something to think about

the other day (before Heath Ledger's death) i was thinking about the idea of collective grieving. what i mean by this can be shown by examples that occured within our life-times.

1. princess diana
i remember exactly where i was when i heard that she had died. i was at my friend rachel ward's apartment in princeton,nj. my mom and i were in nj for a visit after we had moved to md. rachel's dad was a religious conseulor somehow involved with princeton, racheal's mom was a homemaker. her mom is japanese and her dad is white. rachel was extremely talented as an artist and she played the flute, her dad played the piano. one summer she went to japan to visit family and she brought me back a keroppi piggy-bank, i still have it to this day on my bed-side table. back to princess di. so there i was maybe 12 or 13, it's the summer before 7th grade, i was so bloodly excited to see rachel again. we did the normal kid thing, giggled absurdly and stayed up late. so we were up way past normal kid hours being goofy ass best friends and boom, the story of princess diana's death breaks. i was in shock, rachel and i couldn't believe it. her parents woke up and where all like wtf why are you up, but then realized what was going on. there is a phrase in amharic "kew alleng" that means kinda like "i was hit with a sudden shock or understanding". i felt like that. we stayed up mad late watching all the coverage until we couldn't stay up any longer. princess diana died in a crash in a Paris tunnel while her driver was trying to out run a paparazzi. her lover Dodi Al-Fayed (aka the onetime heir to Harrod's) and Henri Paul, then the head of security detail from the Ritz-Carlton, also died in the crash. diana's death outshined the other two. i couldn't believe that she had died because i wasn't even sure she was real. but then she died a horribly tragic death which left her family in shambles. and this family is the throne of england. they were divinely selected to rule england and her colonies as well as to be the embodiment of the church of england. it kinda makes sense why i thought she would never die, since her humanity was stripped from her when she married the heir to the british throne (who is no longer heir after his divorce from diana and his subsequent marriage to camilla parker bowles). i remember watching the coverage after the crash and the news stating that she was in critical condition, which meant to me that she would live. how could she die if was a character in a story i had heard about throughout my childhood. when they announced her death i was bewildered, all i could think about was her children and how they could cope without their mother and the fact that her death was in the name of celebrity. diana was not real to me until the moment she died. funny isnt it. it was like i realized people would actually miss her in the most personal ways as a mother, as a former spouse, as a child, as a sister, etcetc. my mother and i watched all the coverage of her death and burial. the piles of flowers in front of buckingham palace was astounding even as a child. it blew me away that people who didnt know her where feeling the same "pain" that i was experiencing thousands of miles away. i remember the footage from Hyde Park where they were telecasting live the funeral procession and service. there were hundreds of people all there on a beautiful day wimpering, crying as princess diana was laid to rest. i was and still am mystified that all those people i felt that they personally had lost someone in their inner circle. though i was affected by the sudden death diana, i never cried over it and i didnt feel that it had any lasting emotional effect on my life. but i am glad (if that is the right word) that i felt this collective empathy and heartache with people all across the world. in a way, diana's death made me more human and exposed me to the tragedy that exists in the world every day.
2. September 11, 2001
i remember this day quite clearly. i was in Mr. Stange's microeconomics class, 2nd period like 9am-ish. Mr. Stange was not in that day because his wife was pregnant and he was being a good husband and taking care of business. our sub that day gave us bullshit work and we trucked away, until she received a phone call. she was told to put on the news and she did. that is when i first saw the images of that day. i thought it was a joke, the worst joke in the world, but it wasnt. we watched in awe and confusion as the second plane hit and then the buildings fell. it was un-real but i realized we were watching history. then the pentagon was hit. when the bell rang, we peeled ourselves from our chairs and headed to 3rd period. i wasnt crying but i felt sick and unsafe, all i could think about was if i knew anyone in nyc or in d.c. who worked in those sites. i didnot lose anyone that day but i felt guilt and loneliness even after my mom came home. they let our school out early and it was a blue sky early fall day, i was in shorts. as i got to the charles street light near the exxon station across from the elkridge country club i started to cry. i was looking at the blue sky and crying, because all the people in nyc and d.c. had just had the worst day in their lives and i was driving home on a beautiful day. i sat at home and waited for my mom to come home, fearing for some reason she wouldnt. when she came home i burst into tears, she told me not to cry and to pull myself together. america mourned in earnest . everyone from the richest to the poorest, youngest to the oldest died that day. we all mourned together but unlike diana there was no coverage of the funerals because there were so many and they were too close to our individual lives. americans that day, even if they didnt lose anyone, felt like the people who died lead parallel lives to our own. in effect, bits of us survivors died that day, to varying extents. i asked some people at work and some friends what they were doing that day and where they were when it happened, everyone could replay to me exactly how and where they found out about this horrible moment. some even drew the comparisons to the feeling in the nation when JFK was assassinated in 1964. though i can agree that 9-11 was a day that is burned in contemporary america's collective consciousness, i could not agree that the death of one man, even though he was the definition of amercia, could so easliy be compared to the deaths of thousands. the same goes for diana's death, why do i remember hers so clearly but i could not for the life of me tell you the name of one person in 9-11 or katrina or the 2004 tsunami or in the iraq/afghanistan war. why did/do i react to the lives of celebrities more than the reality that surrounds me. i know it is easier to distance myself from the feelings surrounding death and the aftermath of death if it is sensational but why do i/we chose the easy way out when we individually know the personal pain of death as we grow older and supposedly wiser.