How Men Grieve
Men and women are different -- in how they mourn.
And for men, losing
a mother is especially difficult.
By Bob Blauner
USA Weekend
October 10-12, 1997
For two decades, sociologist Bob Blauner, professor emeritus at the
University of California, Berkeley, has taught courses on men and
grieving. The following is an exclusive adaptation from his upcoming book,
Our Mothers' Spirits: Great Writers on the Death of Mothers and the
Grief of Men (HarperCollins, $23), in stores now.
 ast month the world lost two of
its best- known and best-loved mothers. Mother Teresa never had children
of her own. But she was the archetypal mother, a symbol of compassion and
nurturance who captured the world's imagination for her work with the poor
and the sick. And, of course, Princess Diana, a "real" mother
who also cared for the suffering and who left behind two young sons,
Princes William and Harry.
My study of boys who lost their mothers at an early age suggests that
the serious "griefwork" comes later, typically decades later. So
in the years to come, but perhaps not until their late 30s, 40s or even
50s, these two English lads will have their work cut out for them.
But even as boys mature, the work of grieving -- and grief is real work
-- does not come easily. Men have difficulty with mourning in general and,
most painfully of all, a mother's death. For a man, the death of his
mother may be the most difficult of all life's losses to fully face and
feel. The death of a father is "easier" because our father
feelings are more accessible to our conscious minds than are our mother
feelings.
Mourning, after all, is simply becoming aware, pondering deeply, going
through and getting past, the varied feelings we have toward a loved one,
feelings that were there all along but tend to be called forth
dramatically by death. For our fathers we have learned to name those
feelings, whether they are anger, loss, betrayal, admiration -- the
possibilities are endless.
But with our mothers, the feelings have deeper roots. Their origins go
back to infancy, even to the womb, long before the onset of language. They
remain inchoate, often blurred and fuzzy, as well as ambivalent and
suppressed. That's why it's not easy, even for an adult man, to look at
his relationship with his mother with a clear eye.
 ompared with women, men tend to
be less in touch with their emotions, particularly with their deep-seated
feelings of sadness and loss. For many men it is still not
"manly" to cry, to let all their feelings hang out.
Unfortunately, anger is too often the emotion of choice.
The death of a mother also reopens the big wound of childhood, the time
when a boy had to let go of his mother, his first love, in order to
"grow up and be a man." Girls grow up to become women without
such an abrupt break, and for that reason their relationships with their
mothers -- difficult, even stormy, as they can be in the externals of life
-- are not so deeply conflicted. This may be why so many men, even in
midlife and old age, are unable to "return" to the mother after
that youthful separation, to accept her gifts and acknowledge her great
influence as well as their common bond, and instead remain locked in
relations of alienation, distance or routinized obligation, often
interlaced with anger, guilt, resentment and disappointment on both sides.
Such an outcome is not likely to be the fate of the heirs to the
British throne, because they were still enmeshed in loving relationships
with their mother at the time of her death. It is true that mourning will
be especially painful because of the way Diana died without time for her
sons to say goodbye, for their mother to bestow her blessings.
Centuries back, in the Middle Ages, death was omnipresent and people
did not fear it as much as we moderns do. For the privileged strata, a
"Good Death" was celebrated as the high point of a good life. In
drawings of the Good Death, a patriarch lies on his deathbed, at home,
surrounded by family, friends, pets and the trappings of power and
possessions. This was the time to impart wisdom, above all to say one's
goodbyes.
 oday, we wonder what will happen
to William and Harry as they divide their time between such all-male
environments as boarding schools and their father's home. How much of
their mother's spirit will they be able to carry with them as the
exigencies of their father's temperament and the austerity of the House of
Windsor become more and more insistent?
For example, will William and Harry be able to carry on their mother's
legacy of social justice? This was a matter of great concern to her, as
her brother emphasized in his moving eulogy.
I suspect, from my years of studying men and mothers, that Diana's
spirit, like the spirits of most mothers, will not be easily expunged.
Boys can grow up deeply connected to their mothers whether these mothers
remain alive or passed on long ago.
his may be somewhat easier for
boys and men in the United Kingdom. Although the British are justly famous
for their stiff upper lips and their ability to keep their emotions under
wraps, they are not ashamed, as Americans too often are, of being close to
their mothers.
In the United States, we feel a conflict between fully embracing our
mothers, wholeheartedly expressing our love for them, and being a
"real man." Why are we so afraid of being labeled "mama's
boys," so cowed by vulgar Freudian notions of Oedipal complexes? Men
in other countries around the world do not carry such a burden.
Nor is this conflict as present among racial minorities in the United
States. Over the years, many male African-American students have proudly
brought their mothers to my university classes and told me that their
mothers were their best friends, something I have never heard from a
single white male student in 35 years of teaching.
 ne day in the future it is
possible that the expression "Like mother, like son" will be as
unexceptional as its counterpart, "Like father, like son" -- and
that people will be able to say of a boy, without raising eyebrows (as
people in England have been saying about Prince William): "That boy
is the spitting image of his mother."
As the world continues to mourn the loss of the charismatic Princess
Diana, let us honor the love between her and her two sons, a love that
will sustain them long after her untimely death and may even encourage us
ordinary mortals to honor our own mothers' spirits.
Reprinted here with permission.
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