GET OVER IT ALREADY: "Like Ebenezer Scrooge facing his desolate gravesite and begging for a chance to make things right, the bereaved political left scrambles for something to do, or say, that will make it all go away, will make it better, will resurrect the dream."(AMERICAN THOUGHT)

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: AMERICAN THOUGHT

GRIEF LURKS around the edges of all of life's changes. Every new phase of life, every transition, carries with it the loss of something or someone. Your child begins kindergarten, and babyhood irrefutably is gone. You graduate (from high school, college, your doctoral program...) and with the gain of that diploma comes the foggy future and the loss of the routines, the comforts, the rhythm of life as it was. Those are the good transitions that can hold a bit of grief.

Our days offer plentiful opportunities for grief: the sad news that conception is an impossibility; the diagnosis of serious illness; the loss of physical or mental capacities; and, most often brought to mind, death.

Grief comprises the emotional, physical, and spiritual responses to loss: pain, fear, loneliness, anger, numbness, fatigue, restlessness, confusion, and deep sorrow. Mourning is the term used for the rituals and other behaviors each culture provides as a scaffolding to guide the grief process and to create opportunities to connect with, and receive help from, others.

People who, for example, forbid loved ones to have a funeral for them ("I don't want people crying over me") are confusing the formalized mourning process (designed, in great part, to give support to the loved ones most hurt by the loss) and the grief process (feeling sad, lonely, etc.), which will happen whether or not there is a formal event. In fact, the lack of such an event can complicate the grief process because it curtails both the physical, real marker that the loss "really did happen" (the curse of dreams and waking moments of hopefulness for many people for months afterwards) and the opportunity for friends and family to express love and concern overtly.

Often, the entire process of grieving and mourning is referred to as "bereavement," a word encapsulating the sense of deprivation as well as sorrow. Those in bereavement feel torn apart, often disoriented, for someone vital to them, a part of them, is missing. Some of the rituals of mourning provide not just comfort but signal a need for accommodation. When bereaved persons wore black, or the black armbands or lapel ribbons that some people still wear, even in our country, for a full year, indicating a loss, friends would be gentle; good-hearted strangers would respond to heightened emotionality or disorganization with forbearance.

Theorists, clinicians, and clergy working with the bereaved often refer to stages, or tasks, of grief and mourning. The stage theory, developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross while working with terminally ill patients and later adapted to fit the grief of those whose loved ones have died, no doubt is familiar to many readers. The idea of tasks, presented by William Worden, incorporates the interior and exterior acts and changes necessary to cope with the loss. The stages and tasks are not contradictory and, in fact, can work together very well to provide helpful framing of the intense, confusing experiences of grief and a rough template to proceed through that darkness.

The five stages of grief are commonly known: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They do not proceed like an orderly parade, each one cresting the hill and disappearing before the other comes into view. Rather, it can seem like some terrible, complicated line dance in which you suddenly find yourself going backwards when everyone else is going forward.

Worden's tasks, meanwhile, wrap around these stages of the interior world of grief, and reflect the psychological world of emotional pain and the exterior need to make changes to adapt to the absence of a loved one:

* Accept the reality of the loss. Notice that this seems to attach to the end of Kubler-Ross' stage theory but, in Warden's task theory, the acceptance process is an extended one that includes emotional acceptance--more of Kubler-Ross' concept--and an intellectual acceptance, such as that gained, in part, by memorial services, the condolences of friends and family, and dealing with the terrible and ordinary duties of a survivor. It presumes that bargaining and denial will be, in some way, overcome.

* Work through the pain of grief. Here, we intersect the emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of grief, and seem to subsume Kubler-Ross' stages of anger and depression. The sadness, of course, will last for a long time--perhaps, depending on the loss, forever. Alcohol and drug use--including prescription drugs--that numb the emotional pain can give the impression that the person is coping well, when, in actuality, the full working-through has been...