Death days.

Let's not make a regular occasion out of someone's death day. We celebrate Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. on their birthdays. We don't put the holiday on date they were gunned down. Mark October 9th on your calendar, people, not today.



UPDATE: Not long after I wrote this, a great rock musician was shot to death on stage. Scroll up for two posts on "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. Who knows if the annual recognition of John Lennon's murder stimulated the mind of Abbott's murderer?



I received an email from a reader defending the recogintion of death dates. He wrote:

Your point is well taken about not 'celebrating' someone's death day. But it is a time to remember, where I was when I heard, what I thought about, how people reacted. The day of his death has a resonance, and an emotional connection I think most of us don't have with the day of his birth. And death is so much more emotionally affecting than birth or the cessation of death. I think Dec 7th is more notorious and marked every year than VE Day or VJ Day for the same reason, not to mention 9/11. No one is there for the birth of great or notorious people, so they have little reason to relate with that date. Everyone alive remembers the day of Kennedy's death, Lennon's death because of the emotion they have invested in those dates as opposed to their births. By all means make their birthday a holiday or recognized day of celebration, but nothing can stop people's visceral response to the day of their death. And commemorating those days is a good thing because it did make me think about that day in '80 and that isn't always bad to reflect on such things. Its more real to me than to have an announcer say "Today Lennon would have been 64."

I understand this position, but I'm genuinely tired of commemorating murders! And I'm tired of the trite "I remember where I was" reminiscing. Yeah, I remember where I was when I heard John Lennon died: in bed turning on the radio in the morning. I have an identical story to tell about me and Bobby Kennedy. But Bobby Kennedy's death isn't about me, nor is John Lennon's. But I've had enough of it, really. I've been asked a thousand times do you remember where you were when you heard President Kennedy got shot, and I feel like saying, no actually I'm the only one who went ahead and forgot that scintillating fact. But I always say, "I was in a stairwell." But, so what? I remember being in a stairwell, but so the hell what? After forty years, what are we talking about?