Coping With Death

[Dark_Raven]

Some of you have experienced someone close to you dying, how did you deal with it? People accept the death of someone close to them in their own way, I am just curious as to how you deal with it.

[Calax]

I don't... I've never let sombody get that close to me at this point in my life...

 

(I know... I'm a sad sad little (well big but...) man.)

[Darque]

It was... different each time.

[Judge Hades]

I was pretty close to my grandmother. I was pretty much the only grandkid that would visit her in the nursing home. When she died I went on a very very very long walk. Walked about 10 miles just thinking of her and all the things she had done in her life. Pretty much did the same thing when my step-grandfather died a few years earlier.

[metadigital]

The loss never goes away: one just manages to deal with it better, over time.

 

[Deraldin]

Can't say I've really had anyone that close to me die. Closest would be my grandfather, but I can't say that I was really all that torn up when he went. It was really just a lot of "Let's go see Grandma and Gran- oh wait..." type moments.

[Colrom]

It's different for each person.

 

I guess I sort of imagine they are around somewhere else - just not here right now.

 

Sometimes I am suprised that they are not around where I am right now and that hurts.

 

But eventually I can remember nice things about them or nice times I had with them and not be sad.

 

I tell certain people about the wonderful things about them - or about the things about them that were not so wonderful.

 

One person who died a few years ago was very important in my life but was also very abusive on a regular basis.

 

In time I got to see a complete person with both good and bad qualities.

 

Fortunately for me that realization was well along before they died.

 

That makes it easier.

 

Good luck.

 

It takes about 2 years to accept major loss.

 

So I hear.

[Purgatorio]

It depends on the circumstances. But I don't really grieve....it sounds odd and it has caused some family members to think I'm cold. It isn't indifference ,I just don't turn to jelly because it solves nothing and doesn't help those that were close to the person. I care more about the living people that are in morning and making them comfortable. Death is life's only certainty.

Morn the living not the dead....I can't remember who said that but it makes sense to me.

[Colrom]

Sometimes it takes a few years before you can feel what you feel. "

 

That happened when my Dad died. "

 

I got smacked hard by it about 2 years later.

 

Big down trip.

 

Strange how things work.

 

It's OK now.

[Fenghuang]

I got pissed off at the pastor for giving an overly sentimental and entire stupid eulogy at my mom's wake. I wasn't that upset about it because I'd watched her wither for a year and a half after her stroke...she wasn't happy nor healthy.

 

As for my own feelings about death, I'm more scared of getting old than dying.

[Fenghuang]

Also my reaction to death is basically the same as Purgatorio's.

[Purgatorio]

The above not the following. Death is an inconvenience.

EDIT: I mean peoples reactions ie "you bastard how dare you die on me!." That sort of thing. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not the gnashing just the wailing ,how vulgar.

Edited September 10, 2006 by Purgatorio

[metadigital]

It takes about 2 years to accept major loss.

 

So I hear.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Wiki links:

Bereavement

Stages

Death of a parent

 

Grief's journey

 

Beware the Five Stages of Grief

Three Common Myths about the 5 Stages:

1. The 5 Stages of Grief were defined by Elsabeth Kubler-Ross In her book "On Death and Dying", Macmillan Publishing Company, 1969, she presents 5 stages terminally ill persons may go through upon learning of their terminal illness. She presents them as "an attempt to summarize what we have learned from our dying patients in terms of coping mechanisms at the time of a terminal illness". These stages were not originally the 5 stages of Grief but better: The 5 Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News. Over the next 28 years, healthcare professionals, clergy, nurses, doctors, caregivers, students, and other readers of the book somehow mutated the stages into the 5 stages of Grief.
    
   
2. The 5 Stages define the process a bereaved person must go through in order to resolve their grief. Grief is a complicated, multi-dimensional, individual process that can never be generalized in 5 steps. In fact, as will be shown, a person will generally have to go through the 5 stages before true grieving can even begin.
    
   
3. A person who isn't progressing through the 5 stages in sequence and in a timely manner needs professional help. This common belief has caused a lot of problems and misunderstandings. One researcher has shown that some caregivers have actually gotten angry at the bereaved person for not following the stages in order! The person shouldn't be angry yet because they haven't been through Denial.
   

...

1. A change of circumstance of any kind (a change from one state to another) produces a loss of some kind (the stage changed from) which will produce a grief reaction.
    
   
2. The intensity of the grief reaction is a function of how the change-produced loss is perceived. If the loss is not perceived as significant, the grief reaction will be minimal or barely felt.
    
   
3. Significant grief responses which go unresolved can lead to mental, physical, and sociological problems and contribute to family dysfunction across generations.
   

So, are the 5 Stages without value? Not if they are used as originally intended, as The 5 Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News. One can even extrapolate to The 5 Stages of Coping With Trauma. Death need not be involved.

 

As an example, apply the 5 stages to a traumatic event most all of us have experienced: The Dead Battery! You're going to be late to work so you rush out to your car, place the key in the ignition and turn it on. You hear nothing but a grind; the battery is dead.

1. DENIAL --- What's the first thing you do? You try to start it again! And again. You may check to make sure the radio, heater, lights, etc. are off and then..., try again.
    
   
2. ANGER --- "%$@^##& car!", "I should have junked you years ago." Did you slam your hand on the steering wheel? I have. "I should just leave you out in the rain and let you rust."
    
   
3. BARGAINING --- (realizing that you're going to be late for work)..., "Oh please car, if you will just start one more time I promise I'll buy you a brand new battery, get a tune up, new tires, belts and hoses, and keep you in perfect working condition.
    
   
4. DEPRESSION --- "Oh God, what am I going to do. I'm going to be late for work. I give up. My job is at risk and I don't really care any more. What's the use".
    
   
5. ACCEPTANCE --- "Ok. It's dead. Guess I had better call the Auto Club or find another way to work. Time to get on with my day; I'll deal with this later."
   

This is not a trivial example. In fact, we all go through this process numerous times a day. A dead battery, the loss of a parking space, a wrong number, the loss of a pet, a job, a move to another city, an overdrawn bank account, etc. Things to remember are:

• Any Change Of Circumstance can cause us to go through this process.
   
  
• We don't have to go through the stages in sequence. We can skip a stage or go through two or three simultaneously.
   
  
• We can go through them in different time phases. The dead battery could take maybe 5 to 10 minutes, the loss of a parking space 5 to 10 seconds. A traumatic event which involves the Criminal Justice System can take years.
   
  
• The intensity and duration of the reaction depends on how significant the change-produced loss is perceived.
  

[LadyCrimson]

I think how one deals with a death is often in direct proportion to how much one feels like there is unfinished business/lost chances/regrets, as well as the circumstances of the death (natural, violent, lengthy disease etc).

 

When hubby's mother was hit by a train (suicide + medication problems), his sister (usually the 'cornerstone' of the siblings) had a lot of...history...w/their mother, and went through all those 'steps', and it lasted for quite a few years. My husband, however, hardly blinked - he'd already said his good-byes on an emotional level years before, if that makes sense.

 

Myself, I typically skip the first three steps and go right to Depression, if I mourn much at all. Denial, anger and emotional bartering I do with the living, not the dead.

[Dark_Raven]

Very close to me= Immediate family and best friend.

 

I have never had someone very close to me die. i was just curious.

 

thanks

[alanschu]

I became emotional repressed, shut myself out from the world, and probably development mental disorders.

 

In hindsight it probably wasn't the best way to go.

 

 

I had a friend say I was pretty much "comatose" through the entire school year (it was Grade 8, and my brother was killed in a motorcycle accident). Perhaps not coincidentally, I started to take an interest in sports, and had an intensity that few could match (even if I didn't have the talent) on the basketball court.

[Dark_Raven]

thyats the problem, i am doing the avoidence thing, pretending things will get better like they did earlier this year, everything will be fine. But it wont be. She will be gone soon

Edited September 10, 2006 by Dark_Raven

[Shryke]

i had a really close friend of me die a couple of months ago...

i'd known her for most of my life so i'd never even contemplating losing her before. i suppose that because i knew her so well and she meant so much to me, that i sort of took her prescence for granted. but a single drunken idiot in a car can change all that

 

i was shattered and lost. when i found out i just sat staring at the wall for a good 4 hours thinking of everything we'd gone through together, and how i'd never have that again. i'd never have her again....

i abused anyone who'd try to comfort me. i didn't want comforting, i just wanted her to walk in the door and tell me it was all a mistake...

 

i can't tell anyone how to deal with death. i don't know how to deal with it myself. everyone says it fades with time, but to be honest, i don't want it to. the pain is a fitting tribute

[Judge Hades]

thyats the problem, i am doing the avoidence thing, pretending things will get better like they did earlier this year, everything will be fine. But it wont be.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You just need to focus on what you liked about the person, internalize the grief, and and channel the energies it produces in some manner. By the time the funeral took place I was finished with my grieving.

[alanschu]

thyats the problem, i am doing the avoidence thing, pretending things will get better like they did earlier this year, everything will be fine. But it wont be. She will be gone soon

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I'd give you advice, except that there isn't really any to give. You'll have people telling you what you should and should not do, but it's different for every person.

[metadigital]

i can't tell anyone how to deal with death. i don't know how to deal with it myself. everyone says it fades with time, but to be honest, i don't want it to. the pain is a fitting tribute

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't think the pain fades; I think we get better at managing it.

 

Just like bravery is not the absence of fear, just the determination to do the right thing in the presence of it.

 

[Checkpoint]

My grandmother passed away last summer and I remember almost feeling relief when I got the news, because she'd been ill for very long. I was a touch puzzled by the fact that I didn't cry or anything, but at the funeral I made up for it by crying floods. When my grandfather died it came as more of a shock and I was also a lot younger then, so that one hit me harder immediately, but I also never quite got to know him as well as my grandmother.

[mkreku]

The only person really close to me that has died was my grandfather. He died three years ago in stomach cancer. It was very quick though so it wasn't as horrible as some cancers are. He just lost a lot of weight and then passed away. He didn't have to suffer for very long and he calmly left this world surrounded by people that loved him. The last thing he did was smile and close his eyes.

 

I have no idea how I dealt with it. When I last saw him alive I had to practically carry him down some stairs because he wanted to watch the finns win some obscure ski jumping competition, but he was too weak to walk up and down stairs at the time. That was the only sport he liked. We used to sit and guess how long each ski jumper jumped before they announced the results officially. Anyhow, I carried him down the stairs, hugged him and then left to continue my university studies in another town the next day. A few weeks later my mom called me and said he had passed away. I cried a little upon hearing the news, but not much. At the funeral I asked them to open the coffin because I was supposed to carry him to the grave myself, and I had this strange feeling that I had to see him dead to really understand he was dead. It worked, because it made me calm when I carried him to the grave.

 

When I threw my flowers in the grave it was like I had a huge hole in my chest because that's the last thing you can give to a person, so to speak. It was so final that I would never again get to see him.

 

I didn't cry at the funeral, but sometimes when I think about him I feel that hole in my chest again and I miss him so much that I can't stop my eyes from filling up.

[kirottu]

I have no idea how I dealt with it. When I last saw him alive I had to practically carry him down some stairs because he wanted to watch the finns win some obscure ski jumping competition, but he was too weak to walk up and down stairs at the time. That was the only sport he liked. We used to sit and guess how long each ski jumper jumped before they announced the results officially.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

We(finns) do do that. I think it

[Walsingham]

My grandmother and my godfather both died of cancer. My ma and uncle are both fighting it.

 

I got mad as hell when my godfather died. He was a very very fine and brave man. I couldn't believe any order would preferentially take him over the many worthless s.o.b.s out there. I tore up a bunch of furniture with my bare hands, shouted a lot, got drunk and generally raised hell. I'm sure he'd have appreciated the thought even if he would not act that way. He loved Kipling and Chesterton.

 

I accepted things when my grandmother died. She was also a very fine woman, who raised my mother alone as a war widow in the days when a woman got paid half a man's salary for doing a man's job. She was fierce but wise and gentle with it. I know she would have wanted me to be calm and to merely remember her, not with sadness but with warmth.

 

So maybe the key is to think what the person would have you do if they were there. If I catch it I want you bastards to get drunk, find the most officious petty bureaucrat or scrofulous bully you can and thump em on the head with a sofa. Because no life has been lived without feeling the strong arm of the law on you at least once.