The Preservation Of Memories And Grieving Process

When one loses someone or something valuable to them, the grief can be intense. But what happens when what they lose is actually a piece of them? Novels depicting a witness account of The Holocaust (1941 - 1945) paint a picture of the violence and moral anguish, which is accompanied by a loss to the protagonist. The plot shows a process of events that ultimately leads to death and devastation. Both protagonists in Elie Wiesel’s Night and Wladyslaw Szpilman’s The Pianist gradually fall into the abyss of inhumane behaviour. Post Holocaust, they embark on a new life free from social restraints and become either unmindful or compliant to the losses they faced on their journey. Elie and Wladyslaw

The Two-Track Model of Bereavement is a model that states loss is conceptualized along two axes. Track I pertains to the biopsychosocial functioning in the event of a loss and Track II pertains to the bereaved’s continued emotional attachment and relationship to whoever is deceased. The effect of Track I is seen through the bereaved’s functioning, including their anxiety, their self-esteem and self-worth, and their depressive affect and cognitions. Noting the ability of one to invest in life tasks after experiencing a loss indicates how they are responding to the loss of the deceased. This Track is seen as an expression similar to one of trauma, or crisis. Track II holds that the bereaved has difficulty physically separating from the deceased. This can be seen in emotional, interpersonal, or cognitive ways. It is shown through imagery and memories that the bereaved experiences surrounding the deceased, whether positive or negative, as well as the emotional distance from them. These pictures in the bereaved’s head explain both the cognitive and emotional view of the person who has died (Rubin, 1999).

The storyteller is able to keep his or her memories fresh and alive through the act of telling stories. At the age of forty-three, Tim O’Brien is still able to remember his childhood friend, Linda, who died when he was nine. “Even now I can see her walking down the aisle of the old State Theater in Worthington, Minnesota. I can see her face in profile beside me, the cheeks softly lighted by coming attractions.” Linda is given the gift of life through death by the power of the story. She not only lives in the mind of Tim O’Brien, but now Linda can live in the mind of anyone of whom he tells the story to. O’Brien’s audience is even graced with the pleasure of imagining what Linda looked like, “There were little crinkles at her eyes, her lips open and gently curving at the corners.” The audience can nearly see Linda, nine years old, standing in a childlike manner before

The life transition of death and dying is inevitably one with which we will all be faced; we will all experience the death of people we hold close throughout our lifetime. This paper will explore the different processes of grief including the bereavement, mourning, and sorrow individuals go through after losing someone to death. Bereavement is a period of adaptation following a life changing loss. This period encompasses mourning, which includes behaviors and rituals following a death, and the wide range of emotions that go with it. Sorrow is the state of ongoing sadness not overcome in the grieving process; though not pathological, persistent

Memorializing is often the way to remember a very important, intelligent, or rich person who lives above the rest of us. When we memorialize it sets a way to remember someone long after they have passed from life. More often than not those we put in statues and remember are those who change the world for the better or discover something new like Christopher Columbus, and his statue in Riverside Park (Deegan, Jim, source B). Lincoln's memorial isn’t where or had any importance to Lincoln, but it succeeds his most infamous speech he ever had “The Gettysburg Address” (Savage, source A). H. Elroy Johnson a famous lobster trapper, had a statue made but never finished during his lifetime, not until after his death, was the real statue made to memorialize him (Roadside America, source f).

Sonja Livingston is a talented and unique young writer who uses an unusual structure in her work. Structure is the form that an author’s writing takes; how the sentences are formed and how they are placed together to create the work. In Ghostbread, her award-winning novel, Ms. Livingstone uses a freeform chapter structure that, while roughly in chronological order, is not necessarily linear. In chapter 3, Ms. Livingston speaks of her father, “I had no father” (6), and then in chapter 4 she speaks of a childhood friend, “My favorite person should have been Carol Johnson.” (7) Through the course of the book, Ms. Livingston chronicles her life from birth to age 18, but it is not a strict telling; she meanders and explores events as they are remembered, not bound by a rigid timeline. The structure of her work is unconventional and through that unconventional structure she gives the reader an experience that is more like poetry than a conventional novel. Towards the end of Ghostbread, Ms. Livingston contemplates the effect that her miscarriage and the revelation of her sexual activity will have on her relationship with her mother with this passage, “Sex. Pregnancy. Men. What were they to her? Failure? Freedom? Power? Paths she followed, but did not prescribe. At least not aloud.” (212). The use of partial sentences and imagery are elements commonly associated with poetry and it gives

Staring at the screen, the young author sighed in frustration, her fingers once again failing her as she was distracted by the din of the news on TV. Resigned, she shut it off and turned back to her blank document wishing for the ability to channel her emotions towards the high expectations placed before her, as well as the stigmas. She was growing tired of the starkness of the world around her.

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

Biological influences during the grieving process pretends to effects brought on by the unfortunate loss of a love one. Biological influences such as in the act of crying, smiling, joking pulling of hair, scratching of the face along with other self-injurious behaviors. Biological influences are based on ones very one cultural rules and traditions.

Post -traumatic stress can affect learning due to difficulties with their memory and concentration. According to J. Douglas Bremner, “Recent studies have shown that victims of childhood abuse and combat veterans actually experience physical changes to the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory, as well as in the handling of stress. The hippocampus also works closely with the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that regulates our emotional response to fear and stress. PTSD sufferers often have impairments in one or both of these brain regions. Studies of children have found that these impairments can lead to problems with learning and academic achievement” (Bremner, n.d.).

A certain image, scent or sound can bring back moments that may have been forgotten. The speaker is astonished by the dreams she has of her mother. Her mother died very ill, the person who she was when she died was merely a shell of who she truly was. She describes her as “so much better than I remembered.” (Monro, 151). At the end of her mother’s life she could not hear her voice. She remembers her “mother’s liveliness of face and voice before her throat muscles stiffened [as] a woeful, impersonal mask fastened itself over her features.” (Monro, 151) In her dreams she was able to hear her mother’s voice again, opposed to the reality before her death. A mother’s voice is beautiful, and there is no other sound that compare to something as unique. Elliot writes “The unconscious sifts through memory, and then offers up details either strangely distorted or implausibly combined. As in art, as in story, dreams too, render experience metonymically.” (Elliot, 79). With time memories inevitably fade, but the dreams bring a sense of comfort and replenish the image of her mother. “How could I have forgotten this?” (Monro, 151). Heller writes that this scene “serves as a springboard from which the narrator launches into a story being told by her mother.” (Heller, 1). This scene leads us to the central conflict in the story of her mother’s life, and assists in understanding the conflict

The violent markings of the photo album and its images, however, produce an equally powerful message that jars the memory as it disrupts and distorts the photographic chronicle of her life and that of her family and friends. The result is a complex visual experience that addresses the use of images in producing knowledge and making history.

If we had an option to wipe out our memory, would we choose to forget about the events that involved actual or threatened death, serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of ourselves or others? For soldiers, it may be losing a close comrade in a war. For me or any other ordinary individuals, they may be natural or human-made disasters, violent personal attack, torture or even sexually abuse(Parekh). The truth is, we don’t want to be reminded of any of these terrible events that took away a small portion of our lives.

The two concepts that I resonated with are Memory and the Psychodynamic theory. Starting with the Psychodynamic theory is an approach to psychology that studies the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions, and how they may relate to early childhood experience. This theory is most closely associated with the work of Sigmund Freud, and with psychoanalysis, a type of psychotherapy that attempts to explore the patient’s unconscious thoughts and emotions so that the person is better able to understand him or herself. The second one is Memory; understanding how memory works will help you improves your memory. Which is an essential key to attaining knowledge. Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting. I chose the two concepts because throughout the class they stood out to the most. Understanding the conscious, subconscious mind and also memory. I’m interested in understanding the human behavior.

Although visual art is looked upon differently by all, everyone has a either a favorite piece or at least something that catches their eye. Personally, I don’t have a piece of art that I would label my absolute favorite, but during a Spanish research project found that Salvador Dali’s work really stood out. “The Persistence of Memory” painted in 1931 by Dali, a highly renowned surrealist painter, is among the most interesting works I have ever seen. Even though the painting itself is rather simple in quality at first glance, what Dali’s must have been thinking about while creating this work is strikingly complex. The painting is attractive to me because it deals with the concept of time, something