What Abi Taught Us

by Lucy Hone

  YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY HATRED

  In November 2015, Parisian Antoine Leiris gave the world a supreme demonstration of our power to select the focus of our attention. In a Facebook post called ‘You will not have my hatred’, after terrorist attacks in Paris in December robbed him of his wife, he wrote:

  Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred. I do not know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls. If the God for which you kill indiscriminately made us in his image, each bullet in the body of my wife will have been a wound in his heart.

  Therefore I will not give you the gift of hating you. You have obviously sought it but responding to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. You want me to be afraid, to cast a mistrustful eye over my fellow citizens, to sacrifice my freedom for security. Lost. Same player, same game.

  I saw her this morning. Finally, after many nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday evening, as beautiful as when I fell madly in love with her more than 12 years ago. Of course I’m devastated with grief, I will give you that tiny victory, but it will be a short-term grief. I know she will join us every day and that we will find each other again in a paradise of free souls which you will never have access to.

  We are only two, my son and I, but we are more powerful than all the armies of the world. In any case, I have no more time to waste on you, I need to get back to Melvil who is waking from his afternoon nap. He’s just 17 months old; he’ll eat his snack like every day, and then we are going to play like we do every day; and every day of his life this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom. Because, no, you won’t have his hatred either.

  A. Leiris, ‘You will not have my hatred’,

  Facebook post, 17 November 2015.

  Take your time

  The morning after Abi died, the boys’ school chaplain Bosco Peters and his wife Helen arrived at our house. I think I was vaguely aware that Bosco’s daughter had been killed in a devastating accident, but I remember being too shy to ask—in case it was the wrong thing to do. On that Sunday, he and Helen came and sat with us, and others, in our sitting room. We drank tea and talked. They shared their miserable and painful journey through five years of grief for Catherine, and gave us some very good advice. ‘Don’t rush, take your time, there is no hurry to do anything these next few days,’ Bosco said. ‘Take your time with Abi, and don’t rush into having the funeral before you are ready. There is time.’

  I have been so grateful for the hard-earned wisdom of those who have been there before us. They know how much time there is to mourn the dead once they are truly gone—either buried or cremated. Abi died on the Saturday and came home from the funeral director’s on the Wednesday. Thanks to Bosco’s advice, we had five precious days to spend with her before the funeral the following Monday.

  That time at home with her body was a game changer for me, and for my grief. It’s one of those time-honoured rituals that have substantially helped (for other rituals see Chapter 18). I know it was important for others too. I recently copied a text from my dear friend Kimberley, whose son Henry was one of Abi’s and Ella’s closest friends, as a concrete reminder of the importance of having her home and spending time with her. ‘Thank you for always sharing Abi with us. Yesterday was beautiful, we all feel calmer having said our goodbyes. I hope sitting with your girl today gives you comfort. For strength, you can lean on us for as long as it takes.’6

  Feel the pain: walk right in, feel it and weep

  A friend from my Master’s programme contacted me a few weeks after Abi’s death, offering me a bit of ‘Pema wisdom’. She was referring to the American Buddhist teacher and author, Pema Chödrön, of whom I’d never heard. While acknowledging that the moments when our lives fall apart are a test, Chödrön urges us to regard these as a normal part of our unfolding life. ‘We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that,’ she writes. So, this is just the way life is. Just like that. The answer to living in a world where there are no constants is, says Chödrön, to allow room for all this to happen, accept that change will occur, that life contains much suffering, and to allow ‘room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy’.7

  This struck a sufficient chord for me to read the rest of her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart advice for difficult times, and to discover that much of Buddhist thinking is really useful for those of us experiencing substantial loss. Wandering the pages of Chödrön’s prose shifted my perspective and helped calm the voice of outrage inside me. Chödrön suggests that experiencing loss and difficult times is standard in the course of a life, and that we have a choice in the way we react. When traumatic events happen, we have a natural tendency to run from the hurt, but Chödrön advises us to walk straight into it, to approach the pain, loss, envy and longing head on. ‘Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it.’8

  WALK STRAIGHT INTO IT; APPROACH THE PAIN, LOSS, ENVY AND LONGING HEAD ON.

  Those words echo exactly my own experience particularly in those first few days and weeks following the girls’ deaths. I felt we’d somehow been instantly propelled from the life we knew, with all its comforts, routines, expectations and trivial complications, to a different realm of existence. Enduring such traumatic events put us ‘out there on the edges of life’, was how I used to think of it, picturing us on the outer rings of Saturn, quite separate from the world as we’d known it and which steadfastly continued to spin over there in the distance. Even amid such despair and so early after their deaths, however, I could also see there was a clarity to this life, a richness of experience that is rarely encountered in everyday existence. Watching children visit Abi as she lay in her open, low-sided coffin—surrounded by the familiarity and comforts of her own room, listening to them chatting to her, their open, honest, heartfelt, raw communication—I knew we were seeing love and compassion at a level far beyond that of our usual, mundane experience. Through the pain, beauty and love shone. We didn’t attempt to shield ourselves from it. Instead, we leaned right in.

  Now familiar with Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning (see Chapter 4), I can relate this experience to his second task: that of processing the pain of grief. ‘Not everyone experiences the same intensity of pain or feels it in the same way,’ he writes, ‘but it is nearly impossible to lose someone to whom you have been deeply attached without experiencing some level of pain. The newly bereaved are often unprepared to deal with the sheer force and nature of emotions that follow a loss.’9

  Trevor and I are lucky that we share a similar approach to emotions: both naturally open to feeling and expressing our emotions, we find it relatively easy to share how we feel with those around us. Twenty-five years ago, when I first met him, his forthright nature, honesty and openness were among the things that appealed to me most. And his kindness. Little did I know that these would be the things that united us in our darkest days. Feeling pain and sorrow—sobbing loudly and weeping silently—are scary things, but in the end I came to realise that when I hurt so much already, experiencing the full brunt of these emotions could in no way hurt me more. Experiencing pain is just part of living, a symptom of the love we have for those we have lost.

  Beware of the grief ‘ambush’

  In their book, I Wasn’t Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, coping and healing after the sudden death of a loved one, Brook Noel and Pamela Blair introduce the notion of the grief ‘ambush’.10 I found myself ambushed by grief again only very recently, when visiting our new supermarket. It had been destroyed in the quakes, and was at last bei
ng reopened after almost five years. Our whole community had been eagerly awaiting the official opening, all laughing about how ridiculous it was to be so excited about a new supermarket. But five years is a long time and we live a fair distance from the city centre, on a peninsula with only one road in, one road out. Opening day finally came, and I raced into the car park, bright eyed, bushy tailed, thrilled to have some decent groceries on our doorstep at long last. I parked the car—and, as I was getting out, grief overwhelmed me. Suddenly and unexpectedly filled with memories of all the times I’d visited the supermarket with Abi, first as a toddler and then as a school girl, the tears began to flow. And there was no stopping them. The whole journey round the supermarket was the same: I could not stop myself crying, acutely aware of how much our lives had changed since 2011 when I had last stood on the same spot. Abi was just eight years old then, so never far from my side. As a little girl we’d buy her ham from the deli counter and eat it as we pushed the trolley around. Now, here I was living such a different life, looking back to a time when her death would have been unimaginable. Thankfully, I saw one of Abi’s friends and her dad, had a quick cry on them in the Coke aisle, and then powered on, taking refuge behind my sunglasses once more. Grief ambushes are a normal part of bereavement but, arriving unannounced, they sure can make you feel silly.

  No one strategy will prepare you for these moments, but having a name for them helps us understand what’s happening, and so they derail us less. Knowing there will be times when you are blindsided with grief—that misery will overwhelm you at the most unexpected and often inappropriate moments and places—puts you in a better position to weather the grief ambush when it next happens.

  Re-establish routines

  In Christchurch’s post-quake environment, I learned of the importance of re-establishing routines to counteract the negative effects of trauma. The need to re-establish normal routines as quickly as is humanly and physically possible is recognised by disaster researchers as an important initial step towards recovery. Authorities talk about establishing ‘normalisation’—that is, getting kids back to schools, parents back to work, enabling social lives, churches, clubs, leisure facilities and communities to resume functioning. They acknowledge the importance of regarding this as the ‘new normal’.

  Re-establishing routines tells our brains that we are safe, that the crisis period is over, and it’s okay to disarm the red-alert functioning that is our bodies’ reaction to traumatic events. The predictability of routines helps us feel safer, and minimises stress, anxiety and hopelessness.

  Studies show that family resilience really matters: keeping the family together after a disaster, resuming routines and ordinary functioning as best you can, helps the children cope. Returning to the childcare centre, going back to school, to family meals, bedtime stories, sports clubs and opportunities to socialise all give us a feeling that the chaos is over and life is (gradually) adopting a new normal. These repetitive actions are reassuring not only to children but also to adults around them.

  With 16 and 14-year-old boys in the house, I was aware that they needed to experience as much normality as possible to help their brains recover from the trauma and to carry on without Abi around. That’s not to say we didn’t grieve openly at home. We did, we still do. But getting them back to school gave us structure to work with. I was surprised how much they wanted to do this, and how quickly. Within a fortnight, they were both back at school and happier for it.

  THE PREDICTABILITY OF ROUTINES HELPS US FEEL SAFER, AND MINIMISES STRESS, ANXIETY AND HOPELESSNESS.

  It took Trevor and me longer to get ourselves back to work. In those first few weeks after Abi’s death we stumbled around, struggling to pay attention to anything for very long, with wandering focus and only sporadic and minimal interest in the activities that usually filled our lives. Looking back, I have mental pictures of us occupying our days, always starting with a long walk with the dog, sometimes crying for the majority of it, sometimes numb and silent, at other times chewing our feelings over and over, trying to work it out, as if there was a solution to be found if we could only think it through hard enough, talk it over long enough. But while we couldn’t get ourselves back to work, re-establishing meal times, and the regular routine of exercise, dog walk, coffee, breakfast, chores, lunch, chores, nap, dinner, TV and bed helped. At around the six weeks mark, we went back to work. Trevor returned to his building company, which his crew had valiantly continued to operate without him. I was desperate to resume my research and adamant that I wasn’t going to let my current PhD projects go. I talked to my colleagues, and we agreed I’d start with an hour or two and see how it went. Oddly, it was a tremendous relief to focus my mind elsewhere and I was encouraged by how much my poor smashed-up brain could manage. With exceedingly low expectations, the pressure was minimal and gradually my hours picked up. Work has been a welcome distraction and provided me with a lifeline of routine ever since.

  I recently met with another woman, Anna, who had just lost her twin sister in a plane crash. I was full of admiration on the morning I met up with her —just three weeks after her sister’s death—as she battled to hold back her tears, get the kids out the door and head off to work. Getting back into the classroom where she works as a teaching assistant helps, she said. Being absorbed by the children’s activities gives her a much-needed rest from grieving, at least for that part of the day. Seeing the kids carry on as normal tells her brain that normal still exists, that life carries on, that the immediate threat is over. More than anything, short bouts of work provide us with a welcome rest and temporary refuge from grieving.

  Chapter 3

  What can resilience psychology teach us about grieving?

  WHILE THE FIELD OF psychology has traditionally focused on risk factors (predictors of undesirable life outcomes), I am one of a growing breed of academic researchers focused on protective factors that have been shown to promote wellbeing and assist with recovery among people facing trauma, stress and adversity. Bereavement research remains primarily focused on unpacking the complexities of the bereavement experience (identifying the different stages we go through) and on the alleviation of grief ’s negative emotional consequences—anxiety and depression. So when we lost Abi, and my reading on bereavement began, I was struck by how little these two fields of research had crossed over. While resilience psychologists have unearthed all sorts of findings about how to assist people in bouncing back from trauma, bereavement research (and the corresponding literature handed out to people like you and me) featured few of these strategies. I had lived through trauma—the series of earthquakes that rocked my city from 2010–2012—and previously grieved my mother, so it struck me that the tools we advocate for promoting resilience might well be useful during bereavement. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as ‘the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy [and] threats’.1 It seems to me there’s sufficient trauma and tragedy in grief to make this body of research relevant.

  For instance, resilience research highlights the immensely positive difference that close family ties, social support, family routines, parenting quality, thinking and coping styles (such as optimism and positive emotions), physical activity, and cultural and spiritual beliefs can have on human reaction to adversity. There’s no doubt individual personality differences also play a big role in how people react; some people cope well with stress, some are more stress reactive. But, by studying those who have displayed resilience in the face of extreme adversity, researchers have demonstrated that something of a blueprint for resilience does exist. Their findings make for fascinating reading.

  For example, having studied the genetic, psychological, biological, social and spiritual factors behind the resilience of prisoners of war, Special Forces instructors, and ordinary men and women who have endured harrowing traumas and gone on to thrive, Steven Southwick (Professor of Psychiatry, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Resilience at Yale Medical School) and
his colleague Dr Dennis Charney (Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine) were astonished to discover that while genes do play a role in individual levels of resilience, they are only part of the story. ‘When we began our study, we assumed that resilience was rare and resilient people were somehow special, perhaps genetically gifted. It turns out, we were wrong. Resilience is common and can be witnessed all around us. Even better, we learned that everyone can learn and train to be more resilient. The key involves knowing how to harness stress and use it to our advantage.’2

  For one of their studies, Southwick and Charney interviewed 30 former prisoners of war from the infamous Hanoi Hilton camp in Vietnam, selecting those who had coped with six to eight years of imprisonment and gone on to lead successful and meaningful lives. ‘We were particularly interested to discover how they handled the trauma and stress of being a prisoner of war 8000 miles away from home and come out the other end and be a strong person,’ Charney explained in a subsequent interview.3 They found that, despite being held in solitary confinement for years and physically tortured, several common factors emerged as critical for survival. One was continued support from other prisoners. By developing what the prisoners referred to as a ‘tap code’, neighbouring men were able to maintain communications with one another by tapping their way through the alphabet; they were never totally isolated and could still support each other. ‘Everybody needs a tap code to get through tough times, very few can go it alone,’ says Charney, explaining how friendships support us.