Now a cliche, closure is everywhere, but not a heart is mended

NEW YORK -- Lee Ielpi has heard the word so many times, he wishes people would just shut up.

In these times, there is much Ielpi doubts, but one thing he knows is true. There is no such thing as closure. Not now. Not for a long time.

The word is everywhere, just the same. On the tough-talking tongues of Marines, cops and firefighters. On the lips of survivors, psychiatrists, rescue workers, relatives of the dead, even acerbic New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who, until three months ago, could be expected to sneer at such a term and call it touchy-feely.

Since Sept. 11, seemingly everyone is searching for it, longing for it and talking about it as if that will summon healing.

"It doesn't exist," says Ielpi, a retired firefighter whose firefighter son's body was finally found earlier this month after being buried at the World Trade Center. "All of a sudden it's one of those cliches that everyone has to use."

Jonathan Ielpi, a 29-year-old husband and father of two young sons, had already been declared dead. His funeral had been held. But for three months, his father went every day to the rubble, looking for his boy and the children of others.

"What the hell does that word mean?" Ielpi asked. The body of his son has been found, but there is no closure. He helped carry Jonathan out. He was glad to do it. Proud to do it. But it didn't close anything.

Grief he understands. Pain that makes life seem worthless. Relief that comes only in sleep, and often neither comes.

Closure? At the worst, the overuse of that word can be damaging. At the least, it can be insulting, say relatives of the dead and those who help them.

It began as a clinical term used by mental health professionals to define a stage in traumatic grief where one is able to reinvest in life, where living is not to be endured, but cherished.

But closure doesn't come quickly, said Dr. Phebe Tucker of the University of Oklahoma's psychiatry department works with victims of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. "And that is the goal of terrorism -- to create anxiety and fear ... and erode a person's trust level in the world."

Still, it is proffered. Giuliani mentioned the word when he gave families of the missing containers of pulverized debris from the World Trade Center. Firefighters and cops speak of obtaining it when, and if, they can pull every fallen comrade from the rubble.

Even the Marines talk about it. An American flag signed by New York Police Department officers was sent to soldiers in Afghanistan. "They took 23 great cops. Pay back time," wrote one.

They found Arlene Howard's son, but she doesn't know if she has found closure.

George Howard, a 16-veteran of the Port Authority Police Department, won its Medal of Valor for rescuing an elevator full of children during the 1993 Trade Center bombing. On Sept. 11, on his day off, he arrived at the burning skyscrapers just in time to be killed when one collapsed. He leaves two grown sons deeply troubled by their father's death, their grandmother said.

Mrs. Howard gave George's prized possession -- shield No. 1012 -- to President Bush, who promised on national television and to a joint session of Congress that he would carry it as a reminder of his own job, and to honor Howard and others who died doing theirs.

"I hear them say all the time that if they find the body, then you have closure," said Mrs. Howard. "We had George's body and that made us very happy, if you can say 'very happy' in a time like this."

Her family is comforted by having a grave to visit. "I can go and say hello to him and talk him," his mother said.

But closure, well, if such a thing exists, it marks only the beginning, not the end, she says.

"It's part of the healing process, but it's very long," she says. "And there is not much else I can say without ..."

Without?

"Without going into tears, and I try not to do that anymore. I have two grandsons and I have to be strong for them."

Lee Ielpi likes to think he is being strong. Or at least trying to be strong. Because he is helping to raise Jonathan's sons, ages 9 and 3.

"This is the pits," he says. "This is absolutely awful. You wake up and the first thing that you think is, 'Oh ... yeah.'

"There's absolutely no word for it."