The Dead, And Those They Leave Behind

Too long, for the family cannot hold together until then, and the mother moves on to find her own way of coping with the loss, while the others struggle on with their own lives.

This, then, is the aftermath. Bereavement itself is no easy thing. It involves several necessary stages of grieving before a sense of acceptance is achieved. The loss of a child is hard enough — in a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, a couple separates after their baby dies. In Ian McEwan’s novel The Child in Time, a couple falls apart when their child is kidnapped one morning from the supermarket. Such loss is far harder when it is a deliberate killing, such as a bank robbery or a Greyhound slashing. In Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, a travel writer and his wife of two decades separate after their young son is killed in a Burger Bonanza shootout on his second day at camp. And in the film In the Bedroom, we saw the devastating effects of a killing on the victim’s family.

In Sebold’s novel, Susie’s disappearance — her murder — so sudden and inexplicable, leaves the family in shock. It is a complicated web of feelings, from anger and denial, to guilt for words said or unsaid, survivor guilt, “if I had only been there” guilt.

There is also the heartrending matter of identifying the body, if and when it is found. As in so many real-life cases, it is not clear for a long time that she is dead — until an elbow is found. There are the dealings with police, neighbours, friends to be endured. And bits of evidence that might come up suddenly, after years, bringing back all the grief and guilt in a rush again.

Susie’s siblings are shunned at school. The family is isolated, either left to grieve alone or told by friends to get over it. A murder, then, takes many victims — not just the dead person.

I recall another novel, Ali Smith’s Hotel World, on the Booker shortlist last year, which also began in the voice of a dead girl. Sara, a hotel chambermaid, is dead. Sara tells us, “We were a girl, we died young; the opposite of old, we died it.” For the dead girl, death is both a loss of the senses, and a gain of history, understanding, and a kind of vision. She begins to appear to her family. Her mother is afraid, but her sister is not: “I couldn’t appear enough for her.” Appearing to them, she lives on — and their healing begins.

And so, for the people Susie leaves behind, closure is painful. Letting go, moving on, these are facile phrases — for they know that even if they do move on, the path that each of them will choose is very different from the one they would have taken if Susie had been alive. But they do move on. A tender story, full of surprises.