crying all the way, tired from not sleeping, and feeling like you just can’t
go on. After that you have to figure out who you are now that a big part of
who you were is gone. No wonder the analysts called it mourning labor.
Obviously, there’s a great deal of emotion involved in this task, but express-
ing the emotion, while necessary, is not the same as doing the work.
In the late 1960s, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross popularized the notion that
people go through stages in relating to death—denial, anger, bargaining,
sadness, and finally acceptance. Her stages became the model for under-
standing what people experience emotionally as they learn to accept any
kind of loss.
The Strong, Silent Explosion
When Carol’s mother died, she felt like an orphan, even though
she was a grown woman and had a loving husband and family
of her own. Her mother was the only person on earth with
whom Carol could act like a little girl, which was how she
defined any sort of dependency, asking for help, or expressing
less than cheerful emotion.
Carol was astounded and repelled by the anger she felt
toward her mother for leaving her. She thought she was some
kind of awful, selfish person, and hid her unseemly emotion
beneath piles of work. She arranged the funeral, sorted through
her mother’s belongings, had an estate sale, and sold the house,
all within three months of her mother’s passing. “Somebody
needed to do it,” she says bravely. Through it all, Carol was a
pillar of strength for everyone.
Late at night she would go down to the basement and cry
like a baby.Carol had never heard of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, so she didn’t know
that the anger she felt toward her mother was a normal part of the grieving
process. Perhaps if someone had told her, she would have listened. That’s
the premise behind support groups for the bereaved. Maybe Carol could
have gone to one, but she probably would have said she was too busy.
People like Carol use busy work to distract themselves from feelings
they consider inappropriate and from work that needs doing. What she
176 ❧Explosions into Sadness