Why we mourn Humboldt and take a pass on Syria and India
‘But it’s not wrong to wish others could be mourned and cherished like these players. It’s not wrong to wish our compassion were more universal’
Grief is the only sadness left to us that has not been pathologized. In the face of devastating personal loss, it is a natural state of being, not a disease.
Grief is also of course a mass cultural phenomenon, as social media and an all consuming news cycle allow certain tragedies to be mourned publicly in a heightened way by those of us not immediately connected to the victims.
But which tragedies and why? I thought of this watching Scott Thomas, an almost unbearably graceful man consumed with grief, describe in a televised CBC interview what it was like to lose his son Evan, 18, one of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team players killed in last week’s horrific accident.
When the CBC’s Susan Ormiston asked him what he thought his son would want him to do now he smiled and said: “He would probably say really Dad? … This is way too much of a production. Just get on with it.”
As a country, we’ve been part of this “production” as the bereaved father put it, all week, led by media and social media, consumed with the aftermath of this horrific Saskatchewan accident — 16 dead, including 10 young players, 12 seriously injured and still in hospital.
We’ve donated more than $9 million to a GoFundMe page, many of us have placed hockey sticks on front porches to symbolize sympathy and solidarity, or we’re having a jersey day or wearing a green ribbon, or commenting online with the hashtag #HumboldtStrong.
Why has this tragedy gripped us so? Why are some of us making these gestures? This week babies and children were among those gassed in Syria. A school bus filled with kids plunged off a mountainside in India killing 27, 23 of them children.
But Canada stayed #HumboldtStrong. Part of it of course is that these young people were ours, right here in our country, full of enthusiasm and passion, and promise. Their lives were tragically cut short. Their futures don’t exist. They died all together. They were members of a team — playing a sport that is part of our country’s DNA.
I don’t really consider myself a citizen of that mythical land called Hockey Nation. Many others don’t either.
I mourned as a parent, as a citizen, and personally speaking, as someone who had recently seen two families I know lose their 20-something sons, one to illness, another to a horrific car crash. In fact I wondered how this national outpouring of grief over the loss of these other young men had affected their own grieving processes.
The question of our mass collective response to the Humboldt tragedy erupted into a tawdry hate-filled war on Twitter when a Quebec social activist and freelance writer tweeted the following:
“I’m trying to not get cynical about what is a totally devastating tragedy but the maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are, of course, playing a significant role.”
The mountain of rage-filled responses to her tweet — death threats, crude sexually themed insults, demands she be fired from the publications she wrote for, was sickeningly over the top. Mostly all of it came from bystanders.
Even journalists who did not agree with her, including me, voiced their concern. Her initial tweet was insensitive, ill-timed and just plain wrong.
But it’s not wrong to wish others could be mourned and cherished like these players. It’s not wrong to wish our compassion were more universal. Our humanity shines when we acknowledge other people’s tragedies and pain. Our sympathy and support can help change the world.
Not too long ago, many of us were gripped by sadness and rage for the victims of the Parkland Florida high school shooting, and look at the good that has come out of that-the first really solid social action movement to change America’s gun laws.
Terrorist incidents, mass shootings and celebrity deaths have made our public expressions of grief seem almost rote. The gently placed flowers. The lit up national monuments. The online #RIP’s. The donations.
But they are never rote to the individuals who express them. In a more perfect world, everyone in the aftermath of a mass tragedy would feel supported.
That beleaguered tweeter also said: “I don’t want less for the families and survivors of this tragedy. I want justice and more for so many other grieving parents and communities.”
You can’t argue with that.