I’m having trouble with people making rules about whom to mourn.
We are all born good, and life has a way of throwing obstacles and misfortunes in our way that sometime effect the way we think.
Mental illness, physical illness, misfortune, bad decisions, malnutrition, brain injuries, traumatic experiences, evil intent, unintended consequences all go to shape the way we are thinking by the end of our lives.
Last night, I spent some time with family friends. The wife of this couple has had severe dementia for several years, and she rages uninhibitedly and cruelly about most of her close friends and relatives. She would rage when she was younger, but I believe her inhibitions and filters were intact then.
When she passes on, should I judge whether I mourn her on her current personality and actions, or should I remember that she was once a kinder person who helped out many before her mind was lost?
When someone seems at first to have no merit, I try to remember that they were once a baby whom someone bounced on their knee, someone who had hoped for better. They may have been an enthusiastic son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, father, mother, uncle, aunt. They belonged to people who hoped for better lot than they received in life.
There were many people who were mentally bent in the Concentration Camps, and did things that good people ordinarily would not do. Should we judge them on their acts, or should we give them some leeway because of the horrendous things that were done to warp their thinking?
I don’t think whom to mourn is for us to judge. We can leave that for the True Judge, and presume that all our brothers and sisters are worthy of being mourned.