Grief is the process of reacting to physical or emotional loss, including death or divorce.
It was a Saturday afternoon in the small town of Moscow, Idaho when tragedy struck. My grandfather was meeting with a businessman from Seattle, when an armed gunman entered the building. The gunman proceeded to shoot my grandfather and the man from Seattle several times. The man from Seattle was transported to a hospital in Seattle by helicopter, and thankfully, survived. My grandfather was rushed to the nearest hospital in an ambulance, but died due to the severe damage the bullets had caused to his chest. I vividly remember my parents breaking down in tears I never knew they were capable of. That day I experienced what it was to truly grieve.
One of the concepts that people do not understand about grief and loss is the general idea of what it is and how it impacts people. According to Teen Health and Wellness’s article “Grief and Loss: Experiencing Loss,” is what happens when you no longer have something or someone that was extremely significant in your life, and the emotions that result are very real to you. You are entitled to these emotions. Many experts believe that the best thing for a person grieving to do is to let themselves feel sad. Lattanzi-Licht writes, common symptoms of grief are: “guilt or anger; restlessness; a sense of unreality about the loss; difficulty sleeping, eating and concentrating; mood changes; a loss of energy; constant thoughts of the
The term bereavement refers to the experience or process of losing a loved one to death whereas the term grief refers to the multiplicity of responses to bereavement; cognitive, affective, behavioural, and physiological-somatic responses (Zisook & Shear, 2009). Examples of normal grief responses are intense sorrow, frequent crying, persistent longing, denial, anger, guilt, depression, fatigue, hopelessness, shock, loneliness, (Margaret Stroebe, Schut, & Stroebe, 2007). While grief is a normal, natural human experience, it is unique to each person and the intensity and duration of grief is highly variable with states of grief ranging from barely noticeable to intense suffering (Fujisawa et al., 2010; Zisook & Shear, 2009). Notably,
It was July 25th, 1946, when a white mob in Georgia stopped a car carrying two African American couples, the mobbed then dragged them out and shot them to death. One of the victims, George Dorsey, was a military veteran who had just returned from serving five years overseas in World War II. His wife, Mae Dorsey, was also killed. Dorothy Malcom, the other woman in the car, was seven months pregnant. The mob cut her open and removed her unborn child. Her husband, Roger, had just been bailed out of jail after he was accused of stabbing a white man. An investigator estimated people in the crowd fired more than 60 plus shots at the two couples at close range. The horrific attack happened near Walton County, Georgia, not far from Moore’s Ford Bridge.
There is not a single meaning to the word grief. It feels different to every person who experiences it.
Little by little, hour by hour, day by day, people die. The people that die could be loved ones, strangers, friends, foes, just about anybody! Death is a terrible ordeal that one has to go through. Although people die every day the loss that someone feels changes them; as well as those they love, those they were close too, even those they don’t know. How can something that is so frequent effect people in tremendous days? Shouldn’t death be expected? Though people are always cautioned to expect the unexpected, when something catches you by surprise however, it can throw you for a whirl. After the death of a loved one, one of the main emotions felt is grief. This leads one to ask quite an important question: what exactly is grief?
No two people experience grief in the same way, “each person’s grief is like all other people’s grief; each person’s grief is like some other person’s grief; and each person’s grief is like no other person’s grief” (Worden, 2009). How we think and feel, the way our body functions, and the way we interact with others are all affected by grief and mourning. Some common experiences can include: apathy, anger, anxiety, crying, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, Guilt, helplessness, irritability, loneliness,
Grief is a journey. While grief is an expected response to a significant loss the unfamiliar emotions that arise can lead to feelings of helplessness, fear and isolation. Loss is understood as a natural part of life, but we can still overcome by shock. When someone is grieving, encourage them to talk about their feelings of loss and share memories of the individual
Alan Rickman Considered Being the British Giant of Stage Dies at the Age of Sixty Nine Years
Some of the types of grief are: normal grief, anticipatory grief and disenfranchised grief. Normal grief is when people move from loss to acptance of the loss. Normal grief also has little impact on the person’s life in the long term because many of the symptoms will lesson over time. This would be what a large part of the population go through when they experience loss, but there are other types of grief that have long lasting effects. A form of grief that is felt before the loss is anticipatory grief. This type of grief is experience by the family of someone who is dying, they have time to process the idea that a family member is dying and to accomplish any tasks that need to be addressed. At times even when families know that people are dying they may not have the chance to grieve like they need to because of society. For those do not follow what is considered normal, greieving can sometimes be difficult. The type of grief that deals with this aspect is disenfranchised
Grief is defined as a type of emotional or mental suffering from a loss, sorrow, or regret (Dictionary.com, LLC, 2010). Grief affects people of all ages, races, and sexes around the world. Approximately, 36% of the world’s population does or has suffered from grief and only a mere 10% of these people will seek out help (Theravive, 2009). Once a person is suffering from grief it is important to receive treatment. All too often, people ignore grief resulting in deep depression, substance abuse, and other disorders (Theravive, 2009). Grief counseling is very common and can be very helpful to a person in need of assistance. Grief counseling provides the support, understanding, and
As a 25-year-old adult, consider myself on the younger spectrum as far as biological age. However, I am being reminded daily that I am getting older. I no longer can recover from a workout as rapidly as I used to, I require more sleep after a night of staying up late, there are no more “all nighters”, and I have recently developed pain in my joints and spine. As you may have noticed, all the reasons I have listed above seem obviously negative. This is exactly what I am hoping to get out of this class. A positive perspective of the aging process. I have noticed when I pay attention to the physical aging process my body undergoes; my brain is focused on the negative changes and instead should be focusing on what my age has given me over the years. I am hoping, through taking this class, I will expand my knowledge tremendously on the aging process and begin to switch my way of thinking to a more positive one and begin living a better quality of life as the years pass.
But death becomes a source of grief especially when it comes unexpectedly.like in murders and accidents. Most of the time death of a loved one due to either of the two is almost unbearable, too painful and unacceptable. Sometimes, in their extreme grief, they would be questioning God for taking the life of the loved one. But almost all deaths results to loss and grief for those left behind. Grief is a normal emotional reaction to deaths of loved ones. It is often described by those that have gone through it as a heaviness that isn’t easily lifted. It can sometimes be so pronounced that it affects a person’s physical self and can even mimic illnesses (Morrow,2009).
The manifestation of the grief process is different for everyone, but the root cause is the same. It’s not something you learn in textbooks, but the actual experience catapults you to a totally different dimension of your inner being that perhaps you never knew existed. There are people who chose not to deal with the grieving process and consciously