An Obituary. Sort of.

Enforced Home-Ed today. Child no.2 had to write an ‘Obituary for King David’ in Religious Education as requested by school.
It turned out that meladdo didn’t know what an obituary was. So, I spent ages explaining what it was (versus a ‘eulogy’).

I shared with him some very moving obituaries of incredible, human rights activist and campaigning friends of ours – who had passed away. I wrote down some bullet points that would help him to fulfil the task in hand. And lastly, I provided him with online learning lessons, biblically based film clips and the actual bible references to look up.

The kid seemed quite enthused to be learning about David and Goliath and battles etc. His little eyes were shining with delight at the grandeur of the epic storyline.

And then he produced The Obituary ‘itself. Which began:

“KING DAVID – DEAD!!
The evil murderer and womaniser is defeated once and for all!”

And after a long and full account of David’s life, it ended with; “As we look back on his life, it’s fair to say that he made the Israelites victors – but he brought sadness on himself and the wife that he killed someone for – and he murdered thousands of other innocent people.”

He emailed it to his teacher. Before I could even try and explain that David is perceived by People of the Book as being a flawed but essentially jolly nice chap – given his remorse for his actions – and that he is honoured and celebrated by Jews, Christians and Muslims, because he wrote loads of Psalms about being sorry for his dreadful behaviour and …

And “So….” my son said; “David apologised to God and right, well then – that’s alright, is it? Well, if that’s the way it is, I mean – why don’t you say that everything is alright when ***I*** do something awful? No, you say ‘er, no – saying you’re sorry isn’t good enough.’ And I mean – I’ve never not even – ever – wanted to womanise or murder thousands of innocent people. So no. I’m not changing my obituary. Okay?”

I despair. I really do.