"Password"

Passing the time

Passing Grades

Pass with flying colors

Pass the ball

Gave him a pass

Made a pass

Pass/fail

The storm has passed

Pass the buck

You may not pass this way again

Passing  judgement

This too, shall pass

Pass a test

Pass out the treats

2 ships that passed in the night

Don't let it pass you by

And it came to pass...

I'm kind of a freak about words.  I really listen to the words people use and I replay conversations over and over in my head--regretting the words I use or pulling meaning from the words others' use.  Password is one of my favorite games.  We have this 70's version of the box game and our kids are really quite good at it.  I like it because it makes us communicate.  It makes us pull together and remember things we've shared together.

There are words I like to use and hear and then there are words I don't.  Euphemisms in general are not my thing.  Just say it like it is.  That's my philosophy.  Sugar-coating isn't my strong suit.  Not when I'm talking somethand not when others talk to me.  I remember once when Ian was pretty little, I said cars could squish peoples' guts out.  My friend was surprised at how I laid things out for my kids.  It kind of shocked me because I thought making it plain was the best way to keep him out of the street.

Getting to the point, I have for as long as I can remember, hated the term: "passed away".  It makes it seem like a person just disappeared or faded or floated off.  I've never understood why people couldn't just say died.  I get it now.  I stop, mid-sentence sometimes.  I say gone, left, and a number of other words including passed because the words died and dead produce an actual, physical pain in my gut--see,  I could've said stomach, but the word gut conveys the deepness of the feeling so much better.

"Pass" is used in sooo many phrases and in almost everyone of them it is some sort of euphemism--a passive way to say something.  I now have empathy for all the people who can't bring themselves to say the word died.  Keith conducted, and I attended, yet another funeral between Christmas and New Year's.  She was a woman we cared about.  I visited her the day before she died, and even though I'm a pretty good person, I have to admit, it's possible that part of the reason I went is because she told Keith 2 days earlier that Ian had been in the room with her.  It's comforting to know that all 3 of us were visiting the same woman and hopefully helping her go. 

I guess it's proof, (if there is such a thing,)  that we really don't die, we just pass to another place.