By Dawn McKeen, Photo: Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times, The New York Times, December 8, 2021
A year after her mother died from Covid, Fiana Garza Tulip held a small memorial service on a Texas beach that her family had visited countless times when she was a child. As she and her brother dropped a wreath of yellow roses into the waves, she expected to cry. But the tears did not come. She felt only guilt for appearing to be unmoved, heartless even.
Ms. Garza Tulip, 41, had endured so many losses — two miscarriages, and the virus taking her mother, uncle and great-aunt. It also debilitated her father. “I think the one thing I miss the most is feeling anything,” she said recently of life after the series of tragedies.
She had thought the lack of emotion meant she was not grieving, unaware that numbness can be a symptom of grief. When a therapist diagnosed her with prolonged grief disorder, or P.G.D., a newly recognized condition, Ms. Garza Tulip, who lives in New Jersey, was relieved that what she suffered had a name. Recently added to the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., it’s a syndrome in which people feel stuck in an endless cycle of mourning that can last for years or even decades, severely impairing their daily life, relationships and job performance.
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