"Dead" is "dead": Euphemism and the power of words | Phyllis Sommer | TEDxACU

Phyllis Sommer shares how her son Sam’s illness and death have caused her to rethink the way she speaks, drawing from her own experience in learning that the word "dead" takes on a different meaning when applied to an uncharged cell phone or one’s deceased brother who will never return.

Phyllis regularly blogs (and tweets!) about the ins-and-outs of her life as rabbi, wife, and mother of four, leading the Huffington Post to name her as one of their “Influential Jewish Twitter Users” of 2011. But most recently, she has chronicled her family’s experiences in the aftermath of the cancer diagnosis, treatment, and death of her son, Sam.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Language matters.
The words that we say matter.

They matter for truth;
they matter for honesty;

and they matter for reality.

"Euphemism" is defined as a mild
or indirect word or expression

that substitutes for one
deemed to be too harsh or blunt

when referring to something
unpleasant or embarrassing.

Come on! Let me get back to you again.
You know what a euphemism is.

It’s a prettier word,
a better word, a softer word,

used to talk about something

that you might find unpleasant
or uncomfortable.

Let me tell you,
there's very little in this world

as uncomfortable as having a child
diagnosed with cancer,

and there's almost nothing in the world

as unpleasant as having a child
who dies from that cancer.

And yet that is what I found myself
faced with in 2012,

when my then six-year-old son Sam
was diagnosed with leukemia.

Right from the start, I found myself
drowning in euphemistic phrases,

words like "warrior" and "hero,"
words that made it seem like

he was more than a child
whose body had rebelled against him,

words that made it seem like
he had some say in the matter,

as though his very will

will lead him down a path of healing
or a path of destruction.

And so, words became my weapon
of choice against cancer.

I tried to choose my words very carefully,
speak plainly, clearly and simply,

so that he would understand
what was happening

and so that I wouldn't use words
that might muddy the waters later.

Ultimately, Sam’s leukemia
was very strong

and overran the treatments
available to medical knowledge.

And when he died,

I was faced with a whole
new list of euphemisms,

phrases like "passed away,"
"earned his wings"

or even "lost a child."

Now don’t get me wrong,
there're religious identity issues here,

but no matter what you have
as your religious beliefs,

no matter how you feel
about the Afterlife,

it's hard not to admit
that these are euphemisms for "dead,"

pretty sugar-coated phrases for:

"His life ended
and there's no turning back."

Now some of these became
intensely frustrating for me.

When someone refers to me
as a mother who "lost her child,"

I mutter under my breath, "He's not lost.
I know right where he is."

My friend Rebecca wrote about it
after Sammy died.

She wrote it like this, she said,

"His parents haven’t lost a child,

they would never, could never
be so careless.”

When someone says that Sammy
"passed," I’m equally frustrated.

It sounds so painless,
so simple, so easy,

but it wasn't.

Passing is something that we do
to the car in front of us

that’s moving too slowly.

We pass tests and we pass kidney stones.

We might pass through life.

But Sam didn't pass us by.

I did a little bit of research,
and according to Legacy.com,

which has over 6.5 million
obituaries on its site,

over five million of those obituaries
use the term "passed away."

Are we so scared of the phrase "dead"

that we can’t even say it in obituary?

I think that some of this
states very far back to a time, long ago,

when we held the magical thinking

that talking about something
could bring it closer to us.

Well, wait a minute !
We don’t still believe that, do we?

Have you ever done this?

"Did you hear what happened? He...

(Whispering:) ... died."

Oh yeah, we totally don’t believe
in that magic stuff anymore, do we?

Death makes us so uncomfortable.

It’s so hard for us to wrap our scientific
logical selves around this idea,

to explain it, to rationalize it,
to understand it.

How is it that someone is here
one minute and not here the next?

How it is that their body is still there
but yet they are not alive?

And so yes, we have turned
to euphemisms, to phrases

that help us talk about
and maybe understand

this great mystery.

All the euphemistic phrases,
I am sure you've heard so many of them:

"dearly departed," "lost his battle,"

"slipped away,"

"left this world,"

"crossed over,"

"breathed his last."

And then of course,
there are the less sweet ones:

"kicked the bucket,"

"cashed in one’s chips,"

"taking a dirt nap,"

"gone offline,"

"gone to the big baseball
stadium in the sky."

There is a very famous
Monty Python’s sketch,

in which a man goes into a pet store.

He is carrying a cage and he goes in
because he wants to register a complaint.

It seems that he has been
sold a dead parrot.

The shopkeeper actually
argues with him and says,

"No, no, no. The parrot is only stunned."

And in what has become
a now famous rant,

John Cleese says something like this,

"This parrot is as expired.

He's gone to his final rest.
He has breathed his last.

If you hadn't nailed him to the perch,
he'd be pushing up daisies.

He is off the twig. His metabolic
processes are now history.

He has run, shuffled off his mortal coil,
run down the curtain

and joined the bleeding choir invisible.
This is an ex-parrot."

(Laughter)

Okay, it’s a little bit funnier
when delivered with the British accent,

but you get the idea.

All of those phrases strung together,
it sounds a little bit ridiculous,

because truly all of those
remind us that "dead" is "dead."

Now, I have been a rabbi
for nearly 12 years.

And in that time, I have officiated
at countless funerals

and memorial services.

And in all of that time, I really, really
thought about the words that I used

and the way that I referred
to the deceased,

and the way that I used phrases
like "passed away" or "lost,"

but I never truly understood
how those words were heard

through the ears of a child

until I was faced with that
in my own house.

You see, after Sam died,

my husband and I were left
picking up the pieces

not only of our own grief
but that of our three living children.

And in particular, I had to really watch

what I had said around
Solomon, my youngest,

who was at the time
a very precocious three years old.

You see, we discovered that Solomon’s
primary understanding of death

comes from The Lion King.

Now in case you haven’t seen
The Lion King ever or lately,

let me tell you Simba’s father Mufasa
dies early on in the movie.

This should be a very useful reference
for teaching a child about death, right?

Except - and I apologize
if you've never seen the movie -

except near the end of the film

Mufasa appears to Simba
in a ghostly vision in the sky,

and the ghostly vision even talks.

So if Mufasa can come back,
why not Sammy?

In fact, I think
Solomon’s exact words were,

"When will I see Sammy
like Mufasa, in the sky?"

We discovered that Solomon’s
second frame of reference

in regard to death,
was the video game.

Yes, even the simplest,
most benign of video games

when your character doesn't make it,
when he doesn't complete the level,

what do you say? "He died."

And then, you hit that reset button,

start over,

and there he is, alive as ever.

Oh, I'm just getting started.

Really think about all of the phrases
that you've ever used to talk about death,

and then hear them through
the ears of a young child.

"- He's not here.

- Okay, so when he comes back,
can we go to the park?"

"- He is gone.

- Okay, so can we talk to him?
Can we call him? Can we FaceTime him?"

"- When we lost Sammy...

- Oh, let’s go find him!"

"- He is always with you.

- Where? Where? I don’t see him anywhere."

It seems as though we've actually
run out of excuses,

trying to explain to Solomon
where Sammy is.

It’s hard enough to explain death at all,

but even harder when you start to hear
all of the expressions that we use.

Now let's be honest here.

Politicians use euphemism
all the time to talk about things

that they don’t want to talk about.

We might say someone is "let go,"
when we mean "fired."

"Casualties of war" might become
"collateral damage."

The list goes on and on of the things
that we just don’t want to talk about,

and death is at the top of that list.

Death isn't something
that we talk about in polite company.

We talk around it instead of about it.

We're so confounded by the idea of death,

we just don’t know what to do.

So what is that?

Are we really so scared of the words
"dead, death, dying"

that we can’t say them out loud?

It seems like it.

We do spend an awful lot
of our time trying to avoid it.

But, on the other hand,

we talk about death all the time.

"I almost died laughing"
you might have said

if I had used a British accent
for the Monty Python’s sketch.

Or "I was scared to death."

Or "This chocolate eclair is so good,

I think I've died and gone to heaven."

And then there's this one:
"My phone died."

And then of course we make it
a little bit worse.

We say, "Is it dead dead?"
and what does that mean?

Of course, it means, "Did your phone
actually cease to function?

Do you honestly need to go out
and get a brand new one?"

or as you probably mean,

"Do you need to plug it in
to a charging cable

and there in a few hours,
you'll have it again,

good as new, alive as ever?"

I bet you said it today.

And when you hear a phrase like that
you really begin to think about it.

Because let’s go back
to my son Solomon for a minute.

Oh, he knows all about those dead phones.

He knows how to plug those things in
and make them work,

so that he can play
Subway Surfer on my phone.

It really makes you think
about the things that you say,

because then he said to us,

“If we can plug the phone in again,
can't we just plug Sammy in?”

And so I begin to consider and think
about the words that I use;

the way that I speak, teach, and act;

my entire collected body of language.

"Dead" is "dead."

"My phone is out of battery charge."

It’s hard to choose those words,

just as it's hard to say
that my eight-year-old son "died."

He didn't "pass away,"
and I didn't "lose" him.

He died.

When I say that, I watch people;
they stiffen and try to turn away.

They can’t believe
that I've just said that,

that I've used those words.

But the truth is real

and no amount of euphemism can change it.

No amount of euphemistic
thinking or magical ideas

can bring him back to me,

can undo that ultimate
done deal that is death.

"Dead" is "dead."

And I'm not trying to be harsh,
I'm really not.

I truly believe

that using a direct and respectful way
of talking about death

can help to erase some
of the taboos around the subject.

It’s not giving power to death
to speak its name.

In fact, I believe that shrouding
and clouding death

in pretty sugar-coated phrases

actually can increase fear and mystery,

and hence sometimes
even make it harder to heal.

"Dead" is "dead,"

and the words that we say matter

in every aspect of both life and death.

Thank you.

(Applause)