Water and the Shower: Symbols of Trauma and Healing in Loved One
What the Shower and Water Literally Represent
In Aisha Muharrar's novel Loved One, water appears as both a literal element and a charged psychological symbol. After Gabe Wolfe drowns, the narrator Julia Hendricks develops an acute phobia of showers. She cannot step under falling water without experiencing overwhelming terror. Instead, she takes baths—lowering herself into still, contained water—or washes herself using a hotel sink. The shower becomes an object of avoidance, while water in other forms (tears, baths, rain, drinks, the ocean) threads through the narrative, tracking Julia's grief from suppression toward acceptance.
The literal shower appears at key moments. In Chapter One, Julia draws a bath after the funeral, lingering until she prunes, the candle burning down to translucent wax. In Chapter Thirteen, after a one-night stand with a Frenchman named Louis, she admits to herself that avoiding showers "even after having sex" signals a serious problem. The climactic shower scene occurs in Chapter Twenty-Three, when Elizabeth Thompson—Gabe's ex-girlfriend—coaxes Julia into a shower in her London flat. Elizabeth sits on the toilet seat outside the curtain, providing the presence Julia needs to finally step under the stream.
Where Water Imagery Recurs
Water saturates the novel beyond the shower itself. Julia's grief first manifests as tears: "I had been crying every day since I heard. They didn't have any aim or origin, those early tears. It was a physical response, a leak in my face." At the burial, tears slide down her face among the oak trees. Later, she weeps in front of Georgia O'Keeffe's landscapes in New Mexico. These moments frame crying not as catharsis but as an involuntary physical leak—grief escaping the body against her will.
Baths recur as Julia's coping mechanism. After the funeral, she draws a bath immediately upon returning home. In Louis's pristine bathroom, she takes what she calls "a real bath and not just a standing sink bath." The tub represents containment: grief held within boundaries, controlled, still. Unlike the shower's relentless fall, the bath allows immersion without the terrifying verticality of water from above.
Other water imagery accumulates. In Chapter Twenty-Nine, Julia sits at a Barcelona café, an untouched Aperol Spritz before her, ice melting. She pictures the last time she saw Gabe: "A crisp white shirt, condensation forming around something like an Aperol Spritz." In Chapter Thirty-One, at Gabe's yahrzeit memorial, she describes opening "tender and free"—a release that echoes water finally flowing. The ocean appears when Elizabeth dares Julia to jump in during their time on David and Alice's boat; Julia resists literal immersion but undergoes emotional immersion nonetheless.
How the Symbol's Meaning Changes
The shower's meaning evolves across three stages.
Stage One: Avoidance as Control. Initially, Julia's refusal to shower is an act of self-protection. She associates falling water with Gabe's drowning—his body submerged, alone, water filling his lungs. By rejecting the shower, she rejects the sensation that mimics his death. She tells herself she is "clean" using alternatives. This avoidance parallels her broader grief strategy: she compartmentalizes, buries anger beneath performed composure, and narrates a version of her relationship with Gabe that excludes their one-night stand and his subsequent silence.
Stage Two: Recognition of the Real Fear. In Elizabeth's bathroom, Julia discovers the shower phobia is not about physical danger. She tells Elizabeth she is not scared of falling. "I think it's what you said. Being alone in here." The true terror is existential: the shower recreates the isolation of Gabe's death. "It was the idea of him being alone, dying alone. Especially when instead, he might have been downstairs at the hotel bar with me." The falling water becomes a sensory trigger for moral injury—the guilt of having ignored Gabe's final voicemail, of having turned off her phone and watched cooking shows while he waited at Hotel Frank.
Stage Three: Hesitant Immersion. Julia does not conquer the shower phobia in a single triumphant moment. In London, she manages to get in only because Elizabeth sits on the other side of the curtain. When the full emotional weight hits—"I could see Gabe again. Not the moments when I was most upset or conflicted about him, but all of Gabe, fully"—she throws the curtain open and flees. This incomplete victory is the point. Healing is not linear. Julia can tolerate the water only with another person present, and only for as long as she can bear the memories it unleashes. By the novel's end, she has not become someone who showers easily. But she has learned to stay in other kinds of immersion: in grief, in love, in the ongoing work of remembering.
Character and Theme Connections
The shower motif connects to Julia's relationship with Elizabeth. Elizabeth becomes the person who pushes Julia into the water—literally and metaphorically. She mocks Julia's request for a bath ("Do you want me to rub your tummy and find you some jammies too?") but then sits with her through the shower, offering the companionship Julia needs. This scene cements their fragile alliance and models the novel's argument that grief requires witness.
The motif also links to the theme of communication and silence. Julia's inability to shower mirrors her inability to speak honestly about Gabe. Both involve a refusal to let something flow. When she finally declares "I love Gabe" at the memorial—correcting her tense from past to present—the language itself becomes a kind of immersion. The walls between public and private grief dissolve.
Water connects to possession and legacy as well. Gabe's missing medical ID bracelet—the object Julia crafted for him in Barcelona—was worn against his skin, near water when he showered or swam. Its absence haunts her. Recovering Gabe's scattered belongings (a hoodie, sunglasses, a guitar) becomes a way of containing what water dispersed.
Finally, the motif ties to romantic versus platonic love. Julia and Gabe's relationship was defined by what they withheld. His death in water crystallizes all the words that went unsaid. Julia's shower phobia is, in part, a refusal to let those words surface. When she finally steps under the stream, she is flooded by the full Gabe—not just the parts she curated.
Study Questions
1. Why does Julia prefer baths to showers after Gabe's death, and what does this preference reveal about her grief?
Julia chooses baths because they offer containment. In a bath, water is still and bounded; she controls the temperature, the depth, the duration. A shower, by contrast, imposes water from above—relentless, uncontrollable, reminiscent of drowning. The bath reflects Julia's broader grief pattern: she wants to hold her feelings within manageable limits. She photographs and sells her funeral outfit, compartmentalizes her one-night stand with Gabe, and narrates their story as a friendship rather than an unresolved love. The bath is grief on her terms. But as the novel shows, grief eventually demands more than containment.
2. In Chapter Twenty-Three, Julia realizes her shower fear is not about falling. What is the real source of her terror, and how does this insight connect to her guilt over Gabe's death?
Julia tells Elizabeth she is not scared of falling. The real fear is "being alone in here." She then connects this to Gabe: "It was the idea of him being alone, dying alone. Especially when instead, he might have been downstairs at the hotel bar with me." Julia ignored Gabe's final voicemail and text. She stood him up deliberately, wanting to punish him for his silence after their one-night stand. The shower recreates not the physical sensation of drowning but the moral isolation—the knowledge that she could have been present and chose not to be. Water falling on her body becomes an accusation: you left him alone.
3. How does the presence of another person change Julia's experience of the shower, and what does this suggest about the novel's view of healing?
Elizabeth sits on the toilet seat outside the shower curtain, talking to Julia, providing companionship without intrusion. This presence makes the shower bearable. Julia steps in, lathers, and briefly stays under the stream. But when the full force of memory hits—"all of Gabe, fully"—she flees. The novel suggests that healing requires witness. Isolation deepens trauma; presence makes it survivable. Yet presence does not cure. Julia's incomplete shower is the novel's most honest depiction of grief work: you can get in the water with support, but you may still need to get out.
4. Trace the arc of water imagery from the funeral through the yahrzeit memorial. How does the symbol track Julia's movement from avoidance to acceptance?
At the funeral, tears are "a leak in my face"—involuntary, undirected, physical. Water escapes her; she does not choose it. Through the middle chapters, water appears in controlled forms: baths, a melting Aperol Spritz, London rain, the ocean she resists jumping into. Julia keeps water at a distance. In Chapter Twenty-Three, she enters the shower but cannot stay. By Chapter Thirty-One, at Gabe's memorial, water imagery yields to language of opening: "And I opened, tender and free." The final image is not water but an "aurora between our palms." Julia moves from leaking uncontrollably to choosing immersion—not in a shower, but in love. She declares "I love Gabe" in present tense, accepting that grief and love flow forward together, unbound by death or certainty.
For further exploration of the novel's emotional landscape, see the analysis of grief and mourning, the role of memory and revisionism in Julia's narration, and the complex dynamic between Julia Hendricks and Elizabeth Thompson.