Michael Jackson funeral: public tribute and private grief

July 3, 10:23 AMCharlotte Episcopal ExaminerAngela Boatright-Spencer

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July 3 - The world will say goodbye to Michael Jackson, the King of Pop,  next Tuesday 10AM (1pm ET) in the 20-thousand seat Staples Center in Los Angeles. Jackson's sudden death following cardiac arrest on June 25th sent the music world into a tailspin, and has left many of his fans with unanswered questions.  Thousands no doubt will want to attend the service to pay their respects as well as make sense of his death. Some 11,000 free tickets have been set aside for fans. (To register, click on free tickets. )

In 1987, when the literary giant James Baldwin died, everybody and their cousin packed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC - no small matter since it is the largest cathedral of its kind in the world.  The mood was respectful, joyful, and sad all at the same time.  Although most of the people there knew Baldwin only through his writing, the sense of loss was very real.  Someone who had meant a good deal to a whole lot of people had died. So it's worth considering what kind of memorial the Jackson family has chosen to hold for Michael  How does one honor the private grief of saying goodbye to the celebrity whose soul has touched us, and the public tribute to a larger-than-life talent whose musical and entertainment legacy is unsurpassed?  

Turning down the idea of a memorial service at the Neverland Ranch was a good start; the potential for a circus-like gaggle of vendors and self-promoters was huge. What is needed is a space allowing Jackson's family and public to make sense of what has happened on some level, even if all the facts aren't in at the time.  There are so many rumors about Michael Jackson's life -- stories of being shunned by the Jehovah's Witnesses (and not being shunned by the Jehovah's Witnesses), the child molestation charges, the skin malady, alleged drug addictions, the facial surgeries, the marriages -- how does one begin summing up, and sorting out, a life like that?  Only those who knew him intimately really understand what his life was like; the rest of us can only speculate on the details.  But we all have access to the music he shared.  We all have access to the genius, and that is the part we can grieve over. The 11-year-old boy with the exuberant smile who burst onto the scene promising, "I'll be There," has left us -- and that we all can truly mourn.

Funerals, ideally, are times when families sift through the difficult patches in their relationships with the deceased, celebrate the high points, and acknowledge that the person who once occupied a space in their lives has gone, and they must now cope with and accept the emptiness.  They are services of closure for the living; the dead already are with God, who made them and loves them best and, in mercy, will stand in judgment of their souls. 

Generally, these are the things that happen in a funeral liturgy:

• we acknowledge our belief concerning the afterlife
• we recall the life of the loved one
• we say what we wanted to say to the person in life but were unable to (for whatever reason)
• we acknowledge our own feelings of sorrow, anger (at God, at the person, at the medical establishment, ourselves, etc.)
• we begin to accept the reality of death -- our own, included
• we say goodbye
• we continue our lives with a renewed sense of purpose, a new resolve to appreciate every moment, every experience, every person we are blessed to have in our small part of the universe.

The last point -- how we live our lives from  that moment on -- is important.  If we truly wish to pay tribute to the person we now mourn in public, we mustn't simply go through our personal grief, take a deep breath, and go on as before.  If we truly want to pay tribute to Michael Jackson, then we can give the world what he did: all our beauty, all our grace, all our love, all our best, forevermore.

For related articles on Michael Jackson, please see Deaf and Grief Examiner , Spiritual Growth Examiner