When I was in graduate school studying depression, I recall with uncomfortable clarity a comment made by my professor. When asked if all depression was curable he nodded, and then added, except perhaps depression associated with the loss of a child. That’s exactly what Stephanie Muldberg of Short Hills, N.J. experienced. In 2004 she lost her 13-year-old son, Eric, to Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer and for four years thought she was doing okay. “I didn’t do a lot during the day, but I managed to get dinner on the table and drive my daughter to her classes. But I was putting on a big show. I was a zombie.”
When her daughter finally brought her sadness to her attention and a friend severed their relationship saying she was “no fun anymore.” Stephanie found Dr. M. Katherine Shear, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia, who administers a 16-week experimental kind of therapy specifically designed for something she calls. “complicated grief” — acute sadness that lasts for more than six months.
Shackled with survivors guilt and fear of letting go of her precious son, Stephanie’s grief had become a preoccupation that hung out on the background of her day, yet it was also something she had avoided head on.
Dr. Shear’s treatment, a technique borrowed from treatment for PTSD, involves a revisiting exercise that focus on pleasurable experiences with Eric to help reactivate pleasurable memories, memory work sheets, and eventually tape recorded stories about the trauma of his death. She was instructed to play the tapes every day at home as a way to teach her brain how to compartemenalize. It taught her she could turn off sadness.
“My grief became more comfortable. less shocking. It’s like you get used to it. I had been afraid that if I let go of the grief, I would be letting go of Eric. But the opposite happened. I remembered him more and was able to hold onto him as a positive memory rather than a chronic grief.”
The therapy also showed her she could turn on pleasant memories of Eric without feeling guilty. Another part of the exercise involved letting go of survivor’s guilt. Dr. Shear asked her to imagine a conversation with her son and ask him questions she needed answers to. Then she was told to construct his answers. For Stephanie, the questions were simple: “I wanted to know if I had been a good mom. And I wanted to know what he wanted to be in his life. His future.”
Today, Stephanie feels she has her life back. She can experience joy without guilt and have pleasurable memories of Eric without debilitating sadness.
Each year, two-and-a-half million people die and at least four other people are severely affected by each death. For some of these people the pain does not go away and becomes complicated grief, something that Dr. Shear says, it now treatable.
Glad that there’s a little more research into it. It’s a very underserved population, for many reasons. I agree, it can be survived. My own personal experience, almost twenty years later, is that it takes time and a lot of work and some type of spiritual connection and a lot of contemplation to get there. And, it’s still always there, it just doesn’t have to dominate the present.
Beautiful piece, Wendy.
Grief is only half of the battle. When my 2 Sisters dies (8 months apart) I was overwhelmed with Survor Guilt big time. Why them and not me??? Neither of my Sisters smoked, or drank – both had beautiful marriages with good men, and both were Moms and had important jobs (Nan taught Nursing & Maggie was a High School Teacher).
I smoked (at the time) I drank more wine than I should have and I didn’t have kids; my marriage was factious (sp?) at best (and now over) and I still believe that both of them could have handled loosing me better than I managed loosing them (if that makes sense).
And, I didn’t know what to be sadder about. My precious Sisters GONE, my beautiful Neices and Nephew loosing a Mom, or my dear sweet Mom having to bury 2 of her Girls.
I could not have survived without Therapy. And, although I am doing better than pre-Therapy – you never fully get over the grief from a death, you just find a better way of dealing with it.
I allow myself to be sad about if and feel the pain for a certain length of time, then have to cut it off and know how much my Sis’s would want me to move on as happily as feasibly possible and live!
Therapy is manditory, however, the grief over a death never really goes away. You’re just taught on how to manage it.
Thanks for listening.
Beth
Upon reflection, I understand that a Mother losing a child is a greater and more profoud grief that exceeds the grief of losing Siblings – so I’ll just add that it continues to leave me baffled that my Mom never went for any Therapy – but relied heavily on her deep and unwaivering (sp?) Faith.
Wild, eh? And SHE’S the one telling me we have so much to be thankful for.
I will always be in awe as to how she managed through the saddest story a Mother can live through.
Keep writinig!
Beth