In her book, "The Truth About Grief," Ruth Davis Konigsberg challenges the idea that we all can expect to experience the loss of a loved one in a similar way. In particular, she challenges the "five stage" model of grief that is now familiar to most of us -- the one that begins with "denial" and ends in "acceptance." Konigsberg argues that people grieve in different ways. Perhaps most importantly, Konigsberg asserts that people are in fact more psychologically resilient that we generally think they are, and that a relatively brief period of mourning may be the norm.
In the process of writing our own book on grief, Dr. Barbara Okun and I relied on in-depth interviews with family members who had the experience of losing a loved one to a terminal illness. Some of their stories are posted on our website. The "roadmap" of grief that emerged from this work confirms in some ways what Konigsberg has written -- in particular, that grief is indeed a diverse, not a uniform, process. At the same time, we learned that grief has changed rather dramatically in the 40 years since Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' "On Death and Dying" was published.
In short, grief in the past was often triggered by an event -- the sudden or quick death of a loved one. Steady advances in medicine, however, have transformed dying so that it is increasingly a protracted process. In turn, grief has evolved to the point where it is now a parallel process that often goes on for years. This "new grief" begins when a loved one is diagnosed with a terminal illness. It then proceeds through a long period of diagnosis, treatment, remission, relapse, etc. Elizabeth Edwards, for example, worked with her doctors to contain metastatic breast cancer for several years. The realities of modern medicine dictate that more and more of us will find ourselves confronting this new grief, sooner or later.
This new grief is different. For one thing, it includes the loved one with the diagnosis. It also draws in the entire family into a prolonged crisis that some of our interviewees aptly described as "learning to live with death." It presents unique challenges to families who today tend to be more far-flung than ever before, and whose day to day lives were complicated enough before the diagnosis was rendered. This new grief creates ongoing stresses, not only for the patient, but for his or her loved ones and, in turn, on their own families.
Our goal in writing "Saying Goodbye: How Families Can Find Renewal through Loss" was to collect, organize and then share the collective wisdom we were able to derive from the stories we heard. Indeed, we discovered that this new grief is messy, and that individuals and families experience it in diverse ways. At the same time, we learned a few things that others have said they found valuable as they confronted this situation:
As for whether a brief period of mourning is the norm, we have found that this, too, is subject to a great deal of variability. Truth be told, the vast majority of those we've spoken with assert that mourning never truly ends; rather, it waxes and wanes over time. Mourning does not, however, need to be debilitating. The way people mourn seems reflect the nature of the relationship they had with their loved one. It hardly needs to be said that marriages are not all the same; accordingly, mourning is anything but a uniform process. Those we love become part or our identity -- our sense of who we are, and why we are here. The more central a loved one is to our identity, the more profound our mourning will be. Helen Nearing, married to the writer Scott Nearing, described her mourning in her memoir, "Loving and Leaving the Good Life," this way:
Our love had lasted half a century, and still goes on now, eight years after he died at the honorable age of 100. The love continues on my part, and on his side too, I believe. From where else could come the glad certainty every morning, evening and hour of the day that I live in love and am charged with it -- outgoing and incoming.
Follow Joseph Nowinski, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NewGrief
Elizabeth Benedict: Joyce Carol Oates: A Widow's Derangement
Coping with Grief and Loss: Support for Grieving and Bereavement
Grief and Grieving: Managing Sadness and Depression Signs
Grief - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Supporting a Grieving Person: Helping Others Through Grief and Loss
Another observation that I totally agree with is that after each loss we become a different person – some part of us changes permanently. Unlike any other event in life, I don’t believe there is anything like the death of a loved one that creates such an uncontrollable transformation within us. And each time we experience death, that transformation is totally different.
After I lost my father and then a few years later my younger sister, the resulting man in the mirror was a stranger. That was almost as hard to come to terms with as the loss itself. And this is the very reason that I cringe when another “expert” is bringing out a new book detailing how to deal with grief or death or any such event. It is simply too unique to model, document or box.
We are all unique and so therefore by definition will our reactions and actions be through life and in death. Lets keep it that way please.
Also I happen to agree with VirgoLinnea that grief can be triggered by things other than death!
Craig Ing
www.craiging.com
Each time I changed. My parents passed 28 days apart. Both me and my 2 children from that have PTSD.
Its way better then it was.
With that much loss, my life will never be the same. My kids are young adults now. The way they look at life will never be the same. I know for me it can get triggered by other things and up comes the grief.
You saying "the man in the mirror is a stranger."
Is so true. I look in the mirror at times and think "who is that woman"
I wonder where did the person go that I knew before all this took place.
The ways in which death affects us will never be truly understood. We are supposed to know ourselves best and until death comes into our lives I bet most of us would say we do/did.
The most frustrating period of time after a death is the awareness that you no longer know yourself. I spent too long in this limbo of self-analysis, trying to find the person I was. It was really distressing and the pro-longed agony of analysis merged into the grieving so that I couldn’t tell one thing from another, one emotion from another, one thought from another. It was like I suddenly needed a dictionary to translate life, something that told me how to feel and what the feelings meant.
In the end, after many hours of mediation and deep thought the epiphany came to me. That ‘before’ person no longer exists and the new man in the mirror needed to be introduced to me. I needed to get to know that person and in fact, I had the very rare chance in life of deciding who I would be. Out of the death came my own rebirth. It was incredibly positive and this is what I ask my clients to focus on – at the right time. Release the ‘before’ person and live as you are now.
most people find my reaction to death and dying bewildering. i show no sense of loss, because i don't believe that person is gone, only that the suffering is over. i just can't see them. they are here, still with me - still hearing and seeing
everything i hear and see. i have had too many personal experiences to believe otherwise. the comfort
of this philosophy and the fearlessness it provides is priceless.
One of my high school theology teachers once pointed out, apropos of nothing, that Kubler-Ross was pretty sensitive about any omission of the hyphen in her name. Even so--or maybe as a result--"On Death and Dying" changed my life.
- bvf
Mourning never stops. Mourning and memories are intimately linked and for years to come you will find something jogs a memory of a lost one and that memory will seamlessly merge into mourning (as said by brooklyncitizen), albeit maybe only for a few moments.
My heart goes to Joyce and others like her. I have lived through too many direct family members dying and also have worked with a number of Private Clients in similar situations. It is great that Joyce is gaining strength from articles/forums such as this and I for one always prescribe a huge amount of information sharing and communication as a baseline form of medication. I then mix this with changing the perspective and focusing on the positive. The one thing I can tell you (which may help Walfred Michele with the research) is that grief, mourning and “getting life back on track” is as unique to us as our DNA. I have had to deal with every client in a unique way and I would encourage all "experts" to do the same.
Craig Ing
www.craiging.com
I'm not sure we "get life back on track". Really everything that happens to us gets folded into our life very much like ingredients are folded into a recipe for baking bread ....it just creates something new and adds its own flavor.....even if it is slightly bitter.For myself, I realized that after my father's death ,which was shortly followed by my brother's death , there was no getting back to who I was before. IF we allow it, death can push us to go a bit deeper it also gives us a new way of seeing.
After I lost both I came across Joan Didion's "Year of Magical Thinking" and in that book found a mirror for much of how I felt and experienced.Grief can be surreal.
Jai! Heather Whittington
www.mindfulgrief.com
One of the things that jumped out at me from the interviews we did in preparation for writing Saying Goodbye was the enormous difference that ANY kind of advanced thought and planning can make for the person confronting terminal illness and the family. Lack of planning tends to lead to many loose ends. The most painful stories were from families who, not being clear about what the dying person would want, hesitated to make end-of-life decisions. The result was often an undignified end in an intensive care unit or nursing home. Contrast this with the story of woman who was clear when she wanted in-home hospice care, established a rotation for her children to visit, and let it be known when her grandchildren could (and could not) visit. She took charge of saying goodbye, and I admire her for that.
JN
Ellen
I recently went to a wake for the mother of a friend; I was silently praying, head bowed, in fron of the casket when I was interrupted by the friend's daughter. She called my name out, squealing "Oh my God, I haven't see you for ages, how are you?" I was mortified to be interrupted during the paying of my respects.
Then the interrupter's daughter (age 11) told me her grandmother looked different to her. Her mother (the interrupter) said, "Just pretend she's sleeping and it will be the same." I was mortified again.
I think grief and grieving behavior is so diverse, so it's always best to defer to the wishes of the soon-to-be deceased.
I also believe as you do that my loved ones are in a state of pure love when they leave this world. Whatever that means to each of us, it provides me comfort.
Peace to you, my friend.
Arith... isn't being very specific here but probably alluding to the 8 types of unwholesome consciousness of which you apparently are either:
type 6 - One consciousness, accompanied by equanimity, associated with wrong view prompted.
or
type 8 - One consciousness, accompanied by equanimity, dissociated from wrong view prompted.
these particular cittas are rooted in greed. Pure enlightened compassion no?
I think only when grief stagnates a life should the grieving person take a good look at why moving on has not been possible. By stagnate, I mean no further growth, no active participation, no motivation to move on. I would not want my left-behind loved ones to remain stuck in their grief for me. I have already told my loved ones I want each of them to write a little paragraph of the joy we experienced together in life, and post them in a notebook at my wake. No funeral, just the cremation after my friends and family have gathered to pay their respects.
The trick seems, for me, to be in knowing when to do this. Right now I am not actively dying.. it is a slow process. But then I wonder if, overnight, I will become unable to function..and hence, should have those all done now while my mind is clear and I have good thoughts in my head.
Something to think on.....
Your columns are helping me through the process and I'm very grateful.
Joyce Rothman www.http://makingsenseofitall.joycerothman.com