Eulogy is the final death. In eulogizing we presume to capture life's passing in pithy statements, declarative sentences, a sententious anecdote, as if to invoke the ghost of the deceased and say, "Here he is, here is your beloved gone," so that all the mourners can tearfully nod their heads and say, "Ah yes, that was so-and-so, that was who he was. He led a good life. May he rest in peace."

In this way we delude ourselves into believing that we can know our loss, that our grief can be summed and summarized and then lamented for what it is rather than hunted in the darkness of our souls. But everyone knows this is a lie. Funereal speeches always ring hollow somewhere underneath, and privately mourners find themselves wondering if they knew the deceased at all, or if by some cosmic error the speaker and the spoken-of have been misplaced and belong rightfully at some other funereal, some other time, some other place.

But grief demands to be satiated, so we feed it with eulogy's crude approximations. Nevermind the act of desecration, the separation of life from its inherent sprawling messiness, its contradictions and contraventions.

We have gathered here today to mourn a friend, and in eulogy we bury him.

Centuries from now internet archeologists will sift through the broken remains of a 21st century social networking website and conclude that the prevailing mode of artistic expression was a free-form genre whose only restriction was a 420 character limit (with spaces).

Also, the internet archeologists will be aliens from outer space. They will call themselves the Querlimerv and they will subsist entirely on limestone.

Once I was a baby. I looked at everything with newborn eyes. My parents fed me; they changed my dirty diapers. Once my parents were babies. They crawled about, babbled cheerful nonesense. My grandparents wiped the drool from their mouths. Once my grandparents were babies. Then they grew old. Some of them have died. Someday my parents will grow old and die. Someday I will too.

We will wonder what babies grow to be

sweet child, let me stand between the world and you to shield your tender eyes. And if you need to look, take pity on me and look only with the corner of an eye, for if you see the world in full, I fear your heart will break, and if your child's heart should break, my own will surely fail.

When I was a child I thought that becoming an adult made you strong and wise beyond measure. When I was a teenager I saw that the strength and wisdom of adults was a lie and I hated them for deceiving me. In my twenties, I decided that adults are just children who've learned to pretend they’re not, and the world--with its injustices and mindless cruelties--is their broken play-thing. As I approach my thirties, I struggle with the fact that I am fast becoming one of them.

Memory sings a siren song--

comely truth-lies beckoning--

and if you listen carefully,

it will eat you alive.

(note the meter)

Should I feign my innocence and draw you in with lured words? Beware. There is a net and a knife in words, my love. But I, I am too guileless to weave a trap for you, too overeager to lie in wait for you. I stumble to you across the open turf like a pilgrim at his journey's end: empty-handed, a prayer on my lips. And with reverence I lay my arms across your breast and wrap my hands around your slender neck...