Death makes angels of us all

today we went to pay our condolences to one of our student's family whose dad had passed away. he lived with oesophagus cancer for close to a year. and died of it. various people spoke of the occassion of the bereaved family and of the deceased.mostly of the deceased. i had tears brimming when the new widow got up to say how she dreads going to sleep and when she did sleep how she dreads waking up. in our culture, it is said that the pain of losing one's spouse is akin to hacking one's shoulder off(or something to that effect). personally i think it MUST be more painful than that. personally i dont think the loss(death) of a spouse(if love is shared) is NOT akin to any other pain in this world. and therefore shouldnt be compared to any other pain.
that said
the other thing that crossed my mind is this
'death makes angels of us all'
what was Jim thinking of when he wrote this? because i feel its truth. when people come forth to speak at funeral wakes, it is only the good in them that they speak of. never he/she was: petty/deceptive/contrary/shallow/narrow. i dont mean to take anything away from the memory of dead people(pardon my crudeness) but i find it strangely amusing that we,that are alive, feel the need to make angels of those that are gone. not before they are gone. but. after they are gone. hmmm.how contrary.
my father died when i was sixteen. and by all accounts(after his gone state), my father was goodness and kindness incarnate. like i said, i was sixteen, too consumed in my own existence to really know or even want to know anything about my father save for what he stood for, for me, ie a father. so i never knew what kind of person my father really was. not really.
and all the years hence, when people(his friends/acquaintances/colleagues/subordinates etc) realise that i am my father's daughter, the most i can infer from their accounts of their time with him is what an angel he was.now, this is all fine and dandy.because what daughter wouldnt want to hear that her father was a good man?!
but sometimes, someeeetimes, i wish someone would tell me who my father REALLY was. his 'exits' and 'entrances' so i could know what about me in me is a living part of my father.

and i look at the student and think...young person, henceforth, you will only ever know that your father was good and kind and steadfast and true. will you grow from this knowledge in this knowledge.

i requote The Lizard King: Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws.

edit: i also just remembered this one time i was at YMA night for the deceased in our neighbourhood and when one of the YMA 'hruaitu's' got up to speak loftily of the deceased, a drunk a few seats behind us mumbled,'why didnt he say all these nice things to him when he was alive?' LOL