Public Deaths

I do remember the emotional response of the country when John F. Kennedy was shot. But at the same time it seems to me that as a culture and as a society there has been a significant shift in the way that death is handled in public. When I was coming through high school and college, and there was a death of a student or a young person, there were no grief counselors who came to school. We did not have assemblies to talk about the youth. It was never mentioned, but I am guessing that administration people thought that if you had problems, you would see your own spiritual adviser, your minister, or your family.
I also do not remember the now common tradition of creating shrines in various places. Those who mourn now bring to the spot of the accident or go to the home or stand by the locker and fill it with flowers, pictures, candles and other mementos. The public gatherings at those sites and shared sorrows and emotions is certainly different from a wake in a person's home.
I have no way of knowing if one way is better than another. I am not making any judgments about the changes that I think I see. I am only observing that it seems to me that the way we handle death is different now.
The emotional response to John F. Kennedy was one thing. The public weeping for Princess Di was a bit of a surprise to me. The long death watch for the Pope and all the masses gathered seemed a bit more appropriate considering the character of the man and his position. But the public response to Michael Jackson's death continues to be an example of what I think is the change we have made in our response to death. We are creating and developing new public liturgies and rituals for the handling of death and grief because either the old ones do not work now or because society no longer knows about them. There have to be liturgies to handle the great emotional events in our lives, and it certainly appears to me that our liturgy for handling death is changing.