In Memoriam Jack Warren Meyer, Sr. d. 20 July 2008

When we children received gifts and services with silence, mothers said:
"What do you say?"
With a prompt, we were quick to say "thank you."
Or we hurt somebody. "Say you're sorry." So we said "I'm sorry," but it was harder than "thank you." It's more common to hear "you're not really sorry" than "you're not really grateful."

So we children grow up and someone dies and we say "I'm sorry."

Trying to fill the silence of death is a necessary impossibility with anything less than the Word. Meanwhile, we say something. Take and read:

I don't too much believe Uncle Walt:

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I'm more toward Auden:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen,

Would we do better , since we're awkwardly silent and kid clueless (innocently uncomprehending) to quote our mothers, to say "thank you?"