---

Dear Sir,

The death of a person well known to us is indeed an experience filled with a variety of emotions.

To some, the person will be a close family member - to others a good friend and yet to others a passing acquaintance. Still and in all a passing.

Those who attempt to unjustly benefit from another's demise have been aptly described in history as grave robbers.

They have been the lampoon of many a political cartoon as professional mourners having little or even no knowledge of whom they mourn for.

Further disservice is rendered when those left behind attempt to grade their performance as being a more (or less) sincere mourner than another.

Lowering standards

The promise of a holiday for political support or the judgement of one's political future based on some attendance rooster is setting a new low, even for those professional mourners.

On June 8, 1968, just shy of some 40 years ago, Senator Edward M. Kennedy said of his brother Robert's passing:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried too stop it.

"Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world."

We should heed these words and allow the Dame to rest in peace.

David J. Sullivan, JP

Paget[[In-content Ad]]

---