I realize this is a 'reverse' homage. But this sentence struck me:

"When you first showed up as an adult, we just did not know what to think of the Yankee ways you had picked up, but now.... well, now, we've decided that you are just too amusing to find fault with."

It reminds me of Alice Roosevelt: "If you do not have anything good to say about anybody, come and sit next to me."

It is not meaning of what was said, it is how it was said. This is what I feel, this is what I am,take it or leave it.

It is that sense. I have met people like that. Men and women.

I guess that sometimes we lie about the dead to make ourselves feel better.

Regardless of the cultural bias toward speaking well of women in life or death, I think there is a cultural bias toward revering those who've passed on in general. I don't think it's necessarily a healthy bias either, often serving to extend grief. I attended a wake in which willing participants addressed the gathering and took turns telling the worst story they could remember about the departed. That served a great purpose, in providing levity as we all considered what an ass our friend was in spite of overwhelming admirable traits. It also allowed us to put his life in more meaningful perspective, rather than just sitting around crying, and telling each other how the world won't be the same without him, (which it won't).

Thank you so much, M2. You remind me of what was, for me, a pivotal moment at my grandfather's funeral, when an old guy doddering on a cane hobbled up to my grandfather's coffin, looked at him, and said, with simple satisfaction: "Been waitin' thirty years for this;" and, without introducing himself, or bothering to expound, hobbled away.
I adored my grandfather, who adored me. But that doesn't mean that he did not hurt other people. I wish I had broken out of social convention, and followed the old guy out to the lobby, to ask what it was all about. I was loved and, so, I had nothing to lose. But I might, maybe, have healed something that needed to be healed, just by listening.

You are something approaching spectacular, ma'am.

DD: Southern women, as I have told you, do not perspire, but only glow. You make me glow. However, as someone recently pointed out, squid blush. This is completely disconcerting to me, as a lover of Calamari, because I: a) cannot, any longer, order same; and, b) now, thanks to you, have to learn to deal with blushing, as well as with glowing.

Not at all, Bwak, and I mean this: it is you who rawk. (Btw, to show proper respect to you, when I posted a Newfie dog video for Quinn as his belated birthday gift, I purposely passed up the one in which the Newfie had a chicken toy. It seemed unseemly, given your integrity; verdad? -- is verdad right?)

Si, es verdad.

I know the arrogance you are talking about. I have seen it in action and felt the short end of it too.
In regards to the ethical dilemma of praise and/or blame, I do know there was a price to be paid to espouse what this woman did. She paid for it probably in more ways than anyone will ever know.
Paying respect to imagined virtue is not necessarily false because you have to imagine it.
Love requires imagination.

ACK! Sorrrrrrrrry.

But, I blame the Monterey aquarium.

=D

Doesn't "calamari" involve hurting the squid?

Otherwise, I only hurt trolls. They don't count.

Hey, M --
I revised this this morning because it did not make the point I wanted it to make. But you got it anyway, and said it much better, in fewer words.
Here's to the "well-behaved" women who hang on the walls who live in the house that custom built.
Thank you.

... she was a woman so sure of herself that, despite being a legatee of the old south, she was also, early on, fearlessly committed to, among other things: civil rights and, later, the ERA amendment, and later ...

..."a woman who sacrificed herself to work tirelessly for the community" (No; every stand she took flew in the face of the accepted local order)

I loved this piece, thank you. I'd would just like to humbly offer a different take on your point quoted above.

Perhaps, with time, the community caught up a bit towards where your grand dame had been making her brave stand all along.

And perhaps this was due to her tirelessness, her fearlessness, and her sacrifice.

One can hope, right?

I am not a good woman. Saying it like that gives it multiple interprations. I like all those ambiguities. ;)

Interesting post, ww.

What I meant by that admittedly obscure remark was that eulogizing can't help but generate fictions, and a lot of fictions can be awfully self-serving in a way that preserves social order in the way your post talks about.
Now being raised by my mother to be a gentlemen involved a lot of emphasis on putting myself in other people's shoes. Even if they were reserved, arrogant, etc.
So maybe all fiction is not self-serving, especially if it is an attempt to approach a truth.
Full disclosure: My mother grew up in Mississippi.