Getting comfortable with death

I have suddenly realized that I have been enveloped by the idea of death these days. Not in the literal sense but in the literary one. It is part of my research for my dissertation to immerse myself in the literature that examines grief, loss, and commemoration of a loved one after he or she dies. So for more than a year, I have been reading books, journal articles, and any other resource I can find that ties in to this topic of grief as I question how our ability to communicate has led us to share our sad moments in life.

It really only hit me today that I am dwelling in a dark place. Also, that I will be doing so for a prolonged time. I wonder, Do I have enough liquor to sustain me in this trial?

I jest, of course, because I really don’t find alcohol to be a useful medication for me in dealing with difficult things. But if I don’t find the humor in this activity to some small degree, I could get very depressed.

It occurs to me that this is an important strand to pull at, as I dwell in the Village of Rhetoric, located somewhere in the southern region on the map of my Journey to Dissertation.

I have so much I want to tell you. I hesitate, because I think some of you may simply not want to hear it. I also hesitate because others may think it is just plain weird that I would have so much to say about death and the sad losses we human beings bear when a loved one in our life dies.

What’s happening here is interesting. My concern about sharing this topic seems to be unnecessary. That’s because I notice that other people are opening up their feelings publicly -- and not just to intimate friends, mind you -- in a way that suggests we all need and want to talk about this sort of thing.

What do I mean?

The most obvious example has repeatedly popped up on my Facebook page. As I check in periodicallly to see what my Facebook friends are up to, I notice something. Every so often, someone will post a very simple, usually very short, note to mention someone who has died whose death is affecting them in some way.

These mentions are random and usually out of the blue. What I mean is, they usually pop up in an isolated fashion: not as a follow-up post to a prior note about this particular person, but as a distinct, standalone comment. It can be something like, “[Name] is saying goodbye to a wonderful young man who was taken away from us too soon...”

The post then includes a followup sentence asking others to send prayers to his family. In this case, there were at least nine responses to this post on the day that I viewed it.

Perhaps it is because in this social network setting it is easier to express oneself candidly, because any response or reaction will be indirectly conveyed. The original poster can put out the message and not even bother looking back later to see if anyone has responded to this show of emotion. Of course, I’m betting they always do. Most folks on Facebook are there for the engagement, the back and forth discussions if you can call them that.

It’s a way of reaching out, in other words. When you have something difficult to deal with, it is reassuring to deal with it knowing that other people understand, empathize, sympathize or just care enough about you to offer a kind word.

Sometimes, the public expression of sadness over a death morphs into something extraordinary. Another example: the death of a popular professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently generated an outpouring of grief responses to a Facebook page created almost immediately after the news of his passing.

On September 17, a friend mentioned the page to me, knowing of my doctoral topic and quest to understand the human need to share our grief. George N. Parks had died the night before at the age of 57. He was a music professor and nationally recognized band leader at UMass, and clearly was beloved by the college community and beyond.

The UMass web site notes that Parks led the Minutemen Marching Band to national prominence during his 33-year career. Under Parks’ leadership, the school band received the Louis C. Sudler Trophy from the John Philip Sousa Foundation in 1998. It is apparently the biggest honor a marching band can get in the U.S. And no doubt, George Parks was much more than that, based on the kind of loving comments posted to his memorial wall on Facebook.

When my friend first told me about the tremendous public response to Parks’ death that had exploded on Facebook, there were about 3,000 fans connected to him and a “wall” of heartfelt messages and memories that went on and on. This was in the span of perhaps 24 hours.

Today, a week and a half later, there are more than 11,000 Facebook fans of the man. Clearly, he touched many lives. The fact that so many would take the time to click on to a social networking site to leave a virtual message to the world is nothing short of remarkable.

This is something worth thinking about. While I have been reading about the way early human beings initially kept “death” to themselves -- a private matter that was confined to in-home wakes where only family members were allowed to share in the grief experience -- I am fascinated by the very ease of our sensibilities in accepting public exposure of our losses. Have we gotten comfortable with death or is it that we have begun to recognize the human need for understanding and compassion, that can only take place through sharing of these painful experiences?