Melanie's speech didn't sound like the speech
of a woman who loves her husband.
She couldn't come up one warm, personal anecdote, even with the help of speechwriters. Even though everyone knew that was the goal -- to humanize him. Instead, it was one platitude after another, along with a couple paragraphs that really didn't fit in because they were stolen from someone else's very personal speech.
I witnessed a similar situation once, before a funeral. The man died without children, but with a number of nieces and nephews. The minister asked the relatives for stories that he could include in the service, and no one -- not one niece or nephew -- could come up with a warm, fuzzy story about the man. Finally, one of the family friends thought of something, and the minister wrote it down.
Melanie's situation reminded me of that. She couldn't think of any good stories to tell about the Don. How sad. But it makes sense because pathologic narcissists simply are not lovable. As bad as they are out in public, they are even more difficult for the people they're living with. The relatives of a narcissist must make the N proud -- or else. You are either the greatest, because you make the narcissist proud, or you are just a mosquito on the podium, waiting to be flattened.
So Melania strung a bunch of platitudes together and hoped no one would notice. And probably no one would have if she hadn't included some of Michelle's passionate words in the middle of it all.
