Reader-submitted question: What will Christie Blatchford think?

Yeah. About that.

Christie Blatchford is a Toronto writer; she penned one of many columns about Jack Layton‘s death. After Jack’s deathbed letter, her column is probably the most-talked-about item to be published in Canada this week. If you haven’t read it, click through. I’ll wait.

Ms. Blatchford was roundly criticised for bad taste. To a nation that saw itself in her unflattering descriptions, it was personal. And it was certainly too soon.

I agreed with some of the things she said. Not everything: I thought much of her column was irrelevant and unnecessarily mean-spirited. And I would probably have waited a few days before saying even the things I did agree with. But now it’s a few days later, and she wasn’t totally wrong.

Perhaps it’s because it came on a day people in Yellowknife were reeling from the shock of losing people they actually knew, but, like Ms. Blatchford, I was unimpressed with the over-the-top reaction some had to losing a man they had only seen on television. Good Lord. I can understand feeling some sadness, or spending time contemplating Jack’s legacy, or writing a nice note to his family and staff. But I wouldn’t have left work sobbing.

I suppose that if you have never lost anyone, you might not know how to react to death. There really is no “right” reaction to a personal loss; I am still very sentimental about my grandmother, who died eleven years ago. But my grandmother was not like Mr. Layton. She was a nature lover who took us hiking to look for lady slippers and canoeing to count ducks and loons; he was a guy who made rousing speeches I read about in the newspaper. She made people laugh one at a time with self-deprecating stories; he brought silly grins to the faces of entire rooms of NDP supporters. She handwrote the recipes I now treasure at my camp: sweets with names like “dump bars”. He and his staff wrote the letter that thousands of Canadians think is inspiring.

She was a real force in my life, a true lady, and I miss her terribly. Jack Layton was a smart, well-meaning guy, a hard worker, and an inspiration to many, but it does not respect his memory to pretend that it is the same sort of loss. Melodrama is not grief.