It’s Spring! Yet our Culture Still Deals with Death

Death seems an inappropriate or perhaps peculiar topic for a spring column in mid-May in Alaska. After all, we’ve emerged from the grip of winter. This week the annual “pop of green” as I like to call it has occurred. Last Sunday was an especially amazing day to watch the yearly arrival of our gateway to summer fun as I swear to you the size of the leaves doubled from morning to evening. This week’s series of graduations or commencements ceremonies – the start of something new – again gave me a pause as to whether death ought to be the topic of this week’s column.

Yet, here it is.

The topic of death grabbed my cognitive process for a variety of reasons: Margot Kidder, the woman who so stunningly played Superman’s girlfriend died, a White House staffer brushed off concerns raised by Sen. John McCain because “he’s dying anyway,” and the trial of the first teen accused of murder in the 2016 death of David Grunwald has finally begun.

Death is a matter we humans really don’t like to talk about.

None of us wish to face the fact that we aren’t immortal.

David Grunwald had to face death much younger than most of us will and certainly far younger than any of us should.

He was forced to ride in a vehicle for a significant portion of time knowing that those holding him hostage were going to kill him. Attempts to paint the actions of his captors with the brush covered in the pity paint that they had difficult childhoods and or are troubled youth will never be enough primer to cover the gruesomeness of what happened to him in 2016. It is about time that the court system moves toward justice for the Grunwald family.

It seems almost callous to move on to the next death item on this week’s list, but it too highlights yet another abusive approach to death.

According to news reports from Washington, D.C., Kelly Sadler, a member of the White House communications staff “joked” that McCain’s opposition to President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, for her role in overseeing the torture of a terrorism suspect wasn’t a concern because “he’s dying anyway.”

As of earlier this week, Sadler was still employed and the national media was focused on when the apology that most likely isn’t going to be issued might just actually happen.

Maybe I will have to write retraction if Sadler is fired and if an apology to McCain comes from the White House press office by the time this column hits the newsstands.

I doubt it.

I like John McCain – I mean how could you not based on the fact he is a war hero and a victim himself of torture during his extended stay in the Hanoi Hilton. But after he reportedly was the reason the fall 2017 Congressional attack on Obamacare failed, he made himself a little less popular within the executive branch.

That’s life in the Beltway, right?

Perhaps.

I still think it is just super crappy. What Sadler said about McCain is just not okay.

News flash lady: We are all dying. The moment we are born, we are headed for death. As my Dad oft said when summarizing the perplexity of life, “ain’t a one of us getting out of this alive.”

Rubbing in the fact that McCain has brain cancer and using that to dismiss his concerns legitimately raised via the democratic process isn’t just unprofessional; it is just downright despicable.

Have you no soul?

It isn’t okay to diminish the contributions of an American with the stature of McCain in that manner.

Now, before I get accused of being too lenient toward McCain, let me just state that as an American voter, I was super miffed when he gave a thumbs-down on Sept. 30, 2017 effectively killing the effort to rid our nation of one of the worst pieces of legislation ever written that most of those gleefully voting for it admitted they had not even read.

But that isn’t sufficient to justify demeaning the remainder of McCain’s life. And when it comes to politics, we simply have to be grown up enough to accept we won’t get everything we want. That means it is okay for a leading Republican – well, IDK maybe he is now a RHINO too – to question the suitability of a proposed appointee to head the CIA without becoming the all-too-easy target of age discrimination.

I find the callousness of Sadler’s remark completely unacceptable. It very well is true. His presence in our government will be over sooner than later, but that doesn’t mean we have to resort to pointing out the obvious to secure a one up in plotting the next round of strategy.

What bothers me the most about her remark is that it represents an attitude far too prevalent in our American culture: Life somehow becomes less valuable once it is viewed as too near its end versus its beginning or even its prime.

Which brings me to the third reason death is in my thoughts.

Another of our cultural icons – Superman’s girlfriend – is no longer with us on Planet Earth. Margot Kidder, the incredibly talented actress playing Lois Lane in the late 1970s and 1980s in the Superman series is gone.

I can’t help but suggest her death is more than just that.

In her later years, she was a strong and unwavering advocate for those coping with bipolar disease. Much is rightly being said of the awareness she brought to this illness.

But in playing Superman’s girl, Kidder represented something else to us.

As the reporter Lois Lane, she was this strong female character who could take on corruption and win, yet it was perfectly acceptable for her to show her feminine side with tears when her heart was broken. The banter between she and Superman and Clark Kent represents what every woman really wants in that relationship with that guy in her life. She was indeed fierce, but she was also allowed and dare I say, expected, to be in need of his protection; to be vulnerable yet safely tucked under his cape.

That was in 1978.

I wonder how well today would accept her.

We’ve come to a place in our society – based on the rampant revelations of sexual misconduct among our “leaders” and the divide this has placed between men and women – in which women are becoming more and more unwilling to be protected and men are becoming more and more cautious in their efforts to protect.

It is indeed another form of death.

My hope is that chivalry and femininity aren’t dead, but perhaps regaining strength while on a cultural life support. Just as the stock market corrects itself now and then, perhaps our culture is rebalancing itself too.

In the meantime, that is far enough death chat.

The grass is greening, the tulips are emerged from the soil and it is time to dust off the summer camping and fishing gear.

Hopefully this summer season brings justice to the Grunwald family, an apology to Sen. McCain and a revival of men holding doors open for women as women graciously walking through them.

Reach Amy Armstrong via email at: asocialbutterfly@gci.net.