Cemeteries, it's said, are the richest places on earth because so much unrealised potential lies beneath them.
Buried deep with all those bodies are countless dreams never pursued; prize-winning books never written, profitable businesses never built, life-changing inventions never launched off the drawing board, unfinished songs left unsung.
Every headstone marks a life that was lived and infinite others that might have been.
Cemeteries are also where we bury the truth because moments after that last breath is drawn the editing process begins.
A disagreeable neighbour who could find an argument in an empty room is celebrated for "his willingness to speak his mind".
A sociopathic boss is recast as "demanding but fair".
A crabby, narcissistic aunt becomes a "beloved family character".
Rough edges are sanded smooth, inconvenient facts forgotten, as we award the departed a posthumous promotion.
It's image management politicians and movie stars would die for. But it raises a delicate question. What, exactly, do we owe the dead? Kindness and flattery? Or honesty?
In the modern world there seems little room for both.
The issue recently erupted in the hours after the death of former FBI director Robert Mueller when Donald Trump weighed in with typical coarseness. "Good," wrote Trump about one of his long-time opponents. "I'm glad he's dead."
It wasn't the first time Trump had defied society's taboo of never speaking ill of the dead. Years earlier he'd delighted in posthumously mocking Senator John McCain, a former Marine and prisoner of war whose repeated torturing by his North Vietnamese captors left him with lifelong injuries.
Trump also pursued another adversary into the graveyard in 2019, implying John Dingell, a long-serving Democrat critic of Trump, had gone straight to hell.
Trump revels in his self-proclaimed role as a disruptor, delivering opinions with the subtlety of a brick hurled through a window. But his boorishness and recent warmongering aside, his passion for dancing on the graves of others is surely further evidence of his unfitness for office: the man has no empathy.
For millennia most of us have agreed, sometimes uncomfortably, with the maxim of Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, who coined the phrase de mortuis nil nisi bonum - "of the dead, speak nothing but good". Back then it was regarded as a noble sentiment encouraging compassion for grieving families and cautioning against generational bloodletting, a custom enthusiastically pursued in ancient times.
But the airbrushing of history is sometimes taken too far. History is marked by countless lives of the dead sanitised beyond recognition. Princess Diana was effectively canonised as a saint after her untimely death, with little mention of her media manipulation, much less her extramarital affairs. John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and even Mother Teresa also had flaws and frailties whitewashed after their passing. Call them the grateful dead.
Fortunately there are limits to the grace we bestow on the departed. Otherwise Hitler would be remembered as a misunderstood patriot and Stalin an overly firm but ambitious administrator.
But let's not mistake Trump's willingness to attack the departed as an act of courageous defiance against centuries of sober tradition. As always with him - and the increasing number of politicians around the world copying his shock and awe tactics - it's an ignorance of the importance balance and proportion play in life and death.
In the comic book world inhabited by these right wing reactionaries (their self-righteous left wing opponents are just as bad) people are either sinners or saints. Differences of opinion are not tested with thoughtful debate but become fodder for moral crusades. There is no middle ground, no sea of grey separating the black and white lands they inhabit.
Ironic, isn't it? At a time when the world is so complex, fear and loathing encourages simpletons to embrace simplicity.
Death shouldn't exempt anyone from the truth. But that doesn't mean the truth about the departed should be stripped of empathy or humanity.
Honesty and a touch of mercy. Everything in proportion. It's the least the dead, grateful or not, deserve.
HAVE YOUR SAY: How would you prefer to be remembered at your funeral? Can a eulogy be compassionate and honest at the same time? Were you appalled - or did you applaud - Trump's comments about Robert Mueller? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Medical cannabis patients in NSW will be allowed to get behind the wheel without the fear of losing their driver's licence. with a new "commonsense" bill introduced into state parliament.
- A man who drove his ute at police officers and rammed a local station has been found dead days after being denied bail.
- Teachers demanding more hours to plan for the classroom lessons have been backed by Australian voters across the political spectrum, according to new polling.
THEY SAID IT: Don't talk ill of the dead, people say. But if we aren't truthful about who our loved ones were, then we aren't really remembering them. We're creating someone who didn't exist." - Amy Harmon, author
YOU SAID IT: Watching a series of news reports from Tehran, John spotted something once unimaginable in the background: women walking the streets without hijabs.
Gwennie writes: "A friend and I visited Iran in 2019 for a women's tour, and were amazed at the difference between the regime and the population, in the cities anyway. Young women uni students with a token piece of scarf you couldn't see chatted with us, women drivers on their own abusing a man in traffic, hotel staff in the restaurant telling us to not bother with the hijab. A two-tier society. Let's hope the liberal one wins."
"It's not the hijab that's in question, really; it's the menacing connotations attached to the compliance/power trip," writes Jennifer, who's marched, walked in protests for 65 of her 76 years. "How is it different from the edicts of fundamentalist groups elsewhere who control behaviour, dress or birth choices for women in many cultures? Violence, be it at a national or domestic level in our streets and homes, is abhorrent. It denies basic human respect to another person. It's time to lift the veil of war and control. I salute the courage of the women who stand against oppression in Tehran, support those who assist refugees in our country, and make Aboriginal flag beanies to 'wave the flag' for our own First Peoples. We all matter."
"It won't be a government dictating what I as a man cannot wear - it will always be an attempt to control women," writes Keith. "As the father of four daughters I would absolutely resist any such repression."
Alison writes: "For decades now I haven't worn a bra. Those lineups of uniformity you'll see in Big W, with their padding, price tags and underwired syntheticity, are instruments of the devil and I've never met a comfortable one yet. Once in Indonesia I walked past a group of old men while wearing respectable slacks and a top that didn't quite come down far enough. They fixed their eyes on nothing else as I went by. Even though Indonesia largely practises a moderate form of Islam, there are always the diehards. Monitoring women's clothing is an expression of power and control."
