CBS Sunday Morning isn't usually a place that acknowledges death that much. It tries to shine fair light on the living and what many have accomplished, or even that accomplishment isn't always the point to life.
This Sunday, though, it caught itself in a rare place. It publicized death in a way that acknowledges life--that is, how people are remembered. Or if.
Some time ago, someone--the show didn't say who--unearthed the tombstones of black citizens of Washington, DC and used them, hundreds of them, as shoreline barriers from a river that flowed along his property in Virginia. A Republican state legislator and his wife bought the property and, while wandering it, found the tombstones along the riverbank.
They learned that the tombstones were taken from the Columbian Harmony Cemetery. The Democratic governor was alerted and $5M was appropriated toward finding the graves and reattaching the tombstones. Some will never be found. The overwhelming number of the unattached gravestones belong to black people.
Another way in which Black Lives Matter, or mattered: That is, so do Black deaths. "I had a horror of dying alone," wrote a Civil War soldier to his mother. "Just that someone might see me die." He did, in battle, wishing that his death be noted because, for a moment at least, so would his life.
That all those Black lives were deemed insignificant enough to rob their recognition for someone's need for breakwater, with waves washing up against them for decades, thus slowly robbing us and their descendants of simply knowing they once existed, is not only an embarrassment but a type of genocide. The selfish, racist idiot didn't want to get a couple of trucks to dump huge rocks along there (I've seen it done when Lake Michigan's shoreline suddenly expanded in the 1980s, which you know it will again, threatened by climate change, and that's scary enough), so he figured that those Black people wouldn't be missed, I guess. Besides, theft is cheap. That's another dimension of inhumanity.
A less evident, but no less significant, unmarked death, noted the show, went stubbornly untraced until recently as well. This guy was Hispanic, named Hernandez. His corpse was found in Florida, in a one-man tent, along a walking trail. He had no ID, no markings, nothing from which anyone could immediately figure out who he was.
Turns out more than four thousand people share that fate, all told. But with help from authorities and of course the internet, Hernandez's college roommate recognized him. He had a habit, he said, of being friendly then not friendly, depending on the day. He was a computer programming wizard.
Do they do that on purpose? Do they consider themselves so meaningless that nobody should go to much trouble to get rid of them? Their corpses are still there. They must be disposed of, if you want to look at it that way. Even the birds that feast on carrion leave the bones. Someone should account for them. "I'm nobody, who are you?" wrote Emily Dickinson. "Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us, don't tell!"
Such a shame: Every interaction has great potential. That's why the pandemic is such a tragedy: Think of the opportunities to make friends, to correct mistakes, to celebrate good events, that have been squandered, beyond the lives lost.
That people have been dying faster than they can be normally disposed of emphasizes the futility of dealing with a pandemic that has gone out of control. Vaccines have that saving grace, above all. We can't stop reductions in population, but we feel better about putting the remains where they belong, about recognizing that they once were here, about that basic dignity. All that takes time and care. We feel diminished when we can't give that, when we can't slow down for a minute to observe a life lived.
The New York Times is known for its obituary section. Some of the most interesting stories it has in its Sunday paper is of people whose lives were incredibly interesting, often behind the immediate scenes. Just yesterday, the Times ran a story about the late singer James Brown's set-up guy, the guy who paved the way for his appearances, who was part of his act.
He didn't have the musical talent, but he had talent for making someone else's talent matter. He was disciplined and insisted all others be the same. "It's all about the look," he would say.
Another was a mathematician who merged his studies with physics in a way that someone like me can't reach in fathomability yet leaves one with a sense of marvel. He dressed, and lived, it said, with a certain degree of flair; there was more to him than just numbers and equations. I turned the page with a thought: I wish I could have met him.
Nowadays, though, any meeting has an aura of impending danger. Just the other day, a lady in the grocery store (of course she was masked) asked me to reach up to a high shelf and get a package she couldn't. I did so, and thought about giving some self-deprecating comment. But I remembered not to do so, to keep each other from standing in front of one another for long, lest germs be spread. Then I got quite sad for a moment.
There was no time to create a friendship, even if I wasn't looking for one. It could have been a moment for a humorous comment, though, maybe to improve someone's day. But the virus discourages that. Damn. We wander everywhere, still at least slightly scared, knowing that moments like that can't happen. That's damaging, too.
Maybe that will be a gift of the pandemic, for us to understand that time has been stolen from us and it can't be replaced: We're all headed to the same fate. Maybe people will travel more. Maybe they will reconnect with relatives and friends and stop putting it off.
Maybe that will cause people to be nicer to each other, to stop hardening positions, if only for a minute at a time. It's a place to start again. Considering death, life is what matters.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Nine days to a second vaccine shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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