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Show Jociety usually ignores needs of the bereaved ditor's note: Henry Wads worth fellow wrote: "When she had sed, it seemed like the ceasing of uisite music." Death is our imon denominator, and yet ny of us spend months or years ing to understand the loss of a ed one. A group of classes at the erican Fork Hospital, while no e for that loss, are designed to p. This is the first of tw irticles cussing those classes and the :ess of mourning. By SHARON MORREY 'here's no magic cure in the reavement Classes offered by the lerican Fork Hospital, no instant ve for the pain of loss or quick nedy for the tremendous hurt one l feel when someone beloved dies, rhe "facilitator" of the classes, yllis Hansen, a Medical Social irker with Intermountain Health re Services, is quite upfront about it. 'I don't have a magic .and for n," she says. "I left it in the car." "Go get it, we'll wait," quips one group member. Hansen smiles at that as she explains ex-plains that the purpose of therapy groups like these is to learn and become educated about dealing with grief. "There's a vast desert out there," she adds. "We also need to educate our families and friends, those who mean well but don't know how to help." And so the task is laid out for the members of the "group" -- strangers who share a common bond of pain: one has lost a newborn baby, another lost a six-year-old little girl, one man's wife died unexpectedly after routine surgery, another's spouse died of cancer. One woman has come because suddenly the last child has married and she is only now having to face being alone, six years after the death of her husband. There's an assortment of ages, personalities and problems. "This is a self-help group. We will talk. We will discuss. There will be hand-outs to help you. I will help you," says Hansen, "You are here because you need to be here. "Everyone here is carrying their unique load of pain. Everyone's situation is different. No one person can totally understand the other person's loss because each is unique. But there are similarities. " "One of those is that it takes time. And working through the pain in indeed hard work. It takes understanding. un-derstanding. "As human beings we strive for predictibility in our lives, a certain amount of rhythm. Grief is loss, an interruption in that rhythm. We are each trying to regain that which was lost, to put things right again." Hansen points out that the loss and pain from a death can cause intense physical side-effects; rashes, migraine headaches, stomachaches, stomach-aches, constipation, sleeplessness as well as emotional troubles; apathy, anger, confusion, depression, withdrawal. "Like one who has suffered a physical amputation, seemingly simple tasks for a while become major challenges." A person suffering loss can lose interest in life's activities, feel drawn to the past, find it difficult to make the smallest decisions. One may suffer flashbacks to a happier time, ache to stay at the gravesite, wish to "join the dead." A whole range of emotional responses can occur. In the bereavement circle, the suffering gain "permission" to feel emotion and express whatever they may be feeling: bitterness, despair, jealousy, guilt. It's been proven that the stress level goes down when a person unloads his aggravation. "Kept inside ourselves the worries run vicious circles of confusion around us," offers Hansen from one of her handouts to the class. Through the process of dealing with the death of a child, a husband, wife or parent, Hansen points that growth occurs even if it seems to be an unwanted growth at the time. Dealing with the grief becomes a coping skill. "If you don't learn how to process grief, you can suffer physically as well as emotionally," she suggests. She invites the grieving to view pain as a friend. "Those who grieve have loved," she points out. "In a very real way, whenever we choose to love someone, we are also choosing to be hurt." People who have worked through grief become more sensitive to other people's pain and know things "not" to say in times of grief. They gain a measure of empathy. They learn to weed out the "awful kindnesses" that sometimes hurt more than help. (An example: "Aren't you glad you can have another baby? It's good that she didn't suffer.") New friendships and family bonds may develop that did not exist before. While American society tends to expect mourning to be finished in ten days to two weeks, Hansen stresses that it is more realistic to expect the grief process to take up to an entire year or more, depending on the circumstances of the death and the personalities involved. (At the end of about 18 months, if there's no significant improvement in the grieving, she suggests a bereaved daughter or son or husband or wife seek private short-term short-term therapy.) "Every situation is totally different, dif-ferent, every person is unique. There are no set timetables to follow, no deadlines to meet. While .there are certain common stages to grief, no one's pattern is exactly like anyone else's. "What is the same is that we all have to deal with it eventually." Next week: Working through the stages of grief. |
