A good friend of mine just got divorced after more than three decades of marriage. It was a mutual agreement as the relationship had just lost the spark and compassion it once had. They handled the money and separation of the common property amicably and just moved on. Except that my friend only later revealed to me a deep sense of loss and grieving as if it was a death in the family — it sort of was.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau the divorce rate in the United States was 3.2 per 1,000 in 2019. This means approximately 827,261 divorces were recorded in 2019, with the total number of divorces since 2000 topping 8.3 million, which is still a small percentage of the population. It’s the kind of loss that has little consolation.
By contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic killed some 1,123,836 Americans — statistics gathered by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center had gathered in the years since 2019 — a period in which more than 100 million cases were reported. Many of our friends and relatives were infected or affected by this disease. I still don’t believe the nation has properly grieved for this once-in-a-century pandemic loss. Most of us are just relieved not to wear a mask when going shopping or to worry much about contracting the virus, even though some new variants have appeared.
The effects of this global tragedy will linger for longer than we imagine, even as the pandemic recedes from our daily consciousness. Will people continue washing their hands more often and using more antibacterial soap? Many people are still avoiding large gatherings in indoor spaces and many only use outdoor dining establishments. The dining industry still hasn’t fully recovered to the pre-COVID numbers and many restaurants and other businesses fell victim to the recession that crippled our economy. Many people still suffer from the long-COVID symptoms. If you go to the hospital all of the staff and many of the patients are wearing masks because it’s still good practice not to catch the next flu or variant.
Then there’s the post-9/11 wars on terrorism that brought our nation, allies and their militaries into the longest war our nation has ever fought. For over 20 years our troops were shipped overseas to a fight that can be argued was ill-conceived if not poorly executed. Some 7,000 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. Many more were wounded for life both physically and mentally. Their deaths have affected a large community of parents, spouses, children, siblings and friends. Afghan, Iraqi and other allied military and police deaths have been even more extensive. My point is that we as a nation have not stopped to grieve, pay tribute or even reflect on the sense of loss and then fully heal.
As Americans, we aren’t very good at acknowledging death, except when it comes close to home, like the passing of a close friend or family member. Yet still, there are rituals and traditions that cloak our religious funerals — a 21-gun salute for a war hero, a mass at the local church or a flagged draped coffin. Then it’s over and mourners pack up and go to the wake. In some cultures, the funerals last for days or weeks. In the Far East, after cremation, the Buddhist ritual requires a funeral/remembrance ceremony to be held on the seventh or 100th day after death.
In the West people bury the Dead, throw the ashes off of the coast, or keep their loved one in a jar and then head back to work leaving the grief to the individuals to handle. We aren’t very good at the grieving process, not very good at talking about it, and much better at the art of denial.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss American psychiatrist and pioneer of studies on dying people, wrote On Death and Dying, the 1969 book in which she proposed the patient-focused, death-adjustment pattern, the “Five Stages of Grief.” Those stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many times, these five steps take years to pass through, and then there’s always the anniversaries or birthdays and that empty chair at the dinner table. And then there’s the guilt of not having said something or done something. Like I’ve said, culturally we aren’t very good at this.
As a nation I can only think of a few instances for national days of mourning, starting with the Gettysburg Address and just a few short years later the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The creation of Arlington Cemetery out of land taken from the Confederate General Robert E. Lee was also a closure to the war that divided our nation that killed some 700,000 of our people, but the grieving of that tragic war lasted for decades.
Oddly enough there have been more days of national mourning for presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy than for all the soldiers who have died in all the wars since the Civil War. Sure, there’s Memorial Day and Veterans Day, these national holidays are set aside for remembrances but not for reflection necessarily on the futility of war. Or for dealing with the five stages of grief.
Our personal tragedies are often left to self-medication, prayer if you are religious and psychological counseling for the few who accept it, most don’t. There’s still a kind of stigma about asking for help. “I’m not crazy,” people often say and yet the process of dealing with the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance of a loss often needs deep self-reflection before we ever get to healing.
As the nation recovers from our most recent wars and the pandemic, I’m thinking that what’s needed is more awareness of mental health, a national day of mourning, and a straight jacket for those like Donald Trump that are dividing the nation with continued denials and making us all a little crazier than we need to be.