Here’s something I’ve always struggled with: When someone passes, and they’re one of the most exquisitely unique human beings you’ve ever come across, how do you articulate it?
You can say it all, but how do make sure everyone knows they were the best? Them, and no one else. How do you articulate they were just, simply, better.
The intriguing thing about death is that everyone is the best. And if everyone’s the best, then perhaps no one is. As if the minute your heart falters and your brain begins to sleep, every bad decision and every flaw and every mistake goes with you. Your slate is clean. The dead sit together on an even playing field.
And because of this, the one’s who weren’t so good aren’t remembered so, and the one’s who were particularly good don’t stand out as much.
So what happens when we buck that? What happens when we call out humans in death as we do in life?
This, it would seem.
Leslie Ray Charping passed away in Galveston, Texas, last month at the age of 74. His very honest obituary, written from his family, has amassed such traction that the website it sits on has crashed.
Charping was a father, a husband, a grandfather and an asshole. And not particularly in that order.
