Death - Coping With Loss (1976)

well they never told me right away that it was cancer I really didn't realize what it was but then when I found out you know it sort of hit me you know cancer me probably the first reaction is one of denial or inability to accept uh such information I thought I could have died you know I could answer my mind a couple times but it didn't really bother me because they said you know it was curable people are reluctant to even say the word death and I find this situation to be most acute in situations where there is a terminally ill patient you know I expected to feel better and I don't feel better yet when someone knows that death is imminence it allows them to deal with their own death in their own terms and in terms of how they feel that their family is going to deal with it now if they've accepted the fact and can spend the rest of whatever time they have left doing and communicating things to someone else only to have them fall on someone who's saying well I really don't believe that you're going to die and [ __ ] up and keep a stiff upper lip and everything else like that uh that's cheering up the patient but that's not really dealing with the situation my father died when I was very young and my wife's father died when she was young but in our own family background uh also having come from a rural background we experience life and death in animals and in family and friends and neighbors and I grew up in a situation where the cemetery was next to the church so that in my background we were used to dealing with the reality of death today they'll get a call from the hospital at three o'clock in the morning or something someone died well that's a death that's removed from the home it's far away from them although they're very well are conscious and aware of the fact that it's a possibility I received a telephone call it was a nurse and she asked what religion my child was I knew that Chris was dying that's I knew right then so deaths are now and births are taking place primarily in the sterile atmosphere of hospitals Tony stood by her bed and held her hand the priest stood at the foot of the bed he's the only one who was crying I was pacing the floor the nurses were watching us to see whether we were going to be able to manage this I think they were afraid that we'd either become hysterical or faint or do something and mess up their intensive care room naturally I was there when she was born and not too many mothers can be with their child when they die and I am grateful for the rest of my life for that privilege it was in March of 73 our children had a half day off of school and I was taking my son fishing and while he was waiting for a friend to join him he rode his bike around the corner and had some kind of an accident on the street Mark was on the Bennett machine at the hospital for about five days before he actually died and saw that during that five days began to internalize the reality I think they're predictable stages of responding to loss things you can expect things that you can identify and name now the first of these is the sense of shock and denial your whole being your physical intellectual spiritual self is programmed to deny the reality of death kind of a sense of foreboding is red but you know I didn't know anything man so you kind of vaccinated between the reality of everything pointy the fact that he's dying or will die shortly or that he will live and and it's just kind of like a dream world I was told very honestly that they did not feel that Mark would be able to survive and yet you still sort of believe the Miracles you go through a grief process and you're angry at God especially in this case you know why would you take Chris who who was obviously going to do so much in the world she was obvious that she was going to be a doer and a server for society so hostility is certainly one of the earmarks of the stages of grief it was like a selfish feeling you know like he said why did it happen to me when actually it was her that died you know at one point there will be a strong sense of despair a person will feel like they just can't go on their world has darkened and they do wish to withdraw we felt alone terribly terribly terribly alone person most assuredly will feel guilty about the relationship that is now severed and they'll feel guilty not because of a relationship was so poor or they were so bad in it but rather they'll feel guilty because they recognize that there is now no way of going back and restoring What Might Have Been I think the guilt stage is really a very positive one because it does suggest that the the fact of death has come home to the person we make the removal from the hospital or the home to the mortuary here we use a station wagon looks just like any other station wagon and we go to the home and we bring the stretcher in and go to the room and ask the family if they would go to another room in the home where they cannot see us make the removal our training in in the areas of psychology and grief therapy as it is today which is a really an infant science is somewhat limited you know it has something to do with the big funeral rip off they're selling you the our you know 99.95 special casket and you know with our special burial services and we're really looking to work to a funeral director for help and console at a time of death they want someone who can coordinate the details and make that portion of it as easy as possible for them they they make you feel guilty you know if you don't want to buy this casket don't you care about this person your relative will haunt you for this you do for people while they're living and the time of death is not the time to try to make it up you can't equate the way you feel about someone or the way you love someone with the amount of money that you spend on them well you've seen the Egyptian mummies and of course they had 79 days in which to embalm a body which of course is no secret to us as many people would like us to think but we can make a body last as long as you can keep moisture away from IT Cosmetics must be done in good taste in this case I'm using a water-based cosmetic the water base works well on easily cosmetized bodies bodies that aren't too red or too blotchy cosmetizing a body I think is important for the living it's a consideration to the living now this highlighter looks very very dark down here and you get down and we'll make it look very natural all Funeral Directors take note of the part of the casket that no one will see and they are fully clothed they wear anything that they would have worn in life that would include undergarments Hosiery in a woman's case shoes if the family wishes I believe that there's a very positive thing involved with having a casket open seeing is believing and if they can see someone in a deaf state it's again a step in their recovery process back to normality in everyday living Judaism we try to discourage the open casket and the Cosmetic uh art of the of the Undertaker because we feel this is part of denial we feel that death must be accepted as the reality it is you know why they have funerals see their relatives were friends before they put them in the ground Chris died on a Saturday we had a private funeral at home something inside me just I it was an urge an uncontrollable urge to bring her home one more time it was something uh that I wanted done I wanted a funeral for my son for several reasons number one there was the expression of my faith and our hope in the resurrection secondly it is a comfort to have your friends with you at this time of grief I would want them to be with me in a time of Happiness too say a wedding I don't care to go to awake you know it's I just can't take it I can't stand it you know see my friends you know there was a lady in there she's taking him to my wake up until we wake up everybody else was crying at the wake and I thought I was crazy because I wasn't well one of the things that happens early in death is the Gathering of the family [Music] it's a sharing with the family uh a celebration really of a wife has been LED I think that's terribly important and helpful to the bereaved person in two ways one it requires of them to have to tell the story of what's happened and that is a way of making real the death that has come remember I said that people are going through shock and denial and that this is a way of reinforcing the fact death it has really happened when you tell it if I have any regrets at all it's just that I probably wasn't as open uh to people to give them the chance to talk about Chris says we should have a few incidents I remember people coming here and I think that you should give them the opening to talk about the person who has died it really doesn't help me when somebody comes up they comfort me I just got to do it myself I'm a Loner type of person if there's something wrong with me I gotta settle Within Myself and people tried to come up to me and talk to me I just didn't even want to hear them you know inside their heart is aching and that's this is all they want to talk about this is all they're thinking about and the majority of people will do anything except mention the person that has died so if you can give them that opening and then just sit back and listen the bereaved person begins to have a sense of community that this is not an experience that they're passing through alone and isolated but rather that they're part of a group [Music] foreign [Music] the real work comes after the funeral and after the last casserole was gone and after the flowers have withered you know that you must make a re-entry into life with uh meaningfulness and purposefulness and yet some of that has been temporary or is gone permanently and it was such a feeling of loss I still had two living children and yet I rather felt Barren with the loss of one child I say sometimes it's kind of almost like you'll see a little thing or you sit down at the table and see an empty place the table and all of a sudden you just feel blue and you'll cry or you see a boy on a bicycle and you think of your son or you see somebody practicing football oh it's always the first to the first time you go on vacation without a brother the first time you do something first time Dad went fishing without Morgan Shoes felt really down and whatever you do something for the first time you just think oh what if Mark would have been here what would it be doing now and so the frequency of feeling lost and of crying is much more repetitive in the earlier days and months for the first couple months I really couldn't talk about it but it was it's just like anything it faded you know it's lingering still you know I can still feel the the severe Shack you know that sort of thing it's all over with you know I would say the first six months are the most intense and then it kind of lessens and becomes less and less frequent but then gradually there's a as an attempt to return to normal and some kind of normal living they'll do this very tentatively in a very preliminary and testing level what they have realized is that they can't spend all their days in in abject despair that life is going on and that somehow they're going to have to come out of their shell and test out things there's no other way I had to go on so it's kind of just the wheel I've got to go on you know that's all there is each person is fashioned in such a way that he or she can and will pass through these stages and in that passage find some healing in the terrible scars of the loss that they have experienced [Music] death is a lot of people think about that and it's something that they think about try to prevent but it's something that just comes naturally you know I used to have a terrible fear of dying I think most people do but I don't have that anymore how did you overcome it well I just don't know I don't remember that comes with time or whether you feel like old age has brought that on or whether you you've uh when you give up your home and your husband and your family is married or you just that disgusted the purpose of life then lies in realizing your body has an instrument like a chariot or like a car you enter into a car and you leave it but you are not the car you think there's a life after death yes sometimes the one experience which you cannot penetrate until you actually experience it yourself the emphasis should be made not into what happens to the body after death but what the body does before it dies well you you have to die the point is to enjoy what you're doing now and try not to hurt anybody in doing it but if we believe that God created life cares for it then we ought to also believe that he created and cares for our death you don't have much time the four years in high school went so fast and my last year I wasn't even there and I I didn't miss it then but I miss it now really and just try to get things done and do what you want to do it'll help [Music] foreign