Death was something new to me. I had never had to deal with someone close to me passing. I had experienced my friends losing a grandparent or a distant relative, but it had not affected me terribly much. I always considered myself to be lucky I had not suffered through the pain of losing someone brought. When this finally occurred, the first challenge was presented to me: accepting the fact I didn’t have a father anymore.…
In the article “West of The Most Western Point”, Dr Manfred Wolf relates the accidental drowning of a friend when we was 12 year old. He explains how much this experience affected him and how he felt during this bereavement time. Speaking to a counselor to express his feelings about this traumatic experience didn’t feel the right approach to deal with his grief because “some things are too deep for speech and too irrevocable for mediation”. Adults might naturally look to speak to their children to reassure them and embrace their suffering in order to help them coping with their emotions. But because sorrow is a normal behavior for a children when grieving, adults should leave the time to children to deal with their emotions instead of trying…
In An Hour or Two Sacred to Sorrow by Richard Steele, Steele discloses how his early losses made him more tender hearted and aware of death and sorrow. In the beginning, Steele starts by reminiscing the day his father died. Steele as a child, did not understand exactly what was happening but that he should be feeling a sense of sorrow. It was only when his mother sat “weeping alone”, that he knew something was wrong. Steele continues on claiming that as you get older you gain a better understanding of the situation than you did when you were a child.…
The stages of grief are common for all human beings. Once experiencing a tragic loss, or trauma, many of us go through steps that help us except what has happened and to move on. Some of these stages last longer than others, depending on how the person follows each stage. In this paper, we will cover the different stages of grief and how author Nicholas Wolterstorff reflections in the book of Lament For a Son impacted his life.…
Watching a loved one die is one of the most difficult events a person can experience in life. Some people come to terms with the death of their loved one, reconcile their differences, and their death brings acceptance and closure. For others, a family member’s death leaves them with a sense of regret and guilt. Alice Elliott Dark’s short story “In The Gloaming” shows examples of how people react and cope with the death of a loved one. The different ways Janet and Martin handle Laird’s illness and death are respective of their relationships with him. Martin has little or no relationship with his son. He chooses to ignore Laird entirely and disregard his illness. Janet, on the other hand, chooses…
Grief is a strong, sometimes overwhelming emotion felt by an individual when faced with a loss of a loved one or a personal loss, such as their health, job, or a relationship. Grief is the nature reaction to loss. Both a universal and personal experience (Mayo Clinic, 2014). Ever individual will have a different experience with grief influenced by the nature of their loss. At some point in life everyone will have a time of grieving. How the individual copes with their grief can vary, as no two people grieve in the same manner. This paper will discuss the comparisons and contrasting views as defined in the Kubler-Ross model, the five stages of grief, the story of Job in the Bible, and Buddhism regarding grief, as well as the writers preferred method of dealing with grief.…
The poem “Father and Child” by Gwen Harwood shows Harwood’s father teaching her the concepts of life and death, from when she is a young child in “Barn Owl” up to when she is around forty at the time of his death in “Nightfall”, coming to accept the idea that life is not never-ending. In part one called “Barn Owl”; she has learnt to accept death as a component of life. The persona of the poem experiences a loss of innocence with the discovery of the tragedy of death. Before shooting the owl, the child believes they are the “master of life and death,” with the noun, “master,” reflecting the power that the child feels and the ignorance that the child has about the nature of death. This description of the child is later contrasted in the fourth stanza, “I watched, afraid by the fallen gun, a lonely child who believed death clean and final, not this obscene bundle of stuff.” The emotive term, “afraid,” represents the change in the persona’s attitude after being exposed to the harsh reality that is mortality. However, the rhyme and last line “what sorrows in the end, no words, no tears can mend” releases an element of inexpressible sadness that she has towards the death of her father showing that although she accepts death, it still upsets her as it did in “Barn Owl”. Father and Child” Nightfall” is more metaphorical and symbolic suggesting a more mature persona like an adult. The poem represents a human’s journey over time of learning to mature and accept death.…
Arriving home from school, being picked up by his neighbors, “At two o’ clock our neighbors drove me home”(3). He heard the devastating news that someone died in his family. Upon arriving home, “In the porch I met my crying father”(4), showed how death can causes so much trauma and confusion. His father crying,…
“The Unmothered” by Ruth Margalit was an article written in The New Yorker about what it was like losing her mother. Margalit’s mother was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer after thinking she had a cough and a “pulled” muscle in her leg. After her mother’s diagnosis she began to think somewhat selfishly, “The truth is, I was thinking, selfishly, about myself. That my mother would never see me marry. That she would not know my children. That the following summer I would turn twenty-eight -her lucky number- and she might not be there” (Margalit). According to Margalit, she believes that she experienced both anticipatory grief, mourning before death, and delayed grief, a postponed reaction to the death. She explains that the day her mother was diagnosed she grieved. Right after Margalit began graduate school at Columbia she received a call from her sister saying that her mother was getting sick very quickly, she knew she needed to get home as fast as she could. Margalit later was thinking about her grieving process and realized that she didn’t experience delayed grief but rather that “grief keeps odd hours,…
Karen Van Der Zee’s “A Secret Sorrow” is a novel that definitely knows how to play with words. Its writing is dramatic and intensely emotional, moving quickly from soft words to shouts of anger. This might be an intense and gripping moment for some, but I was put off by its generic, soap style plot. Faye does not want to tell Kai that she cannot have children, but after refusing to marry, Kai is persistent to get at the truth. The style and content of the novel’s writing definitely caught my attention. It has a great use of loud tones and catchy lines. Some will enjoy Kai telling Faye that she is “’Not a damaged piece of merchandise, you hear? You’re a living, breathing human being, a warm-blooded female, and I love you’.”(135) It’s when I'm sucked in that this novel falls apart. The plot is overly simplistic. The characters are bland and lifeless. Faye lacks female leadership, confidence, and anything else of interest, which leads to groans whenever she talks of how she “can’t live all [her] life with [Kais] regret and disappointment’” “‘every time [they’re] with somebody else’s children She’ll feel She’s failed [Kai]!” It was a good ride, but in the end, I feel unsatisfied. A Secret Sorrow will please those who don’t mind the intense soap style drama, but if a person doesn’t like romance, this won’t change her mind.…
(2012). The lament of a broken heart: mourning and grieving in different cultures. Progress in Palliative Care, 20(3), 158-162. Retrieved from www.ebscohost.com…
James, J.W., Friedman, R. & Matthews, L.L. (2001). When children grieve: for adults to help…
Relationships are only successful when they are filled with love, trust and commitment to one another. When speaking specifically of marriage, these feelings should be exceptionally strong and the couple should experience unconditional love towards each other for the rest of their lives. However, time tells many couples that this is not always the case and that perhaps their love for one another isn't strong enough to mend their differences. Gail Godwin's "A Sorrowful Woman" and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" both revolve around women experience just that and feel trapped within their own marriages. While both protagonists start off as committed and loving women devoted to their family, personal torment eventually lead both of them to death.…
We had never seen our mother in such despair; it was a shock to see our mother’s vivid emotions. My mother asked us if we wanted to see our father and we all replied “yes” and so she took all of us to see our father. However, my siblings and I went individually, but little did we know that what we were about to witness would shatter our hearts, feelings, souls, and…
Losing a loved one is like having a rug swept from under you. We make plans for the day, and do not think twice about how those plans can be taken away in the blink of an eye. I never thought much about it myself, until I was faced with the shocking, and undeniable truth of my mother’s death. The title of the article I selected was the Effects of a Parent’s Death on Adult Children: Relationship Salience and Reaction of Loss. The author is Debra Umberson, it was published Feb. 1994 by the American Sociological Association. The significance of this article is to evaluate the impact of a parent’s death on adult children’s physical and psychological functioning. The reason I selected this article is because it is basically explaining how adults or children deals with the loss of their parent’s death.…