Comfort Rituals

Every child is born with congenital traits: the urge to suckle, a fear of falling, a reflexive smile, in addition to many others. I think another, often-missed trait in humans is a desperate need for ritual. Ritual is comforting.

We practice rituals in every aspect of our lives. Some rituals are based on superstition, like actors who wear their lucky cuff links whenever they appear on stage or people who perform bedtime rituals so they can sleep. Most obvious rituals appear in religion, of course. Weddings, whether they involve jumping over a broom or reciting elaborate vows are a form of joyous and comforting ritual.

Death, even from ancient times, has involved ritual. Some cultures built a pyre on a ship and sent the flaming vessel off into the ocean. Others chose to mummify their dead so they would be “whole” when they greeted the gods in their afterlives. Today, in what some have called a post-Christian society, we still use rituals of comfort in times of death.

When Princess Diana died several years ago, many Brits expressed their grief by leaving offerings of flowers, notes, stuffed animals, and other gifts outside Buckingham Palace. Eventually the offerings covered a huge space almost three feet deep.

When my son died in an accident, I met a woman who told me she wished she had known about his death because she would have left flowers at the site. In America today when a child is killed in whatever unthinkable manner, friends write notes and post them on his or her locker at school, leave flowers and other offerings at the site of the death, light candles in front of his or her home.

Not to negate these good wishes, but this ritual puts people at arm’s length from the event. Perhaps parents are comforted by the ritual of candles, notes, and flowers. At some point, however, most shrines must give way to continuing life. My son died a thousand miles from our home. If anyone put flowers out for him, I did not know, would not have known, was not comforted. The outpouring of love from friends and family comforted me. And I found enormous comfort in religious ritual.

In contemporary America, despite constant religious posing, the Bush administration seems to me to encourage the creation of random rituals – and abandon well-established, comforting ones. We are denied any public opportunity to mourn those who give their lives for our country. They remain numbers, except to the people who knew them. One hundred four American soldiers were killed last month in Iraq. Unless they were from your hometown, unless you are related to them, unless you were their friends, unless you attended their funerals, they remain statistics, seldom with a name attached.

On occasion, (probably on Memorial Day at the end of this month) newspapers and television stations will print the names and show the faces of those who have died in the past year or since the beginning of the conflict in Iraq. Doonesbury may list their names. The patriotic troops who lost their lives become real at that point. Real but ephemeral. And without significant ritual because for too many people Memorial Day is merely a long weekend holiday filled with end-of-spring sales, a different kind of comfort ritual.

During the Viet Nam conflict television news programs showed the flag-draped coffins of the military dead being returned to American soil. The Bush administration decided that such images are a public relations nightmare. The pictures would diminish support for the invasion – and the president. Consequently, the administration has forbidden the airing or printing of such pictures.

For most of us, the conflict in Iraq is real – but un-real. We can watch the news every evening and see bombings, attacks, troops. We can see visiting dignitaries march through Baghdad in their flack jackets. We can almost taste the chaos and fear of the Iraqis. And watching the news is a ritual; indeed, a comforting ritual in itself for some.

What we don’t see, however, is those who have given their lives in this conflict. We don’t see the overwhelming dignity or the comforting ritual surrounding the return of a deceased soldier. We don’t see a coffin covered in its pall of American Flag. We don’t see an honor guard unloading it from an airplane. We are denied this important ritual. We are denied this comfort.