When a Country Can’t Grieve a Death, It Becomes Mentally Sick

Since Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, it’s taken me several days to bring myself to write this piece.  Something got in the way, namely, our country’s politics.  Mere hours after she passed—her body could still have been warm! —Democrats and Republicans alike turned not to her death and the extraordinary life she led, but to the question of her successor.  I was disgusted by both parties, but especially by the Republicans, whose reaction was nothing less than rapacious.  Personified by their leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, they seemed like birds of prey delighting in the death of another creature.  My own response was one of anger, verging on rage.  Why couldn’t this country declare a moratorium on politics and remain neutral for a long enough period of time to mourn and bury this distinguished Supreme Court judge?  The politicians’ unsavory behavior was covered in the press, which put at least as much emphasis, if not more, on the political parties’ fight over the timing of the hearings for the next Supreme Court justice as it did on the accomplishments of RBG, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg familiarly came to be known.  I had a terrible time focusing on the kind, warm images of this gentle and brilliant woman, whom I had the honor of sitting close to once at a summer afternoon opera performance at Glimmerglass, the opera house in Cooperstown, New York.  She was sitting on the same row I was, just a few seats down from me, separated by two or three secret service agents. She shared an interest in opera with the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, with whose legal views she may have differed.  These views did not, however, keep her from enjoying a wonderful relationship with him.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the very image of someone who could bridge political differences.  It would have been most fitting for the country to have suspended, however briefly, its animosities and to have honored her in the way she deserved.  Instead of the peace that comes from reflecting on a life well lived, I felt only turmoil.  I couldn’t really grieve her passing without the distraction of politics.  The incredible “noise” coming from politicians in Washington drowned out any efforts on my part to gather my thoughts about the loss of an iconic American woman.  To borrow a metaphor from Ginsburg’s beloved field of music, it was as if two orchestras were playing at the same time.  On the one hand, a quiet, mournful adagio was playing, like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which has become our country’s hymn in times of deep national loss.  While on the other hand, the other orchestra was making loud, boisterous music with clashing cymbals.  It’s impossible to concentrate while both are playing such diametrically opposed “music” at the same time.  Death often sets off strong emotions, and we need times of calm reflection to manage our way through them.  When we can’t pay the kind of attention we need to at such important times, we do ourselves psychological damage. 

My own anger over the handling of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death left me with a sense of helplessness, which I believe is widespread in our country right now.  The coronavirus pandemic has prevented thousands of families from grieving over their lost ones.  There can be no large gatherings such as wakes, where friends and family come together to remember fondly the recently departed and to console one another.  When they gather for funeral rites, they are limited to small numbers.  In its “Funeral Guidance for Individuals and Families,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourage “the number of people who are engaged in activities like singing or chanting as these behaviors can increase the amount of respiratory virus in the air.” In short, these intense moments, some of the most important times we share as human beings since time immemorial, lack many of the essential elements that make them special, memorable, and comforting. I can only imagine that those who have been denied indispensable and time-honored rituals for their grieving will sooner or later feel angry about what they have not been able to do.  But how can one direct one’s anger at a virus?

If, as I suspect, anger and helplessness are the emotions smoldering under the surface in our country right now because of politics and a virus that just won’t go away, then we need to be aware of the possible consequences of these strong feelings.  Considered a passion in philosophy and one of the seven deadly sins in Catholicism, anger usually ends up hurting oneself, if not others.   We may not be able to do much about our frustrations during the pandemic until a vaccine comes along.  Even then, however, the damage will already have been done for those who have missed out on important final rites around a death.  Meanwhile, it will take large doses of the virtue of patience to counteract the deleterious effects of whatever anger we’re feeling right now. But we can do something about the kind of politics that may have left us feeling angry and helpless; it’s called voting.