What Is a Traumatic Death?

Would you agree that a death (which is always a loss) is an especially traumatic loss if:

·      it occurs without warning

·      is untimely

·      involves violence

·      there is damage to the loved one’s body

·      the survivor regards the death as preventable

·      the survivor believes that the loved one suffered

·      the survivor regards the death, or manner of death, as unfair and unjust [1]

 

If you agree that any sudden needless untimely death, especially your child’s, is particularly grievous, then imagine Aurelia Plath’s grief after her daughter Sylvia died, overseas, at age 30. Told at first that Sylvia died of pneumonia, Aurelia learned days later that it was suicide, and son Warren told Aurelia the context and the details.

 

Aurelia wrote a brief angry note to a London newspaper that says those responsible for Sylvia’s death “know who they are.” She did not mail it, but kept it; it’s in archives. For future readers of this unsent letter, Aurelia added the initials of the suspect parties.

 

I can’t find in Sylvia Plath studies any respect or allowance for Aurelia’s trauma and grief. Her trauma would be as severe and multidimensional as ours if authorities phoned right now to say they found our child dead by suicide on a kitchen floor.

 

Rather than empathy (meaning, feeling what others feel) or sympathy (saddened by what others must be going through), Plath biographies and essays imply that Sylvia’s U.S. death notices – few and short because Sylvia wasn’t famous yet -- do not say “suicide” because prim Aurelia hoped to hide the real cause. No reason besides her personal character flaw.

 

We will be called to account for our assumptions.

 

Studies of mothers whose children died by suicide say mothers have not only the grief of suddenly losing a child but a burden of guilt, and, on top of that, they are judged. Even people who know suicide is never simple still suspect that a young suicide’s parents did not love them enough or in the right way, or were not prescient enough, or present enough, to stop them.

 

Aurelia in 1963 sent Sylvia’s friend Elizabeth Compton a note that was less about Sylvia than Aurelia’s own grief. Compton was offended and later sent Aurelia’s letter to a biographer as an example of Aurelia’s true personality. In summer 1963 Aurelia went to England. Her son-in-law, unable to think of any good reason a parent might want to visit their dead child’s former home and grave and children, thought Aurelia was coming for an “investigation.” And that she might dump too much love on her grandchildren. Remember he too was bereaved, as were the grandchildren.

 

Sylvia’s readers sympathize with her loss of her father and how his death changed her. It would be a truer picture if we saw that his death disrupted and changed her whole family. Sylvia’s 1953 suicide attempt shocked and terrified them. Aurelia wrote that she dreaded a recurrence. For her and her son 1963 was the second time around, only worse. Two families became survivors of a suicide and to this day they have not heard the end of it.

 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness says each suicide directly affects about 115 people and one in five (=23)  are devastated.

 

Living in a time of epidemic suicide we know that survivors of traumatic loss might cope by saying or writing tasteless vengeful unhinged or sentimental things, or frame the death as a murder, point fingers, or try everything to fix or explain it and never heal. A percentage will commit suicide themselves. Sylvia’s traumatic death very obviously colored all that occurred afterward, not much of it worth celebrating.

 

Sylvia suffered. But so did her family.

 

[1] “Traumatic Bereavement: Basic Research and Clinical Implications,” M. Barle, C. Wortman, J.A. Latack, 2017.