Parenting & Family Quote by Bruce Jackson

There’s a particular kind of cultural smugness in the line “They say”: the voice of received wisdom, the grief-industrial equivalent of a proverb. The usual claim is tidy, almost cinematic. A parent dies and suddenly you’re shoved to the front of the mortal queue, “put in time” like a metronome finally clicking into place. It’s a narrative that turns loss into a lesson, panic into perspective.

Bruce Jackson’s refusal - “I don’t buy it” - is where the quote does its real work. As a public servant, he’s likely spent years around institutional stories that pretend to be neutral but quietly discipline people into behaving: accept the process, respect the order, find meaning that makes the machinery run smoother. This is a small revolt against that script. He’s not denying death; he’s rejecting the idea that grief is supposed to sharpen into self-centered dread.

The subtext is protective and a little angry: don’t use my parent’s death to turn my life into a countdown. “Ordinary death” is the giveaway. It’s the language of actuarial tables and policy memos, mortality flattened into a standard-issue outcome. Jackson pushes back on that flattening. The parent’s death doesn’t have to be a baton pass; it can be an event that ruptures time rather than organizes it.

The intent, then, is not bravado but moral clarity: refusing a cliché that converts love into logistics, and insisting that meaning isn’t something you’re required to extract on schedule.