Death Is in the Details
We live in a culture that runs from true death. Sure, we see death all of the time in our movies, television, and video games, but rarely are we confronted with the actual death of another human being. Death has become more conceptual to us than physical. Even shootings on the news or military death counts can seem like faceless, bodiless numbers. They are deaths we too often don't and can't picture.
It takes great tragedy for us to come face-to-face with the physicality of death. There are our personal experiences, watching a loved one pass away or saying goodbye to their open casket. For us as a country, there was Sept. 11. We followed on TV as rescue workers searched for bodies in the rubble. More recently, of course, there was the Sandy Hook shooting, when horrific details emerged about the slaughter of 20 children and 6 adults at the hands of a mad man.
One victim's mother, Veronique Pozner, has come forward to give voice to the grieving, describing her son's body after he was shot multiple times in his first-grade classroom. This embodied, physical description of death is difficult for us, and the Jewish Daily Forward got complaints over the details they chose to publish in the story, including injuries to 6-year-old Noah Pozner's face and left hand. We owe it to this mother to listen to her description of identifying her son, some say. Kim LaCapria wrote for the Inquisitr:
There's something to be said about viewing the incident without the veneer of teddy bear memorials and celebrity-studded versions of "Hallelujah," seeing it for what it is — a violent act that was both brutal and preventable, a violent act that the parents of Noah Pozner as well as the 19 other children murdered must face every day until the day they themselves die.
Everyone wants to hear the stories of a town united after tragedy, but we need to hear the stories of death and grief as well. The reality of it all is found in the grieving mothers and fathers who had to identify their unrecognizable children. Those are the stories that are more difficult for us to bear. LaCapria writes that Mamie Till had a similar impulse to Noah's mom, releasing a picture of her dead son following his murder. At the time it was unthinkable, but it gave voice to the horror of race-based violence. To pretend these things don't happen is actually worse than the gory details.
We have grown so accustomed to "death" in sanitized forms, so much so that when we see violence in television and movies we hardly flinch, but when a mother describes how a gunman destroyed her son's body, or a picture is released of a slain black teenager, we cringe.
The Seminary Gender Gap
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Comments
Steve Dawson
Thank you for this article. As a society we cannot make intelligent choices without all of the facts. I read the description of Noah Pozner's body and wept. It's painful but necessary to rip the mask of "Hollywood" death and see the real thing. It takes a strong stomach but an essential exercise.
Paul Coneff
I really, really appreciate this article. And as we have a chance to minister to those who have lost loves ones to a brutal, senseless murder we can listen to their stories - and we can also connect their stories to Jesus' story where He lost a loved one, His own cousin, John the Baptist, to a brutal, senseless murder, as the "Man of Grief and Sorrows" that Isaiah 53 talks about. And because Jesus has gone through a similar experience as the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," (Rev. 13:8), He can identify with them, taking all their suffering, grief and loss to death on the cross, along with the cries of their hearts ask "Why?" just as Jesus did as He was dying. And then, adding even more to HIS plan of salvation, Jesus rose again "with healing in HIS wings," (Malachi 4:2). Because of this we can have listen to them and offer them hope.
Pamela Mathews
I'm glad this article was posted. We do dismiss the reality that is involved in violent death in this country. I immediately thought about what it was like for the people who had to identify the bodies of these children (and others in similar violent situations.) Not to get political (I mean that sincerely), but I just learned that one of the reasons Diane Feinstein is such a gun control advocate is that she saw the bodies of her boss and colleague after they had been shot. I imagine that changes you.
Tim Fall
Good points, Courtney. Death cannot be ignored by those of us who belong to the One who has defeated it. You remind me of C.S. Lewis's position too: that death is an abomination in this fallen creation and an affront to God, and as such it is to be avoided rather than embraced; he also pointed out that it is only be being baptized into Christ's own death that we have the hope that sustains us in the face of our own physical mortalities. Blessings, Tim (timfall.wordpress.com)
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