A couple of decades ago, a book by Orson Scott Card came out that shook the world. Called Ender's Game, it was about a boy that destroyed an entire species of sentient beings. This book, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, was put on classic reading lists the world over. But it is not the main part of the novel that concerns the Buffyverse, but rather the end.

Ender, after being tricked into killing a race of alien beings, learns that they never meant to harm humans. Horrified by this knowledge, he writes a book called The Hive Queen, and becomes a Speaker for the Dead: one that tells the life story of someone, the way that they meant to live and die.

It was not until I read the sequel to this book, Speaker for the Dead (also a winner of the Hugo and Nebula), that I truly became aware of why Joss Whedon is able to pull our deepest heartstrings.He has become the Speaker for the Dead to all of us in a way.

In the episode The Body, Joss had a story to tell - a story of the loss of his own mother, as well as a farewell to Joyce. However, he did not stop there.He spoke for anyone who had lost someone, as we became the ambassadors to the feeling of grief and loss.He spoke for the pain we all felt - or will feel - but cannot express properly in our own words. And like the Speaker, his eloquence and simplicity inherent in all his story telling is enough to dig right to the root of that emotion that we keep hidden and bring it out into the air so as to heal more fully. He does this because that is the purpose of a Speaker. So thank you Joss, for telling the story of us.