The Concept and Reality of Death

It was a sad day for Canada and an absolute catastrophe for the residents of a small Quebec railroad town called Lac-Megantic. It was the scene on the night of July 6 of a rail disaster where a runaway engine that had been parked on a long slope beyond the town and inadequately braked, broke loose and ghostlike and silently, with not a soul on board, rammed at breakneck speed through the town carrying its load of petroleum products and overturning within the centre of town where a conflagration of oils polluted the air, a scene that could rival Dante's Inferno.

Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS   Public interest in what is trundling by rail past their homes has ignited in the wake of the July 6, 2013, derailment in Lac-Megantic, Que., when a runaway oil train skipped the tracks and exploded, killing 47 people.

During those early morning hours 47 people died, men and women who were sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers and the town of Lac Megantic reeled in disbelief and keening sorrow. There were 27 children of various ages from infants to teens, who were left orphans; of that total number four children lost both their parents, the balance one parent. And while the still-mourning town attempts to address itself to its loss, it must also address the issue of how best to lead those orphan children into their futures bereft of one or both of their parents.

"Since these children never saw a body at the funeral, they are still waiting for their mothers and fathers. Some of the children are too young to truly understand the concept of death. But with time, as they grow older, these children realize their parents won't come back and they start the process of mourning."
"We didn't want them to be uprooted from their community. In general, when a child has lost both parents, we want them to experience the least loss possible, and therefore we suggested that they stay in their milieu and among their friends."
"The people in the community are working together and supporting each other."
"We wanted to keep the parents as allies, not the contrary. We wanted to make them aware that one of the biggest consequences of not telling the truth is that the children lost trust in them, and that can be a terrible thing."
Josee Masson, director-general of Deuil-Jeunesse ("Youth Mourning"), Lac-Megantic

A child holds a cut-out heart during a moment of silence where 50 church bells rang at Ste-Agnese church in Lac-M½gantic, about 100 kilometres east of Sherbrooke Saturday July 13, 2013, where an a train carrying crude oil exploded after derailing.  Photograph by: Vincenzo D'Alto, The Gazette

Some of the children left parentless still do not understand that they will never be hugged again by the parents they yearn to see come back home to them. While families and friends rallied around the orphans, united in their overwhelming grief, many adults simply could not go beyond telling the children that nothing so awful happened at all. That there was no derailment; a film crew was shooting a disaster film. Other adults assured the children their parents were alive, simply not around at the moment, but they would return.

This led Ms. Deuil-Jeunesse to speak to the remaining parents, to tell them from experience that children must be informed, they must be told the truth, and they must be led with empathy and compassion toward accepting the reality of what had occurred. Led to believe that nothing untoward happened, they would eventually discover the truth and feel betrayed by those they trusted when their consciousness became aware that what they hoped would come to fruition; the return of their missing parents; would never happen.

Misinforming the older children who watched television coverage of the tragedy with its fiery explosions and the search for survivors, then the search for what was left of those who perished and the long, agonizing attempts toward cadaver identification, presented an impossible situation to the adults who wanted to withhold the truth from what they perceived as vulnerable children requiring reassurance, not the grim reality of what had in truth occurred.

A woman  looks at drawings by children of Lac Mégantic, depicting what they would like to see in the town’s new commercial centre, Tuesday, June 17, 2014, during a public information meeting about the construction of the area. The downtown is being rebuilt following a train derailment, explosion and oil spill on July 6, 2013 which killed 47 people. Much of the old downtown was destroyed and what remains is contaminated.  Photograph by:  Phil Carpenter, The Gazette

And soon enough social workers became painfully aware that many of the orphans were both in a state of mourning and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some children rallied and were capable of surmounting their painful awareness though not their acute, deeply-embedded sense of loss. Other children became involved in self-harm, practising auto-mutilation and scarring themselves. Those children whose family situation was dysfunctional or who had pre-existing health problems became the most difficult to treat.

And then there are the children living with their parents who themselves are suffering their own prolonged mourning in memory of their dead siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles. That unending sadness of loss permeates the atmosphere and penetrates the mind of the child, when their own parents are suffering the effects of PTSD. This group of children has had social workers and educators assigned to aid them, through the local health authority.

There are children who attempted to suppress their fears and emotions of dread and longing, to avoid upsetting their parents. Some of those children are now haunted by nightmares, waking up in a panic of terror just after 1:00 a.m., around the time when the train had screeched wildly rounding the rails in the dark quiet of the summer night, just before derailing and exploding.

"There are kids who were exposed to the disaster from watching TV images that were coming at them 1,000 miles an hour. They never had the chance to express themselves", commented Josee Masson.