Eulogy for Rebecca Gray
Modesty was personified by Rebecca Gray. Sure, everyone knew her; sure everyone loved her; sure, everyone thought she was pretty and smart, talented, and kind. Sure everyone wanted her close to them in some way or another. Most just settled for her smile in a magazine and moved on to our more attainable mundane lives. But Modesty personified Rebecca Gray because no matter how many movies, magazines, CD covers, TV shows, or book dust jackets sported her name and face, she was still just plain old Rebecca Gray. She never gave to charities because she wanted the attention, she did it because it felt like the right thing to do; it made her happy to see others happy. She didn’t condone drug abuse and stealing and teen pregnancies because she wanted to be the ultimate role model, she disapproved of them on principle. She didn’t adopt children from orphanages to be a good example, she adopted because she couldn’t have any children of her own and she wanted a little girl. She didn’t get married to make a statement; she got married because she really did love the guy. She didn’t keep her maiden name because she wanted to be an independent feminist or because her name sounded starlet-like enough, she kept it because she wanted to keep the names on her previous legal papers and to keep her mother’s memory alive.
I knew Rebecca Gray, but I’m not everyone. I was her maid-of-honor at her wedding, her roommate in and after college, at every birthday party she had since she was six, her best friend. I knew her boyfriend, fiancé, husband and went through every up and down of her singing and acting career. I watched her become a brunette Marilyn Monroe and helped her up when she started to fall.
But there are some things that you can’t control. Drunk driving during a blizzard as one of them. They could have kept her alive, but I didn’t think that was appropriate, and neither did her husband. She wouldn’t have been Rebecca Gray, she would have been a construct and at least this way she can still stand against something she hated so much.
I don’t know if any of the choices we made were right, but that’s the way they are. I didn’t want to martyrize her, though judging by the crowd tonight I think that’s what I did. But none of you people really knew her, and that’s what makes me sad. Just remember that Becky was one of the greatest people I’ve met and as a great person she can be turned into more than human. I don’t think that’s what anyone deserves—to lose their humanity over greatness. Either way, thank you for coming tonight, despite the rain. Your respects have meant a lot to the Gray and Peters family and we wish you well.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Fiction Prose, Realistic Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.