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Requiem is a word which (technically) refers to the music accompanying a liturgy for the dead. In recent usage, however, it has developed a broader meaning to incorporate any gesture, service, or gathering to remember those who have died. The Latin phrase requiem in pace, (rest in peace) shortened to the letters RIP is used commonly by persons of all faiths to be a prayer (spoken or silent) on behalf of those who have died. From my perspective it is used frivolously too many times in advertising, comic strips, or jokes. It is a serious, prayerful offering of condolence.
A week ago we were fascinated with the dead in the secular observance of the holiday Hallowe'en. (see posting on 10/31) But today it is not about costumes or candy or ghoulish pranks. Today this nation is shocked into requiem by tragic deaths of innocents in Fort Hood, Texas, and Orlando, Florida. Laced with other stories of kidnapped and murdered children and adults whose bodies have been found in garbage dumps and shallow graves behind a murderer's home, our sensibilities have been stunned. This is no Hallowe'en observance. It is real.
Americans don't like death, no matter what form it takes. But when senseless death occurs, as it has over the past week, our fear, anger, and righteous indignation surge to the top. Finger pointing and calls for angry response boil over from our usually placid manners.
The media brings instantaneous, live coverage of the events surrounding those deaths into our living rooms, making them personal tragedies for people of diverse natures. The dead are our friends, our relatives, our loved ones. We absorb the grief of those who are connected to the victims by blood, by law, and by common purpose. Our automatic search for meaning in an attempt to make sense of a senseless act falls short. There is no rational meaning, no matter how hard we try or how deeply we dig. Mental illness or a twisted heart cannot be explained away, either by clinical terms, or ideological rants.
The call for requiem is a call for peace for the soul of the victims. Some of those victims have died; others have experienced the death of a piece of them and will live the rest of their lives damaged by what they have seen, heard, or experienced. That requiem will not come easily, and for some it will never come. For those who have died, however, there is in a plea for requiem a hope that they rest apart from pain and suffering, embraced by an eternity which is a salve, eliminating the shock, fear, and pain that accompanied their deaths.
Photo credit: Stockphoto.com
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