Compassion for Strangers

The death of Rick Warren’s son by suicide is sad enough. But reading the news stories, we see a secondary tragedy — the vicious discussions that are generated in virtually every comment thread I’ve seen. The worst was at NPR, where various readers expounded on gun control, the evangelical guilt culture, and how the Warrens (despite clear statements to the contrary) probably just prayed for their son instead of getting him professional help.

So now there is a whole discussion going on about the quality of the discussion. Who wouldn’t agree that there are an astonishing number of cruel responses from the public at large? But ultimately it goes back to the news media for providing the forum for such an inhumane discussion to arise in the first place.

Why would the announcement of a death be open for comments? What is there for anyone to say in the shock and numbness of such loss? Even more, what is there for numberless uninformed strangers to weigh in on?

My husband agrees, and says that news outlets allow the comments because then they can take them to businesses and say, “See all the discussion we are generating? Don’t you want to advertise with us?” It’s the ultimate commodification of human grief, and we are all its victims. Neil Postman had it right years ago when he observed that in our technological advancement and entertainment culture, we are “amusing ourselves to death.” A culture that has lost sight of the distinction between a media event and a personal tragedy has lost a measure of its humanity.

The day before Thanksgiving in 2007, a stranger walked past my husband’s office at the airport where he works and waved an upbeat greeting on the way to his plane. He took off only to crash moments later. My husband called me when it happened, shaken by the realization that he may have been the last person to see the man. I wrote this poem the next morning because I felt some of the same things I feel now, this time on behalf of the Warrens in their terrible loss.

Obituary for a Stranger

I woke this morning
to the cheery tenor of the radio voice
stating courteously that a pilot had died.
He moved on to the governor’s visit,
then the weather report.

The dead should only be declared
by those who love them.

To start, he was not “a pilot.”
In those final frantic seconds
less than a minute into the air
plunged into a dark bowl of soup
in a sputtering, unwilling vessel,
surely he was a man.

And though his name is not released,
surely it is known,
surely he is loved:
perhaps husband, perhaps father,
perhaps uncle or brother or cousin.
Surely he is a son whose first outraged cries
brought answering tears of joy from proud parents.

He grasped the complex workings
of engine and physics and weather and weight –
could fly in blind conditions
had bravery to try
and faith to trust the instruments
when sensation deceives.

“We prayed for the person in the crash,” cry my children
clamoring to the stairs for their first glimpse
of Daddy arriving home.
“I’m so glad,” he replies gently. “Because he’s gone to see Jesus now.”

In the wisdom of children, they fall silent.
When all the created masterpiece of a human being
is crushed into eternity
it’s not the chatter of news,
but the voices of those who loved him
that should break the silence.

–Janet Goodrich