Our stories keep loved one's memories alive

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Santiago, Chile. December 1962.

Death of a loved one can be quite a personal thing for those who survive. To make meaning of someone else's life, we tend to remember that person through our own lens. We default to telling that person's story by focusing on his life only as it touched our own.

In so doing, we are telling our own story as much as the story of the one we loved.

I chose the pronoun "his" deliberately. Two days ago, as I write this column, my father, 91, died peacefully in his sleep in his assisted living apartment in Minnesota. As we scurry to plan a virtual memorial service, we also search for ways to grieve his loss. I joke with my daughter that partly I grieve by taking a half day to repair the rot on a piece of outside trim at my house.

"My dad would want me to take care of this," I say, but the truth is that the work gives me a few precious moments to focus on my father's life and my memories of life with him.

"Death steals everything except our stories," Jim Harrison wrote in his poem "Larson's Holstein Bull."

So, to grieve and to celebrate a person's life, we tell stories upon their death. Our challenge is to ensure that in our effort to remember, we don't lose sight that that person's life extended far beyond his connection to us.

We will never know the full details of all anyone experienced during his or her life.

In my father's case, we have his stories of being a foster child in Brooklyn, New York, separated from his mother and three siblings shortly after the Depression. Or of the track meets he won in high school in spite of having to practice early in the mornings before school because he had to work each day after school during traditional practice. We remember the stories of working on a farm upstate each summer and the family who took him in, a family he introduced us to years later after he'd married and started a family of his own.

We have his diplomas, his books, his track meet clippings, his photos from the field when he mapped soils as an agronomist. Through these, we think we get a sense of what he found important enough to save, a sight he found important enough to capture.

We notice his copy of "Don Quixote" and of the small bronze statue of Miguel de Cervantes he kept on his bookcase for as long as we can remember and we recall what Cervantes wrote about the love a father has for a child - that it "puts a blindfold over his eyes" so he can forgive his child's defects and celebrate his charm, intelligence, wit.

My father might have examined my wood rot repair carefully. Like anyone else, he would have noticed my imperfect work, but he would have nodded thoughtfully, uttered "not bad" and I might have felt a moment of triumph.

No matter how we try, it's our own stories that keep a loved one's memories alive. When loss hits with such a palpable crush and creates a void that in the moment feels impossible to fill, that seems the right thing do. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Quibbling over expired coupons not right way to help local business

Last December, a reader we're calling Louisa bought about a half-dozen books from her local independent bookstore as part of the store's efforts to get holiday gifts to children in the community.

"I thought it was a great idea to help encourage kids who wanted books to read," writes Louisa. So in the spirit of the holidays, Louisa chose the names of six children from the list of several hundred who had placed a request.

As a thank-you for purchasing the books, the bookstore offered coupons worth 25% off future purchases through the end of March. Louisa writes that she wasn't expecting anything in return, but she appreciated receiving the six coupons and planned to use them later.

The holidays came and went. Louisa's personal and work life got busy and it wasn't until early March that she remembered she had the coupons. "They were under a magnet on my refrigerator," she writes. "I must have stared at them every day, but I just didn't get around to using them."

Louisa liked the idea of supporting the local bookstore, so she planned to get to the store to make her purchase in mid-March.

"Then things got a little crazy," she writes. Because of the coronavirus outbreak, her office shut down and she started working from home. By the time she was set up, the bookstore was shuttered and only taking online orders. Plus, the end of March had come and gone and her coupons had expired.

Louisa wonders, however, if given the unforeseen circumstances, the bookstore might still be willing to honor her coupons for online purchases. "Would it be wrong of me to ask them to extend the discount?" she writes.

I suppose it never hurts to ask for what you want, but Louisa might want to think about a few things before doing so.

First, because she didn't expect to receive a reward for her gracious gift of books to children, it's not exactly like she is being stripped of something she expected. Granted, the coupons were hers to use and she had every right to use them.

Second, if her true motive is to support the bookstore, which presumably is already facing diminished income as a result of having to close its bricks-and-mortar store, does asking it to honor a coupon beyond its expiration date exude signs of support? Again, she has every right to ask.

Third, Louisa had plenty of time to use the coupons. The store was only shuttered for two weeks at the end of March. Even during that time, it was accepting orders online and Louisa could have used her coupons for online purchases.

The bottom line is that it was always possible for Louisa to use the coupons during the time they were good. That time expired.

Louisa did a good thing by buying books for children. The right thing is for her to acknowledge she missed the deadline for using her coupons. She can save money on her book purchases by buying elsewhere, but if she truly wants to support her local bookstore when it needs it most, she might reconsider the ask. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.