This story is partly based on true events. It was written as a newcomer’s introduction to the ideas behind the Effective Altruism movement, which dedicates itself to empowering people to do the most good. If you’d like to learn more, you can visit organizations like GiveWell, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism.
I: Wake
“I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?”
- Rumi, Jewels of Remembrance
Elijah stood at the entryway to his father’s house. In spite of his duties to usher in the arriving family members, he’d become transfixed on a peculiar scene: lying on a patch of exposed soil, an unavoidable distance from the walkway, was the corpse of a field mouse.
As family and friends quietly poured into the wake, each and every person displayed some variation of the same reaction: they would turn to look out of curiosity, take in the morose scene, and then turn away in some sort of revulsion. A wince, a stifled gag, a covering of children’s eyes. Don’t look.
He witnessed two impulses. First was the magnetic attraction of morbid curiosity, the same on display when rush-hour drivers rubber-neck to view some roadside accident.
The second impulse was what now consumed him: that revulsion. It was a unique kind of revulsion that he, along with the rest of the Western world, seemed to take for granted. In a world of widespread vaccination, skyscrapers, and world-class medical facilities, death was a distant kind of devastation.
Death, like nature, had been pushed back to the fringes of society, emerging only through cracks in the endlessly reinforced concrete substrates of the “civilized” world. Yes, it came in time to everyone, just as weeds would eventually grow to consume even parking garages and office complexes: but when it sprouted up pre-emptively and out of place, we treated it as almost unnatural.
This may have not struck him as particularly peculiar had it not arisen alongside a recent memory. The memory was of a backpacking trip to Nepal, two summers ago. A heavy monsoon had swept through the valleys of Pokhara, causing the rivers to swell up and consume many unfortunate neighboring houses.
Elijah and his friends awoke in their structurally sound hotel room to nothing more than a power and water outage accompanied by overly apologetic Nepali hosts. Yet as they set out upon the streets that morning, they witnessed a scene shockingly foreign to them: wailing from every street corner.
Makeshift funeral processions solemnly marched through the streets. There was no telling how many merged into one. Bodies of people young and old were carried on stretchers, followed by throngs of mourners. Some of them were donned with flowers, some of them still covered in dust and rubble. A mother collapsed on her knees, an unearthly howl bellowing from her lungs.
It was not something you could turn away or cover your eyes to escape. It was not confined to funeral homes and walled services. It was loud and all-encompassing. There was no effort to hide it, because it could not be hidden. It required a whole different kind of strength and grace to navigate. Death, there in a world truly subject to nature, was natural.
The stark contrast of that world with his was permanently burned into his memory. And in this moment, the scene of petty revulsion in front of him felt almost absurd. He knew that this funeral was the first exposure to death for many of his family members, so he didn’t blame their naivety.
A hand on his shoulder and the voice of his older sister interrupted his somber reverie. “Are you doing alright? You look zombie’d out,” she said.
Elijah shook the remaining fog from his head. “Yeah,” he replied with a wide-eyed blink, “I’m fine. You?”
“I’m alright,” Blakely said with a sigh, “everyone’s acting strange. They’ve been this way since I got here last night.”
Elijah turned and walked inside with her as the last of the remaining family trickled in. “Well, it’d probably be weirder if they weren’t. It is a funeral.”
“Yeah, but I don’t mean funeral weird. I mean, like, interpersonal tension weird. Like something happened before I arrived.”
“How so?”
Blakely looked around the room. “Dad seems incredibly on edge. You know him, he’s always so cool-headed and… logical. He’s been super irritable. And grandma isn’t speaking to anyone. She gave me a halfhearted smile when I arrived, but she won’t look anyone in the eye. She’s been shut up in the guest bedroom the whole time.”
“That all sounds like pretty normal grief stuff to me,” Elijah said with a shrug.
Blakely shook her head. “I don’t know, I’d always imagined that a death in the family would bring us together to be more supportive. Especially when everyone hasn’t seen or spoken to each other in years. That’s what families are supposed to do, you know? It sucks.”
Elijah paused, looking at her for a moment. “I’m glad you recognize that.”
“Recognize what?”
“That it’s not supposed to be this way. I’m glad you know that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Blakely asked.
“I don’t know. I think a lot of people just normalize and pass things on between generations. Intergenerational trauma, stuff like that. The fact that you can see it and know it’s not ‘right’ means you have some other good models in your life.”
Blakely smiled as they slowly walked in through the wake. “Maybe. I guess I was lucky to find Catherine. Their family is super supportive. Her dad opened up to me faster in a weekend than ours has in a lifetime. It’s refreshing.”
“Must be nice,” Elijah said, watching the family greet and converse.
“You’re not much better, you know,” Blakely shot at him. “You never call me either. No one in this family talks to each other.”
Elijah blushed and began to give a floundering response as their father walked and interrupted them. “Elijah. Blakely. Can you come upstairs for a bit? There’s some family business we need to attend to.”
The two nodded and followed their father upstairs into the master bedroom. They entered the room to find their aunt, Lila, sitting on the edge of the bed. Their grandmother, Grace, sat across the room in a faded antique Bergere, staring out the far window.
It was a sauna of atmospheric tension, thick and suffocating. Everyone aside from them stared blankly off in some separate direction. The slightest wrong move, the smallest offhanded comment, could set the whole room on fire. Elijah and Blakely sat down quietly and unobtrusively, tiptoeing around whatever emotional landmines were left in that battlefield.
“I know that many of you came in just for the weekend, so I wanted to call you all in to discuss this before the funeral tomorrow,” Theo said.
“Why just us?” Blakely asked. “Where’s mom and Sylvester?”
“They’re attending to the guests for the next few hours,” Theo replied, “I wanted this conversation to be between everyone here for now, until we solidify a few things. It has to do with immediate family members on Grandpa’s side.”
Blakely sat down on the edge of the bed. “Alright, what’s this about, then?”
Theo grabbed a set of documents from the top of the dresser. “There’s some… interesting stipulations in Grandpa’s will. I’m sure you all know that he retired a few years ago. You may also know that he did so with quite a bit of savings, which he’s left directions for in here.”
“Oh?” Blakely asked. “Do we know how much?”
“Yes. They’ve run an analysis of the remaining estate. It’s valued at around one and a half million.”
Elijah and Blakely’s eyes widened. They looked to their grandmother, who remained taciturn and unmoved.
“What are the instructions?” Elijah asked, clearing his throat.
“This is the strange part,” Theo replied. “He’s instructed us to donate all of it to charity. And he’s put you two as the executors.”
II: Will
“I, Arthur Gartner, of sound mind and memory, resident of Peace City, Midland, declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, and revoke all previous wills made by myself, jointly or severally.
I hereby appoint my youngest granddaughter, Blakely Gartner, as the executor of this Last Will. If Blakely Gartner predeceases me or is otherwise unable to serve as the executor, then I appoint my youngest grandson, Elijah Gartner, as the successor executor.
I grant to the executor the fullest power to deal with my estate in its entirety, with all powers as conferred by law. The executor shall exercise all powers in a fiduciary capacity for the best interest of the beneficiaries of the state.
To my wife, Grace Gartner, I grant the deed to our house and land, alongside the sum of $1 million.
I request that, upon my passing, the family as a whole should convene and mutually decide upon the best charitable cause to donate the remaining entirety of my estate and inheritance to, valued at $1.4 million. I ask that the family carefully consider what cause can accomplish the greatest possible good with what I’ve left behind.”
Theo took off his reading glasses and flipped through the remaining pages. “The rest is all legal jargon,” he said, “you can take a look if you want.”
“I just can’t believe it…” Lila said with a sigh, “He left nothing to the rest of the family? Nothing at all?”
“Yes, it seems that way,” Theo replied. “I clarified with his lawyer.”
Lila turned to their mother, who still sat staring out the window. “Mom, were you aware of this? Did he discuss this with you?”
Grace offered no response. Her lip was quivering, but her mouth was sealed shut.
“It’s just… inconceivable,” Lila continued, “I mean, it’s nice that he wants to give it to charity, but this just feels like a direct slight against us.”
“He doesn’t owe us the money,” Theo replied. “It’s his to do with what he wants. And now it’s up to us to decide where it goes. Elijah and Blakely, I wanted to take some time now to discuss this while everyone is present. Is that alright?”
“You want us to choose a place to donate it?” Elijah asked.
“Not necessarily, but I think it’d be good for us to start having a conversation about some directions,” Theo replied. “Have you all put much consideration into something like this before?”
“No, not at all,” Elijah said, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” He looked at Blakely.
“I mean,” Blakely replied, “I’ve thought a little bit about it. I guess we can talk about it a bit.”
“Theo, we’re in the middle of a wake,” Lila snapped, “we don’t need to be deciding what to do with this estate right this moment.”
“I know we won’t make a decision right now,” Theo said sharply, “but I want us to talk about it while we’re all present. I know that as soon as we all leave it’ll just fall to the wayside and never get done.”
“I don’t think we need to spend a ton of time deliberating,” Lila said, “We should just all agree on a place that we resonate the most with, and send it there.”
Theo gave a dismissive wave. “Dad said he wanted us to do the ‘greatest possible good’ with this money. Just carelessly choosing some cause we empathize with won’t accomplish that.”
“The ‘greatest possible good’?” Lila squinted in disbelief. “Theo, that’s an impossible idea for us to tackle right now. That doesn’t even have an answer.”
“It might not have a single answer, but there are some answers that are better than others. I just want us to narrow it down a bit while we’re here. It won’t take long.”
“Fine,” Lila said, crossing her arms in indignation. “Have it your way. Let’s shove an absurd philosophical debate into the middle of a funeral if that makes you feel better.”
“It’s not about me feeling better,” Theo replied. “It’s about making sure it gets done. Now, do we have any ideas?”
The room was silent. Lila spoke back up, “Of course we don’t have ideas right now.”
Elijah and Blakely could see their father seething in his own controlled way. They’d seen this side of him several times before: the need to intellectualize stress and trauma, the need to ‘fix’ things right in the moment, the inability to let these fixations go. This was about far more than just inheritance and charity. It was about control. Here he was, stripped of control, clawing his way out with reason and direction. They could almost predict the next words out of his mouth.
“We’re not just choosing something based on how we feel about it. That’d be careless,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh, please!” Lila raised her voice. “It’s the opposite of careless. Just because you and dad are emotionless robots doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be. Empathy focuses our energy and attention on important things. It helps us resonate with other people’s suffering. You should try it sometime, you know.”
“That’s the whole problem with it!” Theo yelled. “Empathy is a… tiny, narrow spotlight. It gets pulled to whatever captures your attention and feelings, and then you zero in on it, putting blinders up to the rest of the world. You lose focus of impact and efficacy.”
“Oh, you and your ‘efficacy’,” Lila scoffed. “Not everything needs to be about efficacy. Besides, empathy can be very motivating.”
Theo took a deep breath. “Yes, but it’s not always motivating people in the right direction. Empathy is biased. We empathize with the people near us. We empathize with who we identify with. The average rich, white person empathizes far more with kids in New York with cancer than they do with some Rohingya family being bombed in some remote part of-”
“Oh, stop!” Lila shouted. “We don’t need a lecture on morality right now. Can we get this over with?”
Theo was silent for a moment, taking a few deep breaths to calm down. “Look, I’m just saying that altruism guided solely by empathy isn’t a good approach. It turns charity into a… a… competition of emotional manipulation and biases.”
Lila sat back down on the bed. “So, what? We should all just be apathetic robots like you?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we should use other systems to approach this.”
“Like what?”
“Like… efficacy and analysis. And compassion.”
“What? Compassion and empathy are the same thing.”
“No, they’re not. Empathy is feeling what someone else feels. It’s limited and narrow; we can empathize with one person’s pain, but our brain doesn’t have the capacity to empathize with the suffering of a thousand people at once. We know that a thousand deaths is, quite literally, a thousand times worse than one death, but we don’t necessarily feel that. We often feel the inverse.”
“So what is compassion, then?”
“Compassion is… the positive feeling that motivates us to action. It’s broader and less divisive. It’s deliberate, instead of impulsive. It sometimes follows empathy, but it doesn’t require empathy. In fact, it often works better and makes a bigger and more effective difference when not controlled by empathy.”
Lila sighed. “I swear you can’t go three sentences without saying the words ‘effective’ or ‘efficacy’.”
Theo rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m not saying empathy is bad. I agree that it’s good and natural to feel what others feel. But when empathy is the only thing guiding our actions, then we’re going to be narrow, impulsive, biased, and inefficient. We’re going to neglect certain causes and people in places that we often overlook.”
Lila threw her hands up. “Alright, I’m not going to argue with you anymore. God, why was I born into a family of human computers?” She sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t care, and I’m leaving if we don’t wrap this up. If you’re so much more effective at solving things, then why don’t you just choose for us?”
“It’s not my choice,” Theo replied, turning to Elijah and Blakely. “I’m just trying to help us make the best decision. What do you two think?”
Elijah and Blakely looked at each other. “Um…” Blakely said, “I think we should definitely try to maximize our impact and… efficacy. But I also think we should find something that grandpa would have cared about, to honor his name and memory. Do we know what that would be?”
The room was silent again, each family member looking to the other for an answer. Blakely’s eyes widened. “Really? No one here has any idea what he would have wanted?”
“You have to understand,” Theo said, “Dad was… a distant person. He wasn’t an open book with us; we knew very little about him. He really only started to be involved with us when you were born. He seemed more invested in his grandchildren than he ever was with us. He was a different person around you two.”
He looked to Lila, who nodded in agreement. She pushed up off the bed. “And he never really spoke about donating his money or doing charitable work,” she said, “which makes this will all the more strange.”
“As far as you know,” Grace muttered from across the room.
“What’s that, mom?” Lila asked gently.
Grace turned halfway to them. “I said, as far as you know. You two didn’t know a damn thing about him.”
That oppressive silence engulfed the room again. Theo spoke up, “Well mom, he didn’t exactly make it easy.”
“Three years,” Grace shot back immediately, as if she’d anticipated his response. “Three years of you not returning his calls. He was trying. You had your chance.”
Theo’s voice took on a sharp monotone. “He was trying about forty years too late.”
“He was trying nonetheless!” Grace stood up from her chair, her hands shaking. “He knew how you felt about him. He realized how consumed he’d been with his work. He realized he’d shut everyone out. He regretted all of it. He tried to open the door for you. You gave him nothing. Nothing!”
Her voice cracked. “It destroyed him. It was the last thing he wanted: to have some semblance of togetherness in our family. It’s a two-way street, you know. You had the chance to make reparations, and you chose to let your anger towards him control you.”
“I treated him no differently than he did us for our entire childhood,” Theo replied coldly.
Grace squinted in disbelief. “Oh, so that’s what it’s about then? Retaliation? Revenge? Well congratulations, then. You’ve got it.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to not have a father!” Theo shouted. “His negligence robbed me of something I’ll never be able to get back. And now, even from the grave, he’s still finding ways to spite me.”
Grace stormed over to the doorway. She stopped and turned to them on her way out. “He had cancer. I bet you two didn’t even know that.” She looked to both him and Lila. “For three years he tried to tell you. He knew his time was coming, he tried to make things right. All this talk of empathy and compassion. You couldn’t even afford them to your own father on his death bed.”
III: Seeds
Theo followed Grace out of the room, shooting a knowing look back at the kids as he left. Lila let out a heavy exhale before walking after them as well. “Sorry, guys. Clearly everyone’s having a hard time,” she said before leaving. “Let us talk with Grandma for a moment. We’ll be back.”
She walked out and closed the door behind her, leaving Elijah and Blakely alone in the room. They sat in silence for a few moments. The muted chatter of the guests below drowned out the passing footsteps.
“Yeesh,” Blakely said with a heavy exhale. “What a mess.”
“What do you make of all of this?” Elijah asked.
“I don’t know. That went about as well as I would’ve expected. It’s a lot to process right now,” she replied. “It would have been nice to have an actual conversation, but I think that’s a tall order for our family.”
“Yeah… “ Elijah paused for a moment, lost in thought. “What does ‘greatest good’ even mean? Does that even have an answer?”
Blakely smiled. “You and Dad just can’t help yourselves, huh?” She thought for a moment. ”I think there are answers, even if they take lifetimes to find. But I think we’re getting closer. ‘We’ as in humanity, I mean. Not ‘we’ as in this room of people.”
“What do you think they are, then?”
Blakely shrugged. “I think that Dad was on the right track with talking about empathy and efficacy. I’d imagine that if we really wanted to do the most good, we’d address things on the scale of systems and long-term issues. Things that would benefit future generations, stave off any big looming threats, help those most in need with as effective of means as possible. And we’d help other people do the same. I’d imagine that’d be close to the ‘answer’.”
“Mm, maybe you’re right,” Elijah said in a distant tone. He stared blankly out at the bedroom door.
“What’s up?” Blakely asked.
Elijah winced. “All of this is just… sad, you know? Grandma was right. We don’t know anything about Grandpa. It made me realize that I don’t even know that much about dad. I haven’t seen this side of him for a while, all of this pent-up anger. He talks about Grandpa being dissociated but it seems like he’s taken on a lot of that too.”
“Yeah. What was that you were saying about intergenerational stuff?” Blakely said with a nudge. “Speaking of ‘sides’, I’ve been thinking about that.”
“About what?”
“About ‘sides’ in general. I bet there were all sorts of sides to Grandpa that none of us knew. Maybe he really did care but was bad at showing it. We’re all used to seeing certain sides of a person: who they are around us, who they are at home, who they are around different friends or family.”
She looked out at the scattered array of old photos on the wall. “We get these ‘sides’ in our heads, and those become our conceptions of a person. Like a snapshot. A funeral’s a weird sort of place where a bunch of different conceptions of someone collide. We’re all remembering our specific snapshots of the person that we’re celebrating. Sometimes we learn about other parts we’d never seen before.”
“Huh,” Elijah replied, “I suppose it is kind of like assembling a big photo album.”
“Something like that,” Blakely replied. “We go through our lives carrying around these snapshots of someone, often thinking that snapshot is all there is to them. I think we only really start to see the full picture of someone when we hear about other sides through other lenses. Sometimes it takes a funeral for that to happen.”
“Mm,” Elijah replied, “I just wish it happened sooner. If I would have known that this accident would cut his life this short, I’d done more to get to know him. I guess there’s no point in dwelling on ’should have’s at this point, though.”
Blakely shrugged. “There’s a point. It could help you change behavior in the future if you actually internalize it. There’s still time for us to put that effort in with everyone else.”
“Yeah,” Elijah admitted. “You’re right.”
The two sat in silence for a bit longer. Blakely spoke up again. “Can I tell you something? It’s pretty heavy, I’ve been holding onto it by myself.”
Elijah sat up. “Of course.”
Blakely took a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t think his death was an accident.”
Elijah’s eyes widened. “What? What makes you think that?”
Blakely wrung her hands. “I got a… strange call from grandpa before he died. Like, hours before. We hadn’t just called in years, and then there was this one out of the blue, as if something were urgent. I took the call and he was talking to me as if it were just some check-up on how I was doing.”
“Why was that strange?”
“Oh, come on,” Blakely said with a knowing look, “You know he wasn’t a ‘check-up’ kind of guy. He hated small talk, even with us. And here he was, trying to force small-talk with me after years of silence. He’s asking me all sorts of weird random questions about my life here, grilling me about the small things I’m doing. And then halfway through the call, as I’m talking about fabric shopping and craft stores, he just starts crying. Like, bawling. For no reason.
“At the time I just thought he was lonely. I thought maybe he just regretted being distant and was trying to reconnect. Make up for lost time or something. But then six hours later he’s found dead. Heart attack, accidental overdose. When dad called and told me he’d passed, it hit me: that was a goodbye call.”
Elijah’s heart plummeted to his stomach. His head fogged over, forcing him to sit back down. “Oh… Jesus.” He took a few moments to catch his breath. “I guess that makes more sense in light of the whole cancer thing.”
“Yeah,” Blakely said slowly. “Thinking about it now, I’m betting he didn’t have life insurance. Treatment or even end-of-life care would have probably drained his remaining savings. He wanted to make sure he could leave something behind.”
“Have you told anyone else about this? Does anyone else suspect that it was… was…”
“No…” Blakely said, “No one else knows about that call. I’ve held onto it until now. But I think that Dad and Grandma suspect it. I imagine it’d explain why they’re so tense towards each other now. I think Dad feels guilty for how he treated grandpa, and I think Grandma is harboring a lot of resentment towards him and Aunt Lila for not reaching out sooner. It’s just an emotional train wreck all around.”
Elijah’s arms were shaking. He felt nauseous shivers running down his whole body. “There was some elephant in the room, but I couldn’t pin what it was. I just figured everyone was grieving.”
“Well, there’s that too,” Blakely said with a forced smile. “I’m sorry to dump this on you right now. I’ve been holding onto it for a while… I thought someone else should know.”
“No, it’s alright,” Elijah replied, taking another deep breath. “I’m glad you told me. I guess it could have been at a less volatile moment, though.” He let out a weak chuckle.
Suddenly, those nauseous shivers overtook him. That half-hearted laugh, in its sheer and unabashed irony, broke the floodgates in his heart. A feral sobbing burst forth from him, uncontrollable and overflowing. He bent forward, trying to contain and hide himself, but couldn’t stop it.
“Hey, hey,” Blakely leaned against his lower back, wrapping her arms around him. “It’s alright, I know it’s a lot.” She sat in silence, slowly running her hands down his back.
Elijah slowly composed himself, breathing deeply as the crying left his body. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “This is all so ugly and awful. I don’t want the money. I just want grandpa back.”
“I know, I know…” Blakely thought for a moment, trying to come up with some comforting words. “This all reminds me of something. There’s this book I picked up a while back, by some Vietnamese monk that I can’t pronounce the name of. He has a saying: ‘No mud, no lotus.’ Something about how you can’t reach enlightenment without suffering. Without suffering, we wouldn’t have any contrast for things like joy or compassion or kindness. We’d have nothing to spur us forward towards progress or growth. We’d just… exist.”
“Would that be worse?” Elijah asked. “I can’t imagine it would.”
Blakely shrugged. “Maybe not. But that’s not the world we live in. We live in one where suffering exists. We live in a world of mud and lotuses. We have the chance to either wallow in it or transmute it. Besides, sometimes the most beautiful things in life come out of the ugliest and dirtiest times, you know? Hell, most of life consists of taking ugly stuff and trying to turn it into something beautiful. That’s the whole damned human condition.”
“Look,” she said, sitting up, “we’re in the mud right now, but we’ve been handed a lotus seed. Even before this money came in, we were all handed seeds. Life is just a series of mud and seeds. It’s up to us to cultivate them to the best of our abilities. All of this talk of efficacy and compassion is just… how to be better gardeners.”
“I didn’t take you for the spiritual type,” Elijah teased, wiping his nose.
“Nah,” Blakely said with a smile, “but I know truth when I see it.”
IV: Bloom
Theo and Lila came back to the room a few minutes later. “Sorry about that, guys,” Theo said. “Mom’s taking a bit more time outside. Maybe it’d be best if we continued this conversation after things have settled a bit. It was probably brash of me to bring this up so close to the funeral. I was hoping it would go… differently, but here we are.”
“She’s fine. We’ll talk with her more tonight,” Theo replied. “You can go speak with her as well if you’d like. Do you want to talk more about this all now, or after the funeral?”
“I think it’d be good to take some time to think more on it,” Elijah said. “Maybe we’ll feel more clear about it afterwards.” Blakely nodded in agreement.
Theo and Lila returned to the wake. Elijah and Blakely walked out front to find their grandmother sitting on the curb outside the house. “Why don’t you go talk with her for a bit?” Blakely suggested. “I’m going give Catherine a quick call and decompress.”
Elijah nodded and walked over towards Grace. The noise of the wake quickly faded into the background, engulfed by the sound of crickets and distant traffic.
“Hey, grandma,” he said quietly, “do you mind if I sit with you?”
Grace turned to look at him. “Sure, dear. Sit down.” She brushed off a swath of curb for him.
Elijah smiled at the gesture. “Are you alright?” He asked.
Grace sighed. “No, but I’ll be fine.” She paused before asking, “You?”
Elijah crouched down on the curbside. “My head’s caving in from interpersonal tension, but luckily I’ve had enough Thanksgiving family dinners to train for it.”
Grace didn’t respond to his meager attempt at humor.
“It feels absurd for all of this to be so stressful,” Elijah continued. “I’m trying to see it as a beautiful opportunity, but it feels like a major burden right now. It feels impossible to make sense of it.”
“Pah,” Grace scoffed, “’make sense’. What does that even mean?”
“I guess I’m just trying to see the good in it,” Elijah said.
“Why?” Grace asked, her brow furrowed. “Why this need to make light of everything? Every time someone dies, there always comes some well-intentioned advice that it’ll ‘make sense in time’. ‘God has a plan for this.’ All that nonsense. There’s this incessant urge to try to make grief ‘beautiful’ and ‘sensible’. It’s like giving birth; it’s easy to call it ‘beautiful’ if you’re not in the middle of it. It’s grief! It’s death. It doesn’t have to make sense. It especially doesn’t have to make sense right now. We’ve been sitting in a room trying to make sense of it for the last dozen hours. Your father thinks that ‘figuring it out’ right now will bring him some peace. He’s grasping at straws.”
“You’re really upset with dad, huh?” Elijah asked.
“His whole morality spiel struck me as a bit ironic,” Grace replied curtly. “All this talk of the ‘greatest good’, as if we could possibly even chip away at that right now. People have been trying to figure that out since the dawn of time. There are whole philosophy schools and social movements and think tanks dedicated to it. And he thinks a room full of grieving, dysfunctional family members will be able to solve it in a weekend?”
“Do you think you’ll be able to make amends with him?”
“Of course,” Grace said matter-of-factly, “he’s my son. I just want him to take some responsibility for his relationship with Arthur. He’s stubborn as a boulder, and he’s dead set on seeing his father as some… emotional miser. Arthur did care for him, and he tried to show it in the end. Theo just wasn’t ready to receive it.”
“Why did he leave Dad and Aunt Lila out of the will, then? It seems almost… retributive.”
“He never said. Maybe part of it was retributive. Maybe he wanted them to see that he was hurting, that their neglect had real effects on him. They didn’t seem to listen otherwise.”
“Did he ever say anything about putting Blakely and me as the executors?”
“No, he never mentioned that either. He always had an odd way of approaching things. I imagine that he wanted to do something that would bring us all together. If he would have put me or your father as the executor, we likely would have just made the decision without involving the family. And we may have been more biased in doing so. But forcing us to involve you and Blakely made it a whole family affair.”
“Huh,” Elijah replied, “I guess it has forced us to come together and interact in a way we never would have before. I’m not sure if that’s for better or worse at this point, though.”
“It is quite extraordinary, even if it is a mess,” Grace said with a faint smile. “Arthur hadn’t heard from any of his kids for years, you know. I had to pull teeth to get your father to even bring you and Blakely out for the holidays over the past few years. The return calls and letters slowly stopped coming. We chalked it up to everyone being busy, but Arthur never really got over it.”
She sighed. “He knew the reasons why. He knew that he’d been neglectful, that his work had consumed his life. He regretted it in the end, but it was too little and too late at that point. The damage was done, and his children felt a world apart from him. I had a hard time imagining them ever wanting him to be a part of their lives again. Now, bringing everyone together to deliberate and agree on something as big as this, especially when they feel robbed of their inheritance? It’d be nothing short of a miracle.”
She stared out at the pink-blues of the dusk horizon. “Maybe that’s what he wanted: some last-ditch Hail Mary, some bizarre attempt to bring a semblance of togetherness back to the family. Maybe he wanted all of us to look beyond ourselves, stripped of all these… pretenses of inheritance and ownership. Or maybe he was just out of his mind.”
She stood up, brushing herself off. “And maybe it’ll make sense in time. Like I said, we don’t need it to right now. We just need to help each other through this. Come on, let’s get back into the fray.”
Elijah stood with her, gently locking arms with her as they strolled back in. “Do you have any ideas for what we should do with the inheritance?” He asked.
Grace let out a long exhale. “I think we should take our time to grieve. Once we feel ready, go take some notes from all those philosophers and think tanks on the whole ‘greatest good’ idea. You’re not trying to solve some niche question, you know. There’s a whole world of wisdom dedicated to it. Go dive in, learn as much as you can, and take action when you feel more equipped. I’m sure it’ll become clear in time, and I trust you’ll make the right decision. Your grandfather believed in you. So do I.”
As they walked back towards the house, Elijah’s eyes were drawn once again to that decaying skeleton in the yard. This time he noticed something sprouting out of it: a single green bud, reaching upwards towards the sun. It very likely had been there before; perhaps he was just not ready to see it until now.
As the evening continued, Elijah and Blakely could feel that black-hole knot of tension begin to loosen and diffuse. They could see the softening happening in faces, across conversations, in small gestures and exchanges. Every awkward fumble through grief-weighed conversation was met with surprising grace and ease. Some small and subtle catalyzation had been set in motion.
The family reconvened for the funeral service the following day. To any onlooker, the scene would seem no different from any ordinary funeral: a reticent throng of black attire, a repurposed chapel heavy with dust and death, a cut-and-paste vaguely redemptive speech from some vaguely familiar local pastor.
But Elijah, looking out upon this motley crowd of family and friends, saw nuances profound and surprising. He saw moments of reconnection and intimacy arise in places previously calloused and withered. He saw sprouts of healing, kindness, opportunity rising through the mire of dejection and grief.
He saw his father and aunt sit down, front and center, with their grandmother. He witnessed them hold and caress her hands with a warm and gentle kindness. He witnessed her lean into his father’s shoulder and weep as the film reel of photos and remembrances played out in front of them. He saw no hint of aversion, nor spite, nor resentment. He saw a once-scorched and arid soil become laden with the potential of some possible brighter future.
A sublimely wild and curious thought took a hold of him:
This is not a funeral; it’s a resurrection.
Some fever-dream transcendent vision descended upon him:
He saw the casket lid fly open, his grandfather springing forth from the coffin, cheeks flushed, eyes wide. The congregation watched in shock and awe as the man they once knew rose from the grave, surrounded by an aura of eternal youth. Rays of light spilled in from every window, bathing the room in brightness and warmth. From his belly erupted bellowing laughter, an explosive and childlike mirth which cascaded through the entire space, filling it with a tidal wave of joy.
His laughter echoed from every lung, filling the funeral home with reverberations of resonant jubilation. Tears of sadness transmuted to tears of joy! Mourning dress splashed with vibrant and saturated colors! Wine and spirits poured out in raucous celebration! Cries of grief transcribed to hymns of rejoicing!
One after the other, friends and family alike rushed the podium for his embrace. Elijah wrapped his arms around his grandfather, sobbing into his chest. He looked up into his grandfather’s eyes, in which he saw himself, the room, and everyone else present reflected back. Overcome with ecstatic disbelief, he asked: “What was all this for?”
Arthur smiled and opened his mouth to reply. From his throat emerged a layered blossom of pink-red petals:
A lotus flower, in full bloom.
In memory of Mark Massmann; may he remain no less in death.
Submission notes
I discovered this contest about a week before it ended, and wrote this in about 5 days. I wish I’d started it sooner, and had the chance to receive more feedback and editing before submitting it. If it happens to be accepted, I would be happy to incorporate major or minor edits to make it fit the prompt/vision of EA better.
[Creative Writing Contest] A Funeral, a Resurrection
A Funeral, a Resurrection
This story is partly based on true events. It was written as a newcomer’s introduction to the ideas behind the Effective Altruism movement, which dedicates itself to empowering people to do the most good. If you’d like to learn more, you can visit organizations like GiveWell, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism.
I: Wake
Elijah stood at the entryway to his father’s house. In spite of his duties to usher in the arriving family members, he’d become transfixed on a peculiar scene: lying on a patch of exposed soil, an unavoidable distance from the walkway, was the corpse of a field mouse.
As family and friends quietly poured into the wake, each and every person displayed some variation of the same reaction: they would turn to look out of curiosity, take in the morose scene, and then turn away in some sort of revulsion. A wince, a stifled gag, a covering of children’s eyes. Don’t look.
He witnessed two impulses. First was the magnetic attraction of morbid curiosity, the same on display when rush-hour drivers rubber-neck to view some roadside accident.
The second impulse was what now consumed him: that revulsion. It was a unique kind of revulsion that he, along with the rest of the Western world, seemed to take for granted. In a world of widespread vaccination, skyscrapers, and world-class medical facilities, death was a distant kind of devastation.
Death, like nature, had been pushed back to the fringes of society, emerging only through cracks in the endlessly reinforced concrete substrates of the “civilized” world. Yes, it came in time to everyone, just as weeds would eventually grow to consume even parking garages and office complexes: but when it sprouted up pre-emptively and out of place, we treated it as almost unnatural.
This may have not struck him as particularly peculiar had it not arisen alongside a recent memory. The memory was of a backpacking trip to Nepal, two summers ago. A heavy monsoon had swept through the valleys of Pokhara, causing the rivers to swell up and consume many unfortunate neighboring houses.
Elijah and his friends awoke in their structurally sound hotel room to nothing more than a power and water outage accompanied by overly apologetic Nepali hosts. Yet as they set out upon the streets that morning, they witnessed a scene shockingly foreign to them: wailing from every street corner.
Makeshift funeral processions solemnly marched through the streets. There was no telling how many merged into one. Bodies of people young and old were carried on stretchers, followed by throngs of mourners. Some of them were donned with flowers, some of them still covered in dust and rubble. A mother collapsed on her knees, an unearthly howl bellowing from her lungs.
It was not something you could turn away or cover your eyes to escape. It was not confined to funeral homes and walled services. It was loud and all-encompassing. There was no effort to hide it, because it could not be hidden. It required a whole different kind of strength and grace to navigate. Death, there in a world truly subject to nature, was natural.
The stark contrast of that world with his was permanently burned into his memory. And in this moment, the scene of petty revulsion in front of him felt almost absurd. He knew that this funeral was the first exposure to death for many of his family members, so he didn’t blame their naivety.
A hand on his shoulder and the voice of his older sister interrupted his somber reverie. “Are you doing alright? You look zombie’d out,” she said.
Elijah shook the remaining fog from his head. “Yeah,” he replied with a wide-eyed blink, “I’m fine. You?”
“I’m alright,” Blakely said with a sigh, “everyone’s acting strange. They’ve been this way since I got here last night.”
Elijah turned and walked inside with her as the last of the remaining family trickled in. “Well, it’d probably be weirder if they weren’t. It is a funeral.”
“Yeah, but I don’t mean funeral weird. I mean, like, interpersonal tension weird. Like something happened before I arrived.”
“How so?”
Blakely looked around the room. “Dad seems incredibly on edge. You know him, he’s always so cool-headed and… logical. He’s been super irritable. And grandma isn’t speaking to anyone. She gave me a halfhearted smile when I arrived, but she won’t look anyone in the eye. She’s been shut up in the guest bedroom the whole time.”
“That all sounds like pretty normal grief stuff to me,” Elijah said with a shrug.
Blakely shook her head. “I don’t know, I’d always imagined that a death in the family would bring us together to be more supportive. Especially when everyone hasn’t seen or spoken to each other in years. That’s what families are supposed to do, you know? It sucks.”
Elijah paused, looking at her for a moment. “I’m glad you recognize that.”
“Recognize what?”
“That it’s not supposed to be this way. I’m glad you know that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Blakely asked.
“I don’t know. I think a lot of people just normalize and pass things on between generations. Intergenerational trauma, stuff like that. The fact that you can see it and know it’s not ‘right’ means you have some other good models in your life.”
Blakely smiled as they slowly walked in through the wake. “Maybe. I guess I was lucky to find Catherine. Their family is super supportive. Her dad opened up to me faster in a weekend than ours has in a lifetime. It’s refreshing.”
“Must be nice,” Elijah said, watching the family greet and converse.
“You’re not much better, you know,” Blakely shot at him. “You never call me either. No one in this family talks to each other.”
Elijah blushed and began to give a floundering response as their father walked and interrupted them. “Elijah. Blakely. Can you come upstairs for a bit? There’s some family business we need to attend to.”
The two nodded and followed their father upstairs into the master bedroom. They entered the room to find their aunt, Lila, sitting on the edge of the bed. Their grandmother, Grace, sat across the room in a faded antique Bergere, staring out the far window.
It was a sauna of atmospheric tension, thick and suffocating. Everyone aside from them stared blankly off in some separate direction. The slightest wrong move, the smallest offhanded comment, could set the whole room on fire. Elijah and Blakely sat down quietly and unobtrusively, tiptoeing around whatever emotional landmines were left in that battlefield.
“I know that many of you came in just for the weekend, so I wanted to call you all in to discuss this before the funeral tomorrow,” Theo said.
“Why just us?” Blakely asked. “Where’s mom and Sylvester?”
“They’re attending to the guests for the next few hours,” Theo replied, “I wanted this conversation to be between everyone here for now, until we solidify a few things. It has to do with immediate family members on Grandpa’s side.”
Blakely sat down on the edge of the bed. “Alright, what’s this about, then?”
Theo grabbed a set of documents from the top of the dresser. “There’s some… interesting stipulations in Grandpa’s will. I’m sure you all know that he retired a few years ago. You may also know that he did so with quite a bit of savings, which he’s left directions for in here.”
“Oh?” Blakely asked. “Do we know how much?”
“Yes. They’ve run an analysis of the remaining estate. It’s valued at around one and a half million.”
Elijah and Blakely’s eyes widened. They looked to their grandmother, who remained taciturn and unmoved.
“What are the instructions?” Elijah asked, clearing his throat.
“This is the strange part,” Theo replied. “He’s instructed us to donate all of it to charity. And he’s put you two as the executors.”
II: Will
“I, Arthur Gartner, of sound mind and memory, resident of Peace City, Midland, declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, and revoke all previous wills made by myself, jointly or severally.
I hereby appoint my youngest granddaughter, Blakely Gartner, as the executor of this Last Will. If Blakely Gartner predeceases me or is otherwise unable to serve as the executor, then I appoint my youngest grandson, Elijah Gartner, as the successor executor.
I grant to the executor the fullest power to deal with my estate in its entirety, with all powers as conferred by law. The executor shall exercise all powers in a fiduciary capacity for the best interest of the beneficiaries of the state.
To my wife, Grace Gartner, I grant the deed to our house and land, alongside the sum of $1 million.
I request that, upon my passing, the family as a whole should convene and mutually decide upon the best charitable cause to donate the remaining entirety of my estate and inheritance to, valued at $1.4 million. I ask that the family carefully consider what cause can accomplish the greatest possible good with what I’ve left behind.”
Theo took off his reading glasses and flipped through the remaining pages. “The rest is all legal jargon,” he said, “you can take a look if you want.”
“I just can’t believe it…” Lila said with a sigh, “He left nothing to the rest of the family? Nothing at all?”
“Yes, it seems that way,” Theo replied. “I clarified with his lawyer.”
Lila turned to their mother, who still sat staring out the window. “Mom, were you aware of this? Did he discuss this with you?”
Grace offered no response. Her lip was quivering, but her mouth was sealed shut.
“It’s just… inconceivable,” Lila continued, “I mean, it’s nice that he wants to give it to charity, but this just feels like a direct slight against us.”
“He doesn’t owe us the money,” Theo replied. “It’s his to do with what he wants. And now it’s up to us to decide where it goes. Elijah and Blakely, I wanted to take some time now to discuss this while everyone is present. Is that alright?”
“You want us to choose a place to donate it?” Elijah asked.
“Not necessarily, but I think it’d be good for us to start having a conversation about some directions,” Theo replied. “Have you all put much consideration into something like this before?”
“No, not at all,” Elijah said, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” He looked at Blakely.
“I mean,” Blakely replied, “I’ve thought a little bit about it. I guess we can talk about it a bit.”
“Theo, we’re in the middle of a wake,” Lila snapped, “we don’t need to be deciding what to do with this estate right this moment.”
“I know we won’t make a decision right now,” Theo said sharply, “but I want us to talk about it while we’re all present. I know that as soon as we all leave it’ll just fall to the wayside and never get done.”
“I don’t think we need to spend a ton of time deliberating,” Lila said, “We should just all agree on a place that we resonate the most with, and send it there.”
Theo gave a dismissive wave. “Dad said he wanted us to do the ‘greatest possible good’ with this money. Just carelessly choosing some cause we empathize with won’t accomplish that.”
“The ‘greatest possible good’?” Lila squinted in disbelief. “Theo, that’s an impossible idea for us to tackle right now. That doesn’t even have an answer.”
“It might not have a single answer, but there are some answers that are better than others. I just want us to narrow it down a bit while we’re here. It won’t take long.”
“Fine,” Lila said, crossing her arms in indignation. “Have it your way. Let’s shove an absurd philosophical debate into the middle of a funeral if that makes you feel better.”
“It’s not about me feeling better,” Theo replied. “It’s about making sure it gets done. Now, do we have any ideas?”
The room was silent. Lila spoke back up, “Of course we don’t have ideas right now.”
Elijah and Blakely could see their father seething in his own controlled way. They’d seen this side of him several times before: the need to intellectualize stress and trauma, the need to ‘fix’ things right in the moment, the inability to let these fixations go. This was about far more than just inheritance and charity. It was about control. Here he was, stripped of control, clawing his way out with reason and direction. They could almost predict the next words out of his mouth.
“We’re not just choosing something based on how we feel about it. That’d be careless,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh, please!” Lila raised her voice. “It’s the opposite of careless. Just because you and dad are emotionless robots doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be. Empathy focuses our energy and attention on important things. It helps us resonate with other people’s suffering. You should try it sometime, you know.”
“That’s the whole problem with it!” Theo yelled. “Empathy is a… tiny, narrow spotlight. It gets pulled to whatever captures your attention and feelings, and then you zero in on it, putting blinders up to the rest of the world. You lose focus of impact and efficacy.”
“Oh, you and your ‘efficacy’,” Lila scoffed. “Not everything needs to be about efficacy. Besides, empathy can be very motivating.”
Theo took a deep breath. “Yes, but it’s not always motivating people in the right direction. Empathy is biased. We empathize with the people near us. We empathize with who we identify with. The average rich, white person empathizes far more with kids in New York with cancer than they do with some Rohingya family being bombed in some remote part of-”
“Oh, stop!” Lila shouted. “We don’t need a lecture on morality right now. Can we get this over with?”
Theo was silent for a moment, taking a few deep breaths to calm down. “Look, I’m just saying that altruism guided solely by empathy isn’t a good approach. It turns charity into a… a… competition of emotional manipulation and biases.”
Lila sat back down on the bed. “So, what? We should all just be apathetic robots like you?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we should use other systems to approach this.”
“Like what?”
“Like… efficacy and analysis. And compassion.”
“What? Compassion and empathy are the same thing.”
“No, they’re not. Empathy is feeling what someone else feels. It’s limited and narrow; we can empathize with one person’s pain, but our brain doesn’t have the capacity to empathize with the suffering of a thousand people at once. We know that a thousand deaths is, quite literally, a thousand times worse than one death, but we don’t necessarily feel that. We often feel the inverse.”
“So what is compassion, then?”
“Compassion is… the positive feeling that motivates us to action. It’s broader and less divisive. It’s deliberate, instead of impulsive. It sometimes follows empathy, but it doesn’t require empathy. In fact, it often works better and makes a bigger and more effective difference when not controlled by empathy.”
Lila sighed. “I swear you can’t go three sentences without saying the words ‘effective’ or ‘efficacy’.”
Theo rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m not saying empathy is bad. I agree that it’s good and natural to feel what others feel. But when empathy is the only thing guiding our actions, then we’re going to be narrow, impulsive, biased, and inefficient. We’re going to neglect certain causes and people in places that we often overlook.”
Lila threw her hands up. “Alright, I’m not going to argue with you anymore. God, why was I born into a family of human computers?” She sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t care, and I’m leaving if we don’t wrap this up. If you’re so much more effective at solving things, then why don’t you just choose for us?”
“It’s not my choice,” Theo replied, turning to Elijah and Blakely. “I’m just trying to help us make the best decision. What do you two think?”
Elijah and Blakely looked at each other. “Um…” Blakely said, “I think we should definitely try to maximize our impact and… efficacy. But I also think we should find something that grandpa would have cared about, to honor his name and memory. Do we know what that would be?”
The room was silent again, each family member looking to the other for an answer. Blakely’s eyes widened. “Really? No one here has any idea what he would have wanted?”
“You have to understand,” Theo said, “Dad was… a distant person. He wasn’t an open book with us; we knew very little about him. He really only started to be involved with us when you were born. He seemed more invested in his grandchildren than he ever was with us. He was a different person around you two.”
He looked to Lila, who nodded in agreement. She pushed up off the bed. “And he never really spoke about donating his money or doing charitable work,” she said, “which makes this will all the more strange.”
“As far as you know,” Grace muttered from across the room.
“What’s that, mom?” Lila asked gently.
Grace turned halfway to them. “I said, as far as you know. You two didn’t know a damn thing about him.”
That oppressive silence engulfed the room again. Theo spoke up, “Well mom, he didn’t exactly make it easy.”
“Three years,” Grace shot back immediately, as if she’d anticipated his response. “Three years of you not returning his calls. He was trying. You had your chance.”
Theo’s voice took on a sharp monotone. “He was trying about forty years too late.”
“He was trying nonetheless!” Grace stood up from her chair, her hands shaking. “He knew how you felt about him. He realized how consumed he’d been with his work. He realized he’d shut everyone out. He regretted all of it. He tried to open the door for you. You gave him nothing. Nothing!”
Her voice cracked. “It destroyed him. It was the last thing he wanted: to have some semblance of togetherness in our family. It’s a two-way street, you know. You had the chance to make reparations, and you chose to let your anger towards him control you.”
“I treated him no differently than he did us for our entire childhood,” Theo replied coldly.
Grace squinted in disbelief. “Oh, so that’s what it’s about then? Retaliation? Revenge? Well congratulations, then. You’ve got it.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to not have a father!” Theo shouted. “His negligence robbed me of something I’ll never be able to get back. And now, even from the grave, he’s still finding ways to spite me.”
Grace stormed over to the doorway. She stopped and turned to them on her way out. “He had cancer. I bet you two didn’t even know that.” She looked to both him and Lila. “For three years he tried to tell you. He knew his time was coming, he tried to make things right. All this talk of empathy and compassion. You couldn’t even afford them to your own father on his death bed.”
III: Seeds
Theo followed Grace out of the room, shooting a knowing look back at the kids as he left. Lila let out a heavy exhale before walking after them as well. “Sorry, guys. Clearly everyone’s having a hard time,” she said before leaving. “Let us talk with Grandma for a moment. We’ll be back.”
She walked out and closed the door behind her, leaving Elijah and Blakely alone in the room. They sat in silence for a few moments. The muted chatter of the guests below drowned out the passing footsteps.
“Yeesh,” Blakely said with a heavy exhale. “What a mess.”
“What do you make of all of this?” Elijah asked.
“I don’t know. That went about as well as I would’ve expected. It’s a lot to process right now,” she replied. “It would have been nice to have an actual conversation, but I think that’s a tall order for our family.”
“Yeah… “ Elijah paused for a moment, lost in thought. “What does ‘greatest good’ even mean? Does that even have an answer?”
Blakely smiled. “You and Dad just can’t help yourselves, huh?” She thought for a moment. ”I think there are answers, even if they take lifetimes to find. But I think we’re getting closer. ‘We’ as in humanity, I mean. Not ‘we’ as in this room of people.”
“What do you think they are, then?”
Blakely shrugged. “I think that Dad was on the right track with talking about empathy and efficacy. I’d imagine that if we really wanted to do the most good, we’d address things on the scale of systems and long-term issues. Things that would benefit future generations, stave off any big looming threats, help those most in need with as effective of means as possible. And we’d help other people do the same. I’d imagine that’d be close to the ‘answer’.”
“Mm, maybe you’re right,” Elijah said in a distant tone. He stared blankly out at the bedroom door.
“What’s up?” Blakely asked.
Elijah winced. “All of this is just… sad, you know? Grandma was right. We don’t know anything about Grandpa. It made me realize that I don’t even know that much about dad. I haven’t seen this side of him for a while, all of this pent-up anger. He talks about Grandpa being dissociated but it seems like he’s taken on a lot of that too.”
“Yeah. What was that you were saying about intergenerational stuff?” Blakely said with a nudge. “Speaking of ‘sides’, I’ve been thinking about that.”
“About what?”
“About ‘sides’ in general. I bet there were all sorts of sides to Grandpa that none of us knew. Maybe he really did care but was bad at showing it. We’re all used to seeing certain sides of a person: who they are around us, who they are at home, who they are around different friends or family.”
She looked out at the scattered array of old photos on the wall. “We get these ‘sides’ in our heads, and those become our conceptions of a person. Like a snapshot. A funeral’s a weird sort of place where a bunch of different conceptions of someone collide. We’re all remembering our specific snapshots of the person that we’re celebrating. Sometimes we learn about other parts we’d never seen before.”
“Huh,” Elijah replied, “I suppose it is kind of like assembling a big photo album.”
“Something like that,” Blakely replied. “We go through our lives carrying around these snapshots of someone, often thinking that snapshot is all there is to them. I think we only really start to see the full picture of someone when we hear about other sides through other lenses. Sometimes it takes a funeral for that to happen.”
“Mm,” Elijah replied, “I just wish it happened sooner. If I would have known that this accident would cut his life this short, I’d done more to get to know him. I guess there’s no point in dwelling on ’should have’s at this point, though.”
Blakely shrugged. “There’s a point. It could help you change behavior in the future if you actually internalize it. There’s still time for us to put that effort in with everyone else.”
“Yeah,” Elijah admitted. “You’re right.”
The two sat in silence for a bit longer. Blakely spoke up again. “Can I tell you something? It’s pretty heavy, I’ve been holding onto it by myself.”
Elijah sat up. “Of course.”
Blakely took a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t think his death was an accident.”
Elijah’s eyes widened. “What? What makes you think that?”
Blakely wrung her hands. “I got a… strange call from grandpa before he died. Like, hours before. We hadn’t just called in years, and then there was this one out of the blue, as if something were urgent. I took the call and he was talking to me as if it were just some check-up on how I was doing.”
“Why was that strange?”
“Oh, come on,” Blakely said with a knowing look, “You know he wasn’t a ‘check-up’ kind of guy. He hated small talk, even with us. And here he was, trying to force small-talk with me after years of silence. He’s asking me all sorts of weird random questions about my life here, grilling me about the small things I’m doing. And then halfway through the call, as I’m talking about fabric shopping and craft stores, he just starts crying. Like, bawling. For no reason.
“At the time I just thought he was lonely. I thought maybe he just regretted being distant and was trying to reconnect. Make up for lost time or something. But then six hours later he’s found dead. Heart attack, accidental overdose. When dad called and told me he’d passed, it hit me: that was a goodbye call.”
Elijah’s heart plummeted to his stomach. His head fogged over, forcing him to sit back down. “Oh… Jesus.” He took a few moments to catch his breath. “I guess that makes more sense in light of the whole cancer thing.”
“Yeah,” Blakely said slowly. “Thinking about it now, I’m betting he didn’t have life insurance. Treatment or even end-of-life care would have probably drained his remaining savings. He wanted to make sure he could leave something behind.”
“Have you told anyone else about this? Does anyone else suspect that it was… was…”
“No…” Blakely said, “No one else knows about that call. I’ve held onto it until now. But I think that Dad and Grandma suspect it. I imagine it’d explain why they’re so tense towards each other now. I think Dad feels guilty for how he treated grandpa, and I think Grandma is harboring a lot of resentment towards him and Aunt Lila for not reaching out sooner. It’s just an emotional train wreck all around.”
Elijah’s arms were shaking. He felt nauseous shivers running down his whole body. “There was some elephant in the room, but I couldn’t pin what it was. I just figured everyone was grieving.”
“Well, there’s that too,” Blakely said with a forced smile. “I’m sorry to dump this on you right now. I’ve been holding onto it for a while… I thought someone else should know.”
“No, it’s alright,” Elijah replied, taking another deep breath. “I’m glad you told me. I guess it could have been at a less volatile moment, though.” He let out a weak chuckle.
Suddenly, those nauseous shivers overtook him. That half-hearted laugh, in its sheer and unabashed irony, broke the floodgates in his heart. A feral sobbing burst forth from him, uncontrollable and overflowing. He bent forward, trying to contain and hide himself, but couldn’t stop it.
“Hey, hey,” Blakely leaned against his lower back, wrapping her arms around him. “It’s alright, I know it’s a lot.” She sat in silence, slowly running her hands down his back.
Elijah slowly composed himself, breathing deeply as the crying left his body. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “This is all so ugly and awful. I don’t want the money. I just want grandpa back.”
“I know, I know…” Blakely thought for a moment, trying to come up with some comforting words. “This all reminds me of something. There’s this book I picked up a while back, by some Vietnamese monk that I can’t pronounce the name of. He has a saying: ‘No mud, no lotus.’ Something about how you can’t reach enlightenment without suffering. Without suffering, we wouldn’t have any contrast for things like joy or compassion or kindness. We’d have nothing to spur us forward towards progress or growth. We’d just… exist.”
“Would that be worse?” Elijah asked. “I can’t imagine it would.”
Blakely shrugged. “Maybe not. But that’s not the world we live in. We live in one where suffering exists. We live in a world of mud and lotuses. We have the chance to either wallow in it or transmute it. Besides, sometimes the most beautiful things in life come out of the ugliest and dirtiest times, you know? Hell, most of life consists of taking ugly stuff and trying to turn it into something beautiful. That’s the whole damned human condition.”
“Look,” she said, sitting up, “we’re in the mud right now, but we’ve been handed a lotus seed. Even before this money came in, we were all handed seeds. Life is just a series of mud and seeds. It’s up to us to cultivate them to the best of our abilities. All of this talk of efficacy and compassion is just… how to be better gardeners.”
“I didn’t take you for the spiritual type,” Elijah teased, wiping his nose.
“Nah,” Blakely said with a smile, “but I know truth when I see it.”
IV: Bloom
Theo and Lila came back to the room a few minutes later. “Sorry about that, guys,” Theo said. “Mom’s taking a bit more time outside. Maybe it’d be best if we continued this conversation after things have settled a bit. It was probably brash of me to bring this up so close to the funeral. I was hoping it would go… differently, but here we are.”
“Is Grandma alright?” Blakely asked. “Did you guys sort yourselves out?”
“She’s fine. We’ll talk with her more tonight,” Theo replied. “You can go speak with her as well if you’d like. Do you want to talk more about this all now, or after the funeral?”
“I think it’d be good to take some time to think more on it,” Elijah said. “Maybe we’ll feel more clear about it afterwards.” Blakely nodded in agreement.
Theo and Lila returned to the wake. Elijah and Blakely walked out front to find their grandmother sitting on the curb outside the house. “Why don’t you go talk with her for a bit?” Blakely suggested. “I’m going give Catherine a quick call and decompress.”
Elijah nodded and walked over towards Grace. The noise of the wake quickly faded into the background, engulfed by the sound of crickets and distant traffic.
“Hey, grandma,” he said quietly, “do you mind if I sit with you?”
Grace turned to look at him. “Sure, dear. Sit down.” She brushed off a swath of curb for him.
Elijah smiled at the gesture. “Are you alright?” He asked.
Grace sighed. “No, but I’ll be fine.” She paused before asking, “You?”
Elijah crouched down on the curbside. “My head’s caving in from interpersonal tension, but luckily I’ve had enough Thanksgiving family dinners to train for it.”
Grace didn’t respond to his meager attempt at humor.
“It feels absurd for all of this to be so stressful,” Elijah continued. “I’m trying to see it as a beautiful opportunity, but it feels like a major burden right now. It feels impossible to make sense of it.”
“Pah,” Grace scoffed, “’make sense’. What does that even mean?”
“I guess I’m just trying to see the good in it,” Elijah said.
“Why?” Grace asked, her brow furrowed. “Why this need to make light of everything? Every time someone dies, there always comes some well-intentioned advice that it’ll ‘make sense in time’. ‘God has a plan for this.’ All that nonsense. There’s this incessant urge to try to make grief ‘beautiful’ and ‘sensible’. It’s like giving birth; it’s easy to call it ‘beautiful’ if you’re not in the middle of it. It’s grief! It’s death. It doesn’t have to make sense. It especially doesn’t have to make sense right now. We’ve been sitting in a room trying to make sense of it for the last dozen hours. Your father thinks that ‘figuring it out’ right now will bring him some peace. He’s grasping at straws.”
“You’re really upset with dad, huh?” Elijah asked.
“His whole morality spiel struck me as a bit ironic,” Grace replied curtly. “All this talk of the ‘greatest good’, as if we could possibly even chip away at that right now. People have been trying to figure that out since the dawn of time. There are whole philosophy schools and social movements and think tanks dedicated to it. And he thinks a room full of grieving, dysfunctional family members will be able to solve it in a weekend?”
“Do you think you’ll be able to make amends with him?”
“Of course,” Grace said matter-of-factly, “he’s my son. I just want him to take some responsibility for his relationship with Arthur. He’s stubborn as a boulder, and he’s dead set on seeing his father as some… emotional miser. Arthur did care for him, and he tried to show it in the end. Theo just wasn’t ready to receive it.”
“Why did he leave Dad and Aunt Lila out of the will, then? It seems almost… retributive.”
“He never said. Maybe part of it was retributive. Maybe he wanted them to see that he was hurting, that their neglect had real effects on him. They didn’t seem to listen otherwise.”
“Did he ever say anything about putting Blakely and me as the executors?”
“No, he never mentioned that either. He always had an odd way of approaching things. I imagine that he wanted to do something that would bring us all together. If he would have put me or your father as the executor, we likely would have just made the decision without involving the family. And we may have been more biased in doing so. But forcing us to involve you and Blakely made it a whole family affair.”
“Huh,” Elijah replied, “I guess it has forced us to come together and interact in a way we never would have before. I’m not sure if that’s for better or worse at this point, though.”
“It is quite extraordinary, even if it is a mess,” Grace said with a faint smile. “Arthur hadn’t heard from any of his kids for years, you know. I had to pull teeth to get your father to even bring you and Blakely out for the holidays over the past few years. The return calls and letters slowly stopped coming. We chalked it up to everyone being busy, but Arthur never really got over it.”
She sighed. “He knew the reasons why. He knew that he’d been neglectful, that his work had consumed his life. He regretted it in the end, but it was too little and too late at that point. The damage was done, and his children felt a world apart from him. I had a hard time imagining them ever wanting him to be a part of their lives again. Now, bringing everyone together to deliberate and agree on something as big as this, especially when they feel robbed of their inheritance? It’d be nothing short of a miracle.”
She stared out at the pink-blues of the dusk horizon. “Maybe that’s what he wanted: some last-ditch Hail Mary, some bizarre attempt to bring a semblance of togetherness back to the family. Maybe he wanted all of us to look beyond ourselves, stripped of all these… pretenses of inheritance and ownership. Or maybe he was just out of his mind.”
She stood up, brushing herself off. “And maybe it’ll make sense in time. Like I said, we don’t need it to right now. We just need to help each other through this. Come on, let’s get back into the fray.”
Elijah stood with her, gently locking arms with her as they strolled back in. “Do you have any ideas for what we should do with the inheritance?” He asked.
Grace let out a long exhale. “I think we should take our time to grieve. Once we feel ready, go take some notes from all those philosophers and think tanks on the whole ‘greatest good’ idea. You’re not trying to solve some niche question, you know. There’s a whole world of wisdom dedicated to it. Go dive in, learn as much as you can, and take action when you feel more equipped. I’m sure it’ll become clear in time, and I trust you’ll make the right decision. Your grandfather believed in you. So do I.”
As they walked back towards the house, Elijah’s eyes were drawn once again to that decaying skeleton in the yard. This time he noticed something sprouting out of it: a single green bud, reaching upwards towards the sun. It very likely had been there before; perhaps he was just not ready to see it until now.
As the evening continued, Elijah and Blakely could feel that black-hole knot of tension begin to loosen and diffuse. They could see the softening happening in faces, across conversations, in small gestures and exchanges. Every awkward fumble through grief-weighed conversation was met with surprising grace and ease. Some small and subtle catalyzation had been set in motion.
The family reconvened for the funeral service the following day. To any onlooker, the scene would seem no different from any ordinary funeral: a reticent throng of black attire, a repurposed chapel heavy with dust and death, a cut-and-paste vaguely redemptive speech from some vaguely familiar local pastor.
But Elijah, looking out upon this motley crowd of family and friends, saw nuances profound and surprising. He saw moments of reconnection and intimacy arise in places previously calloused and withered. He saw sprouts of healing, kindness, opportunity rising through the mire of dejection and grief.
He saw his father and aunt sit down, front and center, with their grandmother. He witnessed them hold and caress her hands with a warm and gentle kindness. He witnessed her lean into his father’s shoulder and weep as the film reel of photos and remembrances played out in front of them. He saw no hint of aversion, nor spite, nor resentment. He saw a once-scorched and arid soil become laden with the potential of some possible brighter future.
A sublimely wild and curious thought took a hold of him:
This is not a funeral; it’s a resurrection.
Some fever-dream transcendent vision descended upon him:
He saw the casket lid fly open, his grandfather springing forth from the coffin, cheeks flushed, eyes wide. The congregation watched in shock and awe as the man they once knew rose from the grave, surrounded by an aura of eternal youth. Rays of light spilled in from every window, bathing the room in brightness and warmth. From his belly erupted bellowing laughter, an explosive and childlike mirth which cascaded through the entire space, filling it with a tidal wave of joy.
His laughter echoed from every lung, filling the funeral home with reverberations of resonant jubilation. Tears of sadness transmuted to tears of joy! Mourning dress splashed with vibrant and saturated colors! Wine and spirits poured out in raucous celebration! Cries of grief transcribed to hymns of rejoicing!
One after the other, friends and family alike rushed the podium for his embrace. Elijah wrapped his arms around his grandfather, sobbing into his chest. He looked up into his grandfather’s eyes, in which he saw himself, the room, and everyone else present reflected back. Overcome with ecstatic disbelief, he asked: “What was all this for?”
Arthur smiled and opened his mouth to reply. From his throat emerged a layered blossom of pink-red petals:
A lotus flower, in full bloom.
In memory of Mark Massmann; may he remain no less in death.
Submission notes
I discovered this contest about a week before it ended, and wrote this in about 5 days. I wish I’d started it sooner, and had the chance to receive more feedback and editing before submitting it. If it happens to be accepted, I would be happy to incorporate major or minor edits to make it fit the prompt/vision of EA better.
Thanks for reading. - Jon