“It is impossible to comprehend the intense anguish of loss, until death comes to someone you love” (Grollman, pg. ix). There’s nothing worse than experiencing the death of a loved one, and trying to adapt to a life without their smile, warm embrace, and presence. In this book, Living when a loved one has died, Rabbi Earl A. Grollman has comprised various poems about grief into four sections: shock, suffering, recovery, and new life. Before he transitions to a new chapter, Grollman provides a brief summary of what the grieving individual is going through, at a certain stage of grief. Although I haven’t experienced the death of a loved one, myself, I can imagine how this book can be comforting to an individual who feels like a part of them has …show more content…
4). This book can be helpful to a society, who has lost their relationship with death, and help them understand the consequence of love is grief. When a person experiences a death, they are afraid of the unknown, and the pain associated with grief. In his book, Grollman goes into great detail on how an individual might feel throughout certain stages of their grief. Shock is the first reaction when they learn of a loved one’s death. Grollman establishes that death is final, and irrevocable, in the first few pages. “You are all but drowning in the sea of your private sorrow. The person who has been part of your life is gone forever” (Grollman, pg. 2). A person might feel as there’s an abundance of things left unsaid, unfulfilled, and yearn for their loved one. The griever might wonder how they can go on living, when their world has been shattered. The book transitions into “suffering” and recognizes the feelings associated: numbness, denial, anger, panic, physical illness, and depression, and the griever is advised these are all normal reactions. Grollman dives into the feelings associated with suffering, and reassures the griever it’s normal to feel the way they do. In terms to numbness, the shock from a death might cause the griever to go through temporary paralysis, which acts as a protective mechanism. With
Grief, the universal process of mourning, materializes differently in each person. Some swiftly overcome it, able to accept their loss and move on. Others concede to despair and develop Complicated Grief Disorder: “a period of mourning after a loss…that exceeds six months and is expressed through…a maladjustment and lack of acceptance of death, social isolation and suicidal tendencies” (Avrutin para. 5). Ethan Frome, the protagonist of Edith Wharton’s novella of the same name, continually struggles with this particular disorder.
Generally speaking, humans cannot be entirely prepared for dying or the death of a close person in their life. Some people say that facing death gives a person both opportunity to grow mentally and the strength to carry on in life; however, it can be too much to handle alone. Help can be needed not only from relatives and peers, but also from the experts. Strong grieving is more than usual, but life must eventually carry on. Death can be both interesting and frightening at the same time because nobody knows what happens afterwards.
This is the death of one who was close to him, but it is not the first. He has learned to manage his feelings of uncontrollable sadness towards death. He will always keep it in his heart, but he knows he must move on. As much as he wants to lie down next to his dead brother and die with him, he knows that is not an
Toni Morrison’s Sula and Edgar Allen Poe’s “To One in Paradise” both explore the implications and aftermath of loss. Both authors argue that although the absence of a loved one can be devastating, even death cannot break the bond of love; one’s thoughts will forever linger on the past, and in times of loneliness, the dead will return in the reflections and memories of the living. In the first stanza, Poe writes that the person about whom he writes meant a great deal to him.
Grief is a complex and multifaceted emotion that is an inherent part of the human experience. It manifests in various forms, ranging from the death of a loved one to the loss of a way of life, and it impacts individuals differently. In Richard Wagamese's novel Indian Horse and James Joyce's short story Eveline, grief plays a significant role in shaping the lives of the main characters. Through their narratives, these works explore the nature and role of grief as a transformative force, influencing the characters' actions, decisions, and perceptions of the world around them.
In anticipatory grief the life of the patient and their family is re-examined; the closeness of relationships, life accomplishments and the anticipation of missed family events. It is preparing for a
Grieving is a common and unhappy process that many people go through in their lifetime. Through the grieving process, people often come to conclusions about their life. In Please Ignore Vera Dietz, Vera loses her best friend Charlie and tries to stray away from her parent’s examples, only to find out that she will have to come to terms with the loss of her best friend. In We Were Liars, Cadence gets sick in a tragic accident that causes her to wonder about her family and find out the truth. In both, Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King, and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, we learn that when people grieve it causes more loss and unlawful actions.
When people are traumatized by an event they are pushed to experience the five stages of grief. The “Gospel”, by Philip Levine and “the boy detective loses love”, by Sam Sax both use characters that are going through one of the stages of grief. Levine and Sax both explain the thoughts and process of what a person thinks when they go through these stages with imagery. Levine uses symbolism, a sad tone, and a set setting in “Gospel” to illustrate that grieving takes you into a depth of thoughts. Sax uses anaphoras, an aggressive tone, and an ambiguous setting to convey that grieving takes you into a tunnel of anger and rage.
In this stage we block and hide from the pain. This is a defense mechanism that protects us from the first wave of pain. At first the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming, this sends us into shock. We block the feelings and hide from the fact that we lost someone important. Then we wonder how, why, or if we should go on with life.
“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief isonly, a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love (Hilary Stanton Zunin).” The short story called “The Beginning of Grief” written by L. Wiowode, is about a young family dealing with grief. The main character, Stanion recently lost his wife has five kids: three boys, and two girls. Stanion is now operating his own business called Wm. Stanion & Sons Plastering since his wife passed away.
In the modern world, when Freud and Jung came with new theories about the human mind and subconscious, explaining dreams and the human conscience, even literature itself began to be preoccupied with what are the human reactions to certain images, a reason why the horror literature is so visual and full of descriptions about images and sounds rather than feelings. Through H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and many authors that wrote horror literature, we can observe that their stories describe situations that may be associated with the primitive state, situations that bring us back on the time when religion and belief were founded based on the idea of death. It is because although we live in a modern world and we may call ourselves far more civilised than our ancestors, we still see death as a mystery which leads to many unanswered questions. Of course, there are many theories, scientifical or religious, but what is actually the question of the humankind is not where we are going after death, for we do not know what death is, but rather how does death feel. In the Peguin collection of short stories, prose poems, and poetry of Clark Ashton Smith, ”The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies”, Clark Ashton Smith affirms that death often reveals the
The attitudes to grief over the loss of a loved one are presented in two thoroughly different ways in the two poems of ‘Funeral Blues’ and ‘Remember’. Some differences include the tone towards death as ‘Funeral Blues’ was written with a more mocking, sarcastic tone towards death and grieving the loss of a loved one, (even though it was later interpreted as a genuine expression of grief after the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” in 1994), whereas ‘Remember’ has a more sincere and heartfelt tone towards death. In addition, ‘Funeral Blues’ is entirely negative towards death not only forbidding themselves from moving on but also forbidding the world from moving on after the tragic passing of the loved one, whilst ‘Remember’ gives the griever
To be able to know how to deal with the losses that are discussed in the following chapters, it is important to have a clearer understanding of loss and grief and how to cope with grief following
Sometimes a life can end before it begin. In the poems "The Mother" and "Here a Pretty Baby Lies," each author portrays this opinion. Robert Herrick is the author of “Here a Pretty Baby Lies.” Gwendolyn Brooks is the author of “The Mother.” Each author insert things in their poems that reflect to the other poem.