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A New Way to Talk about “The Dead”
Here’s an article I wanted to comment on. This pastor has a problem with saying “passed” instead of “died.”
The pastor: Gene Shelburne. Sun, March 6, 2022. #AmarilloGlobeNews
“Shelburne: A new way to say ‘she died’”
“I was disappointed when one of our finest funeral directors (a longtime friend) used the latest jargon to tell me that somebody died. It jarred me to hear this death-expert using the current euphemism. He told me that the man “passed.” Really? What did he pass? Gas?
All of my life it has been common to say that a dead person has “passed away.” While this also has been a way to cushion the reality of death, at least the meaning of that expression is clear. But “passed”? Somebody asked how our son did on his law exam. I bragged, “He passed.” But he’s still breathing almost four decades after that. New signs on four-lane highways all over Texas tell us that the inside lane is for passing only. While driving several hundred miles today, I got into that far-left lane multiple times to get around some slowpoke. It worked. Each time I passed. But I’m still alive.
A friend of mine wrote that Zsa Zsa Gabor died when she was 96. I didn’t know that. But for sixty years-plus before they laid her to rest, over and over in her films she passed for a heroine or a harlot. Roger…