Role Mother? Role model? Maternity? The death of a loved one can cause trauma in which the painful experience leaves a psychological scar. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold explores the different ways people grieve when they lose a loved one. When young Susie Salmon is killed on her way home from school, the remaining four members of her family deal with their grief differently. After Susie's death, her mother, Abigail Salmon, endures the hardships of losing her daughter, her family falling apart, and accepting the loss of the life she never had the opportunity to live. Abigail uses Freud's defense mechanisms to repress wounds, fears, guilty desires and to resolve conflicts, which lead to alienation and separation from her family. When the bond between mother and child is broken with the death of the child, it can be unbearable to deal with, leading the mother to resort to denial to cope with her loss. When Abigail hears the news that her daughter Susie is dead, she refuses to believe it, “but when they lifted the evidence bag with my hat in it, something broke in her. The thin lead crystal wall that had protected his heart […] shattered” (Sebold). Sebold presents the story told from the first-person omniscient point of view of Susie, who has been murdered; the hat belongs to Susie, making death real for Abigail even though she doesn't want to believe it. She denies what happened and would prefer not to talk about it with anyone, not even her husband. This begins to distance Abigail from her husband, marking the beginning of her alienation, which is the result of Freud's defense mechanism of avoidance and denial. This situation demonstrates that “denial can be temporarily helpful in helping… middle of paper… and dealing with one's unhappiness. Over the course of the novel, Abigail suffers from several things: the loss of her daughter, the collapse of her family, and the loss of the life she never had the opportunity to live. She turns to Freud's defense mechanisms as methods of enduring the agony she faces, which subsequently leads her to alienation. Defensiveness becomes a habit for Abigail, who is portrayed as a selfish person during her relationship with the detective investigating Susie's death, and later when she decides to leave her family for eight years to care for her. In the end, he recognizes his faults and mistakes and returns home to make up for his negligence towards his family. Abigail is able to let go of Susie and let go of the childhood desires that caused her to drift away, facing the negative results of her reliance on Freud's defense mechanism..