Grief In Nicholas Wolterstorff's Lament For A Son

Grief is a complicated literature to describe as it is a powerful and personal human response, typically after losing a loved one. Grief is universal, every individual copes with grief in their own ways. The problem of this literature is that it has not been studied in depth and this complicated topic can become difficult to analyze due to misinterpretation of feelings and emotions, which is clearly foreseeable in the articles reported. Grief is a natural human reaction, however the outcome grief has on an individual is powerful and often dangerous to one’s own life. PubMed Health describes grief reactions into three terms; anticipatory grief, common grief, and complicated/prolonged grief.

Grief nearly always entails psychic pain, challenges in coping and, irritation, sadness, and rumination. Less commonly discussed is the heightened sense of vulnerability and fear that

Grief and Loss Grief has a powerful effect on everyone’s lives. The heartbreaking feeling of losing someone close to you, like a family member or a significant other, alters how we view ourselves and act. Sometimes coping methods cause people to do things and make choices that they usually would not. This is illustrated in the films, The United States of Leland and The Fundamentals of Caring, where grief and loss are very prominent themes.

Critical Analysis “Grief is life the ocean, it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn how to swim.” - Vicki Harrison. When it comes to losing a family member or friend, people tend to cope with it in many different ways.

LOSS, GRIEF AND HEALING As human beings, we suffer losses of many kinds and sizes in our life time. While some of these losses are small and do not hurt much, some are big and hurt deeply. Those that are accompanied by pains that are difficult to bear include the loss of a loved one through death or divorce, cheating or unfaithfulness in a trusted relationship or loss of good health when a diagnosis of a terminal illness is made. In all these instances of loss, pain and grief are experienced and an emotional wound is created which needs healing.

By constructing lists of people, foods, books, and musicians that bring him happiness, Junior finds a unique way to grieve for his losses. He reflects, “I keep writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and reediting. It became my grieving ceremony” (Alexie 178). Junior’s ceremony forms hope out of a bitter misery surrounding him. In this adaptation, Junior confronts sorrow with the positivity of his disposition and strength of his character.

Coping with death can be very overwhelming for children. In my essay I will be discussing how children grieve, and how parents can help their kids grieve in a healthier way. Children who have lost a loved one from death grieve in many ways. Grief is the natural response to death and loss, which has four broad categories including: emotional response, physical sensations, altered cognitions and behavior problems (Barbato & Irwin, 1992). These responses can trigger a lot different emotions in the child.

“Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminishes not ever. It passes in and out of everything” (Heller 115). Throughout tragedy primal values come to the surface of even the most civilized people.

In our lives there will always be grieving in some type of form, in “ The Valley of Broken Hearts” Mrs. Joe lost her husband 13 years ago due to lung cancer. In “ New Development Stirs Old Case” the wife of Mr. Renfroe was strangled and found dead on his kitchen floor. Lastly in “French Quarter’s Black Tapping Feet” Rose suffered a great loss the loss of a parent. In every article, each individual had one thing in common they all had a heartache that dealt with death.

There is no comparison to the amount of pain a parent endures when they outlive their child. A tale of woe is what resides after such incident. An endless cycle of grief is exemplified in the short story “Night” by Bret Lott. The way the father in the story pays meticulous attention to detail makes the audience believe that he does not want to forget the existence of his child. He is merely in denial.

It gives the reader the sense that the main character may be experiencing some depression because as it is stated she is waiting for her feelings to surface, and she might be feeling down that she is not reacting as normal people should be. She is convincing herself that she is not worthy and she doesn’t love her father, even though on the inside she loves him . The main character needs to realize that she is taking it in her own way. Furthermore, the second grief in the story is the

That particular adversity is melancholia, which is when an individual is unable to fully recuperate from a loss and consequently their lives remain stagnant as they never seem to exit the grieving mode. This translates to the tension between mobility and immobility that each individual thus experiences. To say that there is a precise manner in which an individual should lament in would be flawed, because every individual approaches life at a different kind of lens. I will be discussing this in terms of the causes and the consequences of grief and the detailed ways in which the individuals deal with the grief. One could say that the most evident origin of grief in this chapter is fixed around the usage of alcohol.

In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part. One of the first apparent emotions the boy experiences with the death of his father is loneliness to make this section memorable. The boy expresses this sentiment when he stays with his father described as, “When he came back he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again,” (McCarthy 281). The definition of loneliness is, “sadness because one has no friends or company.”

In “Mid-term Break,” the family, friends, and neighbors are grieving the death of the young boy in their own personal ways. Heaney pictures the mother by describing her mourning as “angry tearless sighs” (Line 13). This quote shows that the mother’s form of grief is responding to the accident in anger and almost disbelief, which, according to Julie Axelrod, is considered the denial and isolation stage. Heaney depicts the father crying at the funeral of his son, which is the complete opposite of that of his wife. In Frost’s poem, he portrays grief in the line that reads “so Eden sank to grief” (6).

(Kidd p.279)” She is overcome by the truth of her mothers death knowing that she was the hand that ended her mothers life even as a baby. Lily finds herself in deep valleys of self pity and grief, but she also is on mountain tops of joy that this family brings to her. Speaking from personal experience losing people that are close to you hurts, but over time everything gets easier to cope with and to live with that emptiness but it is never gone.