This week's sporkful: Lingering questions

Next week I plan to spend more time on death and healing. Maybe this post is a transition.

There were two things that stuck out for me from Albert's obituary.

One was the use of "beloved" three times for his partner; that made me wonder if she wrote it and if there is a level at which it was overcompensating.

The "credit" I can give him is that for all of the women he hit on who did not know that he had a partner, including the one who was talking to him more and trying to get him to go to the reunion, I can't believe there was a lot of time spent with other women, and not only because so many weren't interested.

I suppose his going could have made the reunion more interesting.

The other thing was a mention of friends.

Friends don't usually end up mentioned in obituaries; maybe they should be.

I know with my father's death and my mother being in end of life, that is something I have thought about more. Who needs updates? How can that best be done?

My parents were very young marrieds and they had a lot of friends who were a little bit older, which I think was nice for them as they were not near family. If I think about their influence or how my mother made friends through greyhound rescue, there might not be names mentioned but that would totally be something that it would make sense to include in an obituary. In fact, there is a reference to Albert making friends through pickleball. I get that.

There are also some people mentioned by name. One is his best friend he met at Beaver Acres. That makes me wonder if in fact he did not go to Aloha Park from the boundary change, but moved and ended up at Beaver Acres at the same time as the boundary change. (Aloha Park and Beaver Acres both fed into Five Oaks at the time.)

Regardless, in this case the person's full name is given and a reference to golfing with him, indicating the friendship lasted. I probably would not have separated the mentions, noting "best friend since elementary school" when mentioning the golf, but the inclusion does make sense.

The other mention strikes me as weirder:

"As Albert entered high school he met his good friends Josh, Joel and Matt and he found his calling with the drama department appearing in various plays."

All four of them definitely were in the drama department in high school and they did plays together. I specifically remember Josh and Albert having a scene together at the end of Barnum.

However, that's not how he met any of them.

Albert knew Josh from Chehalem like I did, then went to separate junior high schools.

Albert met Matt and Joel in junior high, where all of them did plays. I specifically remember Albert and Matt were both in The Curious Savage.

There was another guy in that group, Aaron. He did hang out with the theater people, though I can't remember him acting now.

If the obituary had said Aaron instead of Josh -- even if it had said high school instead of junior high -- that would be logical to me. They did a lot of things together, and my friends and I were often there as the female component of that group.

One potential reason for not mentioning Aaron could be the criminal charges and jail time. I would get that, except that could also make a case for excluding Matt.

As far as I know, Albert never held Matt accountable for anything. Sure, things can change, but they were certainly in contact in 2008 and the mention in the obituary implies a continued connection, except for the other two.

I can't rule out continued contact, but many of us remembered clearly how completely Joel disappeared, shunning those connections. He did briefly pop up on Facebook and we exchanged some messages, but he didn't stay on long. With those group dynamics, I did not blame him, but also he was the most beloved boy in that group.

(That is specifically class of 1990, or '87 for Five Oaks. There were two other boys who spent a fair amount of time with us but one was older and one was younger. In addition, there were some people we knew who started doing more with theater at high school, but were not acting as much then. Regardless, the core group was those four boys and six of us girls.)

Then, with Josh... I don't know the details, as it was again a situation where I found out some things later. Regardless, I am pretty sure that Josh did not consider Matt a friend after one point. Given a choice, I am sure Albert would have defended Matt. He always did.

Josh was also very much beloved.

It's weird to me that the obituary paints this image of a foursome that was really tight. It doesn't fit.

I suspect in some way it is there because maybe including two of the best and best-regarded people paints a prettier picture and makes it look like better associations.

Then I wonder if in fact he drafted his own obituary before he died, and there were things he was not going to face.

In fact, his voice work did bring him into professional and mentoring contact with other classmates who still think fondly of him. Mentioning them could have made more sense and still sounded good.

I can get wanting things to look better, but I want things to be real.

Now, I have generally worked to protect identities in these posts. This one is obviously more specific, which I don't love, but seems necessary given the material.

For that reason, I am posting some references.

https://www.wweek.com/portland/article-19583-barred.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Wingard

Also, though with completely different feelings:

https://www.portlandmercury.com/artsy/2008/12/12/984914/another_death_in_the_portland