A year later, emotions remain fragile

Students and staff at Virginia Tech avoid the word "anniversary" when describing the memorial ceremonies planned for this Wednesday.

"People don't even like to use that term," said Larry Hincker, associate vice president of university relations. "There's a very specific name for it: a day of remembrance. And that's what it's all about - we want to remember and think about and celebrate the lives of 32 people that were tragically taken."

Memorial ceremonies serve an important, ritual function in the recovery process, experts say. They bring people together, provide a public forum for grief and, most importantly, foster a nurturing sense of community, said Linda Goldman, a grief therapist and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.

That sense of community - what some call the "Hokie Spirit" - is what enabled Virginia Tech students and staff to handle their pain over the last year in the midst of an ongoing media maelstrom, Hincker said.

"I think the best way to describe the Virginia Tech student body is to reflect back on the poise and the dignity and the maturity that the world saw when 1,000 cameras were, literally, put in their faces in the week of April 16 and thereafter," Hincker said.

With Wednesday's ceremonies, that intense scrutiny is likely to return in full force, and some students are less than thrilled by the prospect, Hincker said. A delegation even approached the student services board and requested media be banned from the campus during the memorial. But Hincker said most have come to understand the importance of reporters and TV crews in allowing the public at large to grieve with the university.

The intense media exposure following the tragedy may have unexpected repercussions, though, Goldman said.

"Many times it can inhibit the grief process because people don't want to be that vulnerable in the public eye," Goldman said.

According to the most famous analysis of the process of grieving, popularized by psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book "On Death and Dying," people faced with traumatic experiences go through five discrete stages in dealing with loss, beginning with denial and ending with acceptance. But most experts now agree the stages are not linear, and that people frequently skip stages or relapse to earlier stages, such as anger or depression, unexpectedly.

The inhibiting effect of intense media scrutiny could mean students who now seem to have achieved a degree of acceptance might not be as emotionally stabilized as they appear, Goldman said.

Add to that the "anniversary reaction" - which often has unpredictable effects on people who have experienced loss or trauma - and a relapse into grief stages such as anger or depression is even more likely, said Nadia Kuley, director of counseling and psychological services at Mary Baldwin College.

"It may be the season, the smells - anything like that can cause people to really experience an anniversary reaction," Kuley said. "The death may feel like it happened yesterday."

Memorial ceremonies can actually heighten that effect, said David Balk, Brooklyn College's director of graduate studies in bereavement and grief. But grieving students would probably experience those reactions anyway, he said, and the benefits of bringing them out in a safe, supportive context outweigh the dangers. Ritualized or symbolic acts of grieving, such as the candlelight vigil scheduled for Wednesday night, are particularly cathartic, he said.

But the day of remembrance, no matter how effective, can only be one step in a long and ongoing process, Goldman said.

"This was a sudden and traumatic mass death, and when you have a sudden and traumatic death, oftentimes a year is just the beginning of being able to feel all the grief," she said.

Cleve is a staff writer at The News Virginian in Waynesboro, Va.