During class on Monday, I was struck by a memory of a scene in the second Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie that reminded me of the overlap of emotional and scientific ties to the HeLa cells. In the scene, Bridget is in Turkey at an archaeological dig, and she is asked by her leader when a person's death stops being an emotional thing and becomes something to study scientifically. Bridget's answer is that that transition occurs when the last person who knew the deceased person dies. Her leader questions her answer, but it is not elaborated too much further in the scene.
This reminded me of Henrietta's life because that transition never happened. She became a scientific being before she was even dead! Her children were never even given a chance to mourn her before her body was being slashed open in hopes of recovering her immortal cells.
This book emphasized most to me the importance of a mourning period. If that period is abandoned or skipped, it will have to creep back up eventually. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, emotions have a way of finding you no matter what you try to do to evade them. It's best to just deal with them as soon as possible, but Henrietta's family wasn't given that chance.
Agreed, they weren't given the chance, but do you think that because her cells lived on that they felt like they couldn't officially mourn for her, because part of her was still alive? (Especially when considering the views of Deborah, who saw the HeLa cells attached to Henrietta's spirit.
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