Shankar Vedantam

Antonio, you say that one reason grief is sometimes complicated is because our current situation stirs up older and sometimes deeper hurts.

I understand that you once got to know a woman who discovered that she was being cheated on, and instead of getting mad at her former partner, she got mad at herself.

Tell me that story and how in some ways it points to this idea that sometimes when we have setbacks in our lives, it makes us question ourselves rather than question the setback.

There was one time when you had your own heartbroken Antonio and the woman who was saying goodbye to you left you with a parting shot that really stuck with you in a distressing way.

What happened?

Another reason our grief might be complicated is that we learn something about the person we've lost that is hard for us to accept.

I want to play you a clip from the 2011 movie The Descendants.

It features a man named Matt, played by George Clooney.

His wife suffers a serious injury and goes into a coma.

Matt then discovers that she has been having an affair.

In this clip, Matt talks to his wife as she lies unconscious in a hospital bed.

She cannot hear him and she cannot respond.

So you can hear, Antonio, how complicated this is for George Clooney's character.

He's dealing with a partner who has suffered life-threatening injuries, but she's also hurt him, and he doesn't have a way of getting answers out of her.

Right.

Can you say more about that?

Because I think when most of us think about getting closure, especially in a situation like this, we think it's very much about the other person.

We want the other person to explain themselves, to apologize, to beg our forgiveness because they've hurt us.

How is this not about the other person, Antonio?

In some ways, Antonio, what you're saying is that the relationship might have been a shared project, but getting closure for the relationship does not need to be a shared project.