Men in Grief:

Only four days after the sudden and tragic death of his ten-year old son, Roger returned to his job as Manager of a large retail store. Within five minutes of entering the office he was asked, “How is your wife doing?” A well meaning, yet uninformed assistant manager emphatically announced, “We have created more than your normal busy workload. We decided you should keep very busy so you won’t feel sad.”

Unfortunately, Roger’s story is not that unusual for many males whose lives have been touched by the death of someone they loved. Even in the face of tragic loss, many men are encouraged to be self-contained, stoic, and to express little or no outward emotion in general. Those few males who are able to openly acknowledge the pain of loss are often met with judgments about their “inability to be strong and handle grief.”

We hear discussions about how today’s male is more able and willing to express feelings, but there is still tremendous discomfort in our culture when a man weeps openly, admits being disoriented or shudders with fear. Even among family and friends, the tolerance for him being able to acknowledge his pain is often minimal, and he usually follows with an apologetic self-justification, i.e., “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cry, but I can’t seem to help it.” Being strong for others is often reinforced as an honorable and admired quality.

Unfortunately, today’s male continues to exist in a cultural atmosphere that has little tolerance for the emotional expression of grief. The result is that many men either grieve in isolation or attempt to run away in various ways.

From infancy, boys are typically conditioned to be “masculine” and girls to be “feminine.” Watching your children at play, the observer quickly notes a distinct difference in “appropriate” male versus female behavior. A classic example is that boys are usually discouraged from crying, while girls who cry are thought to be sensitive and warm. In other words, if he is a “good boy” he is a masculine boy who learns that certain feelings (aggression) are acceptable, while other feelings (helplessness) are unacceptable.

The common notion that differences between males and females are grounded in genetics tends to discourage us from learning how we can help young boys and girls to acknowledge a wider range of feelings. In fact, the male who fits society’s idealized image of masculinity is often among those men who have the most difficulty when confronted with loss.

The social-conditioning process of glorified masculinity createds a major impediment to a male’s expression of grief. If being a male means repressing normal feelings after loss, the man is set up to move away from his grief instead of toward it. Unfortunately, his inability to do the “work of mourning” destroys much of his capacity to enjoy like and living.

A temporary dependence on other persons is a normal part of healing in grief. Yet, for the majority of men, dependency is equated with weakness.

Many young boys learn early in life that masculinity and “being male” equals not depending on anybody but yourself. During times of death and grief, we might even overhear well meaning adults telling the little boy, “Now you have to be the man of the house.”

Dependency in the typical male usually creates anxiety, fear, and overwhelming feelings of vulnerability. As he begins to experience these feelings following losses, he typically moves quickly to repress them. Although allowing himself to be temporarily dependent would actually assist in the healing processs, the American male fights against dependency as if he is fearing for his own life.

The grief experience naturally creates a turning inward and slowing down on the part of the mourner, a temporary self-focus which is vital to the ultimate healing process. Yet, for most men this is threatening. Masculinity is equated with striving, moving, and activity. Men are taught to overcome grief, not to experience it.

Our image of the ideal male is O.J. Simpson jumping over chairs and knocking people down as he races through the airport. From early childhood on, the boy is urged to produce, keep on the move, and to have endless amounts of energy. The boy who sits quietly in his room, reading, is often thought to be strange.

By the time a boy becomes a man, he is usually driven by a never-ending need to prove himself, which equates with keeping busy. Perhaps it is not coincidence alone that male children have a four-to-eight-times-greater incidence of hyperactivity than female children. Perhaps it is also not coincidence that the high rate of heart disease among men may be partly due to the overstress of constant activity with out slowing down to rest.

Unfortunately, the male who throws himself into his work following loss is not an unusual occurrence.

Another critical grief-healing ingredient is the ability to ask for or accept support. Many men are not able to seek our support even when they need it the most, and this inability is closely related to their need to be self sufficient.

Having to ask for help or emotional support makes many males anxious and uncomfortable. How many of us know men who will drive around lost for hours without asking for simple directions? Actually, this analogy to grief works well—driving around lost, he searches for a destination assuming no one can help him. Many men, lost in the turmoil of grief, refuse to ask for the guidance and support that might well lead them in the direction of healing.

The fear of being dependent on others isolates the male from the very people who would like to help him—friends and family. The result is that he may become incapable of even accepting unsolicited support and caring.

The male in grief usually suffers in silence, questioning if anyone really cares about him. Many men are comfortable only when they are in control, and asking for help means letting go of control and allowing oneself to be nurtures. Outwardly expressing grief equals weakness to many men. The “more in control” he sees himself, the more appropriate he sees himself as being. The need to overcome grief denies him the opportunity to heal. When he feels surges of grief welling up inside, he invests his already drained energy level into repressing and fighting off the outward expression of these feelings.

It is very much in vogue today to encourage men to openly mourn. However, simply urging men to mourn does not adequately address the factors out lined above. Despite verbalizations to the contrary, the contemporary male is still busy protecting himself from feeling and expressing pain and he often detaches from both his inner self and people around him when they stimulate feelings of grief.

Because grief-related feelings are repressed, the male lives in a state of constant internal tension. How he projects himself to the outward world is really a facade in total paradox to what he feels on the inside. As denial of real feelings takes over, symptoms of grief become enemies to be fought instead of friends to be understood.

The result is a virtual epidemic of complicated grief among males in our culture. Clinical experience suggests that a tremendous amount of anxiety, depression, chemical abuse and physical illness has resulted from men’s inability to mourn.

Among some of the more common consequences of complicated mourning in the male are the following:

Chronic depression, withdrawal, and low self-esteem.

Deterioration in relationships with friends and family.

Complaints such as headaches, fatigue and backaches.

Chronic anxiety, agitation, restlessness and difficulty concentration.

Chemical abuse of dependence.

Indifference toward others, insensitivity and workaholism.

This list does not mean, however, that all men who experience the death of someone they loved will suffer these consequences.

Open, honest mourning in the male is sometimes stunted by an apparently more powerful pressure to maintain the masculine image. Observers might assume that he consciously chooses to repress his grief. However, to openly mourn is not something he won’t do, it is something he can’t do. A prisoner within himself, he experiences total frustration of even where to begin in the healing process.

Perhaps as a culture we need to begin to teach the little boy in childhood the freedom of being open to pain and loss.

Working with grown men who have come to know loss in their lives, suggests to me that usually a male will work to become aware of his grief only when he begins to realize how deprived he is of being fully alive and living. Only then can the male begin to relearn how to be a feeling person.

As we work toward creating what we might term this “new male” we must be patient and understanding with ourselves as a culture.

The “new male” will continually affirm his right and need to openly share his grief outside of himself. He will give himself the gift of a total experience with grief, emerging a more whole and healthy person. He will acknowledge his fears, his hopes, his dreams. Becoming a “new male” demands a commitment and awareness of how important experiencing grief is to the ultimate quality of one’s life.

I have felt a personal sense of urgency in writing this article. Why? Because as I experience losses in my own life, I find myself continually working to overcome the influences outlines in this writing. As we celebrate Father’s Day this month, let us hope that all of us, men and women alike, can work toward giving ourselves permission to mourn in healthy, life-enhancing ways!

*Reprinted by permission from

Bereavement Publishing, Inc.

P.O. Box 674, Carmel, IN 46032

To My Husband 

My love, these past few months

Seem to have paralyzed us

In pain and anguish

And I know, in that state,

The flow of communication becomes stilted.

The love we are and share,

Is forever, darling.

But I realize that you have felt,

As have I, a separateness in our grief.

It’s alright, you know, dear.

I guess it is the nature of a loss so

devastating

That no matter how we try

To comfort one another

Along the strange path of grieving

We sometimes feel so alone.

We have done marvelously well, my love,

Talked, cried, remembered our son

With tears and smiles,

I know we will laugh again,

My dearest beloved,

We will laugh again - I promise.

Molly Murphy

TCF. Winnipeg

                                                            The Gap

Our daughter, Alexis, died 6 months ago, at the age of 9. A rare medical anomaly, in a heart-rending wrench of our innermost spirit, stole her from us in barely more than a moment. Recently, I was at the beach near our home with what remains of my soul - my son, Ethan. Our new puppy romped with us. Beautiful weather, fresh salt air, gentle clear water and sea lions barking in the distance. Perfect. Walking back, I saw a sharp, rusted metal rod and thought to get it out of the way. As I tossed it aside, it caught my thumb and cut me. Perfect. Every moment of peace we have, cuts. Everything that is, hones what is not.  

The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one, whose children are well and intact, can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear. Our daughter now comes to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal, every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with her atoms - her hairbrush, her toothbrush, her clothing. We reach for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded. What we had wanted, when she so suddenly took ill, was for her to be treated. We wanted her to be annoyed that her head had been shaved for surgery. We would have shaved ours and then watched her smile as we recovered together, whatever the nature of that recovery. Recover is no longer a part of our vocabulary. Now we simply walk through the noise and debris of our personal ground zero.  

A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed, it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply, and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where she now resides. This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly. At some point in the distant future, the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened but the empty space will remain - a life sentence. It is not unlike a dog who, suddenly hit by a car, survives. The impact is devastating and leaves the animal in shock, confusion and despair. In time the animal recovers adequately to spend the remainder of its life on three legs. It is not that he is unable, eventually, to function or even to laugh and play. The reality, however, is that, on three legs from here on, every step he takes, every action, virtually every breath reminds him of what he has lost. We are that animal. 

Our community of friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our daughter, in part, through talking about her and our feelings for having lost her. Some go there with us, others cannot and, through their denial add a further measure, however unwitting, to an already heavy burden. This was not a sprained ankle or major surgery that we suffered. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” 6 months later is simply “to not get it”. The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap - those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And, yet, somehow, there are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have understood, again each in their own way, that Alexis remains our daughter through our memory of her. Her memory is sustained through speaking about her and our feelings about her death. Deny this and you deny her life. Deny her life and you have no place in ours. That’s the equation. How different people have responded to our loss, or not, transcends a range of attitudes and personal histories. It is teaching us much about human capacity and experience, albeit at a searing price. Parents’ memories of a lost child sustain that life. It should be the other way around. 

We recognize that we have removed to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful and the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it it’s own voice we fear we would become truly unreachable and so we remain “strong” for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise. People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard. Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every experience - and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will have actually managed to survive when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point nor who will still be with us.

 There will come a time, quite some number of years down the road, when the balance between the desperate awareness of what we have lost when our daughter died will be somewhat balanced by the warm and joyful memories of what we had with her when she lived. I neither long for nor cringe from that time. It will simply come. We will recognize it - though now it is far beyond us.

So, yes, our beloved daughter is gone - a light in our lives gone out leaving blackness for us, left behind, to stumble through. And, while we understand and deeply feel the meaning of our phrase “Now we are lit by her only from within”, we hope, desperately, that she is wherever the light is. We are trying to understand what this means, as we seek our own way, for the remainder of our lives, to some kind of light. We love our son and are trying to breath.

 We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those, untarnished by such events, who wish to know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.

                                      March, 2002

Michael Crelinsten is Alexis’ and Ethan’s dad.