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.…
James, J.W., Friedman, R. & Matthews, L.L. (2001). When children grieve: for adults to help…
During the following paper, I will be analyzing in the book “Lament of a Son” by Nicholas Wolterstorff, where the author interprets his traumatic recollection of the death of his 25-year-old son on a climbing accident, and how he was able to appease his grief based on his faith in God. Consequently, I will be identifying the 5 stages of grief, how the author finds joy after his loss, the meaning of death in the light of the Christian narrative, and how the hope of resurrection play a role in comforting the author.…
Almost everyone has experienced bereavement of some form. Usually, this occurs after a person reaches adulthood and has emotionally matured and developed, but sometimes it unfortunately occurs to minors --those under 18 years of age. When this terrible event happens to minors, they often are grief stricken from the loss and do not have access to therapy or support sessions to help them through this difficult part of life. The traumatic experience of bereavement causes anger and sadness, which creates a situation in which there is an urgent need for support for families. Models must be created and refined to assist in dealing with childhood traumatic grief (Cohen, Goodman, Brown, & Mannarino, 2004). These minors also do not know where to start searching for the emotional support that they need so they are left to deal with the emotional burden on their own. “Children’s experience with the death of a loved one—whether a relative, friend, or a family pet—is a significant, often painful experience that requires adult support to care and guide a child’s coping and make sense of the event” (Farber & Sabatino, 2007). The long term effect of this loss on minors is very…
It is a fact of life that every individual will experience loss and grief at some point in their lives but in certain circumstances they may be unaware of it. Loss can come in many disguises from the easily recognisable bereavement, to redundancy, children leaving home, divorce, relocation, disfigurement, chronic illness, miscarriage, loss of a close pet, abortion and others. When a client presents for Counselling, it is vital to be alert for losses, both recent and historical, to check if there are unresolved issues because grief can be easily missed or misinterpreted. Chrysalis (2012) states that there are two ways in which a therapist will encounter the need to work with loss and grief. These are:…
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…
Have people only been able to progress through the stages of grief since 1969 when Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross put a name to the model of processing grief or have people been doing it since the beginning of time? As this paper progresses I will introduce you to a Bible story of a man who was made to suffer incredible losses in his life and how he progressed through what we know today as The 5 Stages of Grief.…
Children and adults experience the death of a loved one or a death of any person differently. In Nancy Boyd Webb’s publication, Social Work Practice with Children, she describes children’s cognitive development and understanding of death. Since the client is an eight year old who has lost her mother to breast cancer, I will focus on her age to understand Piaget’s stage and her chronological age understanding of death. For this eight year old girl, she is considered to be in Freud’s the latency-age.…
Lewis, even when he was grieving did not understand the grieving of his stepchildren Douglas and David(Lewis,9).This part of the journal made me realize that it is not just different people from different families that feel loss differently, it is also people from the same family. I have often not felt comfortable with sharing my feelings of loss with members of my family because I am not sure how to approach the subject. My way of grieving has always been very different from my family and my way of grieving in a sense has always felt weird in a way to me, because I wonder why I cannot seem to relate to members of my own family through the same loss or tragedy. But, Lewis had the same problems and therefore I can feel encouraged that I do not need to have the same way of grieving as the rest of my family and there is not something wrong with the way I…
The child who has passed is still the centre of the bereaved senior adults life. The suffering of their bereavement did not diminish as these parents grew older, the void of the deceased is never filled. Life feels empty without their child. Seniors desire to end their suffering and rejoin their child but are also afraid with their death the child will be…
Death by itself is devastating. But the death of a child is devastating beyond comprehension. How does a parent cope with the emotional trauma caused by the loss of a child? In “The Aquarium,” well-known author, Aleksander Hemon recounts his daughter’s fight against brain cancer.…
Parents that acknowledge the possibility of undesirable outcomes often find that coping is easier than when they have false hope (Tan, et al). Pain management of a child before death is the most important symptom to focus on and try to alleviate (Van der Geest, et al). The parents often feel guilty and ashamed if their child is in pain when they pass away. The goal of caring for the parent after the death of their child is to help the parent achieve well-being, no matter the amount pain that they feel after the loss of their…
The death of a loved one affects people of every age, usually taking children by surprise. Grieving the death of a person is a process that affects a child’s mood, social interactions, causes them to lose interest in things they once favored, and often times causes them to become withdrawn. Several things are said about children and their grieving process. Many researchers believe that children do not completely grasp the concept of death, making it difficult for them to grieve, whereas other researchers believe that children completely understand the concept of death and each grieve in their own way. In the presented paper, the effect grieving has on a child’s social interactions in and out of their home is investigated. It is believed that…
In part, the respondent had never had an opportunity to share her feelings with anyone else apart from members of the family that opted not to talk about it at all. The respondent’s tears fell freely when she started to talk about the incident and how it had changed and affected her life from thence. I had to hold her hands and let her sob for a while. I even stood next to her and comforted her by rubbing her on the back and on her arm, which gave her the confidence to confide in me (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou, 2014). Also, I made available some tissues from the drawer and we ended up changing the seating posture.…