SVO

The great weakness of English as a Subject-Verb-Object language only really becomes apparent when it forces you to hang a name in the air for the eternity it takes to get out "died". No object can follow, of course, and it is lucky that this is so, because the difficulty in forming the name, with its potential to be followed by an infinite number of verbs, knowing that the one to come is the ultimate intransitive, is only exceeded by the impossibility of getting out anything further.

I wrote the above to myself on the back of a Service Agreement while I was waiting for the family of the deceased to arrive at a recent funeral. While the body was being placed in the ground, I was mentally describing the light-brown colouration of the fringes of the tallit which had been unwrapped from the body of the dead boy, brought out from the grave by the man whose job it is to jump into graves with dead bodies and make sure they lie properly, and laid on the stretcher which just a few minutes beforehand had been followed by all of the mourners to that place, and which was now lying just near my foot.

I had left it until now.

I have a funny relationship with death. I relate to the dead person, thinking that maybe that's me and my living is the illusion. I relate to the family, to their genuineness, and try to let them know that no matter how unconventional they think their feelings are, it's okay to feel it while I'm there. Having some brief experience in the world of mourning from the inside, I think it's very common that the mourners themselves feel pressure to feel in a certain way, to act in a certain way. In most cases, if you ask the mourners, they will probably say that it's like any occasion where they are hosting guests - they will act in a certain way and try to control the behaviour of those around them so that their guests feel comfortable. Davka I think that death is the one occasion where we should be released from these bonds of politeness, and allowed to feel whatever the hell we want.