On dealing with grief

Methods for coping with the noise

By Douglas Redd

[W]hen you are grieving, it may seem instinctual to build a wall around yourself. Or you might want to bottle your emotions and disguise what you really feel. It is important, however, to realize that there are other ways to heal that keep you and your relationships healthy. The American Psychological Association recommends several methods for dealing with loss including acceptance, self-care, and support system building.

Loss, failure, or separation can cause pain that may never go away and, in my experience, this pain comes in waves. At times, I would convince myself that I was OK, but something small, like a song or smell, would consume the peace of mind I thought I had. At times, the grief may not seem all that bad while at other times the anger, sadness, or denial may swallow you whole.

It is human to feel this pain, and it is human to let yourself express the heartache that comes with loss.

It is crucial to remember that it’s OK to hurt. The first step to moving on is allowing yourself to be sad. Denial will only prolong the pain you’re feeling. During the initial stages of grief, surround yourself with others. Do not allow the pain to make you forget about the people that you still have. Your friends and family understand what you are going through, and shutting them out will only further your misery.

While you may not want to open up about what you are experiencing inside, realize that talking about what you are feeling will make it better. Talking is believed to reduce stress, and during times of grief, it could be useful to help create a support network. Loved ones want to support you during times of grief, so let yourself lean into that support rather than resisting it. You have people to talk to, so use them to ease your pain. Talking will let you realize that you cannot and should not depend solely on yourself, and it could allow others to find different ways to help you heal.

Grief won’t only affect you mentally, but it will also seep into your daily life and could begin to affect your lifestyle, routine, and health habits. To cope with loss, it is important to maintain your health and wellness.

To make this easier, it may be useful to understand the five stages of grief.

The five stages of grief are denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those who are grieving experience these stages differently; they might experience all of these stages in this order, skip some of them, or they may appear in a completely different order. While everyone may find that some coping mechanisms are better than others, there are a few health-related tips to make the process easier.

Firstly, make sure that you are able to get an ample amount of sleep. The process of grieving may tire the body, and a lack of sleep could cause you to feel worse.

To properly nourish your body, do not forget to maintain healthy eating habits. This also applies to the use of substances to alleviate the pain. While alcohol and other drugs may seem like they numb the pain, they ultimately will only bring more trouble.

Taking care of yourself is an essential part of living well, especially in times of struggle. When grief has the potential to not only affect your mental health, but your physical health too, you need to take additional measures to ensure your well-being. These measures also include returning to things that made you happy before.

Do not forget about the little things in life that you previously enjoyed. I am not telling you to distract yourself from the pain that accompanies grief, but to indulge in the activities that made life worthwhile to begin with. It is not over yet — enjoy what there is left to love.

Complete Article HERE!

California father buries wrong man after coroner’s mistake

[E]leven days after laying his son to rest, Frank J. Kerrigan got a call from a friend.

“Your son is alive,” he said.

“Bill (Shinker) put my son on the phone,” Kerrigan said. “He said ‘Hi Dad.’ ”

Orange County coroner’s officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported Friday (http://bit.ly/2tZSyZj).

The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley.

Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, said he called the coroner’s office and was told the body was that of his son, Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, who is mentally ill and had been living on the street.

When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said — apparently incorrectly — that identification had been made through fingerprints.

“When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them,” Kerrigan said. “If he wasn’t identified by fingerprints I would been there in heartbeat.”

Frank’s sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle of Silverado, went to the spot where he died to leave a photo of him, a candle, flowers and rosary beads.

“It was a very difficult situation for me to stand at a pretty disturbing scene. There was blood and dirty blankets,” she said.

On May 12, the family held a $20,000 funeral that drew about 50 people from as far away as Las Vegas and Washington state. Frank’s brother, John Kerrigan, gave the eulogy.

“We thought we were burying our brother,” Meikle said. “Someone else had a beautiful sendoff. It’s horrific.”

The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 150 feet from where Kerrigan’s wife is buried.

Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Kerrigan had looked at the man in the casket and touched his hair, convinced he was looking at his son for the last time. “I didn’t know what my dead son was going to look like,” he said.

Then came the May 23 phone call from Shinker. Kerrigan’s son was standing on the patio.

It was unclear how coroner’s officials misidentified the body.

Doug Easton, an attorney hired by Kerrigan, said coroner’s officials apparently weren’t able to match the corpse’s fingerprints through a law enforcement database and instead identified Kerrigan by using an old driver’s license photo.

When the family told authorities he was alive, they tried the fingerprints again and on June 1 learned they matched someone else, Meikle said.

Easton said the coroner’s office provided the Kerrigan family with a name of that person, but the identification hasn’t been independently confirmed. The attorney said the family plans to sue, alleging authorities didn’t properly try to identify the body as Kerrigan’s son because he is homeless.

Sheriff’s Lt. Lane Lagaret, a spokesman for the coroner’s office, declined to comment to the Register because an investigation was underway.

The mistaken death identification led the federal government to stop disability payments for her brother, Meikle said. The family is working to restore them.

Meikle said her brother chose to return to living on the street and doesn’t understand how hard the mistake was on his family.

“We lived through our worst fear,” she said. “He was dead on the sidewalk. We buried him. Those feelings don’t go away.”

Complete Article HERE!

I’m Dying Up Here: Books on How to Grieve and How to Die

[I]’m never going to die. I’m sorry I can’t say the same for you. My role models for how to do death are Jesus and Wile E. Coyote. Yours are other dead people. However, because I’m never going to die, I’m super comfortable with the entire topic, and the fact that I’m late turning in this column on books about death and dying has nothing to do with avoiding the subject.

So an author who suggests the dead are not howling in the abyss but rather hanging out in what she imagines as a pretty “waiting area” — well, that’s an author who’s easy for me to love. Theresa Caputo’s television show, “Long Island Medium,” has been a mainstay on TLC, and in GOOD GRIEF: Heal Your Soul, Honor Your Loved Ones, and Learn to Live Again (Atria, $25.99), Caputo (with her co-writer, Kristina Grish) wants us to know what she has learned from all those years of channeling the dead: “It’s their greatest hope that you learn to heal and carry on.” The dead — or Spirit, as she calls them — are quite chatty and opinionated. Among the things Spirit wants you to know:

Your relationship with your loved one isn’t over; it has merely changed. (Even if the loved one can’t drive you to the airport, if you ask nicely Spirit might “help you get a cab.”) You can let your feelings rule you for short periods of time, but “you must also take active steps to heal.” (Spirit doesn’t like whiners.) When it’s your time, it’s (usually) your time, or at least in the “destiny window” of time. Caputo has a host of practical, rather adorable ideas for honoring Spirit, which often involve giving gifts to others in Spirit’s name.

After a while it occurred to me that if the departed behaved in the loving way Caputo describes, I would like them more when they were dead than when they were alive. No matter; I am entirely agnostic, and still found this book comforting and quite touching. I felt oddly close to my own dead parents as I read along.

Those whose loss is more recent may prefer a less warm and fuzzy approach — more of a “what can I do to get on with my life right now?” book. Resilience is a hot topic these days, and Lucy Hone has written a book about bereavement reflecting both her own research and her own grief. RESILIENT GRIEVING: Finding Strength and Embracing Life After a Loss That Changes Everything (The Experiment, paper, $15.95) begins with Hone’s own tragedy: In 2014, her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. Hone shows us how to harness the (thankfully common) power of our own resilience to work our way through a horrible loss.

Resilience is not a shield against suffering, Hone suggests. It enables us to feel and to move through emotions like pain and guilt so that we can continue to feel alive and experience happiness. Hone does not buy into the idea that you just feel your feelings and take all the time in the world; what if, like Hone herself, you have other kids at home, a demanding job, and an urgent need to function in the real world? Hone offers concrete strategies for regaining your equilibrium even in the greatest pain. Among them: Choosing where to focus your attention (not on hating someone or something, which consumes energy); taking your time with the body of the one you love (there is no mad rush to bury or memorialize beloved); and re-establish routines, particularly if you have children, who may need that structure even more than you do.

Despite her insistence to the contrary, there is a strong whiff of “just-get-on-with-it” matter-of-factness that may be a little beyond some of us. Patrick O’Malley’s GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss (Sounds True, paper, $16.95), co-written by Tim Madigan, is for those of us made of less stern stuff. O’Malley was trained as a counselor, but when he lost his infant son, and he tried to work through the famous Kübler-Ross stages of grieving — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance — he felt like a failure. Grief was not linear; it was more of an oscillation. O’Malley wanted to talk about his son, to tell others who his son was, even in the few months he was on this earth. He began to see the wisdom of the writer Isak Dinesen, who noted, “All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them.”

O’Malley gives us the tools to tell the story of the deceased: favorite memories, when he or she was happiest and saddest, how you learned about the death, and so forth. Different kinds of loss bring different stories, and different kinds of pain. Telling the story of how you loved and how you lost gives shape and meaning to what first seems to be a meaningless, uncontrollable event.

For a compelling argument for why we have to rethink the wisdom of end-of-life “heroics,” there is EXTREME MEASURES: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life (Avery, $27). The author, Jessica Nutik Zitter, is a physician who specializes in both critical care medicine and palliative care, the yin and yang of medicine. Critical care specialists are taught to save lives with all the technology and machinery at their disposal. Palliative care specialists need the opposite skill set: They have to know how to help a dying person let go. Zitter is trained in both.

Of course, it was not always thus. Dr. Zitter describes her first Code Blue as a resident. She rushes into the room to heroically save the patient, and instead she is asked to resuscitate someone who is clearly dead, or should be. “With each compression, there is a sickening click, which I don’t recognize until I hear someone next to me whisper, ‘His whole chest is breaking,’” she writes. “This man is dead.”

The patient stays dead. But in that moment Zitter realizes that there must be a better way to depart this earth. She also discusses how palliative care can respond to many of the most painful symptoms of dying in a way that care geared toward prolonging life cannot. And why, at the end of life, less is often more compassionate. Like Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” Zitter’s book shows how knowing when to do nothing is as vital to being a good doctor as knowing when to do everything.

As compared to the more philosophical “Extreme Measures,” John Abraham’s HOW TO GET THE DEATH YOU WANT: A Practical and Moral Guide (Upper Access, paper, $14.95) is exactly as nuts and bolts as it sounds. Abraham, a thanatologist and Episcopal priest, writes extensively about advance directives and how to ensure your wishes are abided by; and then, he tells us the least painful and messy ways to go. It may not be easy to read about these methods, but they affirm the idea expressed by a popular button worn by Abraham and other members of the Final Exit Network — “Let me die like a dog” — because anyone who has ever had to euthanize a beloved pet knows how painless and peaceful death can be. Those of us who fear loss of control of our lives more than we fear death will find Abraham’s book edifying. I even appreciate the phrase he uses instead of assisted suicide; he prefers “deliberate life completion.”

Knowing Nina Riggs died shortly after writing THE BRIGHT HOUR: A Memoir of Living and Dying (Simon & Schuster, $25), the story of her experience with metastatic breast cancer, makes this moving and often very funny memoir almost unbearable to read. But that’s because it is not one bromide after the other. It is true, and it might crush you. There is one moment here that says everything about how lonely you can feel when you’ve been told you have a disease. It’s past midnight, and Riggs and her husband are lying in bed: “‘I just can’t wait for things to get back to normal,’ says John from his side of the moon.” Riggs realizes there may not be a “normal” anymore, and reacts with anger, and a growing resolve that we all wish we could achieve: “Thinking that way kind of invalidates my whole life right now. I have to love these days in the same way I love any other.”

I’ll just say this: You can read a multitude of books about how to die, but Riggs, a dying woman, will show you how to live.

Complete Article HERE!

The New Stages of Grief: 5 Tasks, No Timeline

What bereaved survivors wish they’d known about the grieving process

[B]ereaved people often brace for the so-called stages of grief, only to discover their own grieving process unfolds differently. The stages of grief — popularized from earlier theories put forth by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, and later modified by others — initially described responses to terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. While some find those responses relevant to coping with death, psychologists increasingly believe that the idea of “stages” oversimplifies a complex experience. And grieving survivors seem to agree.

“When we’re confronted with emotional chaos, we yearn for clarity, and the Kübler-Ross stages of grief serve as a kind of road map,” says Robert Neimeyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Memphis who studies grief. “But it’s more accurate to think about phases of adaptation rather than stages of grief. And they overlap rather than fall in sequence.”

No two people mourn the same way. The grieving process is shaped by one’s relationship to the deceased and the nature of the death, Neimeyer says. For example, “non-normative losses” — sudden or untimely deaths (accidents, homicides, deaths in youth or life’s prime) — tend to trigger more intense anger and disbelief, and longer depression.

What all survivors share: Death presents challenges, from processing the loss and coping with grief symptoms through reformulating a relationship to the late loved one — tasks that can take months and years to work through.

Grief task #1: Acknowledging the Reality of Loss

The finality of death is always a shock, even after a known terminal illness. After helping her 62-year-old husband battle a brain tumor for four years, Maureen McFadden thought she’d girded herself for his eventual passing. “A nun warned me that for all the pain I’d already gone through, I would not be prepared for what grief is. She was right,” says the Brooklyn, New York, widow. “Even though I understood the outcome when he was first diagnosed, I had no idea that I was still hoping. When someone dies, you’re just not prepared for that, because humans don’t know how to live without hope.”

It wasn’t until after the busy period of nursing, funeral planning, and the memorial services that the truth struck — “as if I’d been shot,” McFadden says. Later, one of her husband’s physicians told her that people who are constantly at a dying loved one’s side often have the hardest initial response. “He said they seem to hold an unarticulated belief that just by virtue of their presence and determination, they will keep the person alive,” she says. “The eventual death seems like a terrible failure.”

Accepting that death is real (and not your fault) isn’t the same as being OK with it. It merely means absorbing the truth of what has happened. This can be as difficult and painful as smacking through the first high breakers at the ocean’s shore. For some people, acknowledgment happens quickly; others remain in disbelief for months or years (or experience disbelief in periodic bursts).

What helps:

Experiencing the rituals of death. Lise Funderberg and her sisters allowed someone else to organize a quick memorial service because “we were so out of it, floating in Jell-O.” Looking back, she wishes they had done it themselves. “We didn’t even put anything in the papers. I wish we had known how a ritual of closure is really important for everyone in the community of the deceased, everyone who loved him,” says the author of Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home. “It’s not like we would be doing another one.”

Knowing there are no shortcuts through grief. “Grief can begin even before death, during caregiving. But grief doesn’t end until we do,” says Sherry E. Showalter, a social worker in Tarpon Springs, Florida, who’s the author of Healing Heartaches: Stories of Loss and Life.

Practicing your faith traditions. Some research shows that survivors with a spiritual life tend to absorb grief more quickly, possibly because — psychologists believe — people who eventually find meaning in loss are generally better able to cope with it.

Grief task #2: Weathering the stress of separation

Mourning brings many physical and emotional hallmarks: crying, being unable to cry, sleeplessness, not eating, numbness, feeling forlorn, withdrawing socially, and so on. The exact mix is different for everyone.

Anger is a common response, especially to a violent or untimely death. “My anger was so primal and intense, that this good person, my dad, had to die. It was illogical. I was mad at the world. I even thought, ‘Why couldn’t it have been my mom?’ who was already sick and not a contributing member of society,” says Harriet, a San Francisco producer whose father died at 69 after a cancer diagnosis.

Intense emotions can be a way to “hang on” to the deceased person, bereavement counselors say. It’s a tangible connection to the person who died. “It feels like power, like life,” one widow says of her white-hot anger. Letting go of the emotion, or learning to live with it, can feel like letting go of the person who died. Naturally, there can be a built-in reluctance to do that.

Another confusing emotion: Relief. “I felt horribly guilty that I was so relieved when my mom died,” says the daughter of an alcoholic. Caregivers, for example, often feel surprise (and, in turn, guilt) that they feel a lifting of a physical and/or emotional burden when caregiving ends. This is a natural response that’s separate from the sadness of losing the person. It’s entirely possible, and normal, to feel two such different emotions at the same time.

What helps:

Letting yourself experience turbulent emotions rather than shutting them down. “Wallowing is good,” says Cherie Spino, a mom of four in Toledo, Ohio, whose mother was killed at age 69 by a drunk driver. “You have to go through it, dwell on the person and your sadness, cry.”

Redirecting anger. Within a few years of her dad’s death, Harriet, the producer, “used my rage to fuel my passion” for a new project about cancer.

Asking what the deceased person would suggest. Maureen McFadden, whose husband died of a brain tumor, says she partly transitioned out of anger when the thought struck her, “What would Jim want from me?”

Reading about others’ experiences. Literature about grief can point out common threads. Survivors often point to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis.

Seeking bereavement support. Professionally led support groups or individual counseling provide skilled guidance as you navigate confusing or painful emotions. The goal isn’t to make the feelings go away but to help you embrace their purpose. Some people are ready immediately for this kind of help while some come to it long after the loss, and others do fine on their own.

Grief task #3: Adjusting to Everyday Life After a Loss

After the funeral and burial, mundane life patterns such as shopping and working must eventually resume, now in altered form. “Everyday life” often leaves survivors experiencing long-term reactions on top of the more familiar emotional and physical manifestations of grief.

Most common: yearning (intense longing for the person who has died), stress, and depression. These can prevail whether the relationship was happy or turbulent.

“Whatever unresolved issues you have, they get magnified and are elusive at the same time; you feel alone in the world,” says Ellie, whose parents and sister all died within five years. “I felt so isolated in my grief.”

What helps:

Not rushing yourself. “Being without my parents knocked me down and kept me down for a long time; it was as if something had been severed in me,” says Ellie. “Time and new experiences helped, but it was mostly a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.”

Ignoring the “grief police.” Don’t let others rush your adjustment. Turn a deaf ear to the well-meaning comments people make that miss the mark — including “It’s time to move on.”

Getting help as needed with practical tasks. Handling finances, cooking, yard work, and so on can swamp a bereaved person, especially if they’re unfamiliar duties. This just adds to stress and prolongs pain.

Inching toward new ways of doing things. One woman who had a standing Saturday morning long phone call with her late mother felt bereft at that hour each week. “I switched my walking time to then and called my sister while I walked, which shook up my routine and dulled the pain.”

Not expecting you can medicate the pain away. Antidepressants have a place in helping someone who has a chemical imbalance causing depression. But antidepressants can also impede the grieving process, and they can’t remove the yearning that’s associated with depression. The goal should be to think about the deceased with less pain, over time, and to derive a measure of comfort from such thoughts.

Grief task #4: Revising your relationship to the deceased

Your relationship to the person who died doesn’t end with his or her death; it changes. “The goal of grieving is not to let go but to find a way to hold on with less pain,” Neimeyer says.

Simon Ruben of Israel’s University of Haifa describes the grieving process as being “two-tracked,” with two processes happening simultaneously. On one track, we cope with the visible symptoms and emotions (anger, depression, sleeplessness, and so on). On the other track, less obvious but equally important, we’re working to reframe our relationship to the loved one who has died.

Nobody forgets a loved one. The question is, how do we hold him or her in our memory, our rituals, and our conversation in a way that’s manageable, possibly even comforting, rather than painful?

What helps:

Reminiscing aloud. “Loss is so taboo in American culture. You’re supposed to have a funeral and move on,” says Jennifer Amandari of Los Angeles, who lost her mother when she was 16 and then lost an infant daughter six years ago. “But not talking about the person stunts your ability to heal and work the loss into your life.”

Having your grief witnessed. When psychologist Robert Neimeyer’s teenage son got choked up at Thanksgiving on realizing he was seated in his late grandmother’s chair, the table conversation came to a halt. Rather than rushing the awkward moment, someone shared his own memory of her. “We all began to recall ‘Gloria stories,’ and it was a beautiful moment that allowed us to continue a connection to her,” Neimeyer says.

Reflecting on the legacy of the person who died (alone or with others). How did he or she inspire you? What was his or her life’s meaning and purpose? Questions like these help shape a perspective on the seeming meaninglessness of death.

Following rituals that celebrate or honor the deceased. Victorians made an art of the rituals of remembrance, from wearing black and jewelry made from the hair of the deceased to producing funeral cards and postmortem photography. Such traditions help survivors maintain a connection and continuity. Family members join Lisa Byers of Toledo, Ohio, on an annual visit to the grave of her late husband, who died of a heart attack at age 46. Patti Anderson, who lives in Cincinnati, joins her out-of-state sisters in annual trips for their mother’s birthday. They’ve turned it into a memorial to her, complete with a special dinner devoted to reminiscing. Another family sends balloons aloft on the anniversary of their father’s death — followed by a dinner at his favorite restaurant.

Creating a memorial. Cherie Spino and her sisters plan to make a wall hanging from scraps of their mother’s clothing that they’d saved. Others have found solace in creating scrapbooks or PowerPoint presentations with old photos, symbolically lighting a Caring candle and posting a dedication, or planting a tree or garden.

Grief task #5: Rewriting the storyline of your life

“Grief is more than an emotion; it’s a process of reconstructing a world of meaning that’s been challenged by loss,” psychologist Neimeyer says. When our life is closely entwined with another’s, and that person dies, it’s as if a main character in a book dropped out. How can future chapters be rewritten so the book makes sense?

And yet there must be a rewrite, because life is a narrative. An important part of grieving is to gain a perspective on the meaning of the loss and to reconstruct a world in which you can live effectively afterward. Who will now do the things that your loved one once did for you? Who will you confide in about your promotion or your child’s first steps? Will you ever be able to walk into a hospital or nursing home again? Be able to love again? How has the meaning of your life changed?

One challenge: This involves integrating the reality of death into a cultural system that likes to pretend death doesn’t exist.

What helps:

Finding compassion in the workplace, one’s place of worship, and social organizations. It can be incredibly useful to reintegrating into life after a loss to have it acknowledged, rather than ignored without comment. Example: a manager stepping forward to say, “I’m sorry for your loss; let’s talk about what you feel like tackling now.”

Putting your life story on paper. Neimeyer has his patients write the chapter titles of their life stories. Then he asks them to reflect, in writing, on specific questions: How did you organize the flow of your self-narrative? What are the major themes that tie it together? If you were to give a title to your self-narrative, what would it be?

Recognizing that you’re not the same person as before. Losing any loved one is a transformative experience. Expect and embrace change, rather than avoiding it and expecting to return to your “old self.”

Expecting the intensity of your grief to vary. “Whenever I go to a funeral, I cry and cry now — for my own loss,” says one woman. Mother’s Day, birthdays, and anniversaries can ignite surges of depression years later — or there may not even be an obvious trigger.

Being open to help. It’s worth noting that there may be a syndrome called complicated grief, in which grief reaches a point where therapy can be useful. Is prolonged grief a new psychological disorder? Many psychologists now think so and want to see it become a recognized disorder. But more relevant than labels is being open to help if you feel stuck.

A “Happy” Ending?

Important point: Completing these five tasks doesn’t “end” the grieving process. They may never be fully completed. Grief isn’t a disease, after all; it’s a transition.

“Grief is like a room we may enter or leave again and again, for years,” psychologist Robert Neimeyer says. “The character and quality of grief may change across time, but it remains available to us as a resource that we can revisit.”

That positive word, resource, is a deliberate choice: “Being able to revisit earlier losses and their implications for us can enrich our lives and make our narrative more coherent about who we are and how we got to be who we are,” Neimeyer adds.

“I still feel such a sense of loss,” says writer Lise Funderberg of her father’s death in 2006. “But qualities of that experience were incredibly moving — the compassion and charity shown to me and witnessed by me. It’s strange to hold two opposing ideas in your head: that an experience can be horrible and yet have good effects. Things were stirred up by my dad’s dying that are pretty incredible and life-affirming. I now know that if you’ve loved a person, you will always grieve them. It just changes over time.”

Complete Article HERE!

10 things to read when you’re grieving

By Joshua Barajas 

[M]y father died nearly 10 years ago, and it was Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” that pulled me through.

At first, I wanted to hide in a foxhole, isolated with my own emotions as I processed the loss of my father. I withdrew from college and friends and would, on some occasions, drag a chair to the far corner of the backyard and cry.

Several books helped me navigate the process of grieving, but it was Didion’s memoir, which documented the year following her husband’s death, that offered the most solace. I’ve since read the book every year since my father’s death, long enough to memorize its passage about how “grief comes in waves.”

This week, the NewsHour asked its staff for recommendations of books or poems that helped them survive a period of loss. In their own words, here are 10 suggested reads for those who are grieving.

“Gathering the Bones Together,” by Gregory Orr

“The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems”

This poem is the perfect distillation of the sense of loss, grief and darkness in the moment; best I’ve ever read. Written as he reflected on having accidentally killed his brother in a hunting accident when they were young boys.”

— Morgan Till, foreign affairs senior producer

“A Prayer for Owen Meany”

“A Prayer for Owen Meany,” by John Irving

“Within a year of my mother’s death I read Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I wasn’t consciously looking to cope with my grief, though Irving has long been a favorite of mine for the way his characters deal with sudden, random loss of one kind or another.

I unexpectedly came across a passage that so completely explained what I was feeling that I’ve since shared it with friends who’ve lost loved ones:”

“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”

— John Yang, correspondent

“H is for Hawk,” by Helen Macdonald and “The Once and Future King,” by T.H. White

“H Is For Hawk” and “The Once And Future King”

After my stepfather died, I picked up naturalist Helen Macdonald’s book “H is for Hawk,” which is about how, after her father died, she dealt with it by learning to train a deadly bird of prey. Training a goshawk was a kind of escape for her, which was an impulse I understood. In “H is for Hawk” you also learn that T.H. White, who famously wrote the Arthurian novels, was a falconer. It was after this that I reread White’s book about King Arthur as a young boy, called “The Once and Future King.” I love this passage in there:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

–Elizabeth Flock, reporter and producer, arts

“When Breath Becomes Air,” by Paul Kalanithi

“When Breath Becomes Air”

“My sister died suddenly when I was six and she was 19. Over the last three decades, different books, songs and movies spoke to me as I learned to carry her loss. A book that I recently found helpful was ‘When Breath Becomes Air.’ The perspective that book conveys — a thirty-something man in the prime of his life preparing to succumb to terminal cancer — provides solace to the people he leaves behind. It’s a voice we don’t always have the luxury of hearing or the courage to listen to, but Kalanithi reminds readers to share life with loved ones until the final moment comes calling and to summon the strength to carry their memories forward.”

–Laura Santhanam, data producer

“In Blackwater Woods,” a poem by Mary Oliver

“New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1”

“For me this poem reminds me that in the grand scale of time, our short blip of existence is fleeting, but that doesn’t mean we should disengage from loving and caring for others and for the planet fully. Instead, it argues that we should engage completely and recognize that each moment we have is rare and amazing. While that makes saying goodbye harder, it’s because we spent the time we had the most fully. It’s a reminder to me to live in the moment and not fret about abstractions in the past or future — a reminder to love completely. And a reminder to me that earth will live on when humans disappear, and that there is different type of beauty in the long term growth and energy of a life-harboring planet.”

–Dave Berndtson, broadcast news assistant

The Harry Potter series

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”

“When I’m grieving I turn to the Harry Potter series. They envelop me in the comfort of my childhood and allow a full escapism. I can escape with whichever one I’m in the mood for or read the entire series – yet again – if I really need to feel comforted. There’s something about turning to the books I read as a kid that help me push through grief, particularly these because they explore grief, death and love so much.”

–Alison Thoet, anchor assistant

Writing on your own

“I tried Joan Didion’s ‘Year of Magical Thinking.’ It didn’t work for me. The most cathartic was writing it down. It took two days after the cremation at a hut on the coast and then I let all 5000+ words out. I haven’t read it since. Maybe I will when I hit the 10-year mark. It sucks less with time, but different things suck now about it: grandfather’s absence, etc. It’s a crappy club to gain membership to earlier than your peers but admission to it was beyond my control.

–Hari Sreenivasan, correspondent

“Sea Fever,” by John Masefield

“Salt-Water Poems & Ballads”

This poem is a beauty that helped me with the loss of my father, who was in the OSS in WWII, and the CIA from its inception to 1973; he also always loved to sail. There is a pragmatism and joy in ‘Sea Fever’ that I feel embodies my father’s spirit. It was a way for me to share with the guests at his funeral and his memorial a piece of who my father was. I still have his sextant. He knew how to sail by the stars for navigation, and he believed in sailing four hour watches through the night, because that’s how it’s done. Sea Fever explains a hard life well lived, and how the call of the sea pulls the sailor back. I see myself as that last companion, the laughing merry rover, seeing my father off on his last voyage, to a rest he well deserved. I truly believe in celebrating the life and not mourning the death.”

–Bill Swift, Student Reporting Labs

“You Are A Badass: How To Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living An Awesome Life,” by Jen Sincero

“You Are A Badass: How To Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living An Awesome Life”

“My great grandma would send me inspirational quotes every other morning, and I depended on them to get through the day. She died in October, and after that I drifted to this book to feel that same stimulation of encouragement. I wanted to read something that didn’t make me sad — and would redirect my thinking. Self help is a genre I’m not too familiar with, but this book reads unusually raw and honest. And it forces you to confront how an unfulfilled life can lead to depression. This book gave me great advice.”

–Courtney Norris, producer

Complete Article HERE!

What Judaism Teaches Us About Grief And Loss

 

By Gila Silverman

[T]he headline on a recent Forward interview with Sheryl Sandberg asks if Sandberg can help Americans learn to grieve. Sandberg has certainly done all of us a great service by opening up a conversation about the way American do –- and don’t –- deal with death, dying and grief. In the essay that follows this headline, both Sandberg and Jane Eisner, who interviewed her, acknowledge that the rituals and structures of Jewish mourning can play an important role in processing our grief. As Jews, we are lucky. We do not need to create new ways of grieving; we need to look no further than our own traditions in order to learn how to grieve.

While the fact that everyone will die is universal, how we understand and respond to death is shaped by historical, cultural, political, economic, and, of course, religious, forces. Shared norms, values, and practices guide our expectations of how the bereaved should behave, of how we relate to the loss, of the responsibilities of the community, and of the social identities of the dead. As American Jews, therefore, the way we think about death is influenced both by our Jewish heritage and by the larger American culture.

In the United States today, death is primarily understood through the language and concepts of medicine, which focus on treatment, recovery and cure. Death is often perceived as a failure of the medical system, and talking about it makes many uncomfortable. Grief too is frequently seen as an individual and medical problem. Bereavement is a crisis to be resolved, and normal grieving behaviors are sometimes interpreted as symptoms of a psychiatric condition. For much of the 20th century, our understanding of grief built primarily on the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, and the work of grief was seen as letting go of the deceased, in order to free emotional energy for new relationships. Mourners were often told to “put the past behind”, “get back to normal”, and “move on”.

In the latter half of the 20th century, and into the 21st, new psychological models of grief emerged, primarily from researchers in North America and Western Europe whose methodologies allowed them to actively listen to the voices of the bereaved. My mother, Phyllis Rolfe Silverman, who died last June, was one of these scholars. In nearly 50 years of research in this field, she helped us to understand that bereavement is a time of change, a normal and expected life-cycle transition. Rather than something to recover from, mourning is a process of accommodation; it is not a linear process through a fixed set of stages, but a helix-like movement of negotiating a series of crises and accommodations. Mourning is an ongoing process of renegotiating a relationship, a “continuing bond”, with someone who is no longer physically present, and of reconstructing a meaningful world, and our place in it, following a loss. This is a process not of relinquishing an attachment or of giving up the past, but of changing our relationship to it. Grief is a life-long process, as the relationship to the deceased, and the meaning of the loss, is continually revisited and renegotiated as life events occur.

My mother always told us that Jews do grief well, that our Jewish traditions map perfectly onto the psychological experience of mourning. As I near the first anniversary of her death, and the end of my Jewish year of mourning, I understand now how right she was. Traditional Jewish laws prescribe a fixed set of mourning rituals and prohibitions, which are collectively referred to as Avelut (Hebrew for “mourning”) These rituals are designed to balance two core commandments: k’vod hamet –- honoring the deceased, and nichum avelim -– comforting the mourners. They make clear what is permitted and forbidden to the mourner during each phase of their grief, and outline for the community its responsibilities in caring for the dying, the dead, and the mourners. They recognize that what we need during the early days of intense pain and sadness is different than what comes later, as we accommodate to the empty space the death has left in our lives. Jewish rituals recognize that the individual is intertwined with the community, that, as the famous 1952 ethnography by Zborowski and Herzog declared, “life is with people”.

Our guidelines for mourning delineate who is considered a mourner (the parents, children, siblings, and spouse of the deceased), and the exact obligations and prohibitions guiding the behavior of each over time. These guidelines follow a clear progression, beginning at the moment of death, and continuing through the completion of the Avelut period, which is 30 days for a spouse, sibling or child, and one year for a parent. This is a highly structured process; as the mourners move from Aninut (entry into mourning) to Shiva (the first week), and then to Shloshim (the first thirty days) and eventually reach the end of Shanah (a year), they separate from, and then slowly return to, the social life of the community. Even after this year ends, those who have experienced a loss continue to participate in additional memorial rituals (yahrzeit, and, in the Ashkenazi tradition, yizkor) for the entirety of their lifetimes. At the heart of Jewish mourning rituals is recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The kaddish, a prayer sanctifying God, is to be recited daily for the Avelut period, and must be said in the presence of a quorum of ten Jews.

Within a larger social context that still expects people to move on from their grieving fairly quickly, the year of Jewish mourning rituals, and the ongoing opportunities to remember the deceased, send the bereaved a strikingly different message. Our rituals recognize that ongoing mourning is accepted, expected and supported by communal norms, rather than being a reason to seek professional help. Jewish mourning rituals encourage the bereaved to temporarily withdraw from normal functioning, gradually accept the reality of the loss, mobilize social support, and find new meaning within the existing frameworks that guide their lives. In particular, the daily recitation of kaddish, and the annual marking of the yahrzeit, serve as a recognition that the memories of the dead will always be with us. These rituals acknowledge that death ends a life, but not a relationship.

By so publicly speaking of, and writing about, her grief, Sheryl Sandberg has powerfully reminded us that we need to acknowledge, make room for, and talk openly about grief. But it is not her job to teach us how to grieve. We have the wisdom of our Jewish traditions to do that.

Complete Article HERE!

When a Worker Is Grieving: How to Handle Everything from Condolences to Time Off

By Dana Wilkie

[W]hen someone loses a loved one, it’s not only friends and neighbors who may not know what to do or say—it can also be that person’s employer and colleagues.

From whether to send a sympathy card or flowers to whether to offer bereavement leave or ask an employee when she’ll be back at work, it can be difficult for managers to know how best to support someone who’s grieving.

One common reason people grieve is because they’ve lost a close relative or friend. But people also grieve over divorces, catastrophic illnesses or accidents, and even the passing of a beloved pet.

“Death is, by far, the biggest [cause for grieving], especially if it’s untimely or unexpected,” said Andrew Shatte, a clinical psychologist and co-founder of meQuilibrium, a Bostonbased company that helps people and organizations navigate change. “Sudden, cataclysmic loss shakes the very foundation of our beliefs about control and therefore shakes our resilience. There are big individual differences in how people respond to grief and what they need. For some, they need time away from the world, while others need to reimmerse themselves in it. The manager can start the discussion with the grieving employee by asking, ‘What can we do for you?’ ”

Bereavement Leave
There is no federal law requiring that companies offer bereavement leave. Oregon requires employers in the state with at least 25 workers to offer up to two weeks of bereavement leave, while Illinois requires employers with 50 or more workers to grant up to 10 workdays off for the death of a child.

While bereavement leave is not generally covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the law mandates leave to address issues that arise when an employee’s covered family member (spouse, child or parent) dies on active military duty. A bill recently introduced in Congress would, under the FMLA, allow a grieving parent up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave off from work to cope with the loss of a child.

However, many companies do offer bereavement leave. The time off varies from a few days to a few weeks, said Robin E. Shea, a partner with Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP in
Winston-Salem, N.C.

“Most bereavement policies provide only a few days—about enough time to make arrangements, fly out of town if necessary, attend the funeral and return home,” Shea said. “But that doesn’t mean that employees cannot be given more time. If the employer offers personal leave, or if the employee has paid time off or vacation available, the employer of course should allow the employee to take it.”

In cases involving a particularly devastating loss, Shea said, her experience is that companies give the employee time off with pay, even if there’s no specific policy addressing such a situation. “If they do this” in one instance, she advised, “they would have to do the same for other employees, to avoid discrimination claims.”

How Much Time?
Are there certain types of events that should require more bereavement leave than others? For instance, if an employee loses a child, as opposed to a sister, should an employer be more lenient about time off?

“There are differences,” Shatte said. “Typically the closeness of the relationship matters. We grieve more for siblings than for cousins. Also, the level of unexpectedness, for instance, whether [the loss] involved an accident or a long, prolonged illness. And nothing is more debilitating than the death of a spouse or child.”

Shea suggests that the time off afforded a grieving worker should depend on the size of the employer, the nature of the employee’s job and the loss the employee has suffered.

“My quick answer would be [to allow] as much [time off] as the employee needs and the employer can afford to allow,” she said. “In the case of the death of a spouse or child, or in the case of a very traumatic death, like a murder, accident or suicide, I would seriously consider giving the employee as much as a month off if he or she wanted that much time.”

Returning to Work
It can be tricky for an employer to inquire when a grieving employee plans to return to work.

One way to handle this is to check in periodically with the employee to see how he or she is doing.

“Let the employee know that he or she is missed,” Shea said. Hopefully, the employee will volunteer details about her plans to return during these conversations. Another way is to tell the employee how much paid leave he or she has available and then offer to extend that with unpaid leave, if the employee chooses. In most cases, the employee will need to return to work when the paid leave runs out, Shea said.

Shatte suggests that about a week after the employee has taken bereavement leave, a manager—after consulting with HR and company attorneys—should reach out to the employee and ask what the company can do for him or her. “At that point, they can ask how much time they think they might need, with an offer to touch base periodically to see if anything has changed,” he said.

If an employee is too devastated to return to work, he or she may benefit from counseling. An employer might steer the worker to an employee assistance program or even suggest short-term disability benefits.

“I would never ask an employee to return before he or she felt ready to do so, but at some point, the employer may have to tell the employee that the job cannot be held open indefinitely,” Shatte said.

Expressions of Sympathy
Also tricky is knowing how to extend condolences to a grieving employee. Should the company send a card? Flowers? Provide meals? Should company colleagues attend a memorial service?

“These decisions need to be made by weighing the individual,” Shatte said. “How long have they been with the organization? How close is the manager to the employee? This is a sensitive time, and every outreach should be made only after consulting with HR.”

Shea said that if the memorial or funeral is in town, anyone personally acquainted with the grieving employee should try to find out if their attendance is desired. This includes the employee’s direct supervisor, she said, and possibly others further up the chain of command.

The HR department, she said, can coordinate expressions of sympathy on behalf of the company, including flowers or cards.

Complete Article HERE!