Grieving Mothers: Are We Still Standing Beside Them?

From Feeling Forgotten to Our Human and Social Responsibility Towards Bereaved Families

In recent days, while watching several clips of bereaved mothers who had lost their children, I found myself thinking above all about their grief and possible loneliness. In some of their words and reactions, I sensed that they might feel society was gradually forgetting them.

I do not know how closely my impression reflects their actual feelings. But the possibility raised a question in my mind: after the first days of mourning, do we continue standing beside these families? Do we know what they experience in the privacy of their homes, amid memories of their loved ones and the difficulties of daily life?

We have seen images of mothers and fathers weeping at their children's graves, calling out their names or holding photographs of their loved ones as they demand truth and justice. But when the cameras are turned off and each of us returns to everyday life, how do these families' lives continue?

Suffering That Does Not End With Time

Losing a child, spouse, father, mother, sister or brother is more than the loss of one person. Sometimes it transforms a family's life at its foundations. An empty place at the table, a room whose occupant will never return, occasions once celebrated with joy and a future that was meant to be built together all recall that absence.

For families who lost loved ones during protests and government repression, this suffering may have further dimensions.

According to Amnesty International's August 2023 report (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/08/iran-respect-families-right-to-commemorate-loved-ones-killed-during-uprising-without-reprisals-on-one-year-anniversary/), a number of families of those killed in the 2022 protests faced threats, arrests, restrictions on memorial ceremonies and even the destruction of their loved ones' gravestones.

In such circumstances, a family lives with the grief of losing a loved one and may also have to pay a price simply for mourning and preserving their memory.

Continuing pressure can lead to anxiety, sleep difficulties, insecurity, social isolation and problems carrying on with daily life. Families do not all respond in the same way, however, and we must not imagine them all as ill or incapable.

Why Might Families Feel Alone?

We must also acknowledge a reality: Iranian society itself faces numerous difficulties. Economic pressure, anxiety about the future, insecurity, war, repression and everyday problems have exhausted many people's emotional resources.

Someone may feel profound sympathy for a bereaved family yet be unable to help financially. Another person may fear the security consequences of attending a memorial or maintaining an open relationship with the family.

Silence is therefore not always a sign of indifference. Sometimes fear, inability or psychological exhaustion prevents people from expressing sympathy.

Public attention is also usually greater in the first days after a tragedy. Images circulate, people react and many messages of condolence are written. With time and new events, however, media and public attention may diminish.

For a family still facing a loved one's absence every day, this distance between initial attention and subsequent silence can be painful.

Of course, without listening to the families themselves, we cannot conclude that they all feel forgotten or that society has really withdrawn from them. Yet even the possibility of such a feeling should make us think.

What Does Real Sympathy Look Like?

Perhaps our first duty is to listen well, instead of searching for grand, impressive phrases.

We do not always need to ask about their loved one's death or make them repeat painful memories. Sometimes a telephone call, a simple message, or asking, “How are you, and is there anything I can do?” can begin a human connection.

In its psychological first aid guidance, the World Health Organization emphasises listening without pressure, respecting affected people's wishes and providing practical support.

But solidarity should not be limited to conversation and expressions of emotion.

Among these families there may be an ill parent, a child needing support or a household struggling to make ends meet. Help with treatment, education, transport, everyday tasks and access to specialist counselling, where needed and wanted by the families themselves, can form part of social solidarity.

Such support must be offered respectfully, without pity or portraying families as people permanently dependent on others' help.

Does Responsibility Rest Only With Families Seeking Justice?

In published images, we have repeatedly seen bereaved mothers visiting one another, attending each other's children's graves and sharing their sorrow.

This companionship is valuable, but it also raises a question: why should so much of the burden of sympathy and support fall on people enduring similar suffering themselves?

Can we, as citizens, neighbours, friends, writers, journalists or Iranians living abroad, not play a part in reducing their loneliness?

The media also have a responsibility beyond publishing images of crying mothers. Following families' living conditions, listening to their wishes and paying attention to difficulties that persist after the news subsides are part of that responsibility.

At the same time, families should not be made to retell their suffering repeatedly to produce a report or attract an audience. Publishing photographs, personal information and details of their lives must also take place with their consent and attention to their safety.

We must not expect bereaved mothers and fathers to remain constantly in the street, beside a grave or before a camera to prove that they still seek justice.

They have the right to cry, remain silent, step back from public activity and try to continue their lives, without being thought to have forgotten their loved ones.

What Is Our Duty Today, Before Iran Is Free?

Many of us may hope that one day the conditions will exist for victims' families to seek justice freely and for the truth about what happened to their loved ones to become clear.

But these families' emotional, psychological and social needs cannot be postponed until that day.

They are living today, facing difficulties today and needing companionship today.

Within circles of family and friends, we can maintain human contact with survivors. With their consent and attention to their safety, help can be sought for essential needs. Iranians abroad can also provide medical, educational or livelihood support through trusted people and organisations, without putting families' names and identities at risk.

These actions may seem small, but the value of solidarity should not be judged only by its scale. Sometimes a continuing human relationship matters more than dozens of condolence messages.

Another important point is that bereaved families do not necessarily share the same political beliefs, wishes or ways of seeking justice. Supporting them must not depend on political affiliation, agreement with a particular movement or participation in protests.

Human suffering cannot be measured by political criteria.

Must They Remind Us of Their Grief Every Day?

When I think again about those clips, what troubles me most is whether a mother, after losing her child, might also have to worry that the child will be forgotten.

Perhaps we cannot fully comprehend such a mother's pain. Perhaps no words can fill her child's empty place. But we can make sure she does not feel she has been left alone to bear that suffering.

This companionship claims neither a complete understanding of her grief nor the ability to end it. It is a human responsibility that begins today.

Must bereaved mothers keep publishing images of their children's graves to remind society that they are still alive, still suffering and still need our companionship?

Perhaps our answer to this question, more than any slogan or condolence message, will show how firmly we stand beside them.