114. THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY - Remembering All of the Dead

I’m writing this on a train whilst listening to Foo Fighters on my phone. I woke up this morning to the news that their drummer, Taylor Hawkins, had died at the age of fifty. Yesterday I had made a playlist for this journey, and although there was one Foo Fighters song on it, after hearing this morning’s news I just didn’t feel like listening to anything that Hawkins wasn’t drumming on.

But being me, it made me ask why? I mean, it’s not like the deceased drummer knows that I am respecting his memory and appreciating his work. And being a stranger to me, a celebrity I have seen from afar on stage but never met, he didn’t even know I was enjoying his work when he was alive. It would literally make no difference in the world if I listened to anything else right now, yet for me there was some normative urge to listen to the dead drummer’s work. I was compelled.

I had already been thinking about death and legacy when I heard about Taylor Hawkins. Earlier in the week, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright died and I was struck immediately by a different compulsion: the horrible urge to be disrespectful. As tributes started to pour in on social media and news websites to this pioneering women in US politics, all I could think about was her infamous comment when Secretary of State that the price of children dying each day due to US-imposed sanctions on Iraq “we think, is worth it”. For me, growing up, Madeleine Albright was the moral monster responsible for enforcing a policy of choice which was directly leading to the deaths of children. As my newsfeeds filled with comments about her intelligence, wisdom, political prowess and professional integrity I could only hear her terrible words echoing in my mind and wanted the world to stop ignoring the dark side of her career and acknowledge her complicity in state-sanctioned murder.

But then I saw some people I follow do exactly that, calling her a murderer and monster. Spitting on her legacy and saying publicly all the nasty things I was thinking privately. And I felt glad that I’d held my nerve and stayed quiet. There seemed to be something indecent - something just as indecent as saying that the unnecessary deaths of Iraqi children was a price worth paying for mere geopolitical advantage - about taking the grief of Albright’s family, friends and colleagues and making them feel worse. 

My parents weren’t the best. My dad cheated on my mother constantly, and left us all behind several times during my childhood. My mom was a narcissist who used emotional blackmail to get her way to the point of it being emotionally abusive. But none of these words were in my eulogies for either of them. When they died, I cried. I still miss them each and every day, as imperfect, flawed and morally questionable as they might have been. Madeleine Albright was a person caught on TV in a soundbite that sounded callous and cruel. But even if she were the sole architect of that policy (which she wasn’t) and truly believed the price was worth paying, there is no doubt she held other beliefs too.  No doubt that some of them were loving and kind. No doubt that in her passing she leaves behind people who will miss her as much as I miss my own flawed parents. Perhaps she even, herself, had moments of doubt and self-recrimination?

But is saying this advocating a whitewashing of history? Must death really silence any critique?

The concept of “appropriateness” is often used to silence dissent and necessary criticism. The person who speaks out at work, or protests outside parliament, or expresses their anger openly is often said to be behaving “inappropriately” in order to shut them up. Ostensibly the idea is that there are “appropriate channels” where the complaint can still be made, but as anyone who has ever tried such channels knows, all too often those appropriate channels are a means of shutting down rebellion and dragging the possibility of change’s heels through slow and baroque procedures until ideas are neutered, made acceptable, and revolutionary anger has been tamed down into a less virulent strain of frustration and apathy. There is therefore a worry that the idea it would be “inappropriate” to critique Madeleine Albright after her death could be used as a way of silencing serious discussion about US foreign policy. If the position is that it would be inappropriate to criticise the dead then how do we deal with our deceased monsters, from criminals like Jimmy Saville, who avoided scrutiny in life, to those like slave trader Edward Colston, honoured in death until his statue was pulled down in a dramatic posthumous rethink of his legacy? Even my parents, my wonderful but fault-riddled parents - is it wrong to acknowledge the truth of their failings now they are dead?

That can’t be right either.

The answer, I think, is creating a culture of honesty. Neither hyperbole nor hate. When someone dies, we tell their story - the good, the bad and the ugly. But we must tell all of it, and acknowledge that humans are compartmental beings who possess a range of identities and ways of being around different people and in different contexts. Many funeral services already acknowledge this to some extent. You might get speeches from a family member, a colleague, a friend. Each eulogy reminding us about a different facet of the person we have lost and often opening our eyes to whole sides of a person we, ourselves, might never have encountered. And coming back to appropriateness, would it be appropriate at the funeral for the haters to speak too? A speech from the scorned ex, the abandoned child, the survivors of the bombing you ordered? Maybe it should be. A few humbling words to remind us that no one is perfect. That we don’t always impact the world for the better. The idea sounds shocking, now, but is that only because it is so unlike the sort of eulogising we are used to? And if it were part of the ritual, understood, not as a cruelty, but as a necessary release for all those impacted negatively by the life we have lost who are equally in need of closure, might it not be perceived differently? Embraced and understood. Let them wail in their own way as we might wail in ours?  For if not incorporated into the grieving process as a natural part of our loss - remembering the bad as well as the good - at what point is remembering the bad ever appropriate? When is it not “too soon”? If it must be appropriate at some point, then why not always, including when we are mourning?

That said, precisely because it is not currently an understood and accepted part of our response to death, I still believe it was the right decision not to publicly jump on Madeleine Albright’s grave the minute I heard she was dead. Without contextual understanding then such words can only be seen as what they are in these circumstances: an intentional attack on the grieving. The dead will not hear your righteous anger, and the living who agree with you already know. The only people the message can affect are the ones it will hurt. For those who perhaps don’t know about the deceased’s crimes yet, who you hope to educate as a counter-narrative to the media’s rolling praise, they didn’t know yesterday either and you didn’t shout about it then. They can, perhaps, wait a few more days before they are informed while the grieving are allowed the space to remember their loved one without interference. Hurting them might be a price you think is worth it, but that surely just makes you as bad as the person whose memory you want to critique?

Kindness doesn’t have to mean silence. Nor does appropriateness. It might just mean pausing a moment and asking if now is the best time to rage into the night, or if you could rage just as effectively, but far more kindly, tomorrow?

I’m sure, like any drummer, there are outtakes where Taylor Hawkins messed up. He may have been annoying to his band mates at times during long tours. Maybe you’re not a Foo Fighters fan and don’t understand the outpouring of grief for Taylor Hawkins? But today is not the day for that, even if it is true. You can hate the band tomorrow and share your mean-hearted stories then. They will still be just as true. Today, though, can be entirely about appreciation without forgetting there are things we might not appreciate too. It must be possible to hold two thoughts in our heads at once and recognise nuance and complexity.

When my own mother got her terminal cancer diagnosis we weren’t talking at the time. Some truly horrible things had been said on both sides and it was pretty hard to see how our relationship could ever recover. Then I got the message she was in hospital. Saw her tied up to those machines. Heard the death sentence from the doctor confirm the one I had googled when they named her disease. Our disagreement vanished in an instant. None of it was important anymore, only the time that was left mattered. It was not ignoring reality to feel that way, or a disavowal of the real hurt we had caused each other, it was a decision for a detente because some things were more important than holding a grudge and dwelling in anger.

Today, I can still love both of my parents while acknowledging that they weren’t perfect. To do one thing is not to ignore the other. We must remember that when someone dies who we disagree with, even if we think them a monster. We must remember not to lose our kindness if we want our moral anger to hold weight.

As I lay in bed with the news of Taylor Hawkins dying on my phone and thinking about my train listening needing to change, my phone lit up with a message. An ex. Someone I had been with for many formative years in my transition from youth to adulthood. She told me that her mother had died and my heart sank. At times in our relationship her mother had been more of a mother to me than my own. I hadn’t seen or spoken to the women in years. Her daughter and I broke up over two decades ago. But she had impacted me greatly when I knew her and there are still things I do today - things I eat, ways I clean my house, perspectives I have on life - that I can trace directly back to her. I’m sure there were negatives too. Her daughter and I were teenagers - what teenagers ever have only positive things to say about their parents? - and there were probably arguments we had, disagreements and things she did which at the time we thought were egregious. But today, if there are such negative things to remember, it is not the time for any of that. Focusing on the good does not silence the bad, if the bad exists, but merely puts it on pause for a few hours. Like a mindful meditation where we choose to attend to the sound of faraway birds chirping and wind blowing instead of the white noise of your television on standby and the chunter of a nearby radio, we can attend to particular details for selected moments without losing sight of the bigger picture forever. In a few minutes I will open my eyes and see the house I am sitting in, but for those precious few meditative moments I am able to indulge in something better. What exactly is wrong with that?

Author: DaN McKee

My book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE  and from all good booksellers.  Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com