The earthquake in Haiti, the toll of which is still being determined as this is written, is the type of disaster that is impossible to wrap our brains around. We are, most of us, just barely wired to process the death of a single person. So when an earthquake or tsunami takes the lives of thousands – or a war or genocide takes the lives of millions – we exceed our thresholds for grief, for shock and for sadness.
In his diary entry for August 31, 1665, Samuel Pepys reports on the week’s death toll: “In the City died this week 7496, and of them 6102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of the dead this week is near 10,000; partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice of, through the greatness of the number, and partly from the Quakers that will not have any bell ring for them…” It would seem that for the death of a single person, an entire book can be written. For the death of so many, we are reduced to reporting the facts.
If we believe that our universe operates under a universal law of balance, mass death may be the exception that proves the rule. We can understand that for there to be good, there must be evil. We accept that for there to be strength, there must also be weakness. And we intuitively know that if not for sadness, happiness would not have meaning. Show me, though, a “mass life” equivalent to offset an event like the earthquake in Haiti. Show me a grand, spontaneous emergence of life that brings people together not in mourning but in joy. Point to a single historical event where we could not fully grasp its magnitude simply because it was too good to fully understand.
You can’t, of course. And even though you can try to think of a single disaster victim and extrapolate the meaning of their death by applying multipliers in the thousands, there is simply no way to ever feel the appropriate level of condolence for death on this scale.
When at such a loss, people respond appropriately with prayer, charity, and all the sympathy they possess. We turn away from the dead in order to devote ourselves to the living and we commit to doing as much to better their circumstances as we can. The living can be helped, the dead merely removed.
But what if, rather than turning away from death, we instead channeled our sense of loss towards the memories of our own loved ones? We cannot pretend to feel any more connected to the Haiti earthquake victims than we did while they were living, but we can allow this death event to be a reminder to us about our own relationships with those we have lost. Death must be accepted and it must be respected. Whether you say a prayer for lives lost in a natural disaster or spend a few moments to reconnect with the memory of someone close to you, you have the ability to rob tragedy of just a bit of its sadness by choosing to remember rather than to forget.
I’m certain that we all offer our condolences to the victims of the Haiti earthquake, both the living and the dead. In words, this seems shallow. In our hearts, it feels much deeper. As we think of ways to contribute, we are quick to resolve ourselves to “doing what we can.” For the living victims, this means giving of our time and resources to help alleviate their suffering. But what can we “do” for the dead? What gesture could possibly help a number of deceased so large we can hardly accept it? The only answer is to honor their passing by helping to close the gap – through our own remembrances – between death and life.