By Kellys Kaunda
DO NOT NATIONALIZE GRIEF – LESSONS FROM THE US REGARDING THE BURIAL OF THEIR PRESIDENTS OR FORMER PRESIDENTS
US Presidents get to choose how they want to be mourned and buried.
They have the option of either a State or private funeral.
For instance, Richard Nixon was buried beside his wife, Patricia.
The ceremony was a simple private service at the Nixon Library and his birthplace in California.
At the beginning of each President’s term, the new President is asked to participate in planning his own funeral.
He gets to decide how he wants to be remembered.
In other words, of all the wishes of man on earth, there is one the world grants him unreservedly – the wish to be mourned as he sees fit irrespective of the office they held.
It’s understandable. While alive, man can be opposed or accused of anything.
They are alive to respond if they so desire. Not when they are dead.
It’s the law of morality that you cannot be contending with the dead.
While respecting the wishes of the dead, what about the grieving, the immediate family members, how should we deal with them?
Again, another lesson from the US, right from the White House, and the Oval Office in particular.
One article I read recently told of Obama walking into his office and finding his Vice President, Joe Biden alone looking at a family picture and crying.
Biden had just lost his son, Beau to brain cancer at age 46.
Sitting beside Biden for 20 minutes in silence, finally Obama whispered to him, “You gave Beau the best life any son could ask for, and now you have to let yourself grieve like the father you are, not the Vice President everyone expects you to be”.
On the Stephen Colbert Show, Biden revealed further, “Barack told me to take all the time I needed, that the Vice Presidency could wait, that America could wait, because being Beau’s father was more important than being Vice President, and he meant it – he actually meant it”.
Grief is primarily a private matter. It’s only a national matter by extension and by the permission of immediate family members.
This is humanity, this is Ubuntu as seen through the eyes of every cultural grouping irrespective of race, gender, or nationality.
Lesson for Zambia? DO NOT NATIONALIZE GRIEF!
PF set the tone by refusing KK’s wish to be buried beside his wife. It is important to be consistent.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.