Presentation Handout On Grief And Loss

Maureen Frayling MNZACMCounselling (Hons) BHSc (Nursing)

• Invisible death

• Care of dying relegated to professionals

• Death was no longer a familiar element of people’s lives

• Death bed scenes now dominated by efforts to delay death

• The customary role of family and friends as witnesses to a loved one’s dying was de-emphasized and virtually lost.

• Mourning customs were abbreviated as funeral services became shorter and more private.

• The move of communities to cities.

• Modernism and science

• Language

Grief is not a sickness to be treated and cured. It is a normal, natural human experience. The feelings that go with this experience and theneed to express them without guilt and fear are

normal.

Grief itself rarely destroys people.However, the way in which those who grieve are

treated by others – can destroy.

Merren Parker: A time to grieve (1981)

We need to remember that –whether we

like it or not, we will never be our old self

again following a major loss. Although we

can rebuild an identity appropriate to our

new role

R. Neimeyer. Lessons of Loss, 1998

• Each grieving person has their own timetable

• One must be allowed to do it in their own way this will be determined by their own individual personality, character and social situation.

• Each person is unique• Each situation is unique• The relationship between the bereaved and

the deceased is unique

• Sudden/prolonged

• Self induced

• Accident

• Violent

• Stigmatised

Death is a family affair

Who died: Life cycle stages and family roles

• Mother/Father Friend/Other• Husband/Wife• Sister/Brother Grandparent• Daughter/Son

Bereavement is not a simple reaction to a single event it is an:

• Emotional• Social• Economic • Spiritual

And event with a history and a future

• A life

• A relationship

• A self in relationship

• A way of life

Grief is forever

Finding a place for the past in the present

and in the future

• An event that disrupts• Not only sadness and grief but change• A role shift• Change takes place over time

P. Silverman PhD

“What would you like for breakfast, Jack?” I asked my son-in-law on Sunday, the day after the funeral.

“A fried egg” he replied.Such a simple thing. Yet, I’d never fried an egg. Oh, we often had them on weekends; but my husband was the breakfast cook, while I dashed up and down the steps putting clothes in the washer, running the vacuum, and all the other tasks awaiting a working wife.

I stood there, the frying pan in one hand, the egg in the other.

How many times in the future would I find myself standing the same way? How many things had I never done? How many things had I taken for granted?

Maxine Dowd JensenThe Warming of Winter

Remaining engaged considered asymptom of pathological behaviour

• Buzz words most often used were:• Let go• Disengage• Get back to normal• Put the past behind• Move on

Involves

Inner representation

Identification

incorporation

Provides Comfort

Solace

Continuity,

past is always prologue

Focus

The changing nature of relationships

A web of relationships from the past, present and future

When I was thirteen months old, my mother killed herself. So I eventually learned, as I learned her maiden name, Georgia Saphronia Collier, and where she was born, Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, and how old she was when she ended her life, twenty-nine.

(And good lord, writing these words now, all these years afterward, for the first time in memory my eyes have filled with tears of mourning for her. What impenetrable vessel preserved them?)

I didn’t know my mother, except as infants know. At the beginning of my life the world acquired a hole. That's what I knew, that there was a hole in the world. For me there still is. It’s a singularity. In and out of a hole like that, anything goes.

Richard Rhodes

We cannot feel saddened over the loss of those we love without first remembering the joy of loving them.

The real sadness would have been never having had them in our lives at all.

Remembering is a journey the heart takes back into a time that was, and our thoughts are the only tickets needed to ride.

We who have truly loved are blessed