This week the world has focused on public loss. The death of Neda in the Iranian protests, the devastation in Washington, D.C. as two trains inexplicably collided and killed nine people, and the deaths of two long-time entertainment favorites, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett. These notable deaths, covered extensively by the media, were soon overshadowed by a media circus following the sudden death of pop icon Michael Jackson. Throughout the world, there has been an outpouring of grief as people mourn these seemingly larger-than-life losses.
As the world focuses on those very public deaths, it is easy to lose sight of the private tragedies that beset us all. Our own losses seem minimized by the constant “Have you heard?” and later, the millions of mourners expressing their collective public grief on the streets. With so much focus on these losses, there seems little interest in our everyday grief.
I experienced this after 9/11. My 94-year-old aunt died peacefully in the first few days after the September 11 terrorist attacks. She was buried just as the funerals for the victims of that horrendous assault were beginning. The clergyman who presided at her funeral felt compelled to compare her death to those who died in the attack. Her death had been different. It had been peaceful and expected. Her life had not been tragically cut off – she had lived to see great-grandchildren. But then he continued. Your grief should not be like the others, you could take comfort in comparing your loss to the loss around you.
This is always a dangerous and troubling idea – that losses should be compared across some scale of pain. It is dangerous and troubling for two reasons. First it minimizes the horrendous losses of others – making them points on a ruler of horror. And second, it seems to invalidate the grief of all whose losses seem less public or noteworthy than others.
To her family, the loss of my aunt, the matriarch, the glue that held the family together, this was not a loss to minimize. While they could take comfort from her long life and peaceful death, they mourned her loss no less.
Rabbi Earl Grollman once said “the worse loss is the one you are experiencing now”. There is great truth in that. We need to remember that the deaths we grieve, even when they come in the midst of public or catastrophic loss. It is no disservice to those whose deaths are catastrophic, early, or very public, to mourn those very personal tragedies. Rather, it reinforces the inherent worth of every individual, regardless of age or circumstances of death, to be grieved by those who loved them.
We also may need to acknowledge that sometimes too these public deaths may bring to the surface earlier losses. These public deaths may remind and reinforce earlier losses – making us miss, for example, the spouse we watched the Johnny Carson show with, a sibling who sang Jackson Five tunes, or a friend, who like Farrah Fawcett, died after several years of illness.
We also can recognize that our public and private grief may be intermingled. We can empathize with the families in Iran and Washington, D.C. We can acknowledge our own appreciation and connection to celebrities we may never have met. Yet, we may also, honorably and necessarily grieve the personal tragedies that we continue to encounter as we journey through life.
Kenneth J. Doka
