Americans have always been captivated by the manner
and meaning of their Presidents’ deaths.
The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F.
Kennedy shocked the nation, all the more because each coincided with
the proliferation of new forms of mass communication. As the historian Richard
Wightman Fox has demonstrated, advances in photography fueled widespread
obsession with Lincoln's corpse, allowing people from across the nation to
imagine that they were peering into an open casket. Similarly, the
perpetual television re-broadcast of Abraham Zapruder’s home-movie caused millions
of Americans to feel as if they had personally witnessed JFK being gunned down
in Dallas.
But this tradition is rooted in more than mere
morbid fascination – a mysterious mix of popular culture, national identity and
presidential mortality stretches back to the origins of the Republic.
When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on
July 4, 1826 – 50 years to the day from their signing of the Declaration of
Independence – preachers and newspaper editors across the nation proclaimed it
a divinely orchestrated farewell to the nation's founding generation.
And earlier, when George Washington died as the 18th
century came to a close, Americans memorialized their fallen hero not just with
quasi-monarchical funeral rites, but also with an outpouring of sentiment in
memorial sermons, commemorative portraits and memorabilia, children’s books and
more. Washington himself had once written, “At best I have only been an
instrument in the hands of Providence," and in the wake of his death
people attached this understanding to the new nation itself, launching a
tradition of civil religion which remains influential to this day.
Perhaps former President Jimmy Carter has this
tradition in mind as he approaches the end of his life. In the past six months, Carter has afforded the public a surprisingly detailed account of his battle with cancer
– in August he announced that that the melanoma first identified in his liver
had spread to his brain and, in all probability, to other parts of his body; in December he reported that treatments had rendered his body, for the moment, “cancer-free.” Through it all, he has declared himself “completely
at ease” and “ready for anything.” His humor, grace and calm assurance
are utterly convincing.
Only time will tell what meaning Americans will
attach to the death of Jimmy Carter. Will he be remembered most for the
peace-making work of his internationally-acclaimed Carter Center? As a
symbol of a bygone era in American politics when a humble and pious man could
still win the Oval Office? For his volunteer work with Habitat for
Humanity or his weekly ritual of teaching Bible Study at his little church in
Plains, Georgia?
For my part, I’m hoping the dignified elegance with
which President Carter is approaching his own mortality will be recognized as
among his many enduring gifts. As a culture we continue to struggle with
how to prepare ourselves for death. Advances in medicine continue to
lengthen our lifespans, but also to prolong our dying, often
unnecessarily. We need role models for how to think about dying,
how to prepare for death, how – as Carter put it – to “look forward to a new
adventure.”
The notion that the death of a President could teach
us something important about life is largely alien to the contemporary American
mind. That a former President might die a noble death, and that we might
come to be the better for it, will strike some as either morbid, or pathetic,
or a combination of the two. Some readers of this essay may take offense
that I have chosen to write it even while President Carter is still alive.
To
be clear, I am hoping that President Carter lives for many more years.
But I am hoping even more fervently that he will continue to allow us to
accompany him on this next leg of his journey. An American saint is
doing the disciplined, soul-stirring work our forebears called “preparing to
meet your maker." We would do well to sit up and pay close
attention – somewhere in Jimmy Carter’s dying there is a lesson for us all.
MRS. HUNTER'S HAPPY DEATH:
Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die
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