By Eileen A. Kohutis, Ph. D.
Livingston, NJ
The events of September 11, 2001 have had a profound affect on us all. None of us will ever forget where we were and what we were doing when heard that the towers at the World Trade Center had been hit by two domestic airplanes. As tragic as that day is, it provides us with an opportunity to learn about mourning and loss as we consider it as a narcissistic injury. The loss of a spouses through and unexpected and premature death is devastating. The survivor may experience narcissistic rage due to the damage to self-esteem, but how is the mourning process complicated when the spouse is lost before the entire world? How do the feelings of entitlement, an inability to feel empathy for others and the defenses of splitting and idealization affect mourning in the surviving spouse? These are some of the questions I will try to address in this essay.
About one week after that fateful day, a local newspaper ran an article about an area parish that had lost 12 members—men who had perished at The Towers. The church was organizing a weekly bereavement group to meet on Thursday mornings and anyone who had lost someone on that date was invited to attend. Interestingly, the time of the meetings precluded certain people from attending, such as working family members. Wanting to help, I called to offer my services. The group facilitator said that the members consisted of about 40 women—wives, mothers, and fiancés—who ranged in age from their mid-twenties to their early seventies. Having experience speaking about the holiday blues, I suggested the topic of loss and mourning during the holidays for the week before Thanksgiving. She said that she was delighted and that she would confirm the details with me. With the date of my presentation drawing near and not having heard from her, I left a message asking her to confirm, but she did not. Becoming concerned about the date of my talk, I called the church hosting the bereavement group to resolve this matter. I was told that I was definitely scheduled to speak on the date we agreed upon. I wondered why the facilitator had not returned my call and thought that perhaps she did not receive my message, had forgotten, or was disorganized.
When I arrived, women clad in black, some pregnant and some with infants in strollers, were gathering in a room where several tables stood laden with food—breads, salads, entrees, and desserts, far more than such a group could ever consume. The lavishness of the meal reminded of the repast that is served at a funeral—in which the mourners are fed to fill their psychic void and to sate feelings of emptiness for the deceased person. Looking around for the facilitator, I felt awkward and uncomfortable. No one approached me to ask if I was a new member or if I needed some assistance. In retrospect, I wondered if this was a type of projective identification in which my feelings of befuddlement, being lost and ignored were what some of these women were experiencing. For sure, I felt as if I were an interloper in this small group of women. I felt that they had sensed that since I had not recently suffered a loss, I was unwelcomed. When I finally located her, she stated that she had been busy and apologized for not having returned my telephone call. I acknowledged her statements and began wondering what her behaviors meant.
Beginning the group by welcoming everyone and making some announcements about upcoming events, the facilitator then distributed handouts from different local and national resources. Offers for massages, manicures and pedicures, movie tickets, financial advice, legal services were all for free. Like the overabundant food, however, these offerings did not fill the emptiness these women felt. They seemed inconsolable—like infants who have been deprived for long and cannot be soothed.
While distributing various materials to the group members, in a half-joking manner, the facilitator kept apologizing to me and the group for the time that she was taking away from my talk, and added, as and aside, that this happens with every speaker that they have! I now began to revise my thinking—this was not a disorganized woman but a woman who perhaps had some ambivalent feelings about bereavement and loss. Her actions did not match her words.
When the time finally came for my presentation, the facilitator said that we would have to stop early so that the women could write messages to their deceased husbands on paper hearts that would be attached to balloons and released that day for Thanksgiving. This seemed bizarre to me—rather than being allowed to talk about their feelings and to mourn, these women were being encouraged to maintain a relationship with a dead person in a stereotyped and concrete manner. It reminded me of the concrete magnificence of the food, and its failure to fill an emptiness that can be filled—only eventually and only over time—with the work of mourning.
I was given only twenty minutes to speak, not the hour I had been promised. During that short period, many of the women were not listening to what I had to say. They sat and looked attentive but they seemed to be in their own worlds. Again, I was reminded of the parallel play of young toddlers—sitting together and playing but not truly interacting with each other.
I tried to engage them in talk about their personal feelings, concerns, and experiences, but most of them were silent. One woman angrily said that her way of coping with Thanksgiving this year was not to have it. When I asked why, she replied that she wanted her children to "know what it's like" not to have a father. A few other women agreed with her decision stating that they too were not celebrating the holidays this year and then gingerly asked me if this was OK. Telling them that I understood their deep pain and anger, I said that traditions can be altered and that given their recent loss, such a change could help them mourn. Since many families observe certain rituals during the holidays, not adhering to that schedule enables the survivors to relinquish their relationship with the lost object further as reality shows them that the deceased person is gone forever. The representation of the dead lives on in our memories. Also, rather than feelings helpless, such a change can empower the survivor to get on with the business of living.
To the extent that these women did talk about their husbands, it was apparent how dramatically they had idealized them. The wonderful qualities that these men possessed and their lack of faults could not be believed. Such extreme use of idealization complicates the mourning process. A widow needs the opportunity to feel anger at her husband for abandoning her, and to reconcile his absence with her loving memories of him. Perhaps some of these widows are trying to or would like to become angry with their spouses for having been abandoned; but in light of how we treated, how can they mourn?
We, as a society, have not afforded these women the opportunity to mourn. Our media portrays those who are lost as such loving and devoted pillars of their communities that how could anyone get angry with them? And, in doing so, we have transformed them into larger than life figures—like the omnipotent parents of our childhood against whom we, as children, are helpless. The rub is that these lost spouses were spouses to the wives and not their parents, and this is part of the work of mourning. As children whose disillusionment with their parents comes too prematurely resulting in narcissistic rage, so too do these widows experience a severe blow to their own narcissism (healthy or otherwise) and feel Des Pressed.
We have further complicated the mourning process of these women in our own manic defense against our feelings of helplessness. Many women are widowed every day and are not given the type of emotional and financial support that these widows are. Part of the reason may be our need to do something to console them and, in return, ourselves. Yet the act of doing rather than thinking and feeling may be a way to stave off our own anxieties about what has happened on that day—to deny our own sadism and terror. As long as we deny and perhaps even dissociate from that day, the more complicated the work of mourning becomes for us and for our patients.
When I completed my talk, the group facilitator gave me a box of chocolate, and I found myself wondering again about the significance of this gesture. Giving food can be an act of generosity, but it can also defend against our own devouring and cannibalistic urges, and placate those of others—telling them, in effect, not to ask for more. But these black-robed women did want more. More help to feel, to talk, to be, and to mourn.
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