ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Chethik is a writer, professional speaker, and workshop leader living in Lexington, Ky. For the past decade, he has focused his work on the psychology of men. Between 1992 and 1996, he wrote VoiceMale, a weekly column on men's issues, which was syndicated to dozens of newspapers by Universal Press Syndicate. In 1996, he retired the column to focus on book-writing and speaking.

Chethik was born in 1957 in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up primarily in Ann Arbor, Mich., where his father was on the faculty the University of Michigan's School of Psychiatry. Neil got his bachelor's degree in journalism in 1979 from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He worked on the staffs of the Tallahassee Democrat and San Jose Mercury News before going out on his own in 1991.

Now 43, Neil lives in the Kentucky bluegrass region with his wife, Kelly Flood, who is a professional fund-raiser, and their 7-year-old son, Evan. FatherLoss is his first book.

Q & A WITH NEIL CHETHIK

Q: How did you get interested in the topic of father-loss?

A: In 1984, when I was 27 years old, my paternal grandfather died suddenly. I was living a few blocks from him at the time. My father came to town the next day, and we spent an afternoon going through my grandfather's apartment. That was the first time I ever saw my father cry. My father told me that day that he cried in part because he'd always wanted to hear some words of pride from his father, and now he never would. Then my father said he didn't want me to feel the same way when he died, so he told me how proud he was of me. That was the seed for FatherLoss.

Q: Has your father passed away since then?

A: No. He's 69 and healthy. When I first told him I was writing about the death of fathers, I was afraid he might take it wrong, like I was pushing him toward the grave. Instead, he was very supportive, and became intimately involved in helping me with the book. He's a psychoanalyst, and we spent hours together exploring his relationship with his father, his relationship with me, and the stories of the men I interviewed.

Q: You interviewed 70 men for the book. How did you find them?

A: I started with a handful of people I already knew who had lost their fathers. I then contacted a few of the thousands of men who had written to me when I was a syndicated columnist in the mid-90s. Then I reached out to churches, hospices, and other civic groups to help balance my interviewees by age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics. I traveled to every region of the country to conduct the interviews.

Q: Men are notorious for not talking about emotions. Did you have trouble getting them to talk?

A: Not at all. None of the men I sat down with was reluctant to talk. And all but two of the men I asked for interviews said yes. I think the key to talking with men about emotional subjects is to avoid asking: How did you feel? but rather, to ask: What happened next? The men I spoke with wanted to tell their stories.

Q: What was most striking to you about these men?

A: The intensity of their connection to their fathers. Even when a father had been dead for decades, sons spoke with passion, reverence, sadness, anger. It may seem that fathers and sons don't communicate much, but there's usually a tremendous depth of feeling between them.

Q: Is the father-son connection different from other parent-child bonds?

A: I think it is. The father-son relationship may be closest to the mother-daughter bond. Children look to the same-sex parent for guidance and acceptance. I found that when a father didn't offer these things to a son, the son was deeply hurt. He often went through adult life looking for acceptance from other men, especially male bosses. When a man has a rough time with his male boss, you can almost guarantee he's had a rough time with his dad.

Q: You commissioned a national telephone survey of 300 men. Why did you do that, and what did you find?

A: We commissioned the survey because we wanted some hard numbers to go along with the in-depth stories, and because we wanted a representative sample. A university research center conducted the survey. And the findings are fascinating. We found, for example, that 61 percent of sons cry over the death of their fathers – but that crying is not a significant factor in how effectively a son copes with his father's death. A far more important factor is what kind of relationship he had with his father while growing up. Generally, the worse the relationship between a father and son while growing up, the harder it is for the son to deal with the death.

Q: What did you learn, if anything, about how men grieve differently from women?

A: I found that generally speaking, men and women do grieve differently. Women are more likely to be emotionally expressive – they cry more easily, and talk about the loss more easily. Men are quieter, more intellectual. They're also action-oriented in their grief. In place of crying, some men run, chop wood, work out with weights. These act as releases. Then they often take action that honors the memory of their fathers. One man I spoke with built an urn in his father's wood shop after the death, using his dad's tools; another planted a tree in his father's honor. In this way, sons touch their grief and let it out a little at a time.

Q: Does that kind of grieving really work?

A: Absolutely. One of the surprises in my research was discovering previous studies that compared how men and women grieved. Almost across the board, they found that while the sexes grieve differently, neither gender does it more effectively than the other. In fact, that's a major message of my book: Don't let anybody else tell you how to grieve!

Q: You mean that any style of grief is OK?

A: Not exactly. People make mistakes as they grieve, hurting themselves or others. For example, 12 percent of the men in my survey said they used drugs or alcohol to cope with the death, and most of them said that in the long run, it hurt them. My suggestion for those facing a loss is to allow the grieving process to happen naturally—but also to monitor themselves. After a few weeks or months, they can ask themselves if their relationships are suffering, if their work life has taken a dive, if their overall mood isn't improving. Grieving a significant loss can take months, or longer, with lots of dips and dives. Eventually, if someone senses that they're stuck, it's probably worth considering professional help.

Q: How can a professional help someone grieve?

A: There are counselors, ministers, and others who specialize in helping people move through a loss. But often, just having someone to talk with who is not a family member or friend can break the logjam. At the end of most of the interviews I conducted for the book, I asked the man what had helped him most in dealing with his father's death. More than a few said talking with me.

Q: You're the father of a 7-year-old boy. Did writing this book teach you anything about being a father?

A: It helped me immensely. For one, I learned the importance of affection. I asked each man I interviewed to recall what his father did that made him feel valued. The answer, overwhelmingly, was affection. And that wasn't limited to physical affection. Fathers who played games with their kids, helped with homework, took their sons to sporting events—all of that had a similar impact to physical affection. The important thing is for a father to focus his loving attention on his son—not in a controlling way, but rather in a way that allows the son to take the lead. I also learned the importance of talking about death and loss with young children. When a family cat dies, for example, we can encourage—though not force—children to help with the burial or a memorial, and then we should talk about the loss whenever the child wants to. Experience with death is a great preparation for life.

Q: You worked on FatherLoss for three-and-a-half years. Did immersing yourself in death ever leave you depressed?

A: I had my moments. Once I conducted two interviews in one day, totaling eight hours. I ended up with the worst headache of my life. Digging so deeply, churning up so much, it was overwhelming. But overall, the book has lifted me up. I'm not nearly as afraid of death as I was before I started, and I have a greater appreciation for life.

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