Grieving

In the first, a person may feel shock followed by numbness, denial, a dazed sense; he or she may irrationally look for the loved one to return. Such responses serve to cushion the blow of loss until the mind adjusts to reality. In the next stage, a bereaved person confronts the death. This is the deepest, most intense phase of grief. "Intellectually, we know our loved ones are not coming back," says Sanders, "yet it seems impossible to let them go. We remain in emotional conflict until we can finally release them." The final stage is a time of healing, the point when the griever turns a corner and begins to adjust to life without the departed. Progression throught these stages is rarely neat and orderly.

Surprisingly, though, the issue of grieving is no cut-and-dried matter. There is disagreement, for example, over whether people should deal with their pain publicly or privately and what the role of funerals is, as other essays in the book point out.

On the one hand, Ellen Uzelac points out that the AIDS Quilt, colored ribbons, plays, and support groups have helped people confront their pain, forming stronger communities and confronting the larger issue of violence that causes death. Alternatively, Michael Ventura attributes our current poor attitude towards death to a greater societal estrangement from a variety of socioeconomic factors. He explains that we have created a new "mythology" of coping rather just deatling with death, that we try to bring the dead to life. Norman Klein adds, "Yet nowhere has it been convincingly proved that expresing grief has universal therapeutic value. Perhaps more important, this insistence on the requirement to feel and tell represents an ethnocentric standard that can do injustice to person and groups who cope differently." What do you think is the correct role for mourning? Feel free to draw from your own experience.