The Unpredictable Path of Grieving Traumatic Loss
After losing her mother in a hiking accident, Vivien shares the story of how she learned to navigate life with more patience.
If you know grief, you know how unpredictable it can be. It can crush you, clarify your thinking, cause major life changes, leave you numb, and sometimes all of the above in a single afternoon. Grief can isolate you from the people you care about while offering a bridge of connection to complete strangers.
There is no one-size-fits-all cure or all-knowing guide to help you find your way. If you’re lucky, you’ll find someone who understands, or at least is willing to patiently listen while you attempt to make sense of it.
My goal with this blog and podcast is to help others process their grief, loss, and unmet expectations by sharing their story. I recently interviewed Vivien to learn about her unique experience with grief.
Vivien lives in Maryland with her husband of two years, alongside two cats and two snakes who somehow manage to not get in each other’s way.
She earned a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she is engaged in the noble task of cancer research.
Her work focuses on bacterial pathogenesis and cancer immunology. She explains to me how the cancer therapy and the cancer cells are in an evolutionary arms race, continually adapting and competing to find more effective and efficient means to either destroy the mutation or destroy the host. If the therapy wins, the host survives.
She geeks out about bacteriophages and the possibility of using them as a cancer therapy.
“Bacteriophages are so cool.”
By studying where and how a variety of cell populations in the tumor react to combination therapies, Vivien hopes to discover new approaches to treating non-responsive tumors. Thankfully, between my AP Biology class in high school and conversations with my brother who has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience Research, I can follow the gist of what she is saying.
I tell her that the world is a better place having her in it and note how much miscommunication there is about cancer. As much as we want to believe in some magic, cancer-killing bullet, cancer is actually a big, vague term referring to a litany of different types of fast-growing, mutated cells. There is significant diversity in how each of them function, and significant diversity in how each unique tumor microenvironment responds. In a word, heterogeneity.
My mind wanders for a moment to the heterogeneity of grief and those who grieve. There is no universal cure that stops or prevents the pain of profound loss because there is inconsistency among the types of grief and the suffering of hosts.
I lost a brother to cancer and spent a period of my life attempting to understand the battle going on inside his brain. I hoped to make sense of the proliferating cells, the surgical assaults that tried to physically remove the tumors without damaging healthy tissue, and the impact it all had on his ability to function.
Despite all I learned about cancer mechanisms, I still haven’t made existential sense of it. But my curiosity has led to this project. Both this blog and the Grounded Podcast are about giving people a platform to talk about deep and difficult life experiences.
We all have some sort of narrative about how our life should play out, but for most of us it doesn’t go as planned. Those unmet expectations can leave us feeling disoriented.
Up until this interview, I had covered the topics of chronic illness and terminal diagnoses. But this conversation with Vivien was a slight variation on the themes of grief and loss.
I ask why she thinks our mutual friend Tim recommended that I interview her.
She offers that her experience is relatively unique because her mother’s death was sudden and traumatic. “It wasn’t like she was going into surgery and it took a turn,” she explains. Vivien had to process many emotions over time to get to some level of acceptance.
Vivien also adds that she is mostly on the other side of the experience now and can offer perspective. This loss hasn’t defined her life in a negative way. She was able to stick to her educational goals and not get sidetracked by the grief. All of this puts her in a position to share encouragement and a unique viewpoint to others still closer to the shock and pain of loss.
I ask her to tell me the story of what happened.
Leading into her junior year of college, her family took a trip to Zion National Park in southwestern Utah. She was with her parents and two younger siblings, off to hike Angel’s Landing. The five of them hadn’t been together in a while. It was kind of a big deal to take that summer trek.
They had hiked together as a family a lot. Everyone in her family was a seasoned hiker and in good shape. At Scouts Lookout they stopped for lunch with another family they met on the trail. Vivien remembers that their mom was named Nancy, too, just like hers. This family of boys was younger than her siblings and decided to turn around and head back down the trail instead of continuing to Angel’s Landing.
After eating, Vivien’s family got back on the trail, her brother and sister pulling ahead of her parents on their way to the next landing. They made it to a narrow section of the trail with a steep drop off on one side.
“None of us really clearly have an image of what happened. All I know is that we were rounding the curve in a section where there were chains. My mom went over the edge.”
It wasn’t a stumble or a reach for something to hold on to, she was just gone. No one could see her, which Vivien considers a blessing in disguise.
There wasn’t any cell service in that area of the park, so she ran back down the trail with her sister to find a ranger. Her dad and brother stayed at the spot where her mother had been.
Because Vivien had been training for cross-country and track through high school and college, her body went into auto pilot and she stayed ahead of her sister. They passed the family that had shared their lunch spot. When Nancy asked what was wrong, she immediately grasped the situation and ran the rest of the way with Vivien. Her sister stayed with the other family on the trail, too winded to keep up.
They made it to the ranger’s station after about 30 minutes of running and had a search and rescue team sent out to find her mom. Thankfully, there was a room with a mattress and she was able to pass out and sleep. Maybe from shock, maybe from exhaustion. She stayed there a couple of hours, joined by her sister, while the search and rescue team looked for their mom.
It’s a fairly long hike and they had nowhere to go anyway. Her family had been staying in a hotel that week while on vacation, traveling with only the basic necessities. The ranger station was far from their car and farther from their hotel.
Eventually, her dad and brother came back to the station with a ranger. There are a lot of cliffs in that particular area, but the search and rescue team had found her mother’s body. To this day Vivien does not know the state in which it was found but prefers it that way.
Vivien recalls being so emotionally and physical drained from the hike and the shock. She still doesn’t know everything her dad or the search and rescue team were doing while she and her sister slept. Her father kept the family from many of the details.
On the last day at their hotel in Utah, Vivien’s friend Tim came to offer support and hang out with the family. He was able to get them to play in the pool and even got her brother to laugh. It was therapeutic for them to experience something lighthearted in the midst of deep grief and shock, to see that it’s okay to still have a happy moment. She recalls her dad saying that he thought his kids may never laugh again.
Some memories cement in your mind forever in complete, vivid detail. Others you forget. No one knows how they’ll react to such a tragedy until they’re in it.
They did a marathon drive back to California with their mom’s ashes, but Vivien doesn’t really remember being in the car. Vivien shares that her family was far too broken to be consoling each other. Some families may come together, but her family found other people. Every family is going to react differently.
“We all just latched on to logic,” she explains. “We detached ourselves.”
While listening to Vivien I am reminded of the day my brother died. We knew it was coming and miraculously had the clarity of mind to set up a phone tree to communicate with friends and family in the aftermath. I called my close friend who shared the news with the rest of my friends. Each of my parents called one sibling who then shared the news with the rest of the family. One call each and every one would know that he was gone. No need to keep finding the words and reliving the moment.
“How did you break the news to friends and family?” I ask, knowing the difficulty of finding the right words to convey your trauma to others.
Vivien shares her belief that reporters are horrible people. This reaction is no surprise given her experience. The news of Nancy’s death broke on television that evening. “L.A. woman plummets to her death,” was the headline she remembers.
“Reporters are vultures. They went to our house, they went to our neighbors. That’s how our neighbor of 20 years found out.”
Her neighbor called her dad while they were still in Utah to find out what was going on. Vivien’s family didn’t get to share the news on their own terms. There wasn’t enough time to be deliberate in their approach by finding the right words and timing. They were forced to respond to the media.
By the time they made it home to California reporters were swarming. They unplugged their phones, closed the doors and blinds, and tried to block out the world.
Vivien made it back to college at the end of summer where her university had shared her news with the student body. She was grateful that she didn’t have to continually explain to her peers and teachers what she was dealing with, but she had to face the discomfort when others tried their best to be sympathetic without knowing what to say.
Relating to others became increasingly difficult. Some friends had the ability to listen and give her the space she needed while some relationships thinned out. At college it seemed even more rare to find anyone who had had a similar experience and could understand.
There were many ways that people tried to comfort her while grieving this profound loss. Some were helpful, some were not. The common phrase “she’s in a better place” filled her with frustration and felt like a form of denial. What better place for her mother than here with her family?
The blanket “I’m sorry” also filled her with annoyance. “What are you sorry for, you didn’t do anything,” she would think. She preferred the more complete statements such as “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry you feel this pain. I’m sorry you have to experience this.”
Vivien found it most helpful when people were willing to show up and listen. When dealing with this kind of grief, the “greater perspective” lectures are rarely useful.
Now and again, there were well-intentioned people of the opinion that maybe she should take more time away to grieve or spend more time with family.
I asked if she ever felt like quitting college or taking a leave of absence and going home to her grieving family. “No,” she said. This was better. It gave her space to think and focus on other things than her mom and the memory of losing her. She was also able to enjoy a study abroad in Ireland six weeks in to her first semester back.
I ask about her family and how everyone else was coping at that time and since. “Not great,” she says. Ten years later her dad still has night terrors. Vivien admits to experiencing acute moments of depression.
Compared to her family members though, Vivien feels she has coped better. She doesn’t think she is unique or special, but it’s clear to me that she is one of the few high-functioning people who can channel their grief into productive pursuits. She’s been able to approach most of her life as a scientist with facts and logic.
Not everyone is so lucky. Losing a loved one can trigger severe, prolonged depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Experiencing grief is a long, winding road where no one can really predict how their life will be affected.
Ten years may seem like a lot of time, but the loss gets woven into your life experience and the memory shapes you. You never stop missing the deceased. Life continues to present moments where you wish they were still there. Reminders of your loved one surround you. The music, the season, the important dates, the birthdays, the favorite places, and the favorite foods.
Vivien found that writing poetry as a hobby was one channel for her grief. She also tried talk therapy for a while but didn’t feel she quite clicked with the therapist. It did help, but not enough to continue long term. On the bad days when she wanted to punch the wall she could go running and it helped, but she still had moments of shortened temper.
There is a metaphor that resonates with Vivien. She shares with me that grief is like a box. Inside the box is a button and a ball. In the beginning, the ball is large, and the box is small. The grief button gets pressed a lot. Over time, the ball gets smaller or maybe the box gets bigger, but the button is still as painful and still as sensitive, it just gets pressed a lot less.
In my own experience of loss, now over 11 years ago, I have improved my ability to box up the emotions and compartmentalize my grief. But because I grieve not just for the event, but also for the consequences that continue to echo through my life, I am always susceptible to triggers that come unexpectedly. I try to revisit the mementos I keep on the anniversary of his death to allow my thoughts and emotions to be expressed in a more controlled, private environment.
“Do you do anything to remember her?” I inquire.
Vivien remembers playing music and singing with her mom who played piano and guitar. Music was an important part of their family culture. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on a ukulele has special meaning for her.
The more you can feel emotions, the more you give your body permission to keep feeling. The alternative is numbing which can prevent positive emotions, too. You have to keep feeling. You have to create space to acknowledge and express what is coming through you. Find a healthy outlet to process all of it, whether it’s words or physical activity. Create a channel for it to seep out.
Some attempts won’t be helpful. It takes a clear head to recognize what is not working and learn to process in another way.
It’s important to carve out the space and time to remember. Practice focusing on the positive memories and the time you had with them. Celebrate their impact and how they have shaped you. Don’t deny or forget the pain, but gently bring your focus back to the gift that they were in your life. Carry the gratitude of knowing them with you.
“How different do you think your life would be today if this had never happened?” I ask.
The factual details probably wouldn’t be very different, but the emotional landscape is. Vivien’s education has not been derailed because of this, but she is clear that not everyone will or should respond the same way.
She explains that grief takes the time it takes. You can’t force the processing of it. It takes patience to work through it. Never underestimate the value of your friends that are there for you when you’re ready to talk.
I ask her the final question that I have asked every guest, “what hard-earned wisdom do you have now that the world needs to hear from you?”
“Appreciate the time you have with loved ones.”
You never really know how much time you have. Anything could change at any time.
I can more easily recognize that time with those I love is precious now, having learned this the hard way. This perspective is an invitation to be present and grateful and to invest in the relationships that really matter. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?
What once annoyed me about someone can become endearing. Because someday it will be different. Time is fleeting, this relationship temporary, a death bed inevitable. There is a gratitude that is possible for every life experience, even if it was painful and continues to affect my life. It’s important to find acceptance.
You can’t go back and change it, but you can choose your response every day.
We joke about how maybe she’ll earn a Nobel Prize in Medicine for curing cancer and I’ll earn the Nobel Peace Prize for helping more people understand pain and learn to process it in healthier ways. She has a far higher likelihood, I’m sure of it.
I have asked all my prepared questions, so I check to see if there is anything Vivien thinks we’ve missed. She turns the table by asking me a question.
“Are there any movies or TV that have bothered you with their depiction of losing someone?”
Maybe not bothered me, I respond, but really triggered something. My brother died in late September. I was visiting in-laws for Thanksgiving less than two months after his funeral and the movie Dan In Real Life had just come out. My emotions were still pretty raw. The premise of the movie is a widower and his two daughters trying to get back to life without their mother.
What really killed me was that the deceased wasn’t even a character. I don’t think she even had a name, she was just the back story. It crushed me that she didn’t get to be a character. I wanted to know her and hear her story. I wanted her memory to be at the forefront of the movie, but that wasn’t what it was about. It was about learning to get back to living after losing. I wasn’t ready for that kind of story yet.
When we got back to the house with my family, I had to excuse myself and scream into a towel in the bathroom. I wanted to lock myself in the shower where no one could hear me. It took a while to purge enough emotion to make it through another round of social contact and niceties.
Grief is like that, I guess. One unasked-for binge, followed by a lifetime of emotional purge.
I thank Vivien for her time and for sharing her story. I know that someone will be able to better work through their grief because of her willingness to open up about her experience.
We promise to meet up if we’re ever in each other’s neighborhood, and to call if we’ve left out something important that people need to hear.
There is a bridge now between two former strangers, built with empathy and perspective. This interview has been an opportunity to let some of my emotion seep out, to feel less isolated, and to share one more story of grief.
But the most important story isn’t about the grief. It’s really about learning how to come back to life after tragedy, or even in the midst of it. If your life were to play out exactly as you expected, you’d never stop to ask what you’re made of.
As humans, we so easily frame what should be while ignoring what is, then agonize over the gap. But in the space between the perfection in our heads and actual reality is the opportunity to get to know ourselves in a deeper way.
These difficult life experiences are what truly shape us. In the dark storm cloud of grief, the real silver lining is reaching a point where you can make a deliberate decision about what your response will be.
