Facing grief or fearing grief?

It is interesting to see that other writers have been picking up on the topic of grief. Carol Sarlar writes the following in the Times last Friday, "An almost unbearable stunt will open tomorrow's football match between England and Israel: two 11-year-old boys, Jamie Dorrian and Sean Geoghegan, generally private little souls who are famous for nothing save having witnessed the death of their friend Rhys Jones, will take centre stage as England mascots. So traumatised is Jamie Dorrian that, according to one newspaper, he has neither spoken a word since the killing, nor left his home; it is hard to imagine a professional advising this is as therapy. Still, at least the boys knew Rhys — which is more than you can say for the hundreds of children who did not, but who have been forced into ritualistic "memorial" at the secondary school he should have started this week. The article goes on to explain that the school that Madeleine McCann was to attend has "has decreed the tot's very own shrine: an empty desk, peg and locker, together with a burning candle." So what is this all about? Is it as the article says a new and peculiar pornography of grief, or could it be that 21st Century Britain is struggling to express some kind of communal spirituality, seeking to empathise with the victims of grief and violence?

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