Loving The Dead Comparison

Memories can influence a person and shape them into who they become later in life. When a person loses someone important in their life, they cope with those feelings in different ways. The differences people feel are fairly obvious, but the similarities of those memories are sometimes concealed. “Mud”, written by Geoffrey Forsyth and “Loving the Dead”, written by Ronald F. Currie Jr. gives us two examples of how people cope with the loss of a loved one.

In “Mud”, before his big meeting, his boss told him to “bring my good sense and my sound judgement and the right frame of mind”. (Forsyth 231) That is what his loved ones taught him throughout his life. The memories he had shared between him and his grandmother, father, and wife, stuck with

In “Mud” the memories he had of his loved ones were great and he used those memories to make himself a better person but in “Loving the Dead”, the memories he had were difficult to remember and deal with. In “Loving the Dead”, he hated his grandfather. He hated that up until a week before he died, he drove a bus during the day and a cab at night. He learned the language of many different people to hopefully earn him more money and to earn their respect, only for them to look down on him. He hated him for being a good father to seven children. “He loved his children so much that he had no love for himself”. (Currie 41) His grandfather had very little, but he took pride in what he did have. He hated his grandfather’s clothes. “the worn elbows and patched knees…so his seven children could go to school with the children of the men he worked for and not feel ashamed”. (Currie 42) He hated, “his four packs of Old Golds a day, his bottle and his flask and his can and his pint glass, the rotgut on Monday mornings and the bourbon on Friday evenings.” (Currie 42) As he died he hated that he had a “pint of whiskey, three-quarters gone”, (Currie 42) under the hospital pillow that was sent in with flowers and cards. Along with his grandfather, he also hated his grandmother. She lived fifteen years longer than his grandfather but also, “died of self-hatred.” (Currie 43) He hated that she stood by as his grandfather slowly killed himself with “work, alcohol, work and pride”. (Currie 43) He hated the meals she made, sleepovers, the trips to the beach, the smell of Kool menthols in the air. He hates everything about his grandparents because he finds a lot of them in himself. “I hate my strong back, my poverty, my taste for alcohol.” (Currie 45) Despite all the things that he hates about his grandparents, he goes to the cemetery every winter. He finds their graves side by side in the snow, smoke a cigarette, drink from his