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.