Complicated grief
04 06, 12 Filed in: Memory bombs
On Feb 11, 1968, in the midst of his presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy came to Putney School, where his daughter was a junior, to speak at our Sunday night meeting. (For the curious, here's what he said.)
To be candid, his remarks weren’t earth-shattering. They were about what you’d expect from a guy who’d given a thousand such speeches and had a lot of other things on his mind. That snowy night, he offered us an idealistic, sixties-style trumpet call to service, and a trite one, even for the times. Reading it after all these years, I’m not surprised that I don’t recall a word of it.
What I do recall—vividly—was his charisma. That really was something! It wasn’t just the journalists clustered by the podium, the kitchen crew leaning against the back wall, or the senior boys dangling from the rafters. No, it was more than just the thrill of the crowd. He electrified that room.
Also seared in memory is the envy I was feeling for Kathleen. Earlier that day, happening by the main building, I’d seen her greet him, and the affection between them was obvious. Palpable. Envy had been eating me ever since. Also, naturally, guilt for the envy.
I let myself off that hook now; given what had happened to me, such feelings were inevitable. But at the time, I could share them with no one. My story was sadder and more bizarre than those around me could imagine, or wanted to. No one had a clue; so with typical adolescent bravado, I tried not to show it.
Sitting in that old auditorium, its benches turned sideways to accommodate the crowd, what I felt more than anything was: alone. Who among us imagined that only a few months later, his daughter, too, would suffer the sudden death of a parent, the same hurt I’d suffered?
As she departed that dark June morning so many years ago, I glimpsed her face, puffy with tears, and my guilt rushed back. And then the pain… I felt how she was feeling, exactly, intensely. I was reliving it all.
I realized that the extra ten years she’d had with both parents would make a big difference. I knew that her life was not going to slip off the rails the way mine had. Strange, how little difference this knowledge made. My entire brain felt like an antenna tuned to the Grief frequency.
At the age of six, I was deemed too young to attend my mother’s funeral. No one ever sat down to discuss her death with me, either. No one. Not once, not even to break the news; my ten-year-old brother had to do that.
My mother and I were very close. I loved her deeply. I had never been offered a single opportunity to mourn her. One glimpse of my schoolmate’s stricken face, and a tsunami of grief swept me off.
I spoke no word of condolence to her; not then, not ever. My grief cut me off at the knees, and my guilt. I’ve regretted my silence ever since.
In this cynical, knowing age, the senator’s call to service sounds triter than ever. Yet he had a point, so here let me be the poster child for grief counseling:
You can’t avoid grief, you can’t escape pain. If you’re alive, sooner or later, something’s going to hurt. When it does, you must face it. Helping you do that is one of the main purposes of communal mourning rituals such as a funeral.
The death of someone you love is painful enough in the moment. Reliving it for the rest of your life is not the option to sign up for.
To be candid, his remarks weren’t earth-shattering. They were about what you’d expect from a guy who’d given a thousand such speeches and had a lot of other things on his mind. That snowy night, he offered us an idealistic, sixties-style trumpet call to service, and a trite one, even for the times. Reading it after all these years, I’m not surprised that I don’t recall a word of it.
What I do recall—vividly—was his charisma. That really was something! It wasn’t just the journalists clustered by the podium, the kitchen crew leaning against the back wall, or the senior boys dangling from the rafters. No, it was more than just the thrill of the crowd. He electrified that room.
Also seared in memory is the envy I was feeling for Kathleen. Earlier that day, happening by the main building, I’d seen her greet him, and the affection between them was obvious. Palpable. Envy had been eating me ever since. Also, naturally, guilt for the envy.
I let myself off that hook now; given what had happened to me, such feelings were inevitable. But at the time, I could share them with no one. My story was sadder and more bizarre than those around me could imagine, or wanted to. No one had a clue; so with typical adolescent bravado, I tried not to show it.
Sitting in that old auditorium, its benches turned sideways to accommodate the crowd, what I felt more than anything was: alone. Who among us imagined that only a few months later, his daughter, too, would suffer the sudden death of a parent, the same hurt I’d suffered?
As she departed that dark June morning so many years ago, I glimpsed her face, puffy with tears, and my guilt rushed back. And then the pain… I felt how she was feeling, exactly, intensely. I was reliving it all.
I realized that the extra ten years she’d had with both parents would make a big difference. I knew that her life was not going to slip off the rails the way mine had. Strange, how little difference this knowledge made. My entire brain felt like an antenna tuned to the Grief frequency.
At the age of six, I was deemed too young to attend my mother’s funeral. No one ever sat down to discuss her death with me, either. No one. Not once, not even to break the news; my ten-year-old brother had to do that.
My mother and I were very close. I loved her deeply. I had never been offered a single opportunity to mourn her. One glimpse of my schoolmate’s stricken face, and a tsunami of grief swept me off.
I spoke no word of condolence to her; not then, not ever. My grief cut me off at the knees, and my guilt. I’ve regretted my silence ever since.
In this cynical, knowing age, the senator’s call to service sounds triter than ever. Yet he had a point, so here let me be the poster child for grief counseling:
You can’t avoid grief, you can’t escape pain. If you’re alive, sooner or later, something’s going to hurt. When it does, you must face it. Helping you do that is one of the main purposes of communal mourning rituals such as a funeral.
The death of someone you love is painful enough in the moment. Reliving it for the rest of your life is not the option to sign up for.