to remember them in such a fashion. But they always look so bored in those pictures, just tired of life. They probably couldn't wait to leave this world, and the last thing they wanted to do was to have their bored picture plastered all over the morning newspaper. So much for the fancy words, nobody in obituaries seem to appreciate them very much, anyway. 

Dead people's money are so easy to earn, don't you think? That is probably why so many businesses related to death are springing out from nowhere these days. A coffin probably costs in the vicinity of a few thousand dollars, unless you are so cheap that you'd rather go for the wooden pine box. The funeral itself would cost a lot of money, not to mention the cremation if you are into that form of burial, or the traditional way of burying your loved ones in the ground - that'd cost even more money. Supposedly, the idea of returning into nature through the decomposition of one's body and back into the soils isn't an idea welcomed by many people today. Which is why people are given the option of cremating their loved ones and then putting them into little glass urns. By the way, they call it cremation, I call it "burning of dead corpses". It's a nice word, but they really mean the same thing. Even that urn is going to cost you a whole lot of money, and there are even businesses now that make DVDs out of the funeral - how morbid can the business get?

But it is all money we are talking about, money being cashed into your pockets. Everybody likes money, even the dead likes paper money with an obscene amount of zeros in them - the underworld must be facing some heavy inflation, judging from the currency that they are trading with. I mean, ten trillion? Give me a break. Anyway, dead people's money are easy to earn, relatives are willing to do anything just to send them off in the right manner. A little bit more money isn't too much to ask for, it is the last thing the living can do for the dead after all. They work with this mentality of the family of the deceased, they like to manipulate them into buying the most expensive urn or the most pricey coffin. It is the last time anyway, why not spend a few more dollars? Your loved one would be appreciative, he'd be smiling down at you from above for sure. Well, nobody ever considers the possibility that their loved ones may be looking up from below, cursing. Everybody is looking down, because everybody is in Heaven. Everybody is a good person according to the obituaries, and we take the words in those morbid looking pages of an average newspaper as definitive. 

It must have stemmed from the fear of the definite nature of life that humans possess, the way we have created, for ourselves, the illusion of an afterlife just so that we'd be able to live forever. The same goes with those morbid looking pictures in the obituaries in a way, we just want to live in a certain way in everybody's minds. It doesn't matter what you did in life, everybody becomes so forgiving once you are six feet under. If you were a violent father in life, you'd become a strict father with firm principles in death. If you were a alcoholic in life, you'd become a hearty man in death. If you were a person who liked to gamble a lot in life, you'd become a person who took risks in death. If you were a person who died because of drug overdose in life, you'd become a person who was always filled with vibrant imageries and ideas in death. Everything is forgiven, everything is A-OK in death. It's interesting to observe how our perception of the dead changes once they are officially dead. I'd like to see somebody bad-mouth a dead person at his or her funeral, that'd be interesting to see. While that person may not end up as being very welcomed at the funeral, at least he'd be utterly and completely honest.

You read about tragic events in the newspaper from time to time, the obituaries aside. You know, somebody drowning in the swimming pool, somebody taking a plunge off the balcony, somebody being raped and stabbed in a dark alley. These people are almost always good students, good husbands, good friends, or good citizens. Well, you don't hear about bad people drowning, killing themselves, raped and killed in the newspaper, because it just doesn't seem very impacting I suppose. Whenever a student is involved in some tragic accident, the paper would always use words like "diligent student" or "respectful son", and never anything else. I'd like to see a man ran over by a car being described as "an old pervert who deserved to die", or "a man who never had a spine in life". Anything out of the ordinary, that'd be fun to see indeed. It is all Ralph's fault I reckon, Ralph probably wasn't a very good person in life. He just wanted everybody else to think that he was, and we follow suit because, well, the man is dying! Cut him some slack, right? 

As if the function of obituary isn't enough, some people abuse the system by posting pictures of their dead relatives twenty years after their death, like some kind of wedding anniversary or something. "Mrs. so and so, died on July the 25th, 1988. Mother of four and the good wife of Mr. so and so, and shall be remembered today as the mother that we all love and miss dearly". There are a dozen people dying every single day, and there you are taking up half the page with a person who died twenty years ago? What is it with anniversaries that we are so obsessed over anyway, especially when it is a death anniversary. It is not like the person who died was some kind of a martyr, or somebody who made a great sacrifice in life for the betterment of everybody else. That person was probably just a rich businessman, some politician, or anybody with children rich enough to take up half a page in the morning newspaper. Sometimes, you get fourteen year anniversaries too - now what's up with that? Fourteen is an odd number, it doesn't really have authority. Since you want the great population to remember your dead mother from the past, shouldn't you pick a more authoritative number? Perhaps a ten year anniversary, or a fifteen year anniversary. Fourteen is just strange, unless it was your mother's lucky number. But death is not something to celebrate about, it's not a nation's birthday or something like that. I don't see the purpose of digging up old graves and to remind everybody about it. Let the person rest in peace, you living people should just continue living your lives as per normal. 

I find it amusing how the obituaries are almost always placed next to the classified advertisements. We have a page of people selling refrigerators, some guy trying to sell his car, some company looking for part-time employees, someone looking for his lost dog somewhere in Toa Payoh area. Then you flip the page, and you see a whole bunch of dead people on display, and you find yourself choking on your coffee and spilling it all over the morning newspaper. Great, now you have coffee stain all over the pictures of the dead people, and the superstitious you is going to feel like shit for the rest of the day because, well, you spilled coffee over the obituary page. I don't think the obituary should be a part of any newspaper, it doesn't flow with the theme of any newspaper in the world. The front page is the page that sells the paper, dedicated to the busybody and the curious. The finance page is for the businessman, the stock brokers, the money-minded people in the population. The entertainment section is for those TV-junkies, the movie buffs, the scandal lovers and whatnot. The sports section appeals to the soccer addicts, the basketball fans, or whoever that intends to place a bet on tonight's soccer game. Who is the obituary for, who reads it? Every section in the newspaper was designed to appeal to somebody, but not the obituary. Nobody ever reads the obituary, nobody likes the idea that someday, they might be the ones appearing on those pages, just waiting for somebody to spit coffee on their pictures. 

I think there should be a separate paper for the obituaries. I shall call it "The Obituary Post", just to appeal for those people who wants to know who passed away yesterday, or maybe twenty years ago. Some people need to be reminded of how precious their lives are, and these people can only be reminded by knowing about other people's death. You know, those people who'd tell you about how we should treasure our lives only when there's some kind of natural disasters overseas, or when a large number of people died in some terrorist attack. They see a bunch of people dying on the evening news, and they turn to tell you to treasure your life. Seriously, we shouldn't wait till a bunch of people are dying before we tell ourselves that we should treasure every moment. Not when you are reading the obituary, not when you are watching the evening news. Think about it, the newspaper obituary could be a great place for product placement. Need a spanking new coffin for your newly dead relative? How about an expensive urn that costs two-thirds of your salary? Maybe hire a fengshui  master who is going to tell you the best place to bury your relative, a fengshui master who is also going to take away a third of that salary of yours? Product placements, I am going to be a very, very rich man.