From: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Communing with the dead doesn't necessarily mean talking to dead spirits it means realizing the good that is left by those that are absent in body. It's the part that never dies, it's their song, their laughter, their love and nobody has to be a Medium to receive those. However knowing something and realizing it are two different things.
It is said that no man could live up to his epitaph because those that have passed seem to become shrouded in a type of sainthood. After a person is gone it’s usually not necessary to remember the bad things they did unless they had done a great deal of harm to somebody and even then we have to forgive it’s required.
Minerva said to Jim, (In Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) “Tell me something about him.”
Jim, “He tried to kill me?”
Minerva, “No, before then. Something good. Your kind words... ...take root, flower, come back to bless you.”
Likewise evil words create havoc and destruction.
I knew a woman that couldn’t say enough bad things about her husband after he died and somehow her husband became the subject of all of her conversations. It was creepy and a little scary. I could plainly see he was haunting her perhaps even trying to pull her into the grave with him. Her soul stumbled through a barren wilderness and though her words had no power to hurt him they sprouted thorny bushes and prickly weeds. Nobody could comfort her and soon nobody had any pity for her. Finally nobody even wanted to be around her and she became a lonely soul in a wasteland of her own making.
(Say) “Something good.”
John French Sloan had an excellent solution. “Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive.”