Collective Grief

Many commentators have written about the large outpouring of emotion surrounding the recent sudden death of Tim Russert. Some have wondered about the scope of those expressions of grief.
While all of us, political cognoscenti, were personally touched by Russert's unfortunate early demise, I believe there was another force behind the emotion. More than a year ago I posted a poem on my poetry blog: www.poetrysmackdown.blogspot.com on the subject of what I call

Collective Grief

Small slights
Each imperceptible
Occur day by day

Events of our lives
At home, at work
And in the world
At large

Things that
Upset but not
So much as to
Rise to the level
Of conscious reaction

I call them the small
Grief or the little grief

We accumulate them
Over time in some
Reservoir of emotion
About which we
Have no awareness

Then, one day a big
Event occurs and a flood
Flows from that
Reservoir out of
Proportion to the event
Itself

When the event is public
As with the death of
A revered icon
The flood includes
Not only our accumulated
Grief but also
That collective grief we
All share which has
Accumulated silently
Beside our own.

So, on several occasions, Tim Russert's death and the memorial remarks associated with his passing brought me to tears. They were an expression of grief for him, but perhaps more an expression of my own portion of the collective grief and my own mortality as well.