An OSINT Lesson in Grief

And the limits of knowing a person

My grandmother died six days ago.

Given she was 94 years old, it was both expected and not. Expected because that’s a perfectly reasonable age to die. Unexpected because she rarely did things reasonably. So she did not go gently, and she did not go quietly, but she did go, and I’ll make my peace with that.

I learned long ago that grief does funny things to our memories. We tend to evangelize people once they’re gone. We stand at podiums, and we write obituaries, and we tell nice and neat stories of entire lives that were only on occasion nice and neat. At some point, we decided that was polite or good, or the right thing to do, and the tradition carried on.