The Duality of Grieving

By Al Martinez
April 2007

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It is one of those perfect autumn days of sunshine and balanced temperatures, neither too hot nor too cold. Not a breeze stirs through the cul-de-sac of this quiet Los Angeles neighborhood, where Pinney and Ilean Kanter sit at a kitchen table and remember their granddaughter Elisa.

While the day glows with promise, Ilean’s eyes fill with tears. Pinney, a retired aerospace engineer, is tense with emotional pain as they talk about Elisa, a bright and active 13-year-old, who died suddenly of an undetected heart ailment last June. “He never breaks out in tears,” Ilean says of her husband of 53 years, “but I know that he is crying inside. I know what he’s thinking. It’s in his voice.”

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Elisa was their only grandchild. The Kanters babysat her as an infant, took her on trips as a little girl and opened their home to her as she grew into a teenager. One moment she was alive and seemingly healthy, a straight-A student and an accomplished writer and musician, just three days away from a trip to Israel—and the next moment she was gone. The suddenness of her death intensified the loss. When she died, the world they knew evaporated.

“I went to the hospital and rubbed her arm,” Ilean remembers, sobbing softly. “I kissed her three times. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. I’ll never get over it.”

In the days following Elisa’s death, the Kanters helped Elisa’s parents—their daughter, Debbie, and their son-in-law, Leslie—experience their own grief. They cried together, Ilean says, her eyes brimming with remembered tears, and talked about the love and joy that Elisa brought into their lives. Ilean and Pinney listened while the parents talked, emptying themselves of the sadness that filled their new loneliness.

“We supported Debbie by just being there,” Ilean says. “What else could we do? I took her shopping, anything she wanted. I tried to make her laugh when we talked about Elisa. She was the sweetest kid you’ll every meet—when she was a little girl she called the escalator the alligator…”

The Author's Insight I have five grandchildren, and writing this article has made me wonder how I could ever handle the grief that would be a firestorm in my life. We are a close family and have many times shared our home with our grandchildren. My wife has babysat them, and I have held their small hands in mine as we walked through the forests of their growing up. In the event of tragedy, would I be strong for my son, the father of three, and my daughter, the mother of two, or would I dissolve into tears and uselessness, too weak to deal with a grief that claws at the heart? — A.M.

As Ilean talks, a small terrier named Daisy that they bought for Elisa curls up on the floor near them, a reminder of the little girl they had helped raise.

Now, still less than a year after Elisa’s death, the Kanters, both in their 80s, continue to deal with their own grief a day at a time.

Ilean makes it a point to talk with Debbie on the telephone once or twice a day. Elisa becomes a living presence when they reminisce about her, Ilean says. “Debbie feels cheated and so do I. Why did God take her so soon? I tell Debbie how lonesome I am. I don’t want to upset her, but it’s the way we both feel. She must know that she isn’t the only one suffering.”

Indeed, grandparents often are the forgotten grievers. Standing in the background, trying to be strong for their own son or daughter, grandparents are called upon to play the difficult role of parents to their grieving children, while also staring into the void left by the death of a grandchild. How should they act? What should they say to a son or daughter who has just lost the most precious possession?

“The death of a grandchild ranks high on the scale of human grief—but it is rarely acknowledged,” writes Helen Fitzgerald, training director for the American Hospice Foundation, in an online essay. “Grandparents are usually left to cope as best they can.” The death seems out of order, she adds, and forces them to confront their own mortality. Why didn’t they die first? Who will now carry on the family name? “The loss,” Fitzgerald writes, “resonates through the generations.”

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