In the process of coping with their trauma, the bereaved Palestinian parents examined in this study inevitably had to acknowledge and understand their new reality. They came to see and to reconstruct themselves as bereaved parents. This process enabled them to express their pain and assimilate their unbearable loss. Although it is recognized that in some cases of bereavement, the coping process can lead to renewed personal growth, this dynamic was almost entirely absent among the Palestinian parents examined here. These Palestinian parents instead used internal and external resources to cope with the trauma, including beliefs, defense mechanisms, personality structure, resilience and strength. Avitzur argues that, in general, these resources both help bereaved parents process the traumatic event and immunize them against experiencing any pathological psychological effects.1
The Palestinian parents interviewed in this study experienced their bereavement and its consequences on two primary levels: individual and collective. For bereaved Palestinian parents, there is a close connection between their personal bereavement and a national, collective sense of bereavement. The feeling that their individual bereavement following the traumatic loss was, in essence, interwoven with the collective bereavement, was shared by most of the parents. Customarily, the continuing experience of bereavement is mediated by time and by the development and cultivation of concepts of bereavement and loss. In Palestinian society, this process results from the continuing loss experienced day after day against the backdrop of the political struggle in which their society is enmeshed. In this context, death is transformed into an everyday event and thereby perpetuates the personal loss of these Palestinian parents.
With the Israeli army continuing to make arrests and routinely harassing these parents, the bereaved parentsā fears and sense that their lives are basically insecure intensify, while their feelings of loss on both the personal and collective level increase. The Palestinian parents consider their personal loss a collective loss as well, and see the collective loss as their own personal loss. They relinquish their personal space for the benefit of the national-collective mourning process, and, in so doing, help themselves cope with their own painful loss.
The Impact of Traumatic Loss on the Individual Level
Although Palestinian society exists within a reality of ongoing loss, and although traumatic events are an integral part of daily life in that society, nonetheless, the loss experienced by bereaved Palestinian parents is sudden and unexpected. Some of the young people were killed after having gone out to demonstrate, but in some cases they were killed either in their homes or nearby. Almost all the parents interviewed talked about the sudden shock, the terrible surprise they felt when disaster struck. The professional literature addresses several elements associated with trauma that can intensify the experience of traumatic loss: surprise, health problems, the feeling that all is in ruins, loss of interest in life and so on.
Being Surprised with the News of the Death
A significant component of the shock reported by both fathers and mothers involves this element of surprise as well as the impossibility of anyone ever being prepared to hear the news of such a loss, both of which have an impact on how the news of the loss is received. Many parents first learned of their loss, without any prior warning or preparation, on media channels like local television news, which has played a significant role in disseminating information of this kind through direct coverage from the scene of the event.
One of the mothers describes this reality as follows:
I said the evening prayers and was sitting with the shaheedās brothers in the yard. After a few minutes, my son went inside to watch television. He said to me, āMom, the army is moving around in the village. Iām going to watch television, maybe they will report on what is happening.ā My son saw the photo of his brother on television. He screamed to me, āMooooommmm, itās my brother, itās my brotherā¦ā I ran into the house and stood there in shock, looking at the televisionā¦ I saw the picture of my son the shaheed on the screen, hooked up to all kinds of equipment. My husband, sitting in the next room, came to see what all the uproar was about. I couldnāt take it in. I took me a while to understand what had happened. I thought at first that he was wounded. But when I saw how many people were starting to arrive at our house, I understood that the worst thing of all had happenedā¦
To hear such devastating news in that manner was a terrible blow to the parents and intensified their trauma. The news arrived without warning; the parents had had no chance to prepare themselves for the loss of their loved one. Parents usually see the death of their child as violent, unjustified and cruel. The additional elements of surprise, the violent manner of death, and the lack of preparation can only exacerbate the experience of loss for the bereaved parents, making it yet more traumatic and more complex.
Health Problems and Diminished Cognitive Capacity
Another conspicuous challenge for these Palestinian parents was the need to cope with health problems and cognitive issues that arose following their loss. Most of the parents interviewed, both fathers and mothers, reported deterioration in their health. Some of the parents connected the appearance of a disease to the trauma they had experienced. In many cases, the loss was followed closely by the discovery of a chronic health problem like high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, a seriously slipped disc, etc. One mother of a child killed by Israeli shaheed related, āMy health is continually getting worse. Since it happened, I have diabetes, vision problems, and high blood pressure, and I have trouble sleeping. God be praised, all the illnesses possible.ā
The father of another shaheed described his experience:
Thank God, less than ten days after [my child] died, they diagnosed my diabetes and I began having high blood pressure. A few months later, they discovered that I had a seriously slipped disc, and I have vision problems. Listen, Iām not a doctor and I donāt understand much about medicine or peopleās emotions, but Iām sure that [my childās] loss has had an influence on my physical condition. Nowadays Iām unable to climb up the hill to the house on foot. Itās Godās will.
Parents also reported problems with attention, focus and memory, as well as a general decrease in cognitive skill functions. One of the fathers expressed it this way:
These days, I have a lot of problems with attention. I canāt focus on anything. I canāt focus the way I did before, and it affects how I function. Sometimes I find myself stuck while trying to remember details that I used to have under control before what happened. Now I forget the simplest things. My wife sends me to the market and I might call her several times asking what to buy.
Some of the parents interviewed directly identified the trauma, stress and emotional suppression as the reasons for changes in their health. Many of the parents believed that because their society expected them, as parents of a Shaheed, to be constrained in their response to their loss, they experienced feelings of pressure and stress that directly affected their health.
Some of the parents were found to have illnesses or conditions that could not be explained. Below is a statement from one mother, whose son was severely wounded on the left side of his face by a missile fired at their house. During the interview, this mother addressed almost obsessively the injury to her sonās face. When I spoke with her, she had been diagnosed with a paralysis of a facial nerve that caused the left side of her face to sag, creating a distorted appearance.
After it happened, people told me, āYou are living in permanent mourning. It wonāt be good for you, it will kill youā¦ā I kept thinking about him, about what a beautiful face he had, and I could not stop thinking about his injury. I have not been able to erase the image of his face after the injuryā¦ After I got this infection in my face, everyone told me that it was because of my emotional stateā¦
Most of the parents reported thinking obsessively about their dead child. These thoughts never left them, making it difficult for them to function and causing health problems. One mother told me:
Since the loss, I am unable to function. Iām tired all the time. I canāt manage to work, not at home and not anywhere else. The back problems I started having after it happened are only getting worse. Iām physically incapable of anything. I canāt lift things. I canāt carry things. I canāt keep going on anything. I work for a short time, but have to stop. I am almost not functioning. I forget things, and often I just detach from the world. This happens often, in the middle of working I suddenly remember the shaheed and just detach.
Everything Is in Ruins, Nothing Matters
Typical of the bereaved parentsā emotional reactions following the traumatic loss of their child was a profound sense that everything was in ruins and that nothing mattered any longer. Many parents reported dreadful feelings that their world had collapsed and that their lives had lost all meaning after the childās death. A considerable number of the parents felt that without the deceased child, life no longer had a purpose. They suffered from the painful and disheartening feeling that everything they had accomplished in life and all their hopes, aims and dreams had fallen apart.
For these parents, burying their child was equivalent to burying a part of themselves, like burying one of their own organs, along with their sense of humor. These feelings were shared by both fathers and mothers. As one mother related:
Thereās no longer any purpose in life. Since the shaheed left us, life isnāt worth anything anymore. I feel as if the world has collapsed around me. I am not able to enjoy anything. Nothing looks beautiful to me. I am even unable to laugh: Iāve forgotten how itās done.
One father of a shaheed described the loss of his hopes and dreams:
A disaster, a complete disaster and total ruin befell us. Itās hard; very hard. (silence) I had a lot of hopes built on the shaheed; he was a splendid child. I have other children, but none of them has the abilities the shaheed had. He was an excellent student, a good swimmer. I had already planned to send him to university so that heād get ahead in life. What can I tell you; I have a terrible feeling all the time. Nothing can bring back into my life the happiness I had before then.
The sense of ruination and that life has lost all purpose, is commonly experienced in situations of traumatic loss. These feelings were evident among all the bereaved Palestinian parents in the study, even though their losses were caused not by a single collective event that occurred at one time but rather by discrete events that were not concurrent. The great forc...