When There Are No More Tomorrows

 Last January I blogged about our recently adopted dog, Dirk, and that we had brought him into the household as an emotional bulwark against the impending loss of my other dog, Scout. Now it finally happened. Scout has left us. I won't share stories about him because we all have similar memories about the departure of our beloved pets. However, I will admit that I miss Scout more than I miss most people.

I'll use this opportunity as a springboard into a discussion on grief, not in how to deal with it, but in how grief affects, or doesn't affect, our story narratives. Considering the common theme here on Type M for Murder is writing about criminal homicide, and homicide is the death of a human being, what we don't dwell much on is the grief caused by that death. Understandable since our protagonists are often the ones responsible for solving the murder and they can't afford to dilute their focus in sifting through clues by bringing grief into their process. Cops, especially, deal with grief and tragedy using gallows humor. Trauma surgeons and nurses have to distance themselves from the heartbreak if they are to remain functional. 

In World War Two, a phenomenon in the US Army was the indifference shown to replacement troops, particularly in the infantry who suffered the most casualties. The veteran soldiers figured out that those new to the outfit wouldn't last more than a few days, and the grief in dealing with those fresh losses was too painful and demoralizing to bear. "Just tell me your last name. That's all I need to know about you for now."  It wasn't until a new soldier survived for a month before the old timers closed ranks around him. 

An author friend wrote of a similar situation among spouses of soldiers who were deployed overseas during the Global War on Terror. The strain of waiting for the horrible news about the death of a loved one was too much of a burden to harbor day in and day out. So the wives shut down, numbing themselves, smothering their emotions: both happiness and sorrow. When the husbands returned home midway during their tour, randy and ready to party, to their surprise, the wives remained closed tight. It was too difficult of an emotional transition to let their defenses down, only to bring them back up in a few short days.

One police show that leans on grief as a story trope is Monk. Already since childhood, the detective Adrian Monk was burdened with phobias, and the murder of his wife Trudy drags him deep into an existence defined by obsessive-compulsive disorders and sorrow. His quest to find Trudy's killer is driven equally by the search for justice and as a means to deal with his grief.