The Incomplete Self: Apotheosis of a Hollow Man?

Summary

The author reflects on the concept of grief and the self, prompted by a TV show where a pathologist's family dies, contemplating their own lack of personal experience with loss and the uncertainty of how they would cope with such a tragedy.

Abstract

The author is inspired by an episode of the TV show "Silent Witness," where a pathologist's family perishes, to ponder the nature of grief and personal identity. They acknowledge a lack of personal experience with profound loss, having only dealt with the expected passing of elderly parents. The author questions their ability to understand or predict their own response to a tragic loss, recognizing that grief is deeply personal and unpredictable. They discuss the human tendency to construct and maintain a self-image, including hypothetical reactions to situations, but admit that these self-perceptions can be unreliable. The author concludes that there is a gap in their self-understanding, particularly concerning how they would handle extreme grief, leaving them to wonder if they are, in essence, an incomplete or 'hollow' person.

Opinions

The author believes that one's response to grief is highly individualistic and cannot be accurately anticipated or understood through second-hand experiences like books or movies.
They express a sense of relief rather than grief at the passing of their elderly parents, suggesting a pragmatic acceptance of death in the natural order.
The author entertains the idea that they might be morbidly inclined, enjoying horror stories and pondering tragic scenarios, yet they are unsettled by the thought of actually experiencing such events.
They admit to a potential disconnect between their imagined self and the reality of their reactions, acknowledging that hypothetical self-assessments are often inaccurate.
The author reveals a fear of becoming helpless in the face of grief, similar to the pathologist's portrayal on TV, and is concerned about the impact such an event would have on their identity and life.
There is a self-awareness that their sense of self is incomplete, as they cannot envision how they would react to extreme personal loss, leading to a sense of being a 'hollow man.'

The Incomplete Self: Apotheosis of a Hollow Man?

I was watching one of my favourite TV shows the other day. It’s called Silent Witness. You may have heard of it, or maybe not. But that’s not important. In the episode I was watching, a really horrid thing happened to one of the pathologists. He, whose job it was to perform autopsies and “talk to” the dead, learned that both his wife and daughter had just been killed in a car accident.

What a tragic loss. The rest of the show was lost on me at that point. At some point, I will have to go back and watch the rest of it again. What took over my thoughts was how the protagonist was dealing with this deep and painful sense of loss. What engrossed me, more so than what was happening on screen was my inability to fully understand how the person must feel. What shook me was the realization that in all the years I’ve lived, I have never come close to losing someone dear and near to me. What worried me, then, was how I would deal with such tragedy if and when the day came.

I have wandered through graveyards, mesmerized by the headstones and monuments attesting to the will of the living to commemorate the dead. I do wonder, respectfully, what life was like for those who are buried. I have more personal reasons to attend certain cemeteries, not least because my parents are there. And I don’t much need to concern myself with knowing what their lives were like. Nor do I wonder what their deaths had meant to me at the time.

Earlier I mentioned I have never experienced losing someone close to me. Just now I think about my parents, that statement makes me pause. How did I feel at the time? What did I feel? Looking back, I think I was relieved more than anything else. They had been battling some terminal disease (both of them) for quite some time then, and I think I saw their deaths as more of a blessing. For them especially. What was the point of life at that time?

And also, they were quite elderly by then. Both were in their 80s, and that was back in the early 1990s. So their eventual death was not really unexpected or sudden. Still, I did lose them then. Yet their deaths were not the kind of tragic, sudden loss I am talking about here. Or perhaps, I am merely rationalizing, as humans are prone to do.

Back to my main point, though. What would I do if and when something like that happens? I mean, I hope nothing of the sort happens. But who knows, right? Perhaps I am a rather morbid person since I do enjoy writing and reading horror stories. Big Stephen King fan, but that’s another story for another day. I do imagine, sometimes, receiving news that something horrible has happened. Especially when people I love are traveling. Is that even normal? Or am I just weird?

Still, I fear I will become as helpless as the pathologist on the TV show. My life will become a mess. I will become a totally different person. On the show, the person said, “My grief is my own.” That’s what worries me. Grief is idiosyncratic. So I can’t very well use what I read in books or see in movies to imagine how I will deal with grief. I cannot prepare myself. This means at that juncture I will be completely caught off guard, no matter what I do.

We are motivated to construct and maintain a certain sense of self, an idea of who we are and what we are like. Along with this, we create this portrait of ourselves, and how we would react under this or that circumstance. We deal with hypotheticals as well, in this fashion. Like if someone breaks into my house, what would I do, for instance? And if we’re really honest with ourselves, we’d know that what we hypothetically think we would do is nothing like what we actually do. That’s why surveys, especially about future behaviour, are so irrelevant. But that, too, is another story for another day.

So there’s at least a bit missing in the portrait I have created for myself, regardless of how unreliable the self-image actually is. I cannot even begin to draw a picture of how I would react if I were that pathologist on TV. What would I do? I can’t imagine. And so I can’t complete the picture. Folks, there’s a gap in my sense of self. I am incomplete even as my imaginary self. That sucks, no? Am I the apotheosis of a hollow man?