But there is worse, in my humble opinion, brutal insensitivity is much worse.

It might be different with the death of the elderly, or at least, much harder to be brutally insensitive about their passing, since at least there are still social customs dealing with how to treat the subject, which is a part of nature and of our psychic landscape every bit as much as it ever was; perhaps, as life expectancies increase, this is even more so the case, as the closest to the elderly, the offspring, are more mature, have greater life experiences and more grace and ease in observing those social customs; the lack of confidence in our capacity to adequately observe them being often the most likely cause of silence (not due to indifference) in the first place.

But with the young, the death of whom, in our modern, relatively emotionally pain-free society, becomes more and more rare, the rules no longer hold, social cues no longer have the bearing they once had, due to the very same rarity. And here, you will find (though of course I would wish it on not even my enemy) that there is actually worse than silence.

That social cues play a role in this I take as an a priori: I recall being with my son's best friend's mother, when she explained that her surviving son had been sent off to the principal's office for punching a fellow student in the face. Why had he done it? The other kid had said, in reference to my son and her son's friendship with him, "oh, you mean that dead kid?" But, at ten years old, lack of social graces can be forgiven.

At thirty, they cannot. Fifty, harder still.

And you never really learn to deal with it gracefully, though it does harden you, and make you look at other social graces as just so much window dressing? Why? Because real human nature reveals itself occasionally, and it can be a very ugly thing.

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant