Written November 30, 2024

Dear friends, Deaths

I wasn’t going to say anything about this event (I had said something related to it a while ago, and that seemed enough), but then I was reading all the predictable reports, and the few contrary ones, and then I was remembering feelings of my own, so now here I am quoting Donne again:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

             John Donne

I hold to this, every person’s death diminishes me, always: I’m against death. At the same time, consider the life of one who died yesterday, at the age of 100. His death diminishes me, but so also does the death, so many years before of a dear friend, my own age, he should be alive and thriving now, murdered by a regime that could not have existed without the 100 hundred year old’s blessing and support.

My friend, one person (oh, and he was an American citizen). I am more and more inclined to think and feel for individuals as the measure, “each man’s death” as Donne says (I don’t have to account for Donne’s use of the masculine, do I?). Any one of us, it is natural for us to grieve for one of our own more intensely than others, but, the intensity of our grief for our own, wife, husband, child, friend … should carry us to the grief of those in our stead, their child, their friend … We cannot experience the same grief for theirs as for our own lost ones, but we can reach out across all the divisions but also all the strange linkings across regions, nations the world … we all grieve for our lost ones. I cannot feel for yours as I feel for mine, but I know that what you feel and what I feel is one.

Yes. But now, this one, living to 100 is pretty good (my father lived to 101, he knew the 100 one, I don’t think there’d be much disagreement among those who truly knew them both as to their standing in the overall, the one, the true scale of human goodness).

So, again, here he is, dead at 100, feted by all those you would expect to fete him, some because they really do agree with him, some who really know better, but, hey, there is an international establishment, and you have to go with it.

Other commentators have enumerated the list of those who might have something to say about the one, dead at 100, but who have no chance to say anything because they’re dead. Why are they dead? Google the name Kissinger with Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, East Timur, Chile, just for a start. You’ll find a very long list, but with very few names, and only approximate numbers.

I place on the list the name of my dear friend Charles Horman. But I’m lucky, against the anonymous millions, I know his name.

Henry Kissinger, 100 years old, is dead. His death diminishes me. So do all the deaths, millions, for which he is directly accountable. One was a dear friend of mine, I don’t place Charley ahead, but he was my friend, and in him I feel the loss of so many million others.

Love, solidarity, remembrance,

Bobby