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By Root 1170 0

article in the Australian newspaper The Age discusses the new phenomenon of effusive mass public mourning.11 It cites these interesting rituals: joining hands in a great ring of strangers; “paddling out,” a surfing ritual derived from a traditional Hawaiian mourning ritual; vast moments of silence; and, finally, one in which you are “invited to wear a piece of wattle as a tribute to the dead.”12 (Australia’s “floral emblem” is golden wattle, whose clutches of puffy flowers look like lemon-colored grapes.) In response to the tsunami of late 2004, another Australian newspaper tells us that the country’s biggest ecumenical service is to be held because these events “spoke across the divide” of various sects. A preacher explained: “Something like this transcends religion—grief is an experience we journey through together.”13 We are alone in so many ways; we do not worship in temples together, we neighbors, we countrymen. But we do watch the same sitcoms and the same news, and through them we sometimes suffer together.

Journalists in various countries note the rise of public mourning and list the events that have recently brought on an orgy of mourning. It is heartbreaking how obscure some of the local dramas are from the perspective of the other side of the world. Everyone mentions Diana and 9/11 as the starting points, but in England they also speak of the astonishing public reaction to the murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler. In Ireland they also speak of the outpouring of grief for the journalist Veronica Guerin. Australia is still marveling at how, in January 2004, everyone broke down when the cricketer David Hookes, apparently attempting to quell a bar brawl, was beaten to death by a bouncer. During the aftermath of the tsunami, in December of the same year, one Australian journalist wrote an article called “What Made Us Cry Such Bitter Tears for Hookesy?” about the strange level of grief displayed a year earlier when Hookes died. People all over Australia had worn black armbands and set up shrines. In recent years England has had a few massive scenes of the communal outpouring of grief, particularly grief over murdered school-girls. Along with Dowler, there was “the Soham tragedy” of 2002. Two little girls disappeared; they were best friends and in pigtails, and the news showed a photograph of them together, wearing David Beckham soccer shirts. They were found too late, having been raped and murdered. People traveled across England to Soham, where the girls had lived, to put down flowers and cry together, sign condolence books, and leave notes of other kinds. There were crowds of candlelight in the dark. Beckham’s team, Manchester United, is as well known as the New York Yankees, but people who thought of the footballers as their team still mention that fact as a personal connection to the girls, whenever these murders are mentioned. It felt personal.

I am a New Yorker, and I can attest that if, just after 9/11, there had been any ritual associated with keeping ourselves and our city safe, we would have gone and done it. What we did had its own truth. We walked around town and dutifully read the wrenchingly useless “Missing” signs. We wrote notes on paper memorials in Washington Square, Union Square, and Central Park. We walked from vigil to vigil, stunned and bearing witness. That is how a solitary person like myself ends up in the park holding a candle and crying, hoping these strangers around me, whom I now sort of love, won’t spill too much hot wax on my coat and shoes. We read the profiles of the lost lives in the New York Times.14 An untold story is that all that year (yes, we felt markedly strange for a year), it was a relief to have a reason to be sad together, rattled together.

As much as we should allow ourselves to connect to such stories and to the crowds they draw, we should also learn to see them for what they are: true, as fears go, but not likely to come true in your own biography. When we watch the news, we should remember that most little girls are not abducted or killed. We are being told about the