ATTACHMENT AND GRIEF
For my money, the movie Cast Away is one of Hollywood’s great love stories — the tale of a deep and abiding bond between a man and his . . . volleyball.
In the popular film from 2000, Tom Hanks played Chuck, a FedEx problem solver whose business flight over the Pacific was caught in a violent storm and crashed. Chuck somehow survived and washed up on a deserted island that would be his solitary home for four years. His only companion was Wilson, the Wilson volleyball that Chuck discovered in a package from the doomed plane that also had washed ashore. The marooned man painted a face on the ball with his own blood. Day after day, Chuck poured out his sadness, loneliness, fear, and frustration to the ball. The stranded man talked over every major event and decision. Wilson and Chuck even quarreled and reconciled. When the time came, Chuck took Wilson onto the makeshift raft that was to be his means of rescue. But early in the voyage, Wilson toppled into the water and was pulled away by the currents. Chuck futilely swam after his companion, nearly drowning himself in the process. He could not have been more devastated if a human companion had floated away.
“Willlllssssssonnnnnnn!”
One of the first things Chuck did after his rescue and return to civilization was to buy another volleyball.
With Chuck and Wilson, the screenwriters tapped into this basic truth of human existence: we crave attachment. Early in our lives, there is a survival imperative for this attachment. Babies instinctively attach to their parents and caregivers because they are incapable of surviving on their own. Later in life, the desire to attach might be somewhat less primal, but the deep desire remains. Relationships define human experience.
But those human bonds always come with a price. Chuck realized this as Wilson floated beyond his reach. As I’ve said, I knew the moment my son was born, given his precarious state, that there was a great risk in loving him. My life since Ryan’s death is another example of the fact that when we love someone, when we are attached to them, it is our fate to experience mourning and sadness when the attachment is severed by death. That unique relationship is the foundation of our equally unique story about the person who has died. Grieving is another expression of love. As the blogger Tim Lawrence so beautifully put it, “Grief really is love, weeping.”1
Grieving clients frequently talk about this dilemma after their heart has been broken by loss. “Why should I continue to love when doing so leads to such great pain?” There is no magic answer to this question. To love is to risk pain. But the alternative is to live in loneliness and isolation.
The story of our grief does not begin with death; it begins with the story of life, of love, of attachment. To me, the single biggest reason mourning is unique to every person is that no story of attachment is the same.
Attachment has been a focus of researchers and practitioners in my field going back to Freud. However, this focus is mostly with regard to the psychological development of children. Psychiatrist and psychologist John Bowlby was the pioneer in this regard. Bowlby and his associates made the connection between attachment and grief by studying the reaction of infants and children when their attachment to primary caregivers or other emotional providers was severed through separation or death.2 Bowlby eventually expanded his research into adult attachment and separation.
As has been the case for many psychological theories through the years, neuroscience has affirmed the power of attachment. Not only is the baby’s brain designed to form an attachment to his or her caretakers, but the neural pathways of caretakers are also altered in ways that promote attachment and nurturing.3 For example, research has shown that the sound of a baby crying causes neurons to fire in certain areas of a mother’s brain. We can now describe how attachment happens with the understanding of the part of our brain known as mirroring neurons. “Infants are hardwired to connect with their caretakers,” John Prendergast wrote in In Touch: How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself. “They are able to distinguish their mother’s face and voice within thirty-six hours of birth.”4
The foundation of emotional health and security begins when an infant’s caregiver mirrors the child’s expressions and moods in a safe, loving, and accurate way. According to Prendergast, “When normally responsive mothers face their one-year-old babies without showing any emotion on their faces, babies start to have an emotional meltdown within a minute as their attempts to elicit a response meet with failure.”5
But you don’t need a PhD to understand a basic reality of life. Whether the approach is psychoanalytic, evolutional, or neurobiological, all agree — attachment is essential to survival at the beginning of life and essential to well-being later on.
Reflect on your relationship with the one you have lost. The questions that follow are merely jumping-off points to spur your own memories and thoughts of your attachment to the one you lost. I invite you to jot down thoughts, feelings, and memories as they occur.
• What did that person mean to you?
• Who were you with that person that you couldn’t be with anyone else?
• How would your life have been different had you never known her?
• What was his personality like?
• What did she look like?
• When was he the happiest?
• How did he make you feel emotionally safe?
• What was your biggest regret?
• What were some of your most meaningful conversations with her?
• What did you most enjoy doing together?
• How did she demonstrate her attachment to you?
• What do you know about his life before he met you?
• What losses did he have?
• What did you most enjoy doing together?
• What values did you share?
• What is the favorite story you like to tell others about her?
• What were his “demons”?
• What was the most surprising thing about him?
• Was your life with him worth the pain you are feeling now?
Add your own questions, unique to your experience.
Your answers to questions such as these will go far to explain your experience of grief. Many times, other people just won’t get it. And that is what is known as disenfranchised grief — when the community doesn’t support the intensity of a person’s grief because of societal notions that such grief is not really warranted.6
My client Mark was a young man who felt defective because of the deep sorrow he continued to feel about the death of his grandfather a year before. Mark’s friends and family wondered, in so many words, “What’s the big deal?” Mark wondered the same thing.
In our culture, there is an unspoken hierarchy of grieving — another example of our need to categorize grief. A parent’s loss of a young child is the most painful of all, so parents are seen as the most entitled to grieve. The loss of a sibling is more painful than the loss of a friend. The loss of a parent is more painful than the loss of a grandparent.
Mark’s grandfather had lived a long and happy life; his was an example of a “good death.” Yet when he came to see me, Mark still found himself tearing up at virtually any reminder of his granddad. Understandably, he felt like he could not confide in anyone else.
“I can’t seem to get over it,” he said. “That just seems weird.”
Then I asked Mark to tell me about his grandfather.
“My parents split up when I was a baby. I remember all those visitation weekends when my mom would have my bag packed and sitting by the door, but my dad never showed. She would then take my bag and unpack it. But I think I was relieved, because my dad was drunk so often, and I never felt safe with him. The one time my dad came to my soccer game, I could hear him screaming at me and screaming at the ref. It was really embarrassing. But I got over it. It didn’t seem to matter . . .”
“Because your grandfather was there for you?” I guessed.
“Every game. Didn’t matter how I played. ‘You gave it your best shot,’ he would say. I was with him pretty much every weekend, hunting or fishing. He brought me to his office and to job sites. I was always so proud, and he seemed proud of me. One time, when I was a teenager, I asked him how he had been so successful in life. He just smiled and said, ‘Hard work and telling the truth.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
“Your grief would be significant if you were just grieving for your grandfather,” I said. “He was a remarkable man, and you never knew life without him. But you are also grieving for the father he was to you; he helped you form into the person you are today. You lost a grandfather and a father.”
Mark’s story demonstrates how, in so many cases of grief, attachment trumps all. He mattered to his grandfather in ways that he didn’t to his father. Once he fully understood his attachment to his grandfather, Mark was able to embrace his sorrow in a way that it deserved. He could also share that knowledge with his family and friends, as a way of explaining why he continued to struggle. Gone was the shame. Mark even felt a certain level of pride in his sorrow, as it reminded him how deeply he loved and had been loved.
Attachment certainly isn’t limited to human relationships. Anne’s story, another example of disenfranchised grief, is one I hear frequently.
She came to see me after a painful divorce. In her mind, the pain of the breakup was legitimate. She was a deeply introverted person who had few close friends, and no one with whom she felt comfortable sharing her sense of isolation and loneliness. But for most of our first session, she talked about Smokey, her ailing cat.
“She’s been with me longer than any human — going on twenty years,” she said. “Jobs and people have come and gone, but Smokey has always been there. She doesn’t care if I’ve had a good day or a bad day. I feed her when I get home, and she curls up in my lap no matter what. It might sound weird, but I talk to her.”
“If that’s the case, I’m weird, too,” I said. “I talk to my dog all the time.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“But the vet says he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep her going. I don’t know what I will do without her.”
“I understand,” I said.
She seemed surprised by that and relieved.
When Anne arrived for her session a few months later, she broke into tears the moment she sat down.
“I had to put Smokey down,” she said. “I called in sick at work. I just couldn’t face people. But no one would understand. The girl next to me at work just lost her mother. My cat died.”
I assured Anne that her grief was just as valid.
“After twenty years of unconditional love and friendship, you absolutely get to mourn Smokey’s death,” I said. “Your coworker grieves for her mother for the same reason you grieve for Smokey — a deep attachment. Pet love is as close to unconditional love as we can get. You get to grieve.”
“Even it was a cat?”
“Even if it was a cat,” I said.
Looking more deeply into Anne’s love for Smokey provides a window into the power of attachment more generally. Anne had been hurt in her divorce, but she didn’t have any human to share that with at the end of the day. Her reliance on Smokey was tantamount to Chuck’s reliance on Wilson the volleyball in Cast Away. Anne had formed a ritual with Smokey that was unconditional and predictable. Come home, greet, feed, sit on the couch, talk, watch TV, and feel Smokey purr at her human touch. It was a healthy emotional feedback loop.
Most people who come to me about the loss of a pet are almost always embarrassed; they seek me out because they feel there is no other place to turn. Yet I tell them that pets can provide one of the purest forms of attachment we know, because it is unconditional attachment, without conflict. That is rarely true with another human. Smokey the cat soothed Anne’s loneliness and anxiety every night. What human would have been that dependable? No wonder Anne felt bereaved every time she came home and Smokey wasn’t there to greet her.
What most people do, and what Anne eventually did, was get a new pet. She mourned, but she also realized she did not have to remain alone. Another cat started to fill that hole in her life again. But Anne would be forever grateful to Smokey, because he was there in the transition. Smokey was the steady, living being after the divorce.
The role of attachment in grief can also be understood by its opposite — a lack of normal attachment. This is an important topic, though one I’ve seen very little written about.
Over the years, many clients come to me because they are confused that they do not feel more grief or that they are even relieved after the death of a loved one. Cases like this make up a small percentage of my practice, and they are almost certainly underreported because people are embarrassed by their feelings. Relief at the death of another sounds horrible.
There is indeed no Hallmark card of condolence that speaks to this subject. I have never heard a client discuss the feelings of relief, release, or emancipation regarding the death of a person close to them without confusion, shame, apology, or guilt. That’s understandable when you consider the ancient imperative of attaching to those in our tribe, particularly those initially responsible for our survival. When the ones who are supposed to be the safest for us are not, the natural order is disrupted.
This issue is known as complicated attachment, which exists on a long continuum. As I’ve said, every attachment story is unique, and rarely is attachment not complicated by the messiness of human relationships. Recall the story of Carol and Rebecca, the sisters from chapter 7. The two were frequently at odds, and their relationship ended on a very unfortunate note. But after Carol was able to work through her guilt, her deep attachment and love for her sister, as well as her grief, came to the surface.
But it’s different when the deceased had perpetrated overt physical or psychological abuse. The resulting relationships are devoid of love and attachment, even though they typically include family. Short of criminal abuse discovered by authorities, these relationships can be almost impossible to escape. A child is attached by blood to an abusive parent, but is not connected in the other, more life-affirming ways. Yet children don’t have the option to divorce their parents.
That feeling of there being no escape often leads to post-loss feelings of relief, guilt, anger, and confusion instead of sorrow. Another word that also comes up is emancipation. With death, those left behind are free of the oppression of an emotionally or physically unsafe relationship. But without help, it’s hard for a person in that situation to know what to do with feelings of emancipation, especially when the world says you are supposed to be sad.
Margaret came to see me six months after the sudden death of her mother. Her mother was a socially prominent woman, and the large church was full for her funeral. The family was inundated with flowers, sympathy cards, and memorials. In our first session, I offered my condolences to Margaret, who shot me an icy look.
“You assume I am sad,” she said. “The truth is that I’m relieved. What a horrible thing to say. That’s why I’m here. I feel so guilty. How could any decent person not feel terribly sad after their mother died?”
“Why do you think you feel relieved?”
Margaret hesitated. I could see she was trying to decide whether to spill some family secrets.
“With my mother, it was always about appearances — the right clothes, the right house, the right friends, the right clubs, the right charities,” Margaret began. “She constantly shamed and criticized me. I could never get it right for her. I could not have cared less about any of that. She wanted me dressed every day like a child model, and I just wanted to play outside with the other kids. And I was always too heavy. And my hair was always too curly. I always felt like I was supposed to be the right accessory for her, like a piece of jewelry. Thank God for my nanny. She loved me for who I was. I don’t know how I would have turned out if she were not in my life.”
In high school, Margaret became interested in social justice. She decided to major in social work in college.
“You should have seen my mother’s face when I told her. ‘You’re going to do what?!’” she said. “I guess, after everything, she thought I would marry a rich young man from the country club and take over her role in society. She said she had a ‘conflict’ and did not come to my college graduation. Never once did she ask me about my work. I haven’t regretted my decision, not for a second. But it’s easier now that she’s gone.”
Her relief at her mother’s death is perfectly understandable. More than that, Margaret could have felt no other way. Relief came because the struggle to resist her mother’s control was finally over.
We dealt with Margaret’s guilt at her relief in just a couple of sessions. Her real challenge, as is often the case with complicated attachment, was to come to terms with a different loss — the loss of never having a nurturing mother. A series of letter-writing exercises helped Margaret touch the feelings of loss for what she did not have.
Review the following questions to connect with the story of conflict in grief if that has been your experience. Feeling relief is not a betrayal to the one who died; rather, it is part of your unique story.
• What was the most difficult time you shared?
• What was the biggest source of conflict between the two of you?
• Did you try to resolve the conflict? If so, what happened?
• Were there times when you felt emotionally unsafe with him?
• If able, what do you need to forgive him for?
• What do you need to forgive yourself for in the relationship with her?
However you answer these questions, rest in the knowledge that the pain of complicated attachment and the feeling of relief that comes after death are both parts of your own, unique story of loss.