A recurring theme in ELIC is losing loved ones and how you deal with it. How can you come to terms with the loss. A good example is when Oskar makes his adventure trip through the five boroughs of New York and meets several people. This is how he handles the loss of his father.
Another example is when Oskar's Grandfather leaves his grandmother: "The next morning he went to the airport. I didn't dare feel his suitcase. I waited for him to come home. Hours passed. And minutes. I didn't open the store at 11:00. I waited by the window. I still believed in him. I didn't eat lunch. Seconds passed. The afternoon left. The evening came. I didn't eat dinner. Years were passing through the spaces between moments."(185)
JSF shows in this book the effect of loosing a loved on in the 9/11 tragedy - looking directly at one families' reaction to the devastating part of history. This is one of the central purposes of the book-seeing how one family is dealing with things, compared to others.
Oskar's grandfather talks about how "people were left to suffer [the] hope" (215) of their loved one possibly surviving and how they didn't know because there were so many bodies. This is like how Oskar's dad's body was never found, making it hard for him to accept his dad's death, which relates to the 5 Stages of Grief. When Oskar's grandmother is recollecting an interview she saw of a man whose daughter was missing, the man says "it would take a body" (224) for him to accept her death, which is the same way it is for Oskar.
By adding the letters from Oskar's grandparents, you can see that he isn't the only one in his family that's had hardships and loss. They all have lost people in different ways and have to learn to cope with it.
I believe when JSF referrs to his feelings about his feelings from the death of his loved one, he is best describing a state of confusion and lack of change in his life for the better or for the worse. He isn't progressing, just fading away.
"You can't love anything more than something you miss."(208). I feel like Oskar's grandfather saying this sums up the entire book's idea of love of a lost one. We see this statement hold true through Oskar's love for his lost father as well as the grandfather's love for Anna. I thought it was very fitting that JSF finally made this satement after leading up to it through the characters' emotions.
"They shoveled dirt onto your fathers grave. Onto my son's empty cofffin." pg 233
The loss of people you care about is directly related to the death of Oskar's dad.
the lose of people you care about ties back into the central purpos of one thing can mean the world to someone
It seems that Oskar's story is meant to parallel his grandfather's in this regard, with his father taking the place of Anna.