We Never Met

 Every year, as death claims people who are public figures, tension seems to arise between the many people who publicly mourn their passing and those who profess to be baffled. "Y'all never even met ____________," the criticism will say. "How can you be sad about the death of someone you never knew?"

But 2020 increasingly feels like a weird rerun of 1968, complete, it seems, with the death of people whose lives have had particular significance to people who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color). In 1968, of course, we saw the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. just weeks apart.

This year, the death of John Thompson at 78 comes as just one more blow. Less than a week ago, cancer claimed Chadwick Boseman at 43. Boseman, an actor and a graduate of Howard University, brought to life Jack Roosevelt Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and T'Challa of Wakanda (part of the Marvel Comics universe), among others.

Earlier this year, both Rep. Elijah Cummings and Rep. John Robert Lewis died. Often mistaken for one another, each had brought his own unholy struggle to the House of Representatives, where they advocated for the ideal of what America purports to promise all who live here.

Allen Iverson, retired professional basketball player, has said that John Thompson, then coach of Georgetown University, saved his life. A number of colleges were courting Iverson, assiduously, in both football and basketball. Then, as Iverson puts it, an incident happened, and the recruiting tap was turned off. Iverson's mother interceded, begging Thompson to give Allen another chance. "He saved my life," Iverson said.

Why do I care? Why am I sad because someone I never met has died - whether it was Thompson or Boseman, Cummings or Lewis?

Partly because, as John Donne wrote, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." [1]

But, more eloquently, Carmen Florez, writing in 2017, said: "When we're reminded of their humanity, we’re reminded of the effect they had on so many people, and that’s why we care so much. Not because they’re more important than anyone else, but because their deaths mean something different. They remind us that there are few certainties in life, one of which being that there will come a day where we, and everyone else we know, will no longer be here." [2]

I mourn for the families and loved ones of these men. Not only because of the sharp reminders of mortality in a year filled with such reminders for many people who will die "unwept, unhonored, and unsung"[3] except by those who loved them. I mourn because the country, and the world, are a little smaller and dimmer without them. 

[1] John Donne, Meditation XVII

[2] Carmen Florez, "Why We Care So Much When Celebrities Die," at Odyssey Online.

[3] Sir Walter Scott, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel."