Confronting the Complexity of Loss

By contrast, certain participants displayed varying degrees of regret concerning their
actions or behaviour during the traumatic event concerned. These participants often
associated their regret with a perceived failure to prevent the violence or loss they
encountered. For instance, one participant who lost her parents during an LTTE raid on a
border village felt a deep sense of responsibility for her loss. She recalled that she had left
her parents’ home after getting married, and insisted that their lives might have been
spared had she remained with them. Another participant whose son had been killed in
action lamented that her biggest regret was not objecting to her son joining the Army.
Echoing similar sentiments, another participant recalled the circumstances in which her
20-year-old brother joined the Police before he went missing in 1996:
Malli [younger brother] did cadetting in school. That is why he wanted to join the
Police. One day he told me that he wanted to go for the selection interview. So
we took him for the interview. Had we not taken him there that day, he would
still be living with us. Later [after he was selected], he wore his full uniform and
asked me: ‘Akke [older sister], do I look smart?’ He was sitting in this same chair
[points to chair] when he said: ‘Akke, I feel rather reluctant to go [to the police]’.
That was the last day we saw him.
Another participant’s regrets were more difficult to define, as they related to her failure to
act on a premonition she had on the day of her husband’s death. She said: ‘I had a strong
feeling that my husband should have stayed at home without going to work that day.’ She
mentioned that she regretted that she could not convince him to stay back. The
participant’s husband was amongst those who were killed in the LTTE attack on a
civilian bus in Kebithigollewa.
These sentiments of regret reflected a tendency amongst some participants to apportion
on themselves part of the blame for their loss. This tendency ranged from the failure to
prevent family members from joining the military or anti-state movements, to the failure
to act on premonitions of tragic events. This apportionment of blame affected the
participants’ coping mechanisms in two ways. First, those apportioning such blame saw
themselves as struggling to move on from their loss. One participant who lost her
husband during the JVP insurrection observed that she was unable to move on because
she had to live with her failure to act on her conscience. She strongly felt that her
husband should not be involved in the JVP but had kept silent at the time. Second, these
participants appeared to have only a limited interest in discovering who was responsible
for their loss. Most participants who believed that they were partly to blame for their loss,
later expressed ambivalence over the need to investigate and prosecute perpetrators. This
ambivalence will be discussed later in this study.
3.3 Telling others
The next series of questions related to telling others about loss. Two types of ‘truth
telling’ were captured in the responses of participants: first, the sharing of narratives and
experiences in private, among trusted individuals including family members; and second,
the sharing of such narratives and experiences in public formal or semi-formal fora
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