"The quality of death, for instance, affects the quality of grief. Here let us focus on the experiences of the survivors and survivors-to-be. Three key concepts thanatologists employ to understand those affected by the death of others are: bereavement, grief, and mourning. Bereavement is the social status allocated to those experiencing legitimate grief--a status of diminished expectations toward one's role performances much like the "sick role." Grief entails the emotions triggered by the death of other. In American culture there is the expectation that these emotions feature extreme sadness and even depression as other's death is understood to be a personal "loss" (as opposed to, say, a "gain," as in cultures where parental death might mean one's entry into full adulthood). Mourning refers to the "grief work" that one must do to emancipate himself enough from bonds with the deceased to return to one's normal social responsibilities. 

Society does not grant the bereavement status to all experiencing the loss of a significant social bond, even though these may be every bit as profound and grief-inducing for the survivor. Examples include the surviving member of a homosexual couple or a close friend of the deceased, neither of whom would be given the time off from work that would be given to those losing a parent or spouse. Though a son- or daughter-in-law may have a closer relationship with their mother-in-law than with their own mother, at funerals their loss is often not acknowledged as all condolences are given to spouses and offspring. Such absence of social recognition of one's loss can compound the void of grief, hence the rise of support groups even for those having lost a pet.

The grief associated with bereavement is one of the most profound of all human emotions--and one of the most lethal. According to the General Social Surveys, more than 14 percent of Americans 18 and older--or about 36 million-- have experience the death of either a parent, spouse, sibling or child each year. Studies show that such losses disrupt life patterns for up to three years. According to the National Academy of Science, of the approximately 800,000 Americans widowed each year, up to 160,000 are thought to suffer a pathological grief.

Certainly contributing to the challenges of individuals' "grief work" is the privatization of grief, the underinstitutionalization of the bereavement role, the fading of the consoling role, and the dramatic shrinkage of the acceptable duration for mourning over the past century. In Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin notes how Emily Post in 1927 reported that a widow's formal mourning period was three years. Twenty-three years later, this period had declined to six months. And by 1972, Amy Vanderbilt advised the bereaved to "pursue, or try to pursue, a usual social course within a week or so after a funeral." While over 90 percent of American companies grant official time off for bereavement, most have established three days as the formal bereavement period."

Also contributing to the challenges of "grief work" are its unique facets. Note the increasingly specialized nature of support groups here on the Web: they are determined not only on attributes of the griever--such as on the basis of their age (groups exist for teenagers, the middle- aged, and older persons) and sex--but also on the nature of their relationship with the deceased (whether spouse, lover, grandparent, parent, or sibling) and the cause of death, such as death by suicide or cancer or in the line of military service. Some of these are even further refined, such as the parent grief groups. These include support systems for those parents experiencing the neonatal, SIDS, or homicide deaths of their children, or, in the case of In Loving Memory, for those parents coping with death of their only or last surviving child.  Click here for further thoughts on the deaths of family members. 

Finally, and not surprisingly given the commodification of so many aspects of life, we note the commodification of bereavement.

Art of Mourning NPR on Philadelphia's Museum of Mourning Arts

GriefNet

GROWW--Grief Recover Online for All Bereaved

Crisis, Grief, and Healing (Tom Golden LCSW)

HYGEIA (Dr. Michael R. Berman)

NetKin: a place of solace on the web

ACCESS--AirCraft Casualty Emotional Support Services Founded in 1996 by the fiancé of a TWA flight 800 casualty, this site is for victims of air accidents to share their memories and pains

Compassion Connection

Mourning Light Grief Support Webring

Kathleen Gilbert's "Grief in a Family Context" course

~ Yahoo'd through Yahoo Images and their added links

CRADLE MY HEART

Last night,
I was lying on the rooftop,
thinking of you.
I saw a special Star,
and summoned her to take you a message.
I prostrated myself to the Star
and asked her to take my prostration
to that Sun of Tabriz.
So that with his light, he can turn
my dark stones into gold.
I opened my chest and showed her my scars,
I told her to bring me news
of my bloodthirsty Lover.
As I waited,
I paced back and forth,
until the child of my heart became quiet.
The child slept, as if I were rocking his cradle.
Oh Beloved, give milk to the infant of the heart,
and don't hold us from our turning.
You have cared for hundreds,
don't let it stop with me now.
At the end, the town of unity is the place for the heart.
Why do you keep this bewildered heart
in the town of dissolution?
I have gone speechless, but to rid myself
of this dry mood,
oh Saaqhi, pass the narcissus of the wine.

~Hush Don't Say Anything to God:
Passionate Poems of Rumi Translated by Shahram Shiva

The Chemo Room

The chemo room was, as usual, filled with extraordinary people.  I spoke with a woman who has metastasized breast cancer and goes to The Wellness Community as we do.  We spoke of walls and hearts and true friends....schedules dominated by cancer treatments and all that they entail.  I told her that I was ready to take down my wall.  “You can," she said, "for I have taken down mine."  Her eyes were washed with tears of empathy and I hugged her gently, for she is such a treasure.

There was a woman who had just had a port installed earlier that morning and her husband sat down in the chair across from me.  These two were life-partners, no doubt about it.  She spoke of her azalea garden even as she fished a book on Braves baseball from her purse.  Tamara, the chemo nurse, was showing us pictures of her daughter who had just graduated.  You see, we are family to each other.  No appointment needed to get a hug or wipe a tear.  We are there anyway -we might as well be there for each other.

Yesterday I saw a therapist to get some help in dealing with all of this stress and sorrow.  He helped me by confirming my path.  He is a writer, too, and we talked of the windhorse way and courage and webpages.  He stuck an acupuncture needle in my ear and I wore it proudly into the barbecue joint where we ate after my appointment.

But this was the best thing of all.  Someone sent me this e-mail:
 

"Thank you for embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly as well as the beautiful. Your thoughts speak more of spirituality to me than religion."    From a 69 year old clean and sober AA member

That letter makes it all worthwhile.  To write about the hardest journey of my life and have it received by even one person is a form of healing for me.

There is a silence that falls upon the soul when it has said too much.  All of the anger and bitterness has been expressed.  Remorse has now reared its ugly head.  God, I didn’t know that I had so much anger in me.  Cancer is a curse.  It can bring forth blessings, but it is a curse for me right now.  My husband is weak and sick and I am sick and tired.  All of my best hopes and resolves have vanished like smoke and I am in need of renewal.  But from where will it come when no one can take my place in my soul?  I must live in my own being and somehow find rest and renewal there.

I have trod the halls of too many hospitals to be well-disposed towards them.  I have cried too many tears to believe they will lead to burdens being lifted.  I am a psalmist for the insanely grief-stricken mind.  Writing flows from deep within like the tears that I have been shedding for days.  But anger is a mask for grief and I am grieving like hell.  For normalcy, for hope, for optimism and an end to serving the suffering body.

It is a good thing that paragraphs like these are written in water and wind like all other transitory emotions.  These words, too, shall pass. Things get better and things get worse.  The nondual soul who witnesses the personal suffering is always silent.  It is the bird that never sang a note.

My Body

This morning I had a physical therapy session for my neck. The therapist, Kent, was taking me through my range of motions and we were getting to know each other.  Like Bernie Siegel, he has a shaven head.  I told him what Bernie said about why he shaved his head...to bare his emotions, spirituality and love.

He commented that when he told me to let go, I wasn’t able to do so.  “A lot of times,” he said, “people will be telling me one thing and their body will be telling me something else.  And that’s where the rubber meets the road.”

I have known for a long time that I am unable to let go.  But knowing and doing are far removed.  It is good to know where you need to do more work...at not working. I say that tongue-in-cheek and also in truth.  Without descent into the depths, we will never ascend to the inner heights.  That’s just how it is.

Bernie had asked me what my pain in the neck was about.  I honestly cannot put it into words, so I am putting it into my body.  But I am good at words, if nothing else, so I will try.  I need to be embraced--not braced.  Bracing myself against emotional pain hurts my body.  I write a lot about letting go.  Bernie says that you teach what you need to learn.

Those of you who resonate to what I write know that we are all in the same boat.  We are each other.  We mirror each other.  Thank God that this is true.  Sometimes we can all be a pain in the neck and what we really need is to embrace and be embraced.  It seems the logical thing to do, but how hard it is to stay open, to contain the pain.  The body can be an alchemical vessel if we allow it to be.  We can let the pain remain, embracing it with our own higher consciousness.  I know this--but not all of the time.

I would like to say a word to my body, “I am sorry that I have allowed you to get so tense and in such pain.  Forgive me.  I am getting you some help.  Thank you for all that you do.”  My body doesn’t speak in words but I saw the tears in its eyes.  We will be okay.

~ Vicki Woodyard, http://www.bobwoodyard.com

PARENTAL LOSS

"As the limelighted boomers enter middle age we'll be hearing much more about the meaning of parental death (i.e., Jane Brooks' Midlife Orphan). Every year eleven million American adults lose a parent; by age 62, roughly three-quarters have lost both. Unlike earlier generations, however, their "orphan" status typically occurs much later in life; Boomers will have had their parents longer than any other generation.

Mary Gordon, in her recently published The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father, writes that her father's death (when she was seven years of age) was the defining event of her life. George Pollock, director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, has identified hundreds of writers, artists, philosophers, for whom mourning over a parent's death was an adaptation that tapped creative energy. For Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Darwin, and Tolstoy, the death of a parent seemed to spur them on to greatness. Certainly the quality and form of one's death experiences reacts with the quality and form of one's moral, emotional, and intellectual development. Death can spawn depression and social withdrawal, or it can invigorate, stimulating individuals to pursue new heights to their social performances."

Newsweek's Final Farewells-- "Millions of baby boomers face one of life's saddest rites of passage: watching parents die."

SPOUSAL LOSS

Widowhood is not only a label assigned to surviving spouses, but is a social status as well--and female status at that, given that 85% of wives outlive their husbands. Unlike other bereavement-based statuses, this one is permanent. And as is the case with all social statuses, there are normative patterns to its timing and behavioral expectations. For instance, in American society, widows are frowned upon if they begin dating a week after the funeral or remarry a few months thereafter.

In our death-denying and couple-based culture, there is a certain stigma to being widowed, which is amplified by the fact that it is a status typically occupied by females. Few married women escape the status. One facet of sexism is the general pattern of older males marrying younger females. Not only does this often imply greater male power in the relationship but, because of the females' eight or more years of life expectancy advantage, it often guarantees that it is the woman who must cope with the dying and death of a spouse, with the spectrum of emotions associated with grief, and with singleness in a world of couples. In fact, widows often find themselves neither in the world of singles or of marrieds.

Links from Widow Net

WidowNet "an information and self-help resource for, and by, widows and widowers"

LOSS OF CHILD

Hygeia, An Online Journal for Women's Health and Healing

ZOOM--A parent grieves

LOSS OF SIBLING

Welcome to Twinless Twins

http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/death-6.html

Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

~ Rumi

  

"This is how I would die

into the Love I have for You:

as pieces of cloud

dissolve in sunlight."*