Carter, Fetterman delivered powerful messages quietly
Sen. John Fetterman, left, and former President Jimmy Carter. Credit: AP, AP / J. Scott Applewhite
Big announcements come with fanfare.
They have TV cameras and special lighting. Reporters and hangers-on. There’s a buzz in the room and a charge in the air. Someone makes an introduction. The pulse quickens. Then the person of the hour takes to the stage, or dais, or podium, and speaks.
Analysis follows. The cable television hosts drill down. And we gather around our proverbial water coolers, real or virtual, and chew on the news.
Whether it’s politics or sports or business or cultural awards, the big announcements mostly follow the script.
That’s what we’ve come to expect and what those announcing try to deliver.
Then there’s Jimmy Carter.
The 39th president made a big announcement the other day, possibly the biggest announcement a human can make. He told us he was going to die. And he did it utterly without fanfare.
His eponymous center released a statement.
“After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the center said on Twitter. “He has the full support of his family and his medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.”
It was quiet and graceful and matter-of-fact and, more than big, it was important.
And it was notable, as much for what it was as what it wasn’t.
It was not about the political significance of the man, the color of his party’s merchandise, or whether you thought he made the right or wrong decision on this or that matter. It was about a man who once held perhaps the most public job in the world, deciding to put out into the world something so many of us strive to keep private.
He had aged in public, slowly and gracefully, remaining active and vital, but letting the world see him get older. And then, with the end at hand, he did not try to hide his condition.
He let us all know it’s OK to say you’ve had enough, OK to say it’s time to stop fighting, OK to start counting your blessings and accept the finality of the next step. It’s a lesson I hope I can learn, but expect not to.
Carter was showing us that the wish many of us hold is possible — that die if we must, let us do so at home, in a place we love, accompanied by those we love, in a time and way and pace of our choosing.
And if he hoped his announcement also would be educational, by letting the world know about this option of passing on, well, he succeeded at that, too. Newspapers, websites, newsletters and social media were filled with Q&A’s about hospice care.
Two days before Carter’s announcement, John Fetterman had one of his own. The first-term senator from Pennsylvania said he was checking into a hospital for treatment of clinical depression.
Mental health, like death, is difficult to discuss publicly, whether you are a public or private figure. Fetterman was brave to put it out there.
Where death brings finality, mental health bears stigma. Fetterman didn’t have to say he was being treated for depression. But he did. And that decision instantly made him a symbol for the 41% of Americans who have experienced some symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder since the start of the pandemic. And especially for men, who are less likely to seek treatment and more likely to commit suicide.
If his divulgence gives others the courage to talk about their experiences, he has done all of us a great service.
Carter and Fetterman. Quiet announcements, powerful messages. May we listen.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
