Showing posts with label funeral. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funeral. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Deepwater Horizon Memorial Service
Transocean
, the company that operated the oil rig
that exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, sponsored a memorial service today in Jackson, Mississippi for the 11 employees who are missing and presumed dead in that accident. Many of the 115 surviving workers from the rig, whose collapse triggered the massive oil spill still going on in the Gulf, were expected to travel from throughout the south to attend the service. I will admit to greeting this news with some cynicism. My first thought was that today -- five weeks after the accident -- was a little late to be holding a memorial service. The second was that, having allegedly tried to muscle its workers into signing waivers the day of the accident, the company had a lot of nerve inviting them to this service and saying they were a "community."
Let's take that second thought first. I still am skeptical that the executives at Transocean are very concerned with the wellbeing of this community of theres. Their past actions, at least as alleged in court documents, don't seem to support that. However, the fact that they allegedly did something really awful does not actually preclude the possibility that they're doing something good. Whatever their motivation -- be it altruism or pure PR -- bringing the workers back together and holding a memorial service is a good thing to do, and the executives at Transocean get some credit for it.
This brings us to the timing of the service. As memorial services go, this is pretty late. Depending on your religious tradition, services to honor the dead are usually held within a week or two of the death, and in some traditions with 24 or 48 hours. Funerals and memorial services give a sense of "closure" to survivors, which is not to say that they are somehow then "over" the death, but rather that the death itself as an event is over and the healing can, perhaps, begin. For the survivors of the Deepwater Horizon
, there has been no formal event to mark the end of the event. When they finished with the lawyers on the day of the explosion, they went to be with their families, some were still in the hospital, and they scattered to their home towns. At that point, the search was still on for the 11 missing men.By the time the search was called off, the hospitalized were out of the hospital and the dust had settled somewhat, the two week window for a service had passed. At that point, the easiest thing to do would have been nothing. Each of the 11 families undoubtedly held services according to their own traditions and beliefs in their own communities, and Transocean was not really obligated to do much other than possibly send a representative to those services.
Having a memorial service sponsored by the company, however, allows the survivors to come back together, to see each other, to be with others who understand what they went through, and to reach some kind of closure. It recognizes that the dead workers hailed not just from communities defined by their residences, but from a community of workers who were on the rig that day and most of whom were employed by Transocean.
It has been said that funerals are more for the living than for the dead. That is certainly my personal belief. In this instance, a delayed but well-planned memorial service offered comfort not just to the bereaved, but to the survivors. That is how it should be, and why Transocean chose to do the right thing is entirely beside the point.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
The State Funeral Without the State
Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria were buried today in Krakow, just over a week after the plane on which they were traveling went down in the fog in Russia. Usually, when a head of state dies, other world leaders, or at least their designees, attend the funeral. Not this time. Many leaders were unable to attend due to the difficulties with air travel in Europe caused by the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, a volcano
in Iceland which has sent ash into the skies over the continent and halted air travel in countries to the north. Leaders of the United States, France and Germany were among those who canceled their plans to fly to Poland to pay tribute to the Kaczynskis.One of the feelings that people often report following a traumatic incident is a sense of disbelief that the world is continuing about its business when something so awful has happened. When you are feeling completely stopped in your tracks, it's easy to expect, on some level, that everyone else will be, too. This feeling is only stronger when an event has affected a lot of people, or even a whole country, as it has in this case. I remember distinctly the feeling that, after 9-11, it was fitting that there be no air travel. It wasn't just about security, it was that no one should move when the world had gone so crazy.
In that sense, you might think that the Icelandic volcano and its attendant flight disruptions would feel "right" to the people of Poland
. After their "stop the world" moment -- the death of so many government officials on one plane -- the world had to come, at least somewhat, to a stop. Something apocalyptic in their lives was paired with something apocalyptic in nature. It seems fitting.The problem is that when something big happens and we feel like the world should stop, we most commonly feel like the world should stop and pay attention to what has happened. This is what happened after 9-11, when in fact people weren't flying because of what had happened, and when the whole world did seem focuses, if only for a brief time, on what was happening to us in the United States. The week of the attacks, at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace in London, the band played "The Star Spangled Banner." It seemed to align. But that is not what happened this week. The natural world did something big, yes, but that something not only had nothing to do with Poland's tragedy, it actually prevented the rest of the world from focusing fully on Poland's mourning.
The fact of the matter is that the world does not stop turning when there is a critical incident. As much as it may pain us, most people keep on living their lives even when we feel like we can't. Friends may help and support us, but they cannot feel what we are feeling. And nature may seem to echo our anguish, but, in the end, a volcano can't empathize with us, either.
Note: In my lifetime, I think the most salient example of nature mirroring current events happened in October, 2004. For the first time in 86 years, the Boston Red Sox
won the World Series, and there was a lunar eclipse the same night.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Gallows Humor in the Qatari Diplomatic Corps
About 13 years ago, I attended the funeral of my great aunt Clara. She had lived a very long life and her friends and family turned out to honor her and to be with each other in a time of grief. Aunt Clara was active in her synagogue Sisterhood, and at the end of the service the Rabbi announced that the members of the Sisterhood -- a quite elderly bunch themselves, at least the ones who were in attendance at the funeral -- would show their respect by forming their "customary honor guard" in the aisle as the casket was removed from the sanctuary. As these little old ladies hobbled towards the aisle, my father leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Cross swords." Then, of course, we had a problem, because we were giggling at a very serious moment of a funeral.
My father will tell you that he is at his funniest at funerals. I was reminded of this because last night a man was taken into custody by Air Marshals on board a flight from Washington to Denver after he said he was trying to light his shoe on fire. F-16s were scrambled and escorted the plane to the ground. As it turns out, the passenger, a Qatari diplomat, was actually trying to sneak a cigarette in the airplane lavatory. When he was confronted, he said he was trying to light his shoe.
There are two interpretations of what happened. The one that surfaced first, and the one that reminded me of my father, was that the man was trying to make a joke out of what had happened. The other interpretation making the rounds this evening is that this wasn't an attempt at a joke, it was a sarcastic barb. In this version, the passenger wasn't saying, "Ha, ha, just trying to light my shoe! Hardy har har! Not smoking! No sirree!" as much as he was saying, "You people are so ridiculous singling me out for smoking. You probably think I was trying to set fire to my shoe, you morons."
I wasn't there, of course, so I can't tell you which interpretation is correct. Anyone who has seen the warning signs at American airport security checkpoints, however, knows that you simply don't joke about explosives or make reference to them in any way when you're talking to security or airport or airline personnel. So why did this man say something so incredibly foolish?
It's tempting to answer by saying he is stupid or arrogant, and I suppose either could be true. But there is a much more human explanation -- the same explanation as the one for why my father is such a laugh riot at funerals. It's not that either of them don't get it. It's that on an instinctive level, this seems like the best way to deal with it.
All of us have an idea in mind of how we think people "should" act under pressure. We also have an expectation for how we ourselves will act should we ever be in the midst of a serious crisis. The trouble is, those expectations are based on rational thought, and rational thought goes right out the window under pressure. It turns out there is no "right" way to act when threatened, or grieving, or in shock. It also turns out that people do pretty nutty things because they seem like the thing to do at the time.
My father thinks of his funniest comments at inappropriate times because they're inappropriate times, and he instinctively is fighting back against the seriousness and the sadness. This Qatari diplomat made a remark about lighting his shoe most likely because that was precisely what he thought the crew might be worried about (and he was probably right). Putting it out there -- in jest or in anger -- seemed on an instinctive level like the best way to deflect the situation. No, it probably was not the best idea, but he didn't have time to think of the best idea. In a moment of great seriousness, all he could think of to say was the cigarette-on-an-airplane equivalent of "Cross swords."
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Meet the Quarterback
- Naomi Zikmund-Fisher
- is a clinical social worker, former school Principal and a Crisis Consultant for schools and community organizations. You can learn more about her at www.SchoolCrisisConsultant.com
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