Inside the Grieving Brain

Jerry Adler states, ???I can???t help but wonder: maybe the women with complicated grief just loved their mothers more.??? Perhaps the women who are strong enough to work through their grief loved their mothers more and felt that the very best way to honor the memory of a loved one is to live a full and rewarding life, not one that is crippled by grief. We all show our love ??? and our grief ??? in different ways. Mr. Adler???s assumption that only those who are prostrate with grief truly loved their parents is offensive. I recently lost my father to cancer, and while I will miss him until the end of my days, I honor him and his memory by living those days as fully as I can. Other people may love their parents as much as I loved my father, but no one could have loved him more.

The last sentence would have been cut by a decent editor for two reasons. First, it is highly offensive to those who are grieving and therefore too sensational for a magazine such as Newsweek. Second, it contradicts the sentence right before it, which states the author???s opinion that it???s dangerous to quantify grief.

Its interesting to read these comments. When I read the article this morning I originally shared the same anger and resentment towards the author as some of the commentators below. My thoughts were clouded with one idea and one idea alone: my mother fought for eight years of her life to stay alive long enough to watch her only child, myself, graduate college. She knew that she wasn't living to 55, she knew that it would kill her. But regardless, she bravely went through years of pain for me. So to read that article I think to myself - I bravely have to go through my life for her and me as well. To live every day with, if not grandiose meaning, then simple, happy meaning. To help and for others and appreciate everything that we have taht so many people don't. How dare the author proclaim that the miserable non-functioning grief symbolize a child who has loved their mother more? However, I have given some time to the idea and I think I get what he was saying. Love and grief are such natural, not completely scientifically explained, phenomenons of humans (and apparently elephants and primates too) and maybe they are easier explained that way rather than branded as a pathology, whether negatively implicated or not. At the ripe age of 24 I realize don't be so quick to judge. My mother did an excellent job.

Bravo to the author. It is a shame that so many readers misintrepret his closing remark. He may have stated it awkwardly, but what he is essentially saying is that people who exhibit excessive grief should NOT be categorized as mentally ill. He is saying that such grief is just a condition of love, and should be defended as such, and he is right. He was just wrong to quantify it in comparison to those who do not grieve the same way. So don't condemn him for his poorly phrased closer. He was trying to defend love and grief (and normal humanity) against those who are quick to label everything as a disorder.

The suggestion that women who experienced complicated grief "maybe...just loved their mothers more" is offensive to those of us who have lost mothers early or tragically yet experienced "normal grief". I loved my mother, and our relationship was deep and close. Twenty when she died, I could have wallowed, spending hours poring over photos rather than going to classes, thinking about all the things she was missing while our family continued without her, and I did, for a while (with one semester of mediocre to abysmal grades as proof), but I knew that I had to get on with my life--it's what she would have wanted.

Sorry for fhe typing errors in the previous comments.....my computer makes extra "s" and cuts off other letters if I do not proof read.............I was so upset by this absolutely ridiculous article. How a so-called 'respectable" magazine could run it is beyond me.......
Please keep my son in your thoughts (and prayers if you so believe) tomorrow...hree years since he died..

Newweek..I cancel any subscriptions to your magazine..too many unprofessional articles...too many ridiculous idiots writing equally ridiculous articles like this one...cancel subscriptions everyone!!!!

I wrote a comment earlier this morning but it didn't post. I lost my son three years ago tomorrow..I lost my husband june 9, 2008. I can tell you that death iss MORE than a MACHINE'S imagining of so called"grief"..although I suspect the machine could be imagng any number of emotions besides "grief" in the study population. This article is a bunsch of crap...losing a loved one is a lifetime sense of loss. That is what it should be...love ones cannot be replaced..we are human...we are not machines. anyone who hass lost a child or a close loved one will tell you there are signss of life eternal...this poor as....le can't possibly understand...thank God there are many of us who do!!!

Adler, you are an @$$h0Le. I wouldn't wish "complicated grief" on anyone, but if anyone deserves to experience it, you are a prime candidate. How DARE YOU imply that those who deal with grief in any way different than your experience loved their lost ones less. Why don't you do some research and interview a few hundred people who have lost loved ones--including those who have lost children, parents, spouses, siblings, friends, and pets--before you make such trite and insulting remarks. I hope Newsweek reads these comments and takes you to task. Shame on you, you insensitive creep! I am cancelling my subscription to Newsweek because your idiotic column is the last straw. I can't remember the last time I was so outraged from reading something some moron put in print, that I felt compelled to actually register just so I could 'comment.' I wish this wasn't a public forum, I have a few choice adjectives and adverbs I'd like use on you. I will close with an invitation for you to perform an anatomical impossibility upon yourself.

I don't think it has anything to do with "loving them more." I don't know what it is. When my Mom died in 2003, I thought it just couldn't be any worse than that (of course, I have never lost a child, I am sure that would be far worse). I do know that the pain of losing my Mom was horrible, but over a period of months, the pain began to diminish. Then came the day when my daughter and I made a joke that included my Mom's way of doing things. We laughed and laughed. We now make jokes and laugh at good memories and enjoy the happiness that comes from having been loved so much by that woman. So as time goes by, I was talking to another nurse in the nursing home I work in, and I said, "I think about my Mom every day. And I am 56, and still miss her." A woman walking by the nurses station said, "I am 96. I haven't seen my Mom in almost 60 years and I miss her every day too. And I can't wait to see her again." so I guess grief doesn't go away, it just changes into something we can live with.

I can't see categorizing prolonged grief as a mental illness. There is no timetable for grieving; it takes as long as it takes. Telling the stories and looking at the pictures is just a way of working it out and sometimes it takes years. In this country we shy away from the subject of death, and we just want people to get over it as fast as possible so we don't have to deal with our own fears, otherwise something is wrong with them. We don't take individual progression into consideration. Sometimes people just integrate the lost beloved into their lives in a different way. My sister and I talk in our father's Itaiian accent to each other when we repeat something he said. We don't want to list the memory of it. We have gone on with our lives, but we feel that we bring a part of him into our future that way, and he will never be lost to us. He did promise to 'love us forever after'', and that makes him present. We just can't see him right now. If you think we are delusional, that is your issue, not ours. Sometimes we make a choice on what we believe. For us this is more bearable than to believe that he is irrevocably gone.