The Fathers Speak
O
ur sorrow runs as deep, our anguish is as all encompassing, and we live with the same terrible hollow in our hearts as do our wives. But males and females do grieve differently. We tell our side of the story in hopes we can provide some solace and direction for other bereaved fathers.
Our wives have said we are less demonstrative than they in our grief, and that is certainly so when we are in public. But given the opportunity to air our feelings in a private discussion among ourselves, without our wives present, we vent, we yell, we stomp out of the room, we argue, we commiserate with one another, we comfort one another, and here and there we shed a tear.
As an aside, it should be noted that, in sharp contrast to our wives, while we chatted around a dinner table laden with food, we ate less and hardly even noticed what we were eating. Comfort food is far more important
to women than it is to men. And when the bull session on which this chapter is based ended, we found we could have gone on talking for hours more. We believe there is much to be gained by grieving dads allowing their feelings to emerge unabashedly when surrounded by kindred spirits.
We began our discussion, as did our wives in the first chapter of this book, by revisiting our initial emotions during that first nightmare year. Those feelings remain grotesquely chiseled into our hearts and minds as if forged with a hatchet. We remember every detail and every nuance. At the outset, we each attempted to speak without interrupting each other, but soon found ourselves jumping in wherever and whenever we could with our own diverse thoughts and views. We run it here as it all played out.
Irv Cohen: “In the beginning I couldn’t understand how the world was going on without Jess, when I knew for a fact that the world had stopped. I woke up in the morning and saw cars driving and people walking and I just couldn’t believe it. I felt sheer pain as if someone had thrust a sword right through my stomach.”
Don Barkin: “Lisa was sick for about ten years, so I didn’t go through shock. It was a tough period we were going through and it’s tough to bring myself back to that time. I was just totally angry. I was angry at Lisa that she died, although I didn’t blame her. She had been sick for so long and fought it for so long and at the end I felt she gave up a little. She went and had an operation that she knew was very dangerous. But she was twenty-seven, married, and had a life of her own. The doctors wanted her to have a general anesthetic because she had to have four toes removed. We warned her against it. Any time she’d had general anesthesia before, she’d always gotten fluid down her lungs. The doctor said it had to be done that way, but still we didn’t want him to do it. I was so angry. I loved her to pieces, but I was so angry that she did that to herself.”
Mike Eisenberg: “I start counting from the time Brian was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of leukemia. Even though he was a fighter, deep inside I was preparing for the worst. We’d go from crisis to crisis and each time I saw him growing weaker and weaker, and I knew the likelihood of him surviving was getting smaller and smaller. But on the outside, I needed to stay strong for Brian, for
his sister and for Barbara. When he died, I felt exhausted. I separated myself from my emotions and moved from my heart to my head. Whatever feeling remained I channeled into rage, and I raged against everything, but especially against God. I put up a kind of fortress and I didn’t want anyone to see the suffering inside. I thought if others saw it, I’d have to look at it myself. Early on, in that first year, I heard I would need support from other people, maybe from other men who had similar situations. But I thought, ‘That’s not me … I’m different from you guys.’ Yeah, yeah.”
Joe Colletti: “I had retired that August, bought myself a new car. My son Marc had gotten married in June … and then all Hell broke loose. I was angry at God. Not that I was a truly religious person. I was brought up Catholic, but I became a nonbeliever when those two policemen came to tell us. I said, ‘It can’t be.’ When we came home from the morgue, I tried to understand what went on. I said, ‘We can’t do this by ourselves, we need help.’ I’d never asked for help from anybody. During the wake, I went to the deli and I couldn’t understand why the people were standing up. It was surreal and absurd. But that’s what comes to mind, that people had no right to be standing up. When everybody left and we were left with ourselves and our tears and our screams, we cried so hard that our bodies would ache. We survived on only water and each lost ten pounds. We would just drink a pitcher of water in our bedroom; the bedroom became the dining room. Lorenza went back to work after two weeks, but I was retired and I was going crazy. I was alone and I mostly had nightmares. I would stay in bed until 11 or 12. I couldn’t focus on anything for two minutes.”
Tom Volpe: “I still remember the police at the door at 4 A.M
.
Instantly, I felt a split in my body. This was too much for me to deal with or comprehend. I guess that was shock. That first year was characterized by feelings that I had no tools to deal with this horror. Rita had lost her father and knew something about bereavement, but I had never lost anybody close to me. My drug of choice became anger. As long as I was angry, I was comfortable. I was angry at anything, angry with God because he had my son. I used to say to God, ‘Show your face.’ I went to the cemetery two or three times a day. I became self-defeating. I guess your self-esteem suffers. My anger and not dealing with what was going on … I guess I was in denial. Denial is not such a bad thing. I had to keep busy; I had enormous energy. I never got tired. In the second year, it got even worse.”
Bob Long: “Michael had been sick for quite a while. We were just sort of going along I guess, so when the event came it was quite a shock. There’s really no way to explain it. I had a cacophony of feelings that made every part of my body ache. Everything you believed up to that point, whether religious or philosophical or social, is totally shattered. You have no more beliefs in life because if the worst thing ever can happen to you, then the world is upside down. We reacted in fashion … . When I say ‘we’ I mean that we all had a problem when we grieved at different rates and levels, and some caused discord and some brought us closer. But it’s very difficult. You can’t criticize anyone about how they grieve; you just have to be there for them, which is tough for men. You have an additional burden, your own and your spouse’s. I guess that’s a man’s way of thinking. We were totally debilitated, physically and mentally. Our lives were upside down and in slow motion. We could step out of them and watch ourselves go through the day. It was surreal. It was total disbelief. It was as if someone had plucked us out of our situation and landed us in some foreign country where people spoke a different language. We withdrew into ourselves. In terms of anger, I’m angry to this day.”
Mel Levine: “It was like in the movies when that telephone call comes. We found our way to New Jersey. Nurses and doctors came. It was like a movie script. They brought her down and blood was coming out of her nose … terrible. I cried from the moment I got into the car until we got home. I’m an angry guy, but I wasn’t angry for two years. I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t want to go to business. It was terrible. I don’t remember how I did anything, how I got into a car and drove anywhere. How did I come this distance? It was frightening. I couldn’t remember anything. I didn’t reach out to anybody. Phyllis did. I’ve got to give her credit.”
Bruce Goldstein: “It’s a combination of disbelief and denial and then you would find yourself asking ‘why’? In our particular case, we don’t know the details of why and what happened to Howie. We went through hiring a private investigator and speaking with the police. We think the police kind of sluffed it off as just another college kid at a fraternity weekend. The scenario never made sense to us. Nobody knows and we’ll never know. It’s different when you know the reason is an illness or an accident. We’ve just added an additional why or how or what to it. In that first year, I imagined I saw him just over there, and then over there didn’t turn out to be anything. Your mind created mirages. I’d go through
various scenarios of why he disappeared and why he would come back, almost as if I were writing a Hollywood movie about this person who was needed by the government to do secret work with his unique skills and it would be temporary and everybody would be angry and cry and then continue on with their lives. You know that’s not going to happen, but you find your mind wandering because what has really happened is totally unacceptable. You fight with that.”
Cliff Kasden is the only stepfather among our group. He came into the household when Neill was eight years old. Not being the biological father of the deceased child, makes for an entirely different perspective … not necessarily an easier one, but very different.
Cliff Kasden: “I accepted the role of caretaker of the two boys. I was trying to make my way. There was a lot of contention with Neill’s natural father, which didn’t stop until Neill died and this whole new chapter in life began for everybody. Personally, I experienced a lot of pain. I was there because of Maddy, and now the old Maddy was gone. Watching her was one thing and another was examining my relationship with Neill. He had been very loyal to his natural father. I had my best moments with Neill only when his natural father couldn’t provide for him, like when I had to drive him to New Jersey for computer components. But as he grew older, he didn’t feel the same obligation to his natural father and so our relationship was getting better. I suffered the loss of what could have been with Neill and, of course, what had been between Maddy and I was gone as well. I still feel a lot of pain as does everybody in this room. Mine may be for different reasons, but I’m in constant pain. In that first year, thank God, Maddy had a job to go to. I became sort of her caretaker, just trying to get her through the next day. I thought maybe I could go forward and find the silver lining wherever that was. I said things like, ‘We can’t go anyplace, so we won’t incur new debts.’ As a stepfather instead of inheriting a family and being able to joke around with other fathers who have kids, suddenly I didn’t have instant family; I had instant pain. No, I didn’t go through shock, because it wasn’t my flesh and blood. I’m just shackled with perpetual pain.”
The man who was Neill Perri’s flesh and blood father, John Perri, had been divorced from Maddy Kasden for eighteen years prior to their son Neill’s death. John had remarried after long years of bachelorhood, and he and his second wife Mary were to become the parents of a baby
girl just ten months following Neill’s passing. Still, he had always remained close to Neill and saw him on a weekly basis. He was much involved with Neill’s life. John lived nearby and was there throughout the events surrounding Neill’s death and burial. After some initial reluctance to share his feelings for the purpose of this book, John agreed, ultimately deciding that his views would be relevant to divorced fathers whose children have died after the divorce. He was not at the meeting with the other fathers, but spoke later of his feelings.
John Perri: “There was probably some ambivalence on my part, one side of me wanting to talk to you and the other side of me not. My way is kind of the opposite of what Maddy and her group do. They’re continually reaching out to do things for parents who’ve lost children, reaching out to give back and help … but I think they’re also doing it for their own needs. I could never do what they do. I would just die inside.”
“As much as they are in it and live with it all the time, I kind of run the other way. It’s my way of dealing with it to an extent. When Neill died I couldn’t face it, so it was fortuitous that I was married and with a different family. And then Mary’s pregnancy a month later was a gift from God and made it a little easier.”
“Mary was able to give me love and sympathy without suffering in the same way I was. I think a husband and wife who have lost a child are both in the same hole. You want to help each other, but you’re both twenty feet in a hole. It’s easier in a situation where there’s a stepmother. Mary didn’t know Neill that well. She was upset about him, but she could give more of herself; she wasn’t hurting the way I was.”
“Also there was the timing of my daughter’s birth. I think we found out Mary was pregnant two months after Neill died. In one way, it was difficult dealing with all those mixed emotions about life and death, which was bizarre in and of itself, but on the other hand I had something new and a new life. So, that gave me something else to focus on. I was able to continue my life and if I say ‘move on’ it’s a poor term, because you can never really move on from that experience. But I could continue my life and do things.”
In the first chapter of this book, our wives described the terrible exhaustion they all felt in that first year following the deaths of our children.
Our wives wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep so as to block out all thought. They each fell victim to enormous mental and physical fatigue, and just getting up for the day was almost more than they could bear. They were drained of energy. Not so most of us. Our anger seemed to fuel our energy.
Irv: “I had a need to work at a furious pace. I ripped up all the posts in my fence and concreted them all. I scraped and painted the house and stayed as busy as I could.”
Don: “Within the terrible anger that I felt, I also built up strength to keep moving. I didn’t stop. I just wanted to go. When Carol couldn’t go to work, I dragged her out of the house and made her come to work. For me, the only solution was just to keep going. I wanted to bury myself in work and not think about what happened.”