A grave message...

Today’s post covers the delicate topic of death and people’s reaction to it, including humour. 

British culture is characterised by a cynical and often black sense of humour.  Do you find this story a little bit funny or are you sorry for the person affected?

To summarise the story, an elderly lady passed away.  When someone dies in the U.K. it is common to bury them with some personal items they were fond of: a teddy bear, perhaps, or a football scarf.

Well, apparently this elderly lady was fond of sending text messages and using her mobile phone.  So she was buried with her mobile phone.  This happened three years ago or so.

This deceased lady’s granddaughter continued to send text messages to her grandmother even after she had died.  Of course she knew that her grandmother couldn’t read them but sending the messages gave her comfort.  “I know she’s not alive.  But it’s still going to her,” she said.  So far it’s a sweet story, right?

But then after three years of this, the granddaughter received a reply.  It said, “I’m watching over you.”

The granddaughter’s reaction was then quite strange.  She said: "Loads of horrible things were running through my head.

"How did somebody get her telephone? Had they been getting all the texts?"

So, she imagined that someone had dug up the grave in order to steal the phone.  This is not the first explanation that she should have considered!

In reality, the phone company had given the old number to someone else, because it had not been in use for three years.  So a stranger was getting the text messages that the granddaughter was sending and, being a cynical Briton with a black sense of humour, he assumed that his friends were playing a prank on him.

The granddaughter said, “I took it out on him.  But it wasn’t his fault at all.”

I’m sorry but I found the story quite amusing.  I am sure that amongst us cynical Britons, I wasn’t the only one.

Vocabulary:

a delicate topic – A sensitive subject; something which is difficult to talk about.

A is characterised by B – Something distinctive about A is B.

to be cynical – If you are cynical then you don’t respect things as they appear, or make fun of things.

to pass away – To die.  It sounds more polite to say that someone passed away, rather than that they died.

to bury something – To put it in the ground, under the earth.

to be deceased – To be dead.  It sounds more polite to say deceased rather than dead.

loads of... – Lots of...; a large pile of...

to dig something up – To take something out of the ground.

a grave – The place where someone is buried

a prank – Telling someone a false story as a joke.  For example, people often play pranks on each other on April Fool’s Day.

a Briton – Someone from Britain

to take it out on someone – To get rid of some negative feeling like anger by attacking or blaming someone.