Understanding Experience of Loss

The Last Dance: Encouraging Death and Dying - Chapter Nine

Understanding Grief and Bereavement

The ninth chapter of the book The Last Dance: Encouraging Death and Dying focuses on people's experiences following a loss. It focuses mostly on bereavement, grief, and grieving. According to the author, while grieving is a common occurrence in human existence, it includes the objective event of a loss, which causes disruption in the survivor's life.

Grief, on the other hand, is a reaction to loss that manifests as mental distress, emotional distress, bodily, behavioral, and spiritual responses. The mental side of grieving, according to the chapter, includes confusion, anxiety, disbelief, despair, a sense of disorder, sensory responses, and paranormal experiences such as hallucinations. Emotional aspects include loneliness, sadness, longing, guilt, frustration, sorrow and anguish as well as anger and outrage. Further, individuals express several physical aspects of grief such as sleep disruption, change in appetite, feeling of emptiness and hyperactivity. Behaviorally, a person who has just experienced loss can show signs of searching for the deceased or increased talk about the loss, restlessness, hostility and irritability. Spiritually, people may begin to question why the death occurred or struggle to make sense of loss and reexamination of spiritual and religious beliefs.

Mourning and the Models of Grief

In chapter nine, mourning has been defined as the process by which a bereaved individual attempts to integrate the experienced loss into their lives. Often, this is determined by cultural and social norms for expressing grief. As such, people can demonstrate mourning differently, for example, raising national flag half-mast, going to seclusion or cutting long hair short.

Additionally, the author focuses on the models of grief which refer to working through experience and letting go (attachment theory), maintaining bonds with the deceased or telling about the grief. The author holds that grief is an adaptive response to the loss which must be accepted and confronted. It is an active process that occurs over a certain period. Therefore, it is imperative for a person to work through the pain, adjust to the changed environment, relocate emotionally and move on with life and other loved ones. Moreover, it is fundamental to recognize the loss, react to the separation, recollect and relinquish old attachment to the dead person. The author contends that instead of staying tied to the deceased, it is critical for the bereaved to incorporate the loss into their ongoing life, maintaining an inner representation of the dead which can be accompanied by telling the story of the experience. This provides emotional relief and promotes the search for meaning as well as a way to bridge the situation.

Coping with Grief

The chapter also talks about how people can cope with grief. According to the author, this can be achieved through identifying the concurrent changes or secondary losses, minimizing stress from other areas of life during mourning, integrating grief into a bigger picture of life, using social support and acknowledging that the heart and the head may react differently. Further, it is imperative for one to accept the course of grief, and if symptoms persist, the bereaved should seek counseling support from groups or individuals. In particular, this is because the course of grief is often highly variable, complex and individualistic. It involves multiple dimensions and does not encompass any predetermined timetable. Here, the chapter also talks about the three major stages of grief: initial, middle and the last phase, each of which results in distinct responses.

Factors that Can Complicate Grief

Similarly, the chapter focuses on some of the primary factors that can complicate grief: unanticipated death, loss of a child, death from a lengthy illness and bereaved sense that death could have been prevented. Other cited elements that may impede recovery from grief encompass mental health problems and the lack of social support. Multiple losses, disenfranchised grief and unfinished business are other critical variables that influence mourning. According to the author, although this may be the case, individuals should be careful when it comes to medicalizing grief as there are several associated dangers. For instance, it is imperative to consider that circumstance and personality of people differ and what might be the pathological response for one mourned may be a suitable reaction for another bereaved. The danger lies in the fact that traumatic grief is often indistinguishable from normal grief process.

Providing Support to the Bereaved

Towards the end of the chapter, the author provides a description of the support that can be given to the bereaved. One of the crucial things one can do is listening to the person. Also, gestures like hugging the person can be more comforting than words. Further, it is important to suspend judgment about the feelings expressed by the bereaved, especially when they are perceived to be wrong. It may be fundamental to reassure the person that everything will be fine, and it is allowed to take a break from grieving. During the later course after the funeral, the social support group is essential as this provides the bereaved an opportunity to share their stories as well as encourage each other. According to the author, when the loss is transformed in a way that puts it in the context of growth, the grief turns into a unifying factor instead of the cause of alienation.