Finding solace after grief
January 30th 2011 20:26
The last 13 years have been a balancing act for Doug and Mary Lyall of Ballston Spa.
Their daughter, Suzanne, has been missing since 1998.
"On one hand, if you were looking at this from the outside at the facts and figures, the odds of someone coming back after this period of time are remote," Doug Lyall said.
Suzanne was 19 and a sophomore at the University at Albany when she disappeared. She was last seen on March 2, 1998, at about 9:45 p.m. getting off an Albany city bus at Collins Circle, near the visitors parking lot on the college campus.
She was coming home from working her part-time job at Crossgates Mall. Although it was only a three- to five-minute walk from the bus stop to Suzanne's dorm room, she never arrived.
Without knowing for sure if Suzanne is deceased, Lyall said, there is always the possibility that something strange happened and she is alive.
Maybe she had amnesia and walked off, maybe someone took her and she's living somewhere, he wondered aloud, as he sat in his living room last week.
"As long as those things are still possible, I find myself balancing between those two fates," he said.
Liz Smith, director of the The Community Hospice of the Capital Region, said while people are naturally resilient creatures, traumatic events change their perception of the world.
Those occurrences don't even need to happen directly to you for you to feel grief, Smith said.
And everyone grieves in a unique way, for however long it may last.
"To this day it's right below the surface. It's always there," Lyall said.
Grieving together
Because a traumatic memory does not get processed in the brain the same way as a normal memory, Smith said, it's free-floating.
"When you're in an aroused state, your brain changes the way it functions," she said.
Trauma can come from an intensely personal event, or something that happened in the community which resonates with you.
The recent weeks have had their share of traumatic events.
On Dec. 22, 12-year-old Nicholas Naumkin was shot and killed by a 12-year-old friend in Wilton, according to police.
Five days later, Christalin Canavan, a 15-year-old Hadley-Luzerne student died in her sleep.
Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 3, Naumkin's grieving grandfather Oleg Moston, 77, of Saratoga Springs, was killed when he was hit by a car and two tractor-trailers as he tried to cross the Northway, just one week after he laid his grandson to rest.
On Jan. 8, a violent attack in Tuscon, Ariz., on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords left six people killed and 12 wounded.
That night, 18-year-old Amanda Deuel, of Corinth, died unexpectedly.
"When these things happen, it challenges your world view," Smith said.
Tragic events can be compelling and it's human nature, she said, to want to figure out what's happening, so many people look to the media.
"It's part of the appraisal part of our brain that's like, ‘What is this, what is going on here?' " she said.
But that natural draw can be problematic if someone experiencing grief stays tuned in too long.
"It re-exposes our brain over and over again, so it really entrenches the material and makes it harder for us to get back to a normal physiology," she said.
Learning to cope
Grief is never simple to deal with, but Smith said there are some steps to take to help ease the pain.
Any kind of bilateral exercise, like walking, Smith said, will help regulate the brain.
"It stimulates both sides of the brain and it helps the memory get located where it needs to," she said.
When Doug Lyall started talking about pickle ball, his eyes lit up for the first time during an interview last week.
"It's played with a racquet and a whiffle ball. It's a physical activity and its good for me. It allows me to feel better and socially be around other people," he said.
Most importantly, Smith said, those who are grieving need to take care of their health.
"We need to sleep and eat nutritious foods and move our body. We need to be with people who care for us and do productive work, all of which is very challenging. Given the impact of the loss we get more and more disorganized," she said.
It's OK to be tired and have little appetite, Smith said, so long as you don't stop moving around or eating.
Get off the couch, she said, and go for a walk, even if it's just to the mailbox.
Smith also suggested turning off the TV, turn on some music and find someone who will hold your hand.
While television is full of stimuli you can't control, Smith said, music could soothe your soul.
But since grief is unique, there is no perfect treatment.
"There's no template that works for everyone," Doug Lyall said.
"But part of what determines how a person can cope, has to do with how they can look at the world."
Tragedy into action
Mary Lyall said she and her husband do everything in their power to keep the search for Suzanne going.
"Rewards, posters, vigils. We try to keep Suzanne's name out and nothing happens. It's awful to feel this helpless. So, we've tried to latch on to things that we have some control over," she said.
The Lyalls established The Center for Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing resources to educate, assist and support families and friends coping with the disappearance of a loved one.
In the wake of a tragedy, Amy Malloy, regional director for the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, said getting involved, educating others and meeting people who have had similar experiences can be therapeutic.
"If we think of a lot of things that have happened in the country in terms of policies or legislation, sometimes it's in the aftermath of a tragedy or in grief where people are able to kind of mobilize themselves and do something that helps prevent others from having the same loss," she said.
Through the Center for Hope, the Lyalls were able to push for new legislation in Suzanne's name.
In 2003, President George W. Bush signed Suzanne's Law, which requires police to notify the National Crime Information Center of any missing person younger than 21 and have an Amber Alert dispatched.
Previously, police were only required to report missing children younger than 18.
In 2000, The Suzanne Lyall Campus Safety Security Act, which requires all New York state colleges to develop plans for prompt investigations of missing students and violent offenses committed on campus, passed as a federal law.
If they didn't do everything they could to find Suzanne, Doug Lyall said it would be difficult to live.
In the time between, he said, "We have a relatively, ‘normal' life."
"There's no way our life will ever be the same again, there's no way. Even if Suzy walked through the door tomorrow," he said.
Instead, the Lyalls said they have learned to live with a new meaning or normalcy.
Suzanne would be 32 years old now. Her missing persons case is still open and the Lyalls are still grieving.
"It's like a scab," Mary Lyall said. "It's healed enough just where it's about to fall off, but it's not quite ready. You pick it and it starts to bleed all over again. It's how you go through this kind of life," she said, beginning to cry.
"When you think it's almost gone, it comes back to haunt you again."
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