This American Life

"This American Life" is a great radio show (I've heard they have or had a series on cable as well), if only for the fascinating and often twisted stories they feature (jeez, where do they find these people?). Today's show was called, I believe, "How to Rest in Peace," and dealt with various reactions (and abreactions) to death in the family. I only heard bits and pieces of the first two stories (Willow and Aiden were having a conversation with me while I was driving), but I think I got the gyst of both of them.

The first dealt with a man who, as a boy, witnessed (partially, not the deed itself) the murder of his mother. He is 30 something (?) now, and is struggling to get beyond the traumatic incident. For some reason, he cannot get himself to grieve properly over this trauma, and feels an awkward distancing from it all. The event scarred him significantly, most notably in his hypervigilance. As a young boy, he fashioned makeshift weapons (a bat with nails sticking out of it, samurai swords, beebee guns) and distributed them all around his house, so that if a stranger ever broke in, he would have several opportunities to do him damage... This man revisited elements of the crime (there were three men involved, all caught, all in prison with 25 to life terms), apparently because he wanted to "re-solve" the crime. Basically, the murder of his mother was the result of a burglary gone bad. But this man insisted that there was a deeper reason for the murder; he felt that his house had been targeted specifically, and he pursued this hypothesis doggedly... A poignant scene occurred when the man took a look at some of the post-mortem photographs of his mother. He seemed, on the one hand, characteristically distant, and yet, there was clearly a yearning for him to feel SOMETHING, to perhaps have the capacity to shed a tear... Unfortunately, he could not...

The second story dealt with another man who, as a boy, dealt with the burden of his mother's planned suicide. His mother had witnessed the deterioration of aging in friends, most significantly the effects of dementia and Alzheimer's, and decided that, rather than face that slow effacement of herself, would take matters into her own hands and kill herself... The man (as boy) was fully informed of his mother's intentions, and even became a kind of (unwilling but obedient) conspirator... The last thing I heard was that his mother would sometimes have "practice sessions" with her son, in which she would take sleeping pills, and he would monitor how long it took for her to pass out...

Sure, macabre stuff... But it gives me ideas. The first story, because the subject of PTSD has always fascinated me (especially when Freud dealt with it in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"). And the second, because of my grandfather's experiences with Alzheimer's before his death early this year.