Creating a Space to Mourn

As time has brought the illness and death of family and friends, I have thought about the myriad ways we try to communicate with one another about these experiences. Again and again I have been deeply moved by our ability to create ways of communicating that words alone cannot achieve. These states have a dream-like quality that can resemble play. Play may seem an inappropriate term, but, to quote Winnicott (1971), play is a serious business. Like transitional phenomena, these states exist in the space between two people and must be created, not choreographed. We may not know where we are headed until we arrive. I will describe two such experiences. The first was with a close friend and the second in a consultation.

The first example evolved gradually over a period of years in my “conversations” with my college roommate as a rare neurological disorder took its toll. I have put the word “conversation” in quotes as the way we communicated evolved over the years. At the beginning we spoke on the phone, then by email as her ability to speak declined. As her condition further worsened, her husband sent emails for her and added his own comments. She did not like to speak of her illness and for a while mentioned it so casually that I did not register its seriousness. She preferred to speak of what she planned to do next. This led to a number of adventures and no small number of misadventures. I found it difficult to know what to say. I certainly did not want to go on about what now seemed like my trivial complaints, nor did I feel comfortable talking about things she could no longer do.

Several years earlier our family built a house in the foothills near Mendocino. I sent photographs of the house, annotating them with a chatty account of how two urbanites adjusted to the country. She lived in New York and loved the photos of local wildlife captured by the camera traps installed near creeks and waterholes. She particularly liked the picture of an enraged bear just