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Carrying On After 'Dying Alive' By Tammy Wells You don’t see the pain in her eyes anymore. You don’t see the raw, shuddering anguish that she experienced a decade ago when she was a happy mother of a year-old daughter, a practicing psychologist and wife -- and then so swiftly a widow -- at 35. Dr. Laura Slap-Shelton has rebuilt her life. Her daughter Melanie is now 11. She’s remarried to physician Stephen Doane. Slap-Shelton has two teen-age stepsons now, one in college and one in school. Instead of living in Philadelphia’s Lafayette Hill community the couple and their daughter live in Kennebunkport. There is laughter in her life. And there’s a focus –- on helping other people live through their grief and renew their spirit. Those first days and months and years after her first husband died were, quite simply, hell on earth. Les Shelton had a heart problem and the couple knew it, but he’d had surgery to correct it. While they both knew problems could arise, his hear attack and subsequent death left Slap-Shelton in shock. His death left a 13-month-old who doesn’t remember her biological dad. "It’s really like dying alive,” Slap-Shelton said this week from her tiny yellow and blue office tucked in the back of her husband’s medical practice on West Cole Road. “The world becomes unreal around you." Ten years later, she still thinks about Les and what happened. "When you’re married, you become an entity and part of the other person is part of you. Your sense of identity is altered. . . that’s what happens," Slap-Shelton said. "(His death) makes me incredibly sad . . . sad for Les, sad for my daughter, but less sad for myself . . . I grew so tremendously and put together a life and my daughter has a wonderful relationship with her stepfather," she said. It was years before Slap-Shelton could bear to hear the shrill noise of a siren. But life has changed and the shock and pain, combined with her work as a psychologist, has taken her onto a different path. She’s shopping for a publisher for two books, one a children’s story that talks about what its like after Daddy dies -- the Daddy you can’t remember. She’s written grief articles for a self-help magazine. And then she developed a Web site: griefandrenewal.com, dedicated to providing ideas and support for people trying to renew their lives after a significant loss. Because of her own experience, much of the site deals with the situations here and around the world find themselves in. There are chat forums and article on how to cope, and a new one that discusses trauma and grief resources for folks who suffered tragedy after Sept.11. There’s a monthly newsletter. And there is a link to international widow’s issues that provides a horrifying, jaw-dropping glimpse at what happens to some widows in less developed countries -- like losing all their possessions, having their children taken away and turning to prostitution for survival. Or losing a husband and then being reaped by other men in the village as part of a "cleansing" process, Slap-Shelton said. The grief and renewal Web site is gaining national attention. After Sept. 11, producers from the cable television channel Oxygen coaxed Slap-Shelton to New York to appear on a segment focussed on providing support to people who lost their loved ones. Then there was the interview with the Christian Science Monitor, tentatively scheduled to appear in March, she said. The Oxygen segment meant Slap-Shelton met women who lost sons or husbands or daughters in the Sept. 11 tragedies. "One brave Mom came on, she had lost her son. She wanted no counselors," Slap-Shelton remembers. That hit home, because she didn’t either when her husband died. "I hadn’t sought help for quite a while. It took me a year and I went to a support group," she said. While therapy may be indicated for those experiencing depression or panic attacks, support groups provide a valuable resource, she said. It was for her. Besides being able to talk to people who know what you’re going through, there are the friendships that are formed, like the one she has with Deb, who introduced her to Doane, which kicked off a two-year courtship that meant many trips back and forth from Maine to Philadelphia before marriage three years ago. These days, people are more aware and talk about grief. Ten years ago, when her husband died, that didn’t happen quite so often. "It was like being on a whole different planet," she said. "The day care was shocked when they learned I talked to Melanie about her father . . . mostly we’re so protected from death." Ten years later there is a new husband, two stepsons, her adolescent daughter, and life in Maine. How are things 10 years on? "Good," Slap
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