ON SAYING FAREWELL...

The ritual of saying good-bye to someone we love, generally known as a funeral, has once again caught our public attention as Senator Edward Moore Kennedy was mourned and buried. I was in elementary school when his brother John was assassinated, and I remember through the eyes of a child the days of shock and grief sweeping across our country. The continuous news coverage filled all of the channels on the television, and we watched the pomp and ceremony as a nation bid farewell to her president.

Those of us who remember JFK’s funeral procession as well as the subsequent deaths of Martin Luther King Junior and Robert F. Kennedy couldn’t help but think of those days as Teddy’s flag-draped casket peeked out of the rear window of the hearse as it made its way through the neighborhoods of Boston and on to Washington, D.C. Public leaders such as Kennedy belong to the people of America in both life and in death, as apparent by the hundreds of people who stood for so long to say their own farewells.

I told myself that I was watching the coverage of the funeral procession out of respect to Senator Kennedy and his place in our nation’s history. Yet as the family began to gather at the gravesite, I wondered if we should be willing to give these grieving people a private moment to make their final good-bye to husband, father, and patriarch.

While the media plan was to cover the internment to the final playing of Taps, a glitch of sorts occurred that gave an ironic twist to the night. The plan had been to arrive at Arlington about 5:30 p.m., but the procession was running late, so late that the sun was setting as the graveside service began. By the time the priest intoned the familiar words, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the television screen focused on the flickering of the perpetual flame, as the cameras couldn’t pick up any other image in the dark. Perhaps unbeknownst to the family, the little ones were able to express their final good-bye to grandpa without the invading eyes of the nation.

This absence of light at the end of a sorrowful day reminded me of an idea that Joan Chittister poses in her spiritual memoir, Called to Question. She suggests that life made more sense before the invention of the lightbulb. “Without lightbulbs there were only so many things you could do in a day and for only so much time. When night came . . . you had to stop, take stock, sit in front of the fire, or sleep until the light returned.”

Oh. There was a time, even in my lifetime, when the natural rhythms of life as defined by the sun and moon regulated our day, whether on the farm or in the suburb. There also was a time, not so long ago, when the natural rhythms of life and death allowed for a sense of privacy both in the joy of birth and in the anguish of bereavement. While there were funerals and the accompanying culturally-defined wake, they were for family and friends, not the curious spectator intruding during a time of great sorrow.

Times have changed, and our claims upon those in show business, professional sports or politics have stripped away a level of privacy and consideration that all people are owed in times of overwhelming sorrow. How I wished that Michael Jackson’s children had been able to say good-bye to their father out of the public glare of the camera. Can it be possible that even in this world of mega-information, there are simply some things that are none of my (our) business?
Perhaps it was fitting that the shadows of dusk finally gave the Kennedy family the cover of privacy that they had relinquished so many years ago. Finally, in that darkening evening, there was an overdue moment of covering for Jackie, Caroline and John-John, for Coretta Scott King, and for every mother, famous or not, whose grief has been exploited by the flash of a camera. May you and those you love rest in peace.

JoAnn Shade

Major JoAnn Shade ministers with her husband Larry as the corps officers and Directors of the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center. She received a B.A. in sociology from S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton, a M.A. in Pastoral Counseling, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Ashland Theological Seminary in June, 2006. She is a prolific writer, lecturer, and busy counselor and has contributed to this blog since its inception.