What to do when someone dies: A step-by-step guide.

Unfortunately even over a week after a young mother and beloved writer’s tragic death, this how-to-guide is apparently still necessary (note the recent incident necessitating the clarification of step #5).

What to do when someone dies (especially the tragic death of a young parent):

1. Pray (if you are one who prays) for their family.

2. Express condolences in whatever medium is most appropriate for your relationship to them.

3a. If you feel the impulse to write an editorial trying to defend yourself against the purportedly unfair things they said about you (thereby passively aggressively impugning not just their ideas, but their character), don’t.

3b. If you feel the impulse to write an editorial where the only nice thing to say you can come up with is, ‘their husband is a cool dude,’ don’t.

3c. If you feel the impulse to write an editorial where you remind everyone that the deceased was not just ‘wrong’ but ‘dangerous,’ don’t. UNLESS: (a.) They murdered someone, or (b.) they advocated genocide. (contextually adjudicated exceptions for grossly dehumanizing some group of people)

4. If you feel the need to write a rambling essay defending the person who ignored rule #3, don’t.

5. If, after writing this defensive rambling essay, you decide to write yet another rambling essay, about the tragically dead young mother, published ON THE FIRST MOTHER’S DAY WEEKEND AFTER HER DEATH (only one week after), admitting you don’t know hardly anything about her written work and aren’t going to bother to do any more research before blasting your uninformed criticisms (like comparing the mentality of her writing and followers to the comparable and apparently equivalent ‘victimologies’ of Serbs and Palestinians and white nationalists, and contrasting these all with a Catholic martyr?) of her work anyway, DEFINITELY don’t. Especially if posting with an unflattering picture. [I’m ignoring there was a second one in the middle and then three updates defending against the wave of critical comments against the weirdly selective misreading exhibited in the original post]

6. If you feel the need to make your condolences in *any* way contingent on doctrinal disclaimers because you’re afraid you too might get the scarlet letter of ‘heretic,’ don’t. I’m about 70% sure God will not strike you down.

7. If you can do none of these things, say nothing. The world will go on without your voice fighting to be the loudest in the room.