That's why I write.

          It’s pretty common, after all, for grieving survivors to imagine what their dearly departed would have wanted.  “Dad would have wanted me to play in the big game,” we hear young athletes say.  Sometimes, to go on despite their loss, the grieving survivor dedicates his performance to his or her dead father—or mother or grandparent.   Maybe an entire team will wear a black armband, a remembrance and a motivator.  It’s all very touching.  And insincere.

Survivors, after all, have no alternative but to press on, but assuming the dead person would have happily and forgivingly given his blessing about your decision to suck up your grief and go on your camping trip anyway has always seemed bad form to me.  I wince when I hear the familiar refrain:  “Dad would have wanted me to go.”  Have the decency to admit that you are acting selfishly, I want to tell them, that your father’s death matters less to you than losing a chance to do something you have been looking forward to.  And don’t forgive yourself by imagining, in the most self-serving sort of way, that your dead dad would have wanted it that way.  If he still had feelings, they would be hurt.    

The truth of the matter is that at the moment of death, no one has a voice in anything ever again.  Survivors can imagine whatever they want the dead person to have thought or said, but the reality is that survivors from that point forward are safe from the reproaches of the dearly departed, who can no longer manage their own finances, state their most deeply felt opinions, defend themselves against enemies and misunderstanding, explain what they really meant, or ask humbly for forgiveness.  They have entered their time of eternal silence.

            That’s why I write.