THE DEAD SELDOM REST IN PEACE!

Going through the obituaries in our local dailies you can easily tell whether those left behind by the departed are gainfully employed or not. Those employed have their names followed by two things, a bracket, where their places of employment are proudly flaunted for everyone reading the orbituary to see (to read actually) and a comma. The jobless, on the other hand, have nothing after their names other than just a mere comma!

Just sample the following and you will know what I mean:

Death and Funeral Announcement of Johnston Sol (Rest in Pieces!)

It is with great sadness that we announce the untimely (what is a timely death, is it the one that announces its coming?) death of Johnston Sol of the Black & White Enterprises (California, USA) after a long life of trying to come to terms with his own son’s inability to secure gainful employment. Mr Sol has left behind a doting wife, Mrs Lazybones, his daughters Birgitta One-Minute (Surrey, UK), Mercy Fingernails (Alpha House Computers, Nairobi), Judith Weaveful (Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi), son-in-law Jude Wannabe (Oil Contractor, Nigeria), Ben Doolittle (UK), Rich (Austria) and his sons John, Willis, Fred, Jack and Luke. Friends and relatives are gathering everyday at the Norfolk Hotel.

Entrance for the fundraising event is reserved for VIP cardholders only.

This simply means that the dead man will (should he get burried at all) keep on tossing and turning in his grave thinking about all those hopeless sons (the ones whose names are not followed by a bracket and a comma) he has left behind to blemish his record. John and his brothers won’t be attending the funeral arrangements at the Norfolk Hotel since they don’t possess a VIP card. Their job will be to look for gravediggers and do other odd jobs (like allocating the VIP card holers seats) here and there.

It is equally ironical when you hear (read actually) that the survivors want the departed to rest in peace when the last sentence leaves the dead tossing and turning inside their graves.

“In God’s hands you rest, in our hearts you live forever!”

And by the way, why do they refer to dead bodies as the remains when all that is gone out of the body is the breath and blood? And why do people spend more on funeral expenses on the dead, when they never bought the remains a bunch of sukuma wiki while he was still alive! And why do they feast at funerals when they should be grieving over the remains instead? Such are the things that don’t give the dead peace. And so wishing them a peaceful rest is useless. For, when all is said and done, the dead seldom rest in peace. They just rest in tiny pieces instead!