I still like to go out but with my kids," he said. "My mother's at home at the moment." After the death of her husband, her son said that Yvette "got sicker and sicker. There is a difference between her before and after the illness. The whole house would smell of the illness. She went to hospital for a while. When she came back, we gave her drugs like she had tuberculosis, she slept more, and then she became worse. She was vomiting, her stomach became bloated." Her death was "very painful" and hard for them all to bear. "She was not ill before, she was not ill when we took her to hospital." Yvette suffered heart attacks. Sophie, a twenty-seven-year-old nurse, talked about her mother, who suffered from cancer. "My mother was always sad and tearful because she lost both my father and my aunt. She was very depressed. I was very surprised. It was not like her." Sophie had not spent much time with her father and aunt, her grandparents; her grandfather had died several years before her mother, and her father had been away working when the aunt had been ill. Sophie's mother had been a doctor. It was their father who "always kept to himself. I don't know much about my family. I miss my grandmother a lot. She was a great person who used to pray and tell stories about the saints. My grandmother was also beautiful, white skin, pink cheeks." Annette's mother became seriously ill in January 1997. Annette was in Senegal at the time, but she flew back to France as soon as she heard of her mother's death. Annette told me, "My mother was very sick, the last few months she was very sad. She was crying a lot. She told me she was sorry for my brother because she was always crying and she wasn't able to be very good to him. I am sorry for my brother. When I saw my mother in the hospital she was very weak." Annette missed her mother. She cried, and still cried, when she saw the grave site. Annette did not eat, and she did not eat much, but "I think that was normal for me." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Well," she said, "maybe I am not happy or I don't have enough pleasure or excitement in my life." Marlène was an unemployed twenty-seven-year-old former health care worker. Her parents had separated when she was in her teens. Her father had become physically violent toward her mother. Her mother had then met another man and married him. Her father did not want his daughter to see her on the weekend. Marlène was a quiet girl who did not speak much. She saw her father now and again when he needed to get blood drawn. "He didn't like me to talk because I cry, and he hates that. He is not a good person. I was supposed to visit my mother on the weekend, but he was shouting at me that I was not allowed to see my mother. It was hard for me to walk in the street. People would point their fingers at me and speak loud words to me, in the middle of the street. They would say ugly things. It was really hard for me because I didn't have anyone to help me to find food and buy clothes for me. I didn't eat well, I was very skinny, and I stayed in my room all day because I was always sleeping. My room is small, not really big. My window faces the street. When my mother and her new man would see me, they would speak to me nicely." Her mother and new husband had a daughter. They treated the girl nicely, they had bought her a nice house and nice things. They would go on holiday and take the girl, and "I was always lonely and unhappy there." Marlène stayed alone and unhappy at home in her tiny room. "Every day I just stayed in my room, crying a lot. I don't have any friends, I don't go to any activities. I would come out to see the doctor. I was very sad. When I saw my mother, I would talk to her, but she was always crying too. She was crying for my father, not me. I could not ask anything about her life there, but I could see they were happy." Annette's mother was very angry with her father, "and she was not able to understand the love that he had for his daughter." She could not see Marlène's suffering. Bruno was a retired fifty-three-year-old mechanic who lived alone. His wife had recently died and his two sons were in military service. "When I see my children, I cry. They work in Africa and have to go back there. I have two sons, they are in the Air Force, my son is in the army. I have two sons who I did not spend enough time with." Bruno had been very close to his wife. When she was sick, "he was very sad. They were separated for a long time, but they were very happy. I always called him twice a day. After she died, my friends called to comfort me, but I did not call anyone. I did not want to tell them. I just wanted to live in my small room." He did not sleep well, "I didn't eat well either." He woke up early, at five, with thoughts of his wife. "At seven o'clock, I would eat some bread and yogurt. I don't drink a lot. I just stay at home and watch television. If I go out, they shout at me. I will go back to the house and turn off the TV. Then I will go back to my room, and I will watch TV until morning. I am always alone there." Bruno was a lonely man. The death of a child and the loneliness of a grown son, and the absence of a father, a mother, and a sister are in other ways so different, and yet so similar. What is behind the feelings of loss? The sorrow of a mother for a lost son is certainly complex. He was also his mother's "only son." It is her own mortality. She knows she cannot live forever, and she is afraid that one day her daughter will grow up and leave. There is the fear that her other son will also die young. This can make it harder for her to cope with losing one son and harder to accept a living son's absence. The death of the father and her own childhood, and of her childhood in another world, are so embedded in her psyche. The sense of distance between them all was profound, and often the only "link" is through the father's business. The death of a sister and brother-in-law is not so related to the mother's feeling of the loss of her husband. The children were her "favorite things," but they had never been important to her. The mother is not worried by the loss of their lives and wants to remember them as she would have if they had lived longer. For her, there is no "missing" the sister, who is not missed. Bruno is a lonely man, almost always "alone" in the small room where he lives with the television. One is left to wonder whether this isolation was a choice. Perhaps he wishes to remain alone, with the constant images of his wife in his mind? As he is never seen to call anyone or talk about his loneliness, loneliness is not part of his personality, an expression of the loneliness of modern society, or an expression of the desire for love and acceptance. Bruno has been alone since his wife died. He says he does not wish to call any friends, it is too sad, he feels no desire for company. "I am only a lonely man." When Bruno watches the television, it is only to see his wife, or her image is recalled. And this, he says, reminds him of her. I am still with my children, and they are still with me. I see the sadness in my grandchildren. When I see them, I cry. I try to comfort them a little bit. But they look at me and they don't understand. They don't know what happened to my daughter. I am alone at home with my television. When my friends come to see me, I am happy, but my life is the same. It was not only Bruno's wife who died. It was the daughter who was his "only child" who died. His loneliness and sadness are linked to the death of his daughter. There is sorrow for his life as well as for his daughter's loss. He is