Communal Bereavement

Communal bereavement is the widespread experience of grief and distress felt among people who did not know and never met the deceased. It is expressed in mass gatherings of mourners, such as vigils or memorial services. Mass acts of condolence for the deceased and their loved ones, such as leaving notes, flowers, or other gifts and mementos at symbolically important locations, are also manifestations of communal bereavement.

The critical aspect of communal bereavement is that many of the mourners do not personally know the deceased person or persons. Moreover, many of those experiencing communal bereavement did not have a direct social tie to the deceased person or persons. With communal bereavement, the grief and distress extend beyond the social network of the departed to the larger community. This aspect of the phenomenon makes it communal.

Examples of Communal Bereavement

Communal bereavement most commonly occurs after tragic—often violent—unforeseen deaths. In particular, communal bereavement is most common when an act calls into question the basic values or commonly held perceptions of the community. Community bereavement is also common when institutions vital to the normal functioning of a community fail to competently perform essential tasks, especially tasks central to the provision of security. It also occurs after the deaths of popular political figures, such as Diana, Princess of Wales, or Argentinean First Lady Eva Perón. Communal bereavement may also occur after the death of popular cultural icons, such as what occurred after singer John Lennon was murdered.

Among the most common causes of communal bereavement are acts of mass violence that result in large numbers of victims. For example, widespread communal bereavement took place after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This terrorist attack killed 168 people and injured over 800 others; yet, the grieving extended far beyond those victims and their immediate social circle. Similarly, the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States, which resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, caused people worldwide to experience grief and express their sorrow. People in towns and on college campuses across the globe held vigils and made other expressions of communal bereavement after the mass murder of 32 students and faculty members on the Virginia Tech campus in April 2007. Similar scenes were witnessed after the February 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University that resulted in five murdered students. Across the nation's universities and colleges, students offered support by conducting their own vigils and memorial services. The 1999 Columbine High School (Colorado) shootings also resulted in widespread communal bereavement.

Natural disasters can also result in communal bereavement. Thousands of people worldwide expressed distress after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the American Gulf Coast. Similarly, the 2004 tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people in 11 countries led to worldwide communal bereavement. The sheer destruction caused by these events was likely sufficient to cause communal bereavement, yet these events also raised issues of the competency of our institutions to protect us from natural disasters.

Although “routine crimes” such as a murder with one or two victims typically do not lead to widespread communal bereavement, it does occasionally occur when the “routine crime” is particularly heinous and offends strongly held collective sentiments. For example, after Susan Smith murdered her two young sons by drowning them in a South Carolina lake, thousands of people across the United States and around the world expressed their grief by placing flowers, small gifts, and letters at the shores of the lake. A similar example of communal bereavement for a lone victim occurred in February 2000. When a classmate fatally shot Kayla Rolland, a 6-year-old student at Buell Elementary School in Flint, Michigan, the community openly mourned. Nearly 1,000 residents expressed their grief at vigils, memorials, and her funeral.

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