Bereavement Re-Evaluated

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Bereavement, a universal theme in our experience, causes profound stress and sadness, often dragging with it a cluster of morbidities. To their chagrin, those with chronic pain often react with an intensity and non-acceptance that they find both mystifying and dauting and yet this is predictable given their own personal losses; in functionality, quality of life, various levels of social withdrawal and favoured interests that had to be abandoned.

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And then there are the serial questions “why this, why now, why she or he? “

Even though we know that none of these will ever elicit the semblance of a helpful or meaningful answer, we ask them all the same, even if only of ourselves.

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After the disbelief following the initial shock, Kübler-Ross showed that there are several phases of grief that we go through both in dying and bereavement- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and? acceptance, but these don’t always follow a neat, clear- cut order. They can be haphazard, and several of them can occur at the same time.

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Eventually, our collective experience prompts and reminds us that our most painful emotional valleys or troughs with time will lessen in severity, frequency and duration, and this prevents us from feeling totally marooned. We may remain forever changed but will also recognize the day when we know that we have turned the corner and are somewhat more willing and energized to soldier on. Some will have found solace in the balm of shared narrative and memories while others will have sought solitude and umbrage in the embrace of Nature.

Friends of the bereaved who may not even have known the deceased will scramble for words of comfort and encouragement, and yet there is something that is almost always overlooked, that in time can helpfully shift troubled minds in these situations. This having being said, it is probably not best to share this early on in the bereavement cycle.

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Does it always work?

No.

There is very little in terms of therapy and mitigation that helps everyone. Added to which, one should expect a delayed (months or years) positive feedback and outcome response rather than an early one.

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From a transpersonal viewpoint, the whole dynamic of passing on is not only drenched in meaning but at heart it is the limitation thereof that mostly confers value on life itself. As we know, in economics as well as in life, value is conferred by two things; utility or usefulness, but equally?by limitation or scarcity.

The importance and value of life therefore insists that our time be limited, thereby making loss and grief our episodic but inevitable companion- even though rejected, unwanted and most certainly uninvited.

www.trevorcampbellmd

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