Life after death: How to grieve as a family

Monica Kataria, a high school social science teacher at Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School in Mississauga, never anticipated something so devastating would ever happen to her. Her husband, Devinder Kumar, was murdered.

Kumar, a once popular realtor in Brampton, was stabbed multiple times in the neck and back. A former tenant was found guilty and charged with first-degree murder in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison.

Nov. 10, 2011 was the day the world changed for Kataria and her two young daughters. She describes that day as an “emotional rollercoaster,” from coming home from work to find OPP officers waiting at her home, to then being told by the police about her husband’s death. Her first thought was of her girls and the immediacy of being able to take care of them and knowing she would have to tell them when they got home from school.

“The whole concept of becoming a single mother, never planning it, in wh

at I believed to be a great marriage was gone—pulled right out from underneath me,” Kataria says.

In cases like this where an individual is murdered, registered psychologist and York University psychology professor Dr. Stephen Fleming says when a loved one dies tragically, the person grieving has a ‘grief reaction’.

He describes this as first experiencing shock, then pain and finally a sense of longing for their lost loved one.

Explaining death to a child is difficult because they don’t understand what it means. But explaining to a five-and six-year-old that their dad would never be coming home again, especially because of a violent death has to be one of the worst things a mother could ever do.

“I looked at them and said, ‘Something really bad happened to Dada, and he’s never coming home again.’” She says that was the last thing she remembers saying to her girls that afternoon. She couldn’t look at them for days after telling them that their father was dead.

Jenelle Williams, 22, also tragically lost her father at a young age, much like Kataria’s daughters. She was two years old when he died, too young to realize what had happened. His death only began to affect her when she got older.

Williams’ entire family was meant to go Jamaica in 1995 when her father died. Her father went a week ahead of her, her mother and brother. He was killed in a motorcycle accident there before they arrived. Their family vacation turned into her mother planning a funeral for her dad.

“The only time I was really affected by the absence of my dad was in school around Father’s Day,” she said. “Or rare occasions where I’d be around my friends and their fathers and just really wonder what life would be like if he was here and I got to experience that ‘father-daughter’ relationship like they do.”

With her husband’s life being taken so suddenly, Kataria not only had to deal with grieving as a widow, a word she wasn’t able to say before--she also had to deal with the legalities and trial of finding the people who changed her life forever.

She took a leave of absence initially after Kumar was killed, but returned in February 2012 for the last four months of the school year.

“My job was either in the courtroom or in the classroom,” she said.

During her time away, she and her daughters saw a grief therapist that specialized in homicide, who really helped her come to terms with everything that happened.

Fleming, being a psychologist who has worked with grieving people, says it’s important to know when dealing with grief and trauma that you don’t get past it, you learn to live through it. He says that those grieving should know that, therapists “can’t cure them. Grief is nothing more, and nothing less, than the price we pay for loving.”

At first it was hard for Kataria to let go of anything that reminded her of her husband. This past summer she moved out of the home they lived in together and let go of most of his belongings. “I have some of his things. The girls have some of his things,” she said.

It took about four years, but she decided with her daughters what was important enough to keep and what needed to go. She also explains that because her daughters were so young when he died that she didn’t want to shock them more than they already would be with the ongoing trials, so she kept them in school.

Williams’ mother is a bit different; she hid her grieving from her children. “She (her mom) never let his death affect her significantly and never let it show around us,” she said. She explains that her mother sacrificed her personal social life when she and her brother were younger to make sure they had everything they needed growing up. But now that they are older and living their own lives, she has time to enjoy hers as well.

A week before Kumar’s death, he spent the entire day with his daughters and the last place he took them was Marble Slab. So on the anniversary of Kumar’s death, his birthday and Father’s Day, Kataria and her daughters always go there as a way to commemorate his life. Now 10 and 11 years old, Kataria’s daughters are preteens. She’s confident that they will be OK because to her, they seem to be dealing with their father’s absence very well. “I believe in my heart that they’ve gotten over his passing and they’re going to become so used to me being their lone parent that it’ll become normal to them.”

Kataria admits that she is taking the absence of her husband harder than her children but she knows that she can’t let her grief that over her life.

People get over tragic deaths differently. In the beginning, a good day for Kataria was when she didn’t cry. Now a good day consists of her looking back at the day and feeling a sense of fulfillment.

“In my world, I can’t change what happened; I look to the left, I look to the right and I realize my girls need me.”

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