The Tragedy Of Grief And Bereavement

At some point in our lives, we all come to realize that death is a part of life. Cultural diversity provides a wide variety of lifestyles and traditions for each of the unique groups of people in our world. Within these different cultures, the rituals associated with death and burial can also be uniquely diverse. Many consider ritualistic traditions that differ from their own to be somewhat strange and often perceive them as unnatural. A prime example would be the burial rituals of the Native American people.

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

Death is inevitable part of human experience, which is often associated with fear of unknown, separation, and spiritual connection. Death is an individual experience, which is based on unique perceptions and beliefs. Fear of death and dying seems to be a universal phenomenon, which is closely associated with apprehension and uneasiness. Death is allied with permanent loss, thus personal experiences of grief are similar in many different cultures. There are different mourning ceremonies, traditions, and behaviors to express grief, but the concept of permanent loss remains unchanged in cross cultural setting. With this paper I will identify cross-cultural perspectives on death and dying, and will analyze

Every individual experiences the act of death, and most persons experience the death of someone they know of. Whether family, kin, or someone infamous, the living deal with the process of dying. Anthropology seeks to understand the universal process of death ritual and how different cultures deal with death differently. An anthropologist can extract social values of a given culture, past or present, from how death ceremony is practiced. Such values could be regarding political hierarchy or an individual’s status in a society, and about a culture’s spiritual or religious faith. By exploring death ceremony in ancient Egypt, contemporary Hindu death practice in India, and current North American funerary rites, it can be illustrated that

This paper examines the implications of grief, bereavement and disenfranchised grief. Grief in response to a loss is a unique experience and is expressed distinctively by every individual. It is helpful to have models that outline the stages of grief that need to be experienced in order to achieve acceptance. However, their utility is limited by the reality that grief is immeasurably complex and individualized. Veterans and children are two groups at risk of developing disenfranchised grief. Therefore, it will be important for nurses to be able to identify those suffering with disenfranchised grief or other forms of maladaptive grief so appropriate intervention may be employed.

In this paper, we will discuss the different death rituals performed in different cultures. We view death rituals from Native Americans, Africans, those of the Chinese decent, and endocannibalism from the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. Death is universal to all people in every culture. Responses to how one deals with death and dying differ greatly. Death rituals are usually based on beliefs. This can come from religion, history, language, and art.

In ancient Egypt, food offerings were made to the dead. In ancient Greece, pictures of feasts and their favorite things along with food were offered. The overall funeral between the two cultures was very similar in the way things were conducted, however grievers were different. In ancient Greece, people wore black robes and women cut their cheeks and hair to show their grief. In ancient Egypt, people showed their grief through the floral collars they wore . While the beliefs of the afterlife and funerals don’t differ tremendously between the two places, the way they handled the actual body did. In ancient Greece, they buried the dead so the dead who had good hearts would be ensured to make it to the good parts of the afterlife. In ancient Egypt, they used their advanced technologies to preserve bodies through mummification, so the dead could come out of the dead to accept offerings and essentially live forever. Sometimes, afterlife religious practices involved sacrifices which were found in different parts of life leading to the next idea.

Every culture, country, religion, and community has certain behavior and rituals that govern their actions when a loved one dies. These traditions and death rituals are based upon religious and spiritual beliefs. Belief on whether there is life after death and what happens to the body and soul after death.

First and foremost, we need to understand the meaning of burial and funeral. To ancient Greek, the soil symbolizes a connection between the people and the land, as well as the continuity between the living family, the gods associated with the land, and the great-grandparents whose bodily remains were housed by the land. Human beings

In ancient Greece, death was not just an ending, but an event. Funerals were multi-day affairs, consisting of, “the prosthesis (laying out of the body (54.11.5)), the ekphora (funeral procession), and the interment of the body…” (Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece) The prosthesis oftenlasted for up to three days, while the ekphora was traditionally followed by a procession of all of the deceased loved ones, with the women (sometimes hired actresses) crying out and tearing at their hair and clothes to symbolize their sorrow. The body was interred in graves, with larger graves showing more power, and revisited on several occasions throughout the years after death. The ancient Greeks believed that a proper, ceremonial burial was necessary to show respect, or what was called “esubia”. Today, esubia is simply translated as “piety”, but it used to represent, “one's duty to oneself, others and the gods” (Mark, The After-Life In Ancient Greece). A shoddy burial not only shamed the family, but also degraded the gods, the dead, and the longstanding traditions of ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks held a great respect for the

According to the article, “Death and Grief in the Greek Culture”, the authors, Kyriaki Mystakidou, Eleni Tsilika, Efi Parpa, Emmanuel Katsouda, Lambros Vlahos believe that death, grieving, and illness are all aspects of life that are influenced by the culture that one lives in. The authors are referring to the Greek culture and how death has an enormous meaning behind it.

During the times of the Ancient Romans, Epicureans and Stoics it was understood that death and the disposal of the body were vitally important to all beliefs, these views on death also display the contrasting portrayals of each ideology as to how the deceased were handled and the influential theories revolving around death.

Mankind’s history of burial practices and funeral customs are as old as civilization itself. There is no specific way to planning a funeral. Every civilization and culture has provided for their dead in different ways. Religion and personal beliefs play an important role in the burial practices and funeral customs of a given culture or civilization. Furthermore, each civilization and cultured ever studied have three things in common: some type of funeral rites, rituals, and ceremonies; A sacred place for the dead; and memorialization of the dead. As far back as the time of Christ, burials have been noted to take place. In time burial and funeral customs have become very distinct, interesting and

The body can also be a tool through which we narrate our pasts. Besides the obvious use of the mouth, throat, and lungs to speak, the body can also be a means to act out narratives of the past or perform the culturally defined narratives of ritual and commemoration. In funerals, we weep, we visit the corpse to say goodbye, the pall bearers carry the casket to the hearse, and we throw a handful of dirt on the coffin before the cemetery staff fills in the grave. This is one of our society’s mourning and funerary rituals. Often enacted in grief-stricken silence, it is the body than moves through the ritual spaces of death. But what, among the many practices

In this essay I will outline the main theoretical models relating to loss and grief.