Homicide Survivors

Losing a family member or friend to violence can be devastating.  We attempt to provide information and resources to help homicide survivors understand the grieving experience, cope with their loss, and begin their recovery.

Possible Grief Reactions

• Denial
• Anger
• Guilt
• Feelings of powerlessness;
• Numbness;
• Hypersensitivity;
• Hypervigilence (jumpiness);
• Overwhelming sense of loss and sorrow;
• Disruptive sleep patterns;
• Inability to concentrate;
• Lethargy;
• Fear and vulnerability;
• Confusion;
• Social withdrawal;
• Change in eating habits
• Restricted affect (reduced ability to express emotion);
• Questioning of faith;
• Physical and financial problems; and
• Constant thoughts about the circumstances of the death.
• Grief spasms

Families Surviving A Homicide

The dynamics of a family are profoundly affected by murder. Some issues are universal and some are unique. All of them are personal and difficult.

Shortly after their son Buzz was murdered, Dee and Anson Clinton heard a disturbing statistic: Within the first year, over 90 percent of couples who loose a child to murder either separate, divorce, or become emotionally estranged from one another. Worse, they could feel the strains of grief, inconclusive police investigations, and meeting daily responsibilities take an ever heavier toll on their relationship.

Their individual means of coping with their eldest son's murder often annoyed one another. Dee said she found relief in reminding her family that Buzz was happy on the spirit plane. She had a vivid sense of his real presence, watching his grieving family, and she tried to convey to them what she felt he wanted to express. 

Anson grew tired of hearing about it. For him, it denied the reality of their awful loss, and made differences in their religious beliefs into a wedge between them. For his part, he liked to entertain violent fantasies about finding Buzz's murderer and shooting him, a common means of coping that made Dee frightened that after losing her son to murder, she'd lose her husband to his self-imposed justice. 

“When I planned Buzz's memorial service with my priest,” Dee said, “I told him to leave out sharing the Eucharist for this service. Anson isn't a Catholic, and neither were a lot of the relatives and friends who would be there. I realized the most important thing was for everybody to come together in remembering Buzz. Why let the differences make anybody uncomfortable?” 

She went on to say that Anson has been very supportive of her ways of grieving and coping. They both believe from their own experience that being sensitive and tolerant to one another's needs in living through the aftermath of a murder, is the only way any couple can survive intact.


Differing grieving styles
Karen Carney, a social worker who is Grief Program Director of the D'Esopo Pratt Resource Center and a member of Survivors of Homicide's Advisory Board, said that men and women tend to use different ways of grieving. She said that men often need to feel they are taking effective action, while keeping their own feelings under control. 
Women may need to go over and over the story of the murder, while men may focus attention more on achieving justice. While women are more apt to invest themselves heavily in doing a “life review” of their entire relationship with the deceased, men tend to prefer to talk about the future.

Women may be more emotionally expressive, to the point of becoming uncomfortable when others around them don't want to share on a feeling level. Karen believes women may even underestimate men's emotional reactions sometimes. She cites research on the biology of grief and the role of the hormone prolactin, associated with tear production, that most women have in abundance and most men do not. 
“Because women, with their high prolactin levels, cry relatively easily, they sometimes think men don't feel grief deeply because men don't tend to cry as much. This can lead to misunderstandings," she said.

While therapists who specialize in grief often advocate a more emotionally open grieving process than some men readily welcome, Karen Carney likes to remind her clients that there is no “right way” to grieve. “It's important to respect the individual differences in grieving,” she said. “A mistake some people fall into is in trying to recruit other family members to favor their own grieving preferences over their spouse's. A couple grieving a loss needs to go beyond tolerating each other's coping methods, to actively embracing them.” 

Dealing with more than grief
At a recent support group meeting at Sam and Wanda Rieger's home in Waterbury, 20 members of SOH talked about some of the problems homicide had caused in their primary relationships, and how they dealt with them. The problems cited went beyond different styles of grieving. 

Marie Pellegrini said that like many mothers, she was usually the one who managed things with their kids, and when their son was murdered, she was afraid she would be the one who went to SOH meetings, while her husband Artie stayed home. “From the very beginning, he attended the meetings with me”, Marie said. “I felt his support the whole way, and that made all the difference.” 

Shirley and Larry Bostrom emphasized the same theme. “I was afraid Larry would say ‘no' to Survivors of Homicide, but he didn't,” Shirley said. “The group counseling we did together really helped. Being involved in this together has made our relationship stronger.”

One of the hardest things couples have to face concerns how they deal with the disturbing memories stirred up by belongings of the deceased. It isn't always easy to agree on which belongings to keep for their positive memories, and which to pass on because the associations seem too painful. 

“This morning I came across some of our son's baseball equipment in a bureau drawer,” Marie Pellegrini said. “I spent a lot of the morning crying. Artie let me cry, and he really supported me. It hurts, but we agreed that we don't want to let go of some of the things Joe loved.”

People in the group agreed that living with painful memories is better than pulling back and denying them, something they said some family members do. Pain is much easier to bear when shared with loved ones. 

Antoinette Bosco spoke of interviewing grieving parents for an article she wrote for Marriage and Family Living magazine. Some told her it became painful to look at their spouses, because they saw in them the child who had died. In some cases, this led to a lack of sexual desire, emotional withdrawal, and separation. 
In her article, “What Happens to Parents When a Child Dies?”, in the August 1978 issue, she quotes Ernie Friedreich who, with his wife Joyce, co-founded the New York Chapter of Compassionate Friends: “Our dreams, our future are invested in our children. A child is a living extension of yourself. If he dies, part of you — and your future — dies.” 

She also quotes one husband whose wife refused to have sex with him as saying, “We reached an impasse that I am sure can never be breached. I know she will enjoy sex with another man, but not with the father of her dead child.”

When is it okay to have fun?
Successful couples learn how important it is to enjoy themselves together, but what happens to that healthy process when they lose someone to homicide? One of the worst forms this dilemma can take is when one spouse wants to let some of the enjoyment back into life, and the other experiences this as a betrayal of the loved one who died. Sex is by no means the only form of pleasure that can become grounds for conflict. 
Visiting with friends, enjoying books or music, doing any of the things the family used to love doing with the deceased, even laughter, can be important coping resources for one spouse, yet be deeply offensive to the other. And not only spouses: the same issues can divide siblings, children, or friends trying to survive a homicide or death, too. 

Sometimes the best thing family members and friends can give one another is understanding and tolerance. With love and understanding, even deep differences seem smaller in perspective. As Sam Rieger expressed it, “The couples who have trouble after a homicide often had problems beforehand. A loving relationship can be the best asset in getting through the rough times.”

During the recent discussion at the Riegers' home, several SOH members pointed to what may be at the root of much conflict around allowing enjoyment back into life. They spoke of the guilt that is so common after losing someone to homicide, and how easily guilt can drain the enjoyment out of life. 

According to Bosco's article, “Psychiatrists say that the denial of pleasure is a symptom of guilt.” It is no surprise then that the families where people seem to overcome problems with when and how to have fun, also avoid the “blame game” with one another. 


Helping each other reject guilt 
For homicide survivors, it may be almost impossible not to obsess about the circumstances that led to murder, and to feel deep personal responsibility — even when no rational blame is warranted. At the meeting, several couples spoke about this, and how the spouses helped each other deal with guilt.The Pellegrinis cannot forget how their son needed to borrow gas money to go to a hockey game, a trip that ultimately cost him his life.

Similarly, Sue and George Frigo lost their daughter to a drunken driver. As Sue remembers it, she and George disagreed about whether their daughter's fatal car ride was warranted: “George told her he didn't think she needed to go, but I said to let her go if she really wanted to. Not once since her death has George thrown that up to me.”  But for the Frigos and Pellegrinis, and other couples in the support group, survival goes beyond not raising guilt levels, to actively helping one another heal the guilt. 

For instance, Shirley Bostrom has a hard time forgiving herself for not seeing that her daughter, whose husband killed her, was in a dangerously abusive relationship. It helps to have become an expert in domestic abuse, giving workshops that warn other abused women; and it is especially healing that her husband, Larry, helps her produce those workshops.

Beyond support
In speaking of things that make family life hard after a murder, SOH members more often cite little irritants than big disagreements. Stress research notes how in response to most kinds of severe psychological trauma, we become hypersensitive and lose our resilience. Irritation can quickly turn into anger, and family members may bear the brunt of it. 
Dee Clinton said that after their son's murder, she and Anson seemed to be angry at each other all the time. “I kept thinking of the title to that Rudy Vallie song, ‘You Always Hurt the One You Love'. After a murder, you are filled with rage. You feel like killing somebody. But who is around you all the time? Who is safe to feel angry at? Your spouse, that's who. When Anson and I realized that we were driving each other crazy, we saw that we had to give ourselves more space. We decided to take separate vacations that year.”

Just as there is no right way for an individual to grieve, there may be as many ways for couples and families to survive homicide together as there are couples and families. Taking separate vacations after a child is murdered probably wouldn't appeal to many couples, but it points up the importance of recognizing what real relationships need, instead of trying to live according to an ideal. 

Pain, anger, irritability, intolerance, and all the other ways people respond to a murder may seem overwhelming at times, too much for relationships to bear. Recognizing them as parts of the process may help. Things will get better. Staying sensitive to and tolerant of one's own true needs and feelings, and one's partner's, is hard, important work.

Written by Frank Blackford, Ph.D., from the Winter 1998 Survivors of Homicide Newsletter - Provided by Survivors of Homicide.

For More Information

The National Center for Victims of Crimes 

The National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children

GriefNet

Internet community of persons dealing with grief, death, and major loss

The Compassionate Friends

T*A*P*S

A national non-profit organization made up of, and providing services to, all those who have lost a loved one on active duty with the Armed Forces.

Concerns of Police Survivors, Inc.

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