James Turner

About

There is one thing I would want said before anybody sits down: you are not required to have loved the person simply or uncomplicatedly. A great many people arrive braced to perform an affection that was, in life, a lot more mixed than the eulogy suggested. Complicated is normal. The loss of a loved one who was also difficult produces a particular kind of tangle, involving relief, anger, and guilt about both, and it is far more common than anybody admits at a funeral. We make room for the whole picture. Nothing has to be simplified in order to be discussed in here. I have heard enough complicated affection to have stopped being surprised by any of it. Almost nobody's version is straightforward. If yours was mixed, that does not disqualify you from finding this hard. Eulogies simplify; this hour does not have to. Mixed feeling is the ordinary case rather than the exception.