Deaths, Public and Private
Every death is a tragedy for someone. Even the most noxious individual, had a mother, even if they didn’t know their father, or have any children.
Years ago, I was phoned by Haringey Council, because my great uncle had died in their care. He’d returned from Australia to find his family and after failing had ended up in an old peoples’ home in the borough. But a guy in the Legal Department of the council had taken the trouble to trace those few remaining relative after his death. He felt it was more than a pity, that he hadn’t been able to find us before my great uncle had died.
We’ve recently had a lot of coverage about Lockerbie, where unlike my great uncle, 270 died in a very public and violent way.
Over the years, I’ve met many who like myself, have lost someone very near and dear to them. But all of these, like my great uncle have been very private and the most public they have got would have been a notice in the paper. And usually only the local one.
But is the grief felt by those left behind any different?
When my wife died of an aggressive and incurable cancer of the heart, I felt totally powerless. It just gripped her body and drained the life out of her. But at least we said good-bye properly and if I can keep my dignity like she did in her last days, I will be surprised, as I don’t think I have it in me. I do want to get even, but it will be by helping those in the fight against cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Others I know lost their partners, parents and children to accidents and heart attacks, where they didn’t have my luxury of a slow parting. They seem to take much longer to come to terms with their new circumstances. After all, they were not told to get on with their life. Or fixed up with a blind date! Many too, don’t have the financial circumstances that I have, to carry on in the same way as before.
Is the public death of a loved one any different?
In a way it is not. You still have the same grief and personal problems, although interestingly in some cases, you may well have received much more financial help and counselling.
But surely the real problem is that whereas I have been able to restart my life, the endless publicity and digging up of the issues, by newspapers and often well-meaning politicians, doesn’t help.
My heart goes out to those who can’t be left alone to suffer their grief in private with friends, family and any professionals they need, so that they can be left to rebuild the rest of their life.
An interesting aside to this is that because my wife was a barrister, we often discussed various legal issues and cases in the courts. She could not understand, why if someone was murdered, increasingly relatives seem to spend every day of the trial of the accused in Court. I agreed and if she had been murdered, I would have quietly withdrew and had nothing to do with case. She would have done the same if it had happened to me. How can you get any satisfaction from watching justice unfold, so close to home?
So to return to Lockerbie. I can’t understand the mentality of those who keep pushing themselves through all the grief again and again, by appearing on the radio and demanding more and more vengeance.
But then I think all deaths are generally a private affair, for those that are involved.
I like to think that by now, I would have moved on and built a new life that was a credit to the memory of those that I had lost.
The Anonymous Widower 
I think there is research which says that if you lose someone through violence (murder/terrorism etc) that you have “complicated grief” or “extended grief” because you have not had the issue resolved … i.e. that the perpetrator has not been identified or punished … and this stops you from going through the grieving process in the way that, say, you and I are travelling along our own journeys. Their guilt and anger remains with them for a long long time (as opposed to 6 mths for me) and they can’t seem to get past it, thereby needing long-term counselling. It’s the added complication I think of having the media/people in “authority” also having some control over the way the loss is managed in addition to having already lost the loved one.
Comment by Boo Mayhew | August 25, 2009 |
I’ll probably agree with you, but then there are lots of people, who have also used the terrible events that have happened to them to move on and do a lot of good. Take for example Gordon Wilson, who lost his daughter in the Enniskillen bombing in Northern Ireland.
He was an example to everyone.
I think sometimes, people get vengeance mixed up with grief. I’ve seen several people wanting to go round doing severe harm because their beloved car was damaged! That is not grief at all.
Comment by AnonW | August 25, 2009 |
A lot of food for thought in this post, AnonW.
Although I have been surprised by some stages of the grieving process, mostly I would say that my responses have largely mirrored my own pre-bereavment personality; my grief has been largely internalised with a large dose of guilt thrown in. I have felt very little anger at all. This strange blogging business is about as loud as I get!
I suspect that the ‘shouty’ people in grief were mostly just as loud with a strong sense of entitlement before their loss, and that there are just as many gentle people who get on with quietly mourning their loved ones, despite losing them through violence. It is just that the loud ones get the attention of the media.
Your wife’s comments about people attending every minute of a trial were particularly interesting. If you had asked me before whether I would do the same, I would probably said that, yes, I would attend the trial. But after R died, his brother in particular was very keen to know about the exact mechanism that killed him, so we went to speak to the consultant on the ICU ward about it. Had Jon not asked to do that, I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t have bothered. It didn’t seem to matter much – it was the fact that he had died, not how it happened that filled my mind, and probably still does.
So I suspect that I am moving over to you and your wife’s way of thinking – that the obsession with the trial is more about vengeance than grief. And that surprises me, but it is good to have one’s perspective changed every now and again!
Comment by J-in-Wales | August 26, 2009 |
I think my responses did too. But then I did have a lot of guidance about what to do from my late wife and my children.
I just went and wrote a book about it all. I suppose, that I tend to believe that out of the worst episodes in life something good will come. I met a guy once, who had been in a German concentration camp as he was a Jew. His view was that he had survived and that losing his wife through cancer was much worse.
It’s just all very complex.
Comment by AnonW | August 26, 2009 |