Aspects of Grieving

Bereavement and mourning are functions, not dysfuntions.

There is no such thing as abnormal grief, there is no blueprint.

Grief is never over, it becomes accommodated into life.

Bereaved people become an exaggerated version of who they've always been. This exaggeration decreases with the grief process.

Regression is a survival technique, a care eliciting behaviour, a functional vulnerability.

When we feel sad we cry. Tears of grief contain methencephalyn, an opioid.

A good cry naturally lead us to feel better.

It is always good for the bereaved to have the option to be intimately involved in death and the funeral. It has never been shown to increase the risk of suicide.

Informing others of Death

Sometimes the informant is treated as if they were the perpetrator. Unconscious blame falls on this person. This can have major implications if the informant is also a support person or family member. A good idea is to hand the job of informant to a Doctor or someone who is not a family member. The person dying can even be the informant and treated as the perpetrator.

Risk Factors for Complicated Grieving

1. Sudden Death
2. Death of a child
3. Trauma witness
4. Centrality, how central the deceased is perceived to be to the grievers life
5. Preventability
6. Ambivalence - miss the bastard?
7. Decreased role diversity - eg child dies, what does mother do? What am I?
8. Lack of social support
9. Pre-existing factors
10. Concurrent crisis - multiple events
11. Overly prolonged dying - eg lots of remissions and the death may be unexpected in the end, and resources have been used up
12. Lack of reality - brain dead versus dead, new medical definitions of what is dead?

Bereavement Counselling

Bereavement counselling is for adjusting to absence. Bereavement counselling is not change oriented, but helps to accommodate the experience into the person's life.

Counselling often starts 4-6 weeks after death, when things generally start feeling worse.

Bill of Rights for Grieving

1. You have the right to experience your own unique grief.
2. You have the right to talk about your grief
3. You have the right to feel a multitude of emotions
4. You have the right to be tolerant of your physical and emotional limits.
5. You have the right to experience grief bursts.
6. You have the right to make use of ritual.
7. You have the right to embrace your spirituality.
8. You have the right to search for meaning.
9. You have the right to treasure your memories.
10. You have the right to move toward your grief and heal.

(A.Wolfelt)

For those dying

Fighting death is a paradoxical battle. It is one we must fight and will certainly lose. There is no escape from this predicament, it must be lived.

We tend to deny and squirm and resist the inevitable. This can sap our energy.

A wise relationship to death is simultaneously furious resistance and open acceptance. The ultimate adversary is also the ultimate teacher. It reminds us of our vulnerability.

Dying is participation in and alliance with the natural world. The more we try to separate ourselves from the natural world, the more terrifying and incomprehensible death will appear.

Live your life and experience your death with dignity and open eyes; live and die with noble strength.