Obits

I don't read them. I am not old enough 'yet' to look through them daily to see if I know anyone who has died. My parents read them. My aunts and uncles read them. But not me. What is the official age to begin this daily painful habit? I did however, stumble across this obit about Susan Sontag and it moved me. To the core.

"She showed you things you hadn't seen before; she had a way of reopening questions. Through four decades, public response to Ms. Sontag remained irreconcilably divided. She was described, variously, as explosive, anticlimactic, original, derivative, naïve, sophisticated, approachable, aloof, condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic, sincere, posturing, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing, left-wing, profound, superficial, ardent, bloodless, dogmatic, ambivalent, lucid, inscrutable, visceral, reasoned, chilly, effusive, relevant, passé, tenacious, ecstatic, melancholic, humorous, humorless, deadpan, rhapsodic, cantankerous and clever. No one ever called her dull." - From the obituary by Margalit Fox, December 29, 2004