I have a friend who has a friend who is a Canadian now but was an American. He voted for the Gipper. And the two of them are heading out in the June heat to make their way to Washington for Ronald’s internment. If I had the money and the bravado and a sponsor I should like very much to go with them, to sleep in squalid motels with stains on coarse bedspreads, to make my pilgrimage to a foreign land, and to pay my last respects to a man I paid little attention to whilst he was alive but more importantly to photograph the other countless people making their pilgrimage.

It’s just such an odd event. I don’t have much of an opinion about the qualities of Ronald Reagan as a leader. He seemed like a nice man to know. He seemed like he could be quite a comfortable man to have at a house party. And for me, who suffered high school in the 80s, the Great Communicator was more an emblem of that decade than Duran Duran or Depeche Mode or Return of the Jedi. And nearly as much of an emblem of the 1980s as the horrific social trauma of high school.

It’s not a new remark but it’s such as shame that great men of much remark and great men of less remark are glorified, perhaps even deified, shortly after their last breath, shortly after their heart stops beating, to miss that last hurrah, to miss that last win, to miss that moment of the greatest attention, your funeral. We’re never so much honored as when we’re departed and never so much loved as when we are missed.

Nostalgia is the greatest peroxide. It blanches the memory and corrects many flaws. The ongoing media coverage is getting a little much. I think as a horde we love to grieve vicariously, we love to watch other people’s grief like so many little ants under the glaring power of a magnifying glass. It’s unclear why.

Or maybe I’ve got it a little wrong. Misery loves company. Grief needs company. What’s the point of grieving if nobody is there to see you do it? Regardless, I should have very much liked to go photograph the traveling mourners. I would have been respectful, I wouldn’t have poked fun. I do understand that for many, especially for Americans, he was more than just an emblem of the 80s.

Still, from where I’m sitting it all seems a little odd and a little much but perhaps that’s because I haven’t seen anything like this before.

SS