Lelia relive the tragic moments with their "flesh, the pressure, the rhymes of gasps,"

which becomes "the novel language" of Henry and Lelia's life and all they can find in

each other (107). The sad ritualistic lovemaking is the couple's way of reconnecting with

their dead son and commemorating his last dying moments, which Henry often imagines:

"Reside, if you can, in the last place of the dead. ... A crush. You pale little boys are

crushing him your adoring mob of hands and feet, your necks and hands ... Too thick

anyway to breathe. How pale his face, his chest. Blanket his eyes. Listen, now. You can

hear the attempt of his breath, that unlost voice, calling us from the bottom of the world"

(107).

 The bereaved's identification with the dead is not a rare phenomenon, though,

especially in the context of a traumatic loss. According to David Aberbach, mourners

often identify with their beloved who passed away, "sometimes even going so far as to

adopt his characteristics or the symptoms which lead to his death."324 Freud also

comments on the griever's identification with the dead in "Mourning and Melancholia."

As Freud explains, melancholia is different from normal mourning, for unlike the normal

grieving process of mourning in which the pain fades away as the griever accepts and

comes to terms with the loss, in cases of melancholia, the grieving process is almost

interminably protracted and the griever cannot withdraw the cathexis from the lost object.

The melancholic finally identifies with the dead love object, causing the "shadow of the

object" to "fall" upon his or her ego, which often leads to a distorted object relations with

the lost object in which the melancholic stages a severe self-torment.325

 Similarly, the dark shadow of Mitt's death falls on Henry and Lelia heavily.

Reenacting the death scene of their child together, they partake in the fatal ordeal Mitt