Young people will feel and behave differently from adults when their loved one dies
Bereavement is an outward expression of grief. Mourning and the accompanying ceremonies provide the bereaved with the sense of closure after the loss. The rituals remind the survivors that death is real. The rites enable close friends, family members, and loved ones to express their love and duty to those who have died. Lack of ceremonies leads to a lack of closure that makes it hard for people to grieve; therefore, not learning to live with the loss. Funeral ceremonies mark the beginning of a new life to the bereaved. Grieving, however, is done differently depending on the life span of the diseased and the survivor. Young people will feel and behave differently from adults when their loved one dies. A child losing his parent may have to deal with issues that are beyond their age and that the child is not prepared. Such children might experience anxiety, sadness, and fear, among other emotions (Firth, 2016).
Losing a young spouse is overwhelming and confusing. One feels devastated by the loneliness of being single again. A lot of things ought to change, ranging from the lifestyle to being anxious about the future. The situation gets met with different feelings. The survivor may feel numbed heartbroken, among other adverse emotions. They can also feel relieved if the dead spouse was suffering a painful illness. Sharing the memories of the departed spouse may be easing to everyone in the family since the other members are also mourning. It could be comforting to allow people around the spouse to talk about the deceased. It may relieve some anger and grief. Some bereaved may experience complicated pain where they feel to lack the purpose to live anymore. They get difficulties to live and perform daily practices (Stritof, 2020).
In the recent past, I witnessed a close neighbor grieving after she lost her husband. Although the husband spends a prolonged time in the hospital, the lady kept faith that one day he would recover and get discharged. The thought of her husband dying never crossed her mind. The couple was young; in fact, their only daughter was barely seven years. The husband was the sole breadwinner in the family, making it very difficult for the wife to come to terms with the realization of his demise. She experienced the denial stage for so long. She could not contemplate how she could cope up with life without her husband. They were pretty close to each other, and to make matters worse, she was due to deliver her second born in a few months. The loss was so massive for her since she did not have a job, and the load of two children was imminent. She narrated how she prayed to God to reverse the death of her husband. She, for an extended period, wished it was a bad dream and one that she would wake up from soon. She eventually accepted the loss and looked for a job to care for her two daughters.
Elisabeth viewed grief as the experience of loss psychologically, emotionally, and physically. She observed that those experiencing trouble mostly undergo five stages. Whether the survivors could expect or not expect the death of loved triggers the way people will react when grieving. For instance, parents never expect to lose their children. People can expect a demise if their loved one becomes ill for an extended period or when they are dealing with a terminal disease. The grief, in this case, would be different from if the death occurred suddenly. The bereaved will have varied emotions if they feel responsible for the death (Firth, 2016).
A suicide case may leave the surviving wondering if they made a mistake, and perhaps the death could not have occurred if they acted differently. America had recorded almost five million survivors of suicide by the year 2007 (Corr, 2018). The bereaved usually torment themselves with the feeling of guilt. In suicide cases, some family members do hold others responsible for the cause of death. The survivor will battle with the feeling wishing they could have control of the situation. The emotions have the effect of the assumption that if the survivor never makes a mistake again, he or she can control all that happens to their lives.
Some scenarios make the survivors expect the death of their loved ones. The case gets termed as anticipated grief. Anticipatory grief allows the bereaved time to prepare somehow before the loss. Even before the occurrence of death, anticipatory grief may encompass the same emotions felt when a loved one dies. Elisabeth reiterated that the state makes the stages of loss somewhat easier once the person eventually dies. The family members may get a sigh of relief if a death occurs after a long-term illness, which was painful. The family may feel that the suffering is over—the feel relieved of the tasks and exhaustion of caring for the sick person. Survivors who have to hide the circumstances of the loss experience disenfranchised grief—those whose loss goes unrecognized experience the type of pain. The death may include; losing an ex-spouse, a lover, among other examples. Literature suggests that grief lasts a lifetime, although the intense grief lasts between one and two years. One continues to get grieved as long as there is a loss, according to Elisabeth. However, different people grieve with varying intensities for the rest of their lives (Corr, 2018).
Different authors have their various models of grieving stages. Two models will get discussed; Elizabeth Kubler Rose model of the five stages of the dying process and dual-process model of grieving. Dual-process suggests that the survivor moves resonate between grieving for the deceased and coping with leaving without them. The model puts into consideration on restoration and loss orientations. Elisabeth and coauthors came up with five stages of the grieving process in their grief model. The steps include; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Denial is the first stage of grief characterized by shock and disbelief. It persists for a few weeks following the loss where the survivor is yet to come to terms with the reality and thinks the loved one will come back.
The survivor feels angered by the people he or she thinks should have saved their loved ones’ lives. Many are mad at the doctors feeling that they did not offer enough care, hence leaving their loved ones to die. The bereaved sometimes are angered because they did not expect life to turn out that way. Elizabeth suggests that some go-ahead to try to question God. Firth concluded that there is no way to grieve, implying that not all people will experience all the stages given by Elisabeth. The author also indicated that mixed emotions go hand in hand with grief. Many times the feelings that follow the death of loved ones are contradictory. For instance, a partner may experience a total lack of sexual arousal, or they may want sex to feel connected and alive. The feelings may happen if they lose their spouses (Firth, 2016). People’s consolation may turn out to cause more sadness to the bereaved.
The denial stage helps the bereaved to survive the loss, according to Elisabeth. At the moment, life is meaningless and overwhelming to the survivor. Healing comes when one accepts the damage and start to ask themselves questions about the demise. One is trying to cope with the difficult situations where nothing surrounding them makes little or no meaning at all. With time the survivor grows more robust, and the denial starts to fade away. However, at some point, the first emotions of the loss begin to resurface. It leads to the anger stage. The authors suggest that anger brings about individual healing from the ordeal. The aggression may extend to the doctor, friends, family, yourself, or even to the late person (Corr, 2018).
Pain accompanies anger in most cases. For example, a survivor may get angry with a family member or a friend who did not attend the funeral. The more the anger one feels, the stronger they were linked to the deceased. The pain and anger give one a feeling that they could do anything to save the dead person. The emotion comes at the bargaining stage. A husband would vow to God that he would never quarrel with the wife if God could let her live. At this point, the survivor wishes things to go back as they were in the past when the deceased was alive. The depression stage follows the bargaining. It is the time where the survivor’s thoughts move to the present, and empty feelings sharply hit one. The state is usually confused with being a mental illness, and many think it is unnatural. Scholars reiterate that a survivor will inevitably undergo this stage provided they were close to the deceased. The study observes that depression is a part of the healing process after loss, and it is natural to experience (Lawton, 2015).
After depression comes acceptance. The bereaved have accepted that the dead is physically gone and realizes that the reality is there to stay permanently. Many authors, however, have confused the acceptance stage with being ok or alright. It is not correct since the survivor will never feel ok, although they will learn to cope with the situation, in acceptance. People now devices methods and ways of living without the dead. They soon realize roles owned by the dead to other people. Reassigning the tasks sometimes makes the survivors feel they are betraying the dead. They cannot ultimately replace the deceased; however, they can find more meaningful lives than the ones to grieve (Lawton, 2015).
To sum up, the grieving process will be different, ranging from one survivor to another. It will depend on the relationship and how the bereaved gotten depended on the deceased. For instance, losing a husband who was the sole breadwinner of the family will impact the wife very much. It will be difficult for her to cope with life without their husband. It might take a lot of time before she attains the last stage of acceptance.
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