Episode 9: The Science of Grief and Bereavement
Hannah: Was it hard to find recent research on this or was it like, because I also heard that it's kind of not been studied till sort of recently, but then I could also see it being really obscure in the past.
Izzy: Yeah. So a lot of the more experimental research I found was more recent. The older works that I cited tended to be more historical references. I did a lot of research into like, historically, how we used to treat our bodies and then also like different cultures, how they treat their bodies. So it was a lot of intersection between my initial psychological question, basically, and then having to take in anthropological data having to take in historical data having to take in, like pathology basically and thinking like, okay, you know, does it matter if the bodies buried in a graveyard versus in a backyard? Like, am I allowed to bury my body in the backyard? The answer's no. In most places, because it's considered a public health hazard. Fun fact. Yeah, it's just it was a lot of I thought it was gonna be a lot of very, like psychological experimental research. But when I really started looking into it, I was I want to say I was surprised but I was very impressed by how many layers there are.
Because you can't answer the question of why do we care about what happens to the bodies of our loved ones? You can't answer that question without considering the history, how we as humans evolved, I mean, going all the way back to prehistoric times to us at our very, very basic evolutionary stages. You know, disposing of a body was vital to our survival as a species because if we just kept them around with us, they would be breeding grounds for diseases and parasites, and it would kill people it would have just killed more people. You can't live. You know, you can't have a bunch of decomposing bodies around you know, granted, there are cultures around the world that do tend to keep bodies closer for extended periods of time, but they've developed techniques to ensure that the bodies are essentially mummified. So they don't really decompose the same way. But there's just so many things that have to be taken into consideration when you talk about death in general. There's no, you can't you cannot isolate it as a concept. It is about as far reaching as something can get.
Hannah: Yeah and it also like differs a lot based on different cultures around the world. Didn't you say like in Western society, it's common now for like the funeral home like whisks away the body like almost immediately?
Izzy: Yeah.
Hannah: Is there a law on how quickly you have to give up the body?
Izzy: Um, I'm not sure if there's one overarching law. If I were to look into it, I would, my best guess is that it's state by state legislation. That is a lot of death laws in the US are contingent upon what state the body is in. But in in American culture and in Western culture, specifically because the funeral industry has so much money behind it, it is just very strongly encouraged that families and loved ones just let the funeral home sort of take the reins and take control and you know, do what needs to be done like you know, preparing the body and stuff and putting it in the casket or the coffin or setting it up for viewings and everything like that, and then a lot of weeks are usually held up funeral homes as well. When in the past, like even within the last century or so, wakes used to be held primarily at the home. The family would actually keep the body at the home and lay it out and hold the wakes there and then proceed to bring it to either the crematorium or the cemetery wherever the body is going. So it's a very different culture from what we were even 100 years ago. In the US right now, and it's I personally believe that it's it's because of the multibillion dollar industry that is –
Hannah: A billion?
Izzy: Yeah multibillion billion.
Hannah: Oh my gosh.
Izzy: I don't know the exact I don't know the exact number. But I do believe it is in the billions. And when you think about it, it makes sense because it is constantly in demand and especially with COVID, I'm sure that the numbers have gone up exponentially, with you know, people dying a lot. And that's not to say that everybody involved in the funeral industry is inherently a bad person. But it's just that, it is an industry. You know, there are people who are in it for the right reasons and there are people who do a really, really good job at communicating with families and respecting their wishes and making sure they're open with them. And really trying to help them.
Hannah: Yeah, and it's like when we were last talking. It's like, I didn't even realize until I read more of your research how much capitalism has affected how we handle death and dying. And how, like the funeral industry has made us much more separated from the body in ways that yeah, might kind of like distance us from that. I don't know if you couldn't put that in your own words. Because it's gonna be more eloquent than what I just did.
Izzy: But yeah, I not to sound like a raging communist or anything but capitalism has absolutely impacted the way and we as a society and as a culture, view and experience, death and grief. And historically speaking, like I said, within the last 100 years, there's been a huge shift in not only where people die, but where the body goes after death. So in the early 1900s, death happened primarily in the home with the family, and the family was primarily responsible for taking care of the body, holding wakes, there were funeral homes that they could go to and that was certainly an option. But it's not like today, where it is the only option, essentially. And that has shifted rapidly to you know today where statistically most deaths happen in the hospital. And bodies are not usually brought back home when somebody leaves their home to go to the hospital, and they die at the hospital. They don't come back. Their body never comes back.
There's no, there's not sort of that sense of ceremony or closure. And when a body dies, or when somebody dies at hospital, it becomes a body I guess. The body is then taken to the morgue and it's kept in the morgue and then the funeral home shows up and then the funeral home takes it to their morgue and they hold it there and it's a lot of behind the scenes transfer of these people's bodies. That there are extended periods of time where the bereaved and the grieving families really don't know where their loved one is.
And I I've witnessed that personally with my mother. When my grandmother passed away because her funeral she passed away here in DC, Her funeral was held in New York. And there was a period of time where her body was being transported from DC to New York. And my mom has maintained that the hardest part of that entire ordeal of losing her mother was that period of time where she had no idea where she was. She knew she was somewhere between New York and DC but she did not know where she was.
Hannah: Wow, I didn't know that. It's so interesting that they don't involve the family more with that.
Izzy: A lot of the times the family has to really push to be involved. But of course when you're grieving you don't always think of that or you don't always know or you don't have the energy to really push for it and say hey, I want this information. You just you know you're given this you're told Okay, we're gonna take them to here and you can meet us there at this time but you have no idea where they go in between that, and that is incredibly distressing for most people I would imagine.
Hannah: in your thesis, you also talk about primates behavior and how they often groom the body or carry it around with them or interact with it basically. And I think other animals do that too. Like I think whales carry –
Izzy: Whales are another one. Mother whales are known to carry their dead calves around. It really hasn't been observed in adult whales like breathing other adult whales, I think primarily because their bodies are too big and they just sort of sink. But another very prominent species that that's been observed in is elephants.
Hannah: Aww, I love elephants!
Izzy: When elephants pass away, their herd mates will oftentimes you know, touch the body, interact with it, move on. But then because they're migratory, they'll usually take the same path for years. And if an elephant dies along that path, they will visit the bones of that elephant that has since passed, and they'll touch the bones and usually stop at them for a bit. And, you know, it's really hard to say, Oh, this proves that they're grieving. Because, you know, all it proves is that they're touching bones, you know, at a very, very base level. They're just exploring their environment. But it's not hard to infer that there is some level of understanding going on there. That this is, you know, a family member that they cared about a friend that they cared about, who is now gone and they interact with the body to help solidify the fact that they are gone.
Because, evolutionarily speaking, it is not advantageous for us to stay in that state of, of initial grief of that pure, unadulterated sadness and sorrow. Because that can be really debilitating. And, you know, a lot of the primate research that has been done shows that you know, once they interact with the body of, of their herd mate or clan mate, or I don't know what a group of primates is called. Once they interact with the body, they're able to move on with their lives, they're able to keep going and keep living. And I think that that is something that's being robbed from us, as a society and as a culture. And not again, not because there's this whole big you know, evil conspiracy of like, we're trying to keep everybody in grief and we're, you know, evil man in a big hat behind the curtain pulling all the strings, you know. It's just that economically it's, it's really smart to be like, Hey, I got this, just pay me some money, and I'll take care of it. And for some people, it works. Some people don't want to and don't need to interact with the bodies of their loved ones.
That's the beauty of being human is our individuality. But those who do and those who would benefit from it often don't get the chance because they don't know they have the chance to or they, they don't know that it's like they don't even know that it's something they can do. You know, there's a lot of misconceptions about laws regarding dead bodies. A lot of people think that it's illegal to want to hold a wake in your home, it's illegal to, you know, be there with the body one as it's going into the crematorium. There's a lot of misconceptions about that.
Hannah: Yeah, I I'm having this image in my mind that it's like a memory I have of something I saw on TV when I was like young, and it was like, really had an impression on me. And it was, I think, Oprah cause I watched a lot of Oprah, like I don’t know why.
Izzy: Of course it’s Oprah.
Hannah: Like, this woman's husband died in a car crash that was so tragic, and I don't there, there couldn't have been video unless there was CCTV of it, but she may have explained and then I visualized it were like his body was on the sidewalk and she was like, you know, screaming and crying and hugging him. And people were tearing her away. And you know, and being like, No, you gotta go. You gotta go. No, no, I don't want to go.
Izzy: You can’t touch him.
Hannah: They wouldn't even let her have like two minutes. It's like, of course you want to like, hug and like, you know, he had just died. He's right there. And they're like, no, no, no, and they're like, dragging her away. And I feel like that's just gonna make it a million times more traumatic for her. Literally they tore him away from her when there was already nothing they could do to save him. So why are you tearing him away from her? And I didn't register about how that doesn't make sense until like I talked to you. I'm like, that's like it doesn’t make sense.
Izzy: It’s very culturally ingrained in, in American culture specifically, but also Western culture as a whole. That the living do not interact with the dead. And that's a lot of the times that a lot of the times that that's the reason behind the whole like creepy morticians stereotype or like you know, if you tell somebody you work in a funeral home or you tell someone you're a mortician, you know, imagine how would someone react to that, you know, someone will be like, Oh my God, that's terrible. That's so that's like scary. That's gross. Like what kind of person chooses to do that?
Hannah: Yeah, there is definitely a stereotype of a creepy mortician.
Izzy: There’s a stereotype. You expect a certain kind of person to go into that job and that's like the creepy old man. And it's, it is a cultural phenomenon for us to be like you said, tearing people away from their dead. And I also want to clarify that I'm not trying to advocate for pushing people towards their dead either. I'm just a huge advocate for a person's ability to choose how they want to interact with the bodies of their loved ones. Because I remember being a child and being at the funeral of my grandparents, you know, I remember the one I remember the most was one of my grandmother's and, you know, because I'm the grandchild I was like, up front with the rest of the family. And there was a moment where all of the grandkids were going up and kissing her forehead. And I was terrified. I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to be near her. I didn't want to touch her, because it didn't look like her. It was you know, very uncanny valley kind of thing. And that also plays into it, the whole evolutionary thing. I have a whole thing about the uncanny valley.
Hannah: what's the uncanny valley?
Izzy: So the uncanny valley is that uncomfortable reaction you get when you see something that's like kind of human but not quite. The most popular example of it that I can think of is the animation from the Polar Express.
Hannah: Oh, yes. Yes, oh my gosh!
Izzy: It’s human enough that you recognize it but it's not enough that it's creepy as hell and makes you uncomfortable. And, and, and corpses are, it's been theorized that corpses are the origination of the uncanny valley. Which is we're not supposed to be super comfortable around them. Because you know, as they decompose they can breed disease and, and, like parasites and attract, like lots of vermin that you don't really want around living people. But that's the whole gist of it. But I do I vividly remember being so upset that I had to go up and kiss my grandmother's forehead because I wasn't ready for it. And I was a kid and it was expected of me and everybody was watching and I didn't want to do it. And I mean, I ended up doing it because I was a kid and the grownups were telling me to do it, but you know that that really upset me and even later on in life, I'm like, wow, that's a little messed up. Like I still I don't have any bad memories of her I don't you know, I don't associate that memory with her specifically. I associate it with complicating my ability to deal with her passing because I was already in a very vulnerable state. And then I had that experience, which upset me even more.
Hannah: Yeah it is really upsetting.
Izzy: It's really, yeah, and it was, you know, it was very well intentioned. It was very much like, go kiss your grandmother. This is going to be the last time you get to do that. And it's like a respect thing. And it's like, a family thing and whatever. But being forced to do something that you don't want to do when you're grieving and especially when it involves the physical body of your loved one can have such an adverse effect on the grief process.
Hannah: Yeah, I mean, it's complicated too, because when my friend my friend Lauren passed away, it was closed casket. I don't know the reasoning behind it. There could have been a million reasons. But in a way, that meant that, like me hearing about her death was more of an abstract concept. You know, it's like, I heard that she passed away and then I go to a funeral and I see this wooden box and I'm told that she's inside of it. And so it's like, in a way my brain like I totally felt like I was outside of reality. Like it didn't feel like real life, it felt like a nightmare. It's possible that that made the grief worse. I have no idea because I also would’ve been very upset to see her live their debt. So I don't know which one would be better to be honest. I mean, they would. They both like have their different like reactions, but yeah, I don't know. It's just something I've been thinking about.
Izzy: It's very different when we have a more abstract idea of what's happened to somebody. Especially if it's something sudden, like your friend, where you, You know, it wasn't like she had this illness. You know, that she had been battling for a long time and you were sort of expecting it to happen. It was a very sudden event. So to you. You know, she was alive and then she was gone. And it wasn't just that she was dead. She was gone because you didn't get to see her.
Hannah: Yeah, it was just like a total disappearance of her from the face of the earth.
Izzy: And that that is tricky is very tricky. Because sometimes closed caskets are necessary, especially in the body's undergone like a severe amount of trauma that really can't be fixed to be presentable enough because sometimes you know, whatever a body goes through can be it can be more traumatic to see that than to see the closed casket, but at the same time, it's like a lose situation, you know, you're gonna get messed up either way. It's either going to be that ambiguous loss of being told that they're gone and having to believe that they're gone, but not being able to actually see the proof, or being able to see the proof but being traumatized by how horrible and gory or whatever that proof might be.
Hannah: So what did the research from what you found why is it that is, the research suggests that that proof is can be helpful?
Izzy: So when we talk about the proof of someone being dead being helpful. I like to describe, grief as like a ball and your brain is a box. And in the beginning, your brain is quite small, the box is quite small and the ball is quite big, and it keeps bumping around and every time it bumps a surface. Every time it bumps the inside of the box you're hurting, and you're back in that in that very first deep, deep, sorrowful pain. But as time goes on the box around the ball grows, and it hits the sides less and less often. It's never gonna stop hitting the sides of that box. You're always gonna have moments where you go back to that place and you're hurting and you're in pain. But it will happen less and less often. And you'll have time to grow around it and learn how to deal with it. In studies of pet owners, there have been studies of pet owners who have least recently lost pets.
And in those studies, there are two conditions: there are pet owners who viewed and interact with their pets bodies. And there are pet owners who did not, so if someone was taking their dog to be put down and they couldn't bring themselves to be in the room with it. And then you know, the animal gets goes to get cremated. And all they get back is a bag of ashes, versus someone who's in the room with their dog while it's being put down, sits with it. And then lets it go. There's this phenomenon of false cues where you know, the most normal thing I can compare it to is like the Phantom phone ringing where you like think you hear your phone ringing or buzzing or vibrating and you check it and nothing's actually happened.
That tends to happen with people we've lost, well you know sometimes we'll think oh my gosh, did I just hear their footsteps? Did I just hear their keys in the door? With pets oftentimes it's did I hear the jingling of their collar? Did I hear the meow did I hear a bark? And pet owners who interacted with their pets’ bodies reported fewer of those false cues than pet owners who did not. And those false cues are really significant because when you're grieving somebody and you get a cue like that, and you think oh, that's you know, that's my friend coming into the house or that's my pet coming down the stairs. Then you're faced all over again with the realization that they're not there and the ball hits the wall of that cube again.
And the more often those false cues happen, the more often you are sent back to that place of I'm in pain and I'm grieving and I'm hurting. The less often those false cues happen, it's pretty much in colloquial terms that's moving on, or being able to grow from it. The way I describe it is, you know, your box grows slower the more queues you receive, because you're not able to process life without them. You're constantly being reminded. You're constantly thinking, Oh, they're just around the corner, they're coming back. Whereas when you don't experience those cues, your box is able to grow and you experience the ball hitting the wall fewer times.
Hannah: Yeah, I could see how even though the closure is horrible it does give you a sense of closure like I had been there by a cat's side when we put him down and you know, it was with my sister and my aunt and we were sobbing and it was so emotional, but like, I also got to share that moment with them. And I got to see like him, you know, slowly fall asleep and so in a way that was like that was closure. Whereas if he just disappeared and someone you know just says oh, he's dead. He's gone. Then I don't get that same closure. So I mean, I can definitely understand that. And I know I told you that I had a lot of dreams after my friend passed away. That was part of just like me I think still even just processing like the shock lasted a really long time. Months and months and months and months of shock where I would I would kind of be like living in a daze like she's like, oh my god she’s dead, like, What? And my dreams would be like, you know, I find her and find out that she has been alive this whole time. And that she'd been faking her death. And I'd run up to her and be like, oh my god like thank God but I'm so mad at you for faking your death. Why would you do that? And but also just so relieved, you know, kind of like I knew it. I knew it wasn't true. I knew it. And then just in the dreams that she would, she wouldn't recognize me and then she would run off. And it was so devastating. And I think yeah, like part of that is just the fact that she just disappeared, which is really hard when that happens.
Izzy: And that sort of ambiguous grief, there are like different levels to it. And ambiguous grief is a is a term that's used in research when it comes to grief and bereavement. It usually applies to like missing persons cases or people who have been involved in natural disasters where their bodies couldn't be recovered, but they are presumed dead. A lot of cases like that have that ambiguous grief because they don't they know and they are told and they can assume that rationally, you know the person that they love is dead and not coming back. But they don't have any physical proof. And we don't like accepting just ambiguous. Oh yeah they're gone now. It's okay. It's fine. You know, they're gone. We don't know what happened but you know, they're not here anymore. Time to move on. Human beings aren't really wired to accept that.
Hannah: And those cases of like that there's even if it's like 99.9% chance, there's still a point .1% chance that could be alive and like you're going to cling to that maybe like forever, and that's just going to make it so hard to process your grief. Because you're always gonna have that thought like what if?
Izzy: Exactly and then there's also the thought of trying to move on and accept it and be like, Okay, there's a 99% chance that they're gone. I should move on. And then you're faced with the thought of what if I move on and they come back? How are they going to view me that? What if they're fine and they come back and I think they're dead? How am I going to recover from that? Would I rather endure the pain of holding out hope for this tiny, tiny possibility? Or would I rather try and accept it and gain closure at the risk of them coming back and not only hurting me but hurting them as well for you know, being like, How could you think I was dead? You know, why didn't you wait for me? There's a lot of that a lot of that fear really plays into the way we cope with loss.
Hannah: Yeah, and you feel like in order to best honor them, I love them would be to, to hold on and stay there in the grief. And I think that's true. And even if you know they're dead, you know, like you know, like just in general with grief. I feel like it's so hard because, you know, grief is love. Like it's the other side of the coin. So it makes sense that we would feel like when I'm in pain, I'm loving them. As much as I can. And like while that's true and that's a part of it. Like it's hard if that's how we, it's tricky if that's what we think the only way to love them is because then that keeps us stuck.
Izzy: Yeah.
Hannah: It's just really tricky.
Izzy: It is the whole the whole thing is very tricky. And it's not made any easier by the fact that it's not commonly talked about and that anybody who's interested in it or wants to work within, you know, the death field in any capacity either you know, within the funeral industry, as a death doula as someone working in palliative or hospice care, you know, trauma psychologists, anything related to that is seen as like taboo or weird or dark and it's like, oh my God, why would you want to work in that that's so like, out there, and it's really not it is one of the most universal experiences of the human condition. Like birth and death are two conditions that we as people are all going to experience no matter what.
Hannah: And any forms of life.
Izzy: Yeah. And that is regardless of literally anything else, regardless of race of genders, socioeconomic status, culture, anything. And the less we talk about it, the less we're able to deal with it and the more it hurts when somebody does die.
Hannah: And I think you mentioned in your paper that dying in our society is seen as an inconvenience to productivity or what was it?
Izzy: It is I mean, I don't remember the exact quote that I wrote but it is it is both a failure of the medical system as well as an inconvenience to the productivity of society. Because when somebody is grieving, they can't work as well as they did. They can't participate in society the same way that they did before. And, you know, that's the idea behind like, oh, yeah, you can take a couple days off if you need to go to a funeral or something. But like, when you get back you should be fine, right?
Izzy: When my when my other grandmother passed away, it was like, what like, two three weeks before I graduated from high school and I remember I had so many final projects and work that I needed to do that I went to school the day I found out that she had passed away. My dad woke me up in the morning saying, you know, grandma passed away last night and we've been expecting it for a while, you know, so I wasn't totally blown away by it. But I just sort of thought okay, but I have work to do. Like I have shit that I need to get done. And I had put myself under so much pressure to perform even as a kid even in school, that I didn't let myself take that time until my family left to go to her funeral in New York. And I had to I pretty much pushed myself through that initial phase of grief and put it off for couple days so I could finish up both papers, you know. And I would be fairly confident in guessing that I'm not the only one who's done that.
Hannah: Oh, heck no.
Izzy: At any point in time, you know?
Hannah: Definitely not. Yeah, and it's like, I mean, we don't even we also don't even get that many days off. Just like you would have to use your vacation days to even get like a couple of weeks off work. And I wouldn't I might posit that a couple of weeks isn't even enough. Especially if it's someone who was really close like yeah, we just need to take that time.
Izzy: And there's definitely a balance that needs to be struck. Because for some people having a routine can be really helpful in dealing with grief and part of that brain can be work or school. But you can’t assume that that works for everybody. And again, it all comes back to being able to have that choice of being able to say, hey, I need to take some time to myself, I need to stay home and I need to sleep or I need to just be with myself I need to work through what I'm feeling. You know, people have to be able to have that choice. And most people don't. They get a couple days and then it's like Alright, back to work. You're you know, you had a person die. Sorry. You grieved. Now you're done. That's not how it works. Like I said, there's a ball in a box and it keeps hitting that wall and it doesn't stop.
Hannah: Right.
Izzy: I still have moments you know like, my last grandmother died when I was 18. I think. Yeah, I was 18. And I'm 24 now, and you know, it's not like a huge amount of time, but I still have moments where I’m just hit with this awful sinking feeling of like none of them ever got to see me graduate from high school. None of them ever got to see me start college. None of them saw me graduate from college and I see my friends with their grandparents. And God bless my friends. They're so sweet. And their grandparents are so sweet. And you know, I've had moments like there was one moment this summer I was visiting my boyfriend and I met his grandparents and like they made us cookies and I went fishing with his grandfather and he taught me how to fish and that was so cool. And then I got home or I got back to my boyfriend's place and I burst into tears because I hadn't had an experience like that for years, I hadn't had that feeling of a grandparent, which is a very specific kind of relationship and feeling you know, very odd to have to have lost that at a point in time where I'm not a child. But I wasn't an adult yet. You know, and you're you usually you know, grandparents aren't, they don't stick around for ages and ages and ages. You know, there's the whole you know, there's generational gaps, but it was very weird for me specifically because all of my friends still had theirs. And I was constantly being reminded of it and seeing it and I don't know just spending time with my boyfriend's grandparents was like, oh, like they're treating me like a granddaughter.
Hannah: Yeah, I can absolutely see that. And it's also like a reminder of what you're missing because it's in the busyness of life we're able to momentarily forget what we so desperately miss. And then yeah, we have moments that remind us like, one trigger is that like a lot of people will just casually in conversation say oh yeah, me and my best friend, blah blah blah blah blah. And just you know, and but I zero in on that. Not that people aren't my best friend, but that after her death I got scared to use that word, because I'm still figuring out what it means. And just, it's just really complicated. And so I just I envy people who are able to like kind of flippantly use it and be like, I have a best friend and I saw her yesterday and I'll see her again next week. And I'll see her for years and years until we're 80, it just makes me so angry. And also really sad and kind of like oh man I like I wish I didn't have such complicated feelings about it. And that I feel like I'm not able to, to say that.
Izzy: Yeah. Yeah, and it's incredible how grief affects our connections to very mundane ordinary things. And how it can hit at seemingly unprovoked times, you know. I you know, I can't see Cardinals without thinking of my grandfather. You know, every time I see a yellow rose, I think of my grandmother. It's, it's these like, really strange, very mundane things that you know, other people would be like, Oh, that's, that's nice. That's a thing. You know, but to you to you and your specific experience that is so much more meaningful, and we often aren't aware of that of the specificities that come with grief. It's often referred to as like this big overarching umbrella term, just this big mass of generalized pain. Right, but it can get very, very specific.
Hannah: What would you say is like the main takeaway that you've learned through your research?
Izzy: The biggest takeaway I got personally was working through my own grief through academia. And that's not surprising for me. I'm very scientifically and factually oriented and very clinically thinking person. It was a very much like this sort of, I can sit down on my desk and I can read this and I can relate it to my own experiences. And that was really cool for me. The biggest, I mean, the biggest takeaway that I would like to tell other people is that you have a choice. And you have the ability to advocate for yourself when you're going through that process. And in trying to deal with not only the grief of losing your loved one, but like the super shitty, bureaucratic technical stuff that comes with figuring out what to do with their body.
There's always a choice.