The events of the last few days have gotten me thinking about how we mourn our dead in NYC and on the Internet.
The recent death of blogger Bob Guskind and the very public outpouring of grief and admiration in blog posts, comments, and other media has been incredible.
Sure, there were also unpleasant reports from certain media outposts that amplified the more tabloid aspects of the situation but sadly that is to be expected.
Still, it was the outpouring that moved me above all and got me thinking about death in the age of the Internet. It also made me sad for the fact that sometimes it takes death for people to take the time to acknowledge how much someone means to them.
I also thought about how 9/11 changed the way we mourn our dead in NYC. Who can forget the signs, the shrines, the messages posted in Union Square and elsewhere in those first terrible days after the attacks.
That was the first public outpouring of grief on that scale in NYC that I remember.
From that point forward, the Internet—and the streets of the city—made expressions of grief and remembrance even more immediate and far reaching.
In the last few days, I received comments from people who suggested that it was exploitative to write about Bob so soon after his death; that it was inappropriate to write about the man in a public way while members of his family were grieving.
I took these thoughts to heart and gave them some serious thought. But finally I concluded that one honors the dead by memorializing them. Indeed, in some cultures, people create shrines to their dead, which include written remembrances, meaningful objects and candles.
The living seek to keep the dead nearby. And we do this in any way that we can. As a writer, I find words when I want to make sense out of something sad and incomprehensible.
The day after my father died I found myself writing about him on this blog for the very first time. It came naturally. I didn't even think about it. I needed to reach out and send my words out there…somewhere. It was my way of keeping him close by. At the same time, connecting with others seemed like the natural thing to do.
Interestingly, I got a nice note from Bob Guskind on September 19th just twelve days after my father's death. It was around the time that his blog was on hiatus and I sent him a note of concern:
Here is Bob's note:
loss of your father. Several of your posts brought me to tears…
When a public figure dies there is a longing by the public to connect and share what they are feeling. Bob was someone whose writing and perspective many had come to rely on. As one friend of mine wrote on Facebook, "I'm going to miss my daily dose of Bob's Brooklyn."
It is for this friend and others that I felt compelled to write about Bob, to post pertinent information, post a video and even one of his first posts on Gowanus Lounge from Spring of 2006.
The public grief has little to do with the private grief of loved one's. The two kinds of grief exist on parallel planes. Sometimes these two strands come together in comforting and compelling ways. Sometimes the public outpouring is just a disturbing encumberance to those closest to the dead.
Alas, the death of a public figure does not just belong to family members and loved ones alone. That must be understood. After 9/11 Park Slope mourned the loss of 12 guys from Squad 1 as if they were members of their own families. Those men had families, too. But the citizens of this community who didn't even know them by name felt the need to connect with them, to memorialize them, to walk with candles to the firehouse and share their sadness with one another.
This is how we mourn our dead in NYC: In blog posts on the Internet, with ribbons on churches for the dead in Iraq, with quilts on the Great Lawn for the dead from AIDs; with teddy bears on chain link fences for children killed in traffic accidents; with sidewalk shrines with Korean market flowers and Yartzeit candles; with artfully created white bicycles on street corners to remember bikers killed…
It is how we share what we are feeling with the world. It is how we keep the dead in our minds front and center.
Picture by Joe Holmes of Joe's NYC on Flickr
I hope to touch on this at Blogfest. I wrote a lot about the death of my mother on my blog three years ago, and it really helped me connect with people for support. In fact, I still receive emails from people who have found the posts searching Google and who thank me for sharing.