Wrestling With Stages of Grief

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. As the dust began to clear this week, New York City lumbered through the stages of grief like a wounded beast, not comprehending at first, then frothing with rage.

It moved forward with the hope that hard work and true faith would produce miracles, until determination succumbed to sadness.

In Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' landmark book, "On Death and Dying," the stages of grief were determined by watching scores of individuals responding to loss, and preparing for their own deaths. But experts say the city at large is probably experiencing the same stages, though not necessarily in an orderly fashion.

And acceptance, the final stage, isn't even on the horizon.

"Now the whole city is in a shock and grieving mode, even if you only saw it on television," said Dr. Randall Marshall, a psychiatrist who directs the trauma center of the state Office of Mental Health. "People have told me, 'We're at 30 percent capacity.'"

At first, denial flourished.

Only after the second tower was hit did people realize New York was under terrorist attack. Residents who watched the towers crumble from the outer boroughs found it impossible to reconcile the calamity with the clear summer day that provided the view.

Firefighters launched a rescue mission even after the towers crumbled into a fiery mausoleum seven stories high. College students and sanitation workers rolled up their sleeves to donate blood and hospitals throughout the region cleared the decks for wounded. But while 6,000 people were treated at city hospitals, more than 6,300 remained missing.

In scattershot volleys, anger was expressed.

President George W. Bush promised to take action against the bombers, to "smoke them out of their holes." A Brooklyn man dropped a firebomb near an Islamic center, and in other parts of the country, turban-wearing Sikhs were mistaken for militant Muslims and attacked.

Some of the ire was directed at America's own security failures. "We're angered at how this could have been allowed to happen ... It's catastrophic," said Francis Bravin, who flew the flag at his Whitestone home at half-staff.

Meanwhile, families of the missing engaged in what Kubler-Ross calls the bargaining stage, trying to blunt the senselessness of death by ascribing some meaning to it. "I know if he didn't get out, it was because he stopped to help someone," said Cathy Muñoz of her husband of two years, who worked at Marsh & McLennan in Tower One.

Or as Brian Davan said of his father-in-law, First Deputy Fire Commissioner William Feehan, who died when the emergency command center collapsed, "My feeling is if he'd survived that, knowing that he'd lost 200 men would have killed him."

Despite the sobering mound of evidence, family members printed fliers with photos of their loved ones - fliers that listed hopeful identifying characteristics like Kimberly Bowers' ying-yang tattoo, Elizabeth Holmes' braids, Amy O'Doherty's freckles, and an urgent note that 18-year-old Richard Pearlman needs daily medication.

Reality set in slowly. For John Hepburn, there was the moment when he went to pick up his missing brother's van from a train station in New Jersey. Robert, 39, is missing from the 93rd floor of Tower One. "That - that flipped me out," Hepburn said.

By last Thursday, only four survivors had been pulled from the wreckage. On Friday, no one was found. But it wasn't until Tuesday that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani acknowledged the chances of pulling out more survivors were "very, very small."

Since then, sadness has set in.

Restaurants and hotels are half-filled; long-running Broadway shows may close. New Yorkers held candlelight vigils, and stacked bouquets and votives outside firehouses. "This is going to hurt forever," said Vina Drennan, who lost her firefighter husband back in 1994.

And now, experts say, all of this will probably lead to a general feeling of uneasiness, which they expect to come to the forefront in the next few weeks.

"People are going around New York City nervous about being in big buildings and looking out the window," Marshall said. Already, the anxiety has sent scores of patients to Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn with stress-related headaches and abdominal pains. "Not necessarily because they know someone who is missing, but fear that there could be another strike or another hit," said hospital spokeswoman Zipporah Dvash.

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