Death and the 80/20 Rule
Dear Rachel,
Lesley and I went to a Christmas party last night, where I discovered that the 80/20 rule holds true in death, as it does in business.
We’d been avoiding large gatherings ever since you were killed. Since May 28th at 9:00 a.m., when I received the call from the Virginia Beach police, we haven’t really felt like being around the largely superficial, synthetic happiness that one finds at parties. Mindless, meaningless chatter about golf; kitchen remodels; the Huskers’ chances against Michigan; drunken flirting and obvious, sophomoric overtures to other people’s spouses; and “Where did you get that dress? It’s beautiful!” Just not the kind of thing we really appreciate these days.
Dinner or drinks with a couple of close friends is about all we’ve been able to handle since that awful morning.
But it is Christmas, and Phil and Carlene have been having this neighborhood party for 25 years, and it has been almost seven months now—time, we thought, to see what it felt like to get back into the world.
It wasn’t a good idea. We made it through, but it was awkward for everyone, I think: us, because, as it turns out, we weren’t really ready—and for everyone else because…well, there‘s nothing like a couple of grief-stricken parents to put a damper on a Christmas party. If Santa had come down the chimney, he would’ve yelled, “Ho, ho…uh, ho?,” looked around, and slit his wrists.
OK, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it was pretty uncomfortable.
I did learn, though, that the division amongst friends and their ability to handle what’s happened is about the same at a party, proportionally, as it is at work and amongst our non-work circle of friends.
In other words, the 80/20 rule applies. In business, the 80/20 rule states that roughly 20% of your product line will generate roughly 80% of your revenue. The goal, then, is to determine what products constitute that valuable 20% and concentrate more on those than on the rest; if you can do that, you’ll drive revenue up and costs down. Or so I’ve been told by businessmen, sales reps, etc.
In terms of grief, the 80/20 rule works a little differently. It seems that a small number—about 20%, in fact—of your friends will fall into one of two camps: About half of that 20% will be able to talk about what happened. They’ll confront the issue head-on, they’ll attempt to be supportive; they’ll come to you and put their arms around you and say, “Are you doing OK? I’m so sorry. I know the holiday season must be very difficult for you. Can I do anything? Would you like to just sit down and talk?” And then they do sit down and talk, or listen to us as we talk.
These folks are very brave. We can’t be much fun to be around, especially when the conversation turns to your murder and to how we’re all holding up.
The other half of the 20% won’t talk to you at all. They simply cannot deal with what’s happened—perhaps they have their own losses to deal with, or they can’t bear to consider the possibility of such a loss. It’s a pain that’s not only too great to discuss, it’s too great to even imagine.
To these people, the bottom half of the 20%, the grieving are like lepers of old: We must be avoided, shunned, ignored; if we do travel amongst the non-grieving, we should be required to wear distinctive clothing, our gloomy passage marked by a lamp-bearer who rings a bell and shouts, “Unclean! Unclean!” as we pass by. It would be best, one feels, if there were colonies where the grief-stricken gathered, forced to huddle in amongst themselves; perhaps grief ghettos would serve to protect the normal folk as they go about their lives.
The remaining 80% of one’s friends and acquaintances can and do speak to us, but not about what’s happened. They try to pretend that everything is normal. We’re up and about, after all; we seem to be able to function—and besides, it’s been several months now, time to “get over it.” They can talk to you about just about anything, usually with a bright, chipper smile and a perky lilt to their voices. (Some of them are marketing people, so they can’t help this, of course; “perk” is part of their job description. It might be an inbred thing, I’m not sure.)
Sometimes, though, someone in the 80% group accidentally asks a dangerous question. He may look up and smile as I stand at the office coffeepot. “So,” he says, “how are you doing?” He doesn’t really want to know the answer. You can tell by his furtive, hangdog look that he didn’t really mean to ask that and that he regrets that it slipped out. Like a store clerk muttering “Have a nice day” after she finishes bagging the groceries, it was just something to say, words to fill a conversational void; it was meaningless chatter that was meant to remain meaningless. You can almost hear him thinking, “Oh, crap! Please don’t let him really answer that. I just want to talk about volleyball, or this terrible coffee, or the dress code at work.”
So, at work and at parties and in the world at large, the 80/20 rule seems to hold true. The vast majority of our friends and acquaintances need—for their own peace of mind—to pretend that all is well, that life is normal, that things can go on as they are, that the world isn’t falling apart.
And why not? After all, you and I did pretty much the same thing during the last presidential election.
Love,
Dad
Lesley and I went to a Christmas party last night, where I discovered that the 80/20 rule holds true in death, as it does in business.
We’d been avoiding large gatherings ever since you were killed. Since May 28th at 9:00 a.m., when I received the call from the Virginia Beach police, we haven’t really felt like being around the largely superficial, synthetic happiness that one finds at parties. Mindless, meaningless chatter about golf; kitchen remodels; the Huskers’ chances against Michigan; drunken flirting and obvious, sophomoric overtures to other people’s spouses; and “Where did you get that dress? It’s beautiful!” Just not the kind of thing we really appreciate these days.
Dinner or drinks with a couple of close friends is about all we’ve been able to handle since that awful morning.
But it is Christmas, and Phil and Carlene have been having this neighborhood party for 25 years, and it has been almost seven months now—time, we thought, to see what it felt like to get back into the world.
It wasn’t a good idea. We made it through, but it was awkward for everyone, I think: us, because, as it turns out, we weren’t really ready—and for everyone else because…well, there‘s nothing like a couple of grief-stricken parents to put a damper on a Christmas party. If Santa had come down the chimney, he would’ve yelled, “Ho, ho…uh, ho?,” looked around, and slit his wrists.
OK, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it was pretty uncomfortable.
I did learn, though, that the division amongst friends and their ability to handle what’s happened is about the same at a party, proportionally, as it is at work and amongst our non-work circle of friends.
In other words, the 80/20 rule applies. In business, the 80/20 rule states that roughly 20% of your product line will generate roughly 80% of your revenue. The goal, then, is to determine what products constitute that valuable 20% and concentrate more on those than on the rest; if you can do that, you’ll drive revenue up and costs down. Or so I’ve been told by businessmen, sales reps, etc.
In terms of grief, the 80/20 rule works a little differently. It seems that a small number—about 20%, in fact—of your friends will fall into one of two camps: About half of that 20% will be able to talk about what happened. They’ll confront the issue head-on, they’ll attempt to be supportive; they’ll come to you and put their arms around you and say, “Are you doing OK? I’m so sorry. I know the holiday season must be very difficult for you. Can I do anything? Would you like to just sit down and talk?” And then they do sit down and talk, or listen to us as we talk.
These folks are very brave. We can’t be much fun to be around, especially when the conversation turns to your murder and to how we’re all holding up.
The other half of the 20% won’t talk to you at all. They simply cannot deal with what’s happened—perhaps they have their own losses to deal with, or they can’t bear to consider the possibility of such a loss. It’s a pain that’s not only too great to discuss, it’s too great to even imagine.
To these people, the bottom half of the 20%, the grieving are like lepers of old: We must be avoided, shunned, ignored; if we do travel amongst the non-grieving, we should be required to wear distinctive clothing, our gloomy passage marked by a lamp-bearer who rings a bell and shouts, “Unclean! Unclean!” as we pass by. It would be best, one feels, if there were colonies where the grief-stricken gathered, forced to huddle in amongst themselves; perhaps grief ghettos would serve to protect the normal folk as they go about their lives.
The remaining 80% of one’s friends and acquaintances can and do speak to us, but not about what’s happened. They try to pretend that everything is normal. We’re up and about, after all; we seem to be able to function—and besides, it’s been several months now, time to “get over it.” They can talk to you about just about anything, usually with a bright, chipper smile and a perky lilt to their voices. (Some of them are marketing people, so they can’t help this, of course; “perk” is part of their job description. It might be an inbred thing, I’m not sure.)
Sometimes, though, someone in the 80% group accidentally asks a dangerous question. He may look up and smile as I stand at the office coffeepot. “So,” he says, “how are you doing?” He doesn’t really want to know the answer. You can tell by his furtive, hangdog look that he didn’t really mean to ask that and that he regrets that it slipped out. Like a store clerk muttering “Have a nice day” after she finishes bagging the groceries, it was just something to say, words to fill a conversational void; it was meaningless chatter that was meant to remain meaningless. You can almost hear him thinking, “Oh, crap! Please don’t let him really answer that. I just want to talk about volleyball, or this terrible coffee, or the dress code at work.”
So, at work and at parties and in the world at large, the 80/20 rule seems to hold true. The vast majority of our friends and acquaintances need—for their own peace of mind—to pretend that all is well, that life is normal, that things can go on as they are, that the world isn’t falling apart.
And why not? After all, you and I did pretty much the same thing during the last presidential election.
Love,
Dad
posted by Rod at 2:45 PM
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