We're Not Ready for the Past Tense . . .

. . . when talking about Tim Russert.  Jesus!  I find myself getting angry at the glib swiftness with which journalists and public mourners slip into the condolent and obituarian use of it, while we're still all going, "Wait a minute!  Not so fast!"

Someone who hasn't even whirled a day away downstream isn't "was" yet.  His or her presence still vibrates in the room, the way the exquisitely dilute homeopathic essence of a substance is said to be imprinted on shaken water.  The past tense ought to be forbidden by stern custom for at least three transitional days after especially such an out-of-the-blue, blindsiding death. 

Comments

[reader_iam]

This is pretty much the one truly original take I've seen, Annie. No shock there. : )

[Mary]

Ready or not, he's gone amba... Really and truly and no defibrillator or artificial life-enhancing efforts to bring him back.

Sadly, and as much as it might hurt, truth is the past tense is here is appropriate. Spending the good majority of their nightly news program mourning him -- at the expense of covering the other important headlines, especially when you've got the later primetime "remembering TR" show in the works, well I can see where that could be questioned, but that's the way our celebrity-based news coverage goes these days.

Sadly, your insticts about it being too soon after heart attack deaths in younger men whom we don't think to be so weak healthwise is probably shared by many in the audience, celebrities or not. But life often delivers such honest rude awakenings, just to keep us from getting too soft and comfortable, I think.

RIP Tim Russert, and all those whom we would protest are taken too soon. But facts are facts, and if we can face them honestly, maybe we can learn something from them. TR probably had access to the best heathcare in the world; it's a shame nobody could see this heart trouble coming and do something to head it off before a loss of this magnitude (a life) occurred.

[Kate]

I feel the same as you do, Amba, but I could never have stated it like you do. Wow! what a great use of English.

Admiringly,
Kate

[amba]

At MSNBC, they certainly are indulging in doing their private mourning publicly, taking over the entire agenda of the network with their wake -- because they can. But it's interesting to hear sorta-celebrities like Jack Welch musing about mortality. It reminds you they are, and are only, actual people.

[karen]

Sometimes talking about a person who's gone seems the only way to keep him alive, still. Remebering so vividly is to reach forward and touch again.

He may have known these people best, and they give him a tribute fitting for a king because they want it known how much he meant to them.

It still sucks, though.