Bad Grief! When No Body Comes Home

Missed PersonEach year, more than 1.8 million American men, women and children are reported missing. Although the majority of these people are located, many stay missing, leaving their families to wonder for years and years if the person they love is dead or alive. Sometimes, this situation is the result of a monumental tragedy, like 9/11, that strikes an entire community or nation. Other times, it’s as simple and as devastating as a woman with dementia walking away from her caregiver, never to be seen again. Whatever the circumstances, the uncertainty, pain and isolation felt by the person’s family and friends is the same…and unimaginable to those who haven’t experienced it.

When tragedy strikes and people are presumed dead, but no body is recovered, it changes everything that traditionally surrounds the natural process of grief. Two recent news stories have included just such situations–the missing Malaysian aircraft and the big mud slide in Washington State. Families and friends of those involved in these situations are experiencing this rare types of loss. They yearn for both answers and a starting point from which to confront their loss. However, without a body, the mind still wants to believe anything but the truth. Such deaths, called “ambiguous deaths” by the psychiatric community, require unique handling and sensitivity from family and friends as well as funeral professionals called upon to oversee the final arrangements.

Death in the news

Missing  370 Missing 370 in Sand  On March 8, 2014, Malaysian flight 370 disappeared without a trace. The nightly news has focused regularly on the recovery efforts by crews from more than a dozen different nations. More than one month later, not one fragment of the plane or its occupants has been found. The latest speculation is that the plane is at the bottom of a particularly deep part of the Indian Ocean, more than 2.8 miles from the surface. If this is true, there is little likelihood of the plane and its dead will ever be recovered. The pressure at such depths makes it impossible for any manned craft to navigate the area where the plane likely lies.

The 238 passengers and crew members of MH370 came from 13 different countries, but their families share a common pain, the roller coaster ride of hope and the despair of not knowing what happened to their mother, husband, daughter, father, wife or son.

Washington_Mudslide-088c6Another situation with unrecoverable bodies occurred recently in Washington State last month when a rain-soaked hill collapsed without warning, engulfing more than three dozen homes in a massive mudslide. As I write this, 36 bodies have been found and 10 people are still missing, including two children. Recovery efforts continue more than four weeks after the disaster.

Why are such enormous resources–both in manpower and money–expended trying to recover bodies long after it is reasonable to assume that a person could have survived? After 9/11, the recovery effort continues for more than eight months and ended with a solemn ceremony at the site. Our culture associates death with a body. Not having that body of our loved one disrupts the entire grieving process.

Grieving without a body

Grief On Hold
Grief Stuck In Limbo

In our society, we associate death and grieving with a physical body. Most funeral arrangements involve a viewing, where friends and family can share memories and get a last glimpse of the body that once was their friend or loved one. We usually follow that with a service that culminates in the lowering of the casket in the ground or the handing of the ashes to the survivors. Without a body, all of those traditions are disrupted.

Denial is one of the classic stages of grief. Our mind naturally wants to assume that our dead loved one will walk through the front door any minute. When their is no body, our mind can get stuck in this stage, even when all evidence points to the fact that the person is gone. This is why enormous amounts of time and money are spent on recovery efforts in situations like the mud slide and the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner even when the likelihood of finding a live person has long since passed.

Planning funerals without a body

Deaths where there is no body present challenges for funeral professionals as well as for family and friends. Like loved ones, funeral professionals are used to dealing with a physical body as part of the funeral rites, either as a burial or a cremation. A death without a body throws this traditional system out of alignment, while at the same time offering the challenge of trying to comfort a family during the most terrible time in their lives.

When Hope and Grief CollideDeaths without a body, while rare, are not unique to current events. After 9/11, friends and family of thousands of men and women missing from the Twin Towers had to deal with their grief even though fewer than a quarter of the bodies of those in the buildings had been recovered. Some chose to use an empty casket at the funeral to give the service a sense of normalcy. Others used caskets for whatever part of their loved one had been found, even if it was just a finger.

Often funerals without a body are handled similarly to memorial services, with photos and/or videos of the deceased adorning the service, so that family and friends are able to “see” the person who died one last time. Having the family put together these images, even making a video or a few photo collages can help in the healing process. Take it a step further and have the family create a memorial table filled with items that were important to the life being mourned .

When dealing with deaths where people are presumed dead but there is no body, it is important for funeral professionals as well as friends to be especially empathetic and willing to listen. Any death of a relative or loved one is somewhat isolating, but a death without a body can make the survivors feel that they are the only ones who have ever had to go through this anguish.
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7 thoughts on “Bad Grief! When No Body Comes Home”

  1. grieving without a body is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, considering everybody wants to bury their loved ones :/

  2. i lost my big bro on2013 because of tanzanian farmers.at a time he was migrating with his friends from ethiopia to south africa when they reach tanzania the farmers murdered one many and harmed many so badly so my bro didnt survived the tragedy but some so funeral with no body is a truma to the family its like a disease that you can carry for life time.and at a time i was small boy who dont decide nothing as a family member but gone through a lot we didnt brry nothing even a photo we never burried so what i am thinking now is when go back home i wanna brry something of him so that i can relief because his face is always hunting me of doing nothing as a brother.it is tough to let it go i alwys think of may be he will came back home thats wht i always think to ease the pain that i curry for my life time it’s so painful

  3. It has been 5 years since my sister went missing, I have been getting worst every year with worry and anxiety, left wondering if she is dead or alive. Deep down I know she is not alive. Apart of me is still in denial and I cant fully accept that she has gone onto the spirit world. She has visited me in my dreams and told me she can’t come home. I am going to have a ceremony for her this year and bury a ribbon dress with pictures and letters to her to. My family is going to put anything sentimental in the box and we will sing our songs and bury it. My hope is that this helps us to start to accept this loss and move forward because my sister wouldn’t want us to keep living like this. This has been a very hard loss and it had been difficult.

  4. My son has been gone for 18 months he just disappeared.The police have no clues to what happened to him.He had mental problems along with drug use. It’s very hard not knowing.Ive gone to medians one says he’s alive one said he died. I want to have a celebration of life. Do you think I should do it now?

  5. Losing a loved one is already so very hard as you go through the different stages of the mourning process. Doing it without that last chance to actually say “Goodbye”
    would leave me unable to find the closure that’s so necessary when we lose a loved one. It seems like I would spend the rest of my life looking for the loved one who I didn’t really say goodbye to because the coffin was empty.. I can’t wrap my mind around it.. I don’t think I could sit there while ignoring the fact that the coffin was an empty box.. Wouldn’t you have to keep on looking for that missing person until you are able to see the final details of what exactly had happened and is there any chance that your loved ones body is available for a funeral service?

  6. My son has been missing for two years. He was 34 the last time i saw him. It was January 16 2019. The detectives couldnt find any clues to what happened to him. He had disabilitys . I have to do something for him but dont know what to do. I hurt the same as i did two years ago. The hurt does not go away.I had hope the first few months because we were very close. But as time goes by i dont know what to believe. Its been horrible I keep thinking i see him the car behind me walking down the street. I have stopped so many people thinking it was him. Not knowing where he is or what happened to him is honestly killing me. My heart hurts so bad. Should i have a memorial for him?

  7. Oh wow. I haven’t experienced this personally, not with a human friend or family member, but I’m very grateful for this article because it was helpful to me. I was looking this up to figure out how to mourn my cat. My second cat (who was a “grief cat” after my first passed at a young age) ran away for good and she’s been missing for almost 3 years now so I know there’s no way she’s ever coming home. I figured that since my first cat had a funeral, she should too. I know she’s dead. We live right next to a busy road, and there’s lots of wildlife here. I knew the day she went missing that she was never coming back, I just knew it, and nobody believes me. Before anyone yells at me that it’s my fault and I should keep my cats inside: I KNOW THAT, I TRIED. I’d always take her out for walks on her leash and harness and she loved it, but it wasn’t enough for her, she always wanted to be outside and she was an escape artist. Even though she was a cat and not a human, I find my grief parallels a lot of the stories I’ve read here. Of course the two things are different but all grief is like that no two deaths are the same in general. My cats are my best friends (yes I really am that lonely) and losing them is extremely traumatic for me. With the first, at least I held her when she passed away. But with my second, I searched around for ages. I PRAYED to find her body regardless of the horror the sight would cause me, I just wanted to be able to bury her. I have nothing left of her, no fur sample, no paw print, no gravestone. My first I did all of these things for and it gave me much peace. All I have are her old toys and a bag of the moss she would always bring me which I kept because I knew one day she would die I just never expected it to be so soon or in such a way. Maybe I will bury the moss she’d bring me, since I know it will decompose eventually anyway… Hope I am not offending anyone here by putting this story here, I’m so deeply sorry for anyone who’s ever experienced this with a loved one. I have experienced death, including that of my human daughter, but never like that. If it was this hard to lose a cat this way, I can only imagine how losing a fellow human this way must feel. Grief is for the grieving so if you feel a funeral or memorial of any kind would help you cope, I think you should do it. May the memories of those you’ve lost bless you always.

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