Elephants Never Forget and Neither Do Grieving Parents

An excellent book that explores life after the loss of an adult child is Our Walk With Elephants by Peggy Boon, Ph.D. and Bonnie Headington, Ph.D.  These authors have the distinction of not only being mental health professionals but also bereaved mothers.  One of their most salient points is the fact that bereaved parents continue to grieve over the years.  Once the acute grief is over there are reminders that happen daily, monthly, yearly, that awaken the pain of the loss. A reminder may be as simple as another child's college graduation, a wedding, or a birth.  All of these things will remind the parent of the events they will never experience with their child. The authors approached their need for answers as a research project.  They obtained participants and decided on questions they wanted to examine.  They then conducted structured interviews with the participants and the result is this book.  Although they took a scientific approach to the subject the book is a sensitive, narrative of personal stories of loss and common themes experienced by bereaved parents.

Bereavement or Depression--The Great Debate Continues

Lately the mainstream media has picked up on the discussion that has been raised regarding the changes in how depression and bereavement are going to be designated in the revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  This manual and its revisions, have been published since 1994 by the American Psychiatric Association and is used by all mental health professional in the United States to categorize and diagnose mental health disorders in adults and children.

What has caught the attention of professionals and lay-people alike is the changes that are being made in the categorization of depression.  In the current edition of the DSM, bereavement has been carved out as a separate category from a Major Depressive Episode. The guideline states that diagnosis of Major depressive Disorder would not be given until the symptoms had been experienced for at least 2 months after the loss.  Symptoms include: feelings of sadness, insomnia, poor appetite, and weight loss. The DSM differentiates between normal grief and a Major Depressive Episode by advising the professional to look for subtle differences in symptom presentation.

The removal of the bereavement category was explained by the American Psychiatric Association in a news release of 12/1/12 that stated:

Removal of bereavement exclusion: the exclusion criterion in DSM-IV applied to people experiencing depressive symptoms lasting less than two months following the death of a loved one has been removed and replaced by several notes within the text delineating the differences between grief and depression. This reflects the recognition that bereavement is a severe psychosocial stressor that can precipitate a major depressive episode beginning soon after the loss of a loved one. 

"Grief is an equal opportunity human reaction; grief affects everyone." explained J. Shep Jeffreys in his book   "Helping Grieving People: When Tears Are Not Enough."  This is an accurate statement.  Everyone will eventually experience bereavement if they live long enough.  However each person reacts differently to the stressors of grief and just as with physical illness some people will be resilient and able to bounce back while others may have a more difficult time and may need support and treatment.  The thing is to not spend so much time debating whether this change is "pathologizing" grief but to spend the time helping those who need it. 

Grieving Spouse--Raging at the Universe

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. Most people recognize C.S. Lewis as the author of the Narnia series of children's fantasy books or for his non-fiction Christian faith books.  However this small treasure of a book documents the torment that he suffered after the death of his beloved wife.  This book was written half a century ago but the raw feelings of grief are as timely today as they were when C.S. Lewis wrote the book.

This book is a compilation of long-hand written notebooks that C.S. Lewis wrote after his wife's death from a long battle with cancer.  In his many writings he questions his faith, how God can be a good deity and allow this kind of pain, and screams out to the universe in agony.  In the end Lewis comes to terms with his grief and his faith and found that " bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."

I highly recommend this book no matter what your loss.  To read how eloquently and at the same time at a primal level that Lewis is able to express his anger and sorrow is an important lesson for any griever.  It's okay to have these feelings, there's nothing wrong with you, and Lewis is testament to the fact that someone can question everything and survive.

Knit one, Grief too

Ann Hood was a published writer prior to the unexpected death of her daughter, Grace, at age 5, from a severe strep infection. After the death of her daughter, Ann found like many of us have, that the problems with concentration during the early stages of bereavement made it almost impossible to read or to write. When those are the tools of your trade, or in my case reading was one of my favorite things to do to relax, and you are no longer able to perform them it is more than a little startling and unnerving. I wondered if I would ever be able to read a paragraph again. Ann wondered if she would ever write again.

Ann was no stranger to grief. Her brother, her only sibling, drowned in a bathtub when Ann was a graduate student. Soon after her sixty-seven year old father died after a six-month battle with lung cancer from fungal pneumonia. Shortly after her father's death, Ann experienced a miscarriage. Still even with the experience as a bereaved sibling, bereaved daughter, and finally her miscarriage, nothing prepared Ann for the extreme emptiness she experienced after Grace's death years later.

In her memoir recounting her daughter's death and the aftermath, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, Ann talks about how people woudl often suggest that she write things down, express her feelings on paper, and this increased her anxiety with her inability to write and with their continued suggestions. Ann eventually found comfort in learning how to knit. Some people have written about the meditative effects of knitting and its almost healing quality.

When Ann was able to write again, a year and a half after Grace's death, she took her new interest in knitting and her knowledge of grief and blended them into a fictional book called The Knitting Circle. The book chronicles a story of a bereaved mother whose marriage ends after the child's death and the mother's discovery of knitting and a group of friends who offer each other the support and love that they each need.

Road Map for the Grieving Parent

The Bereaved Parent by Harriet Sarnoff Schiff.   Schiff was formerly a reporter, she has written two books on grief and has lectured extensively. She is also a bereaved parent. Her son, Robby, ten, died from complications after heart surgery. Her book is considered a classic guide for bereaved parents and has been recommended for years. In matter-of-fact terms, Schiff discusses the hard stuff and offers help for those who are suffering. She includes stories about her own journey and those of other bereaved parents. Her book is divided into easy to digest chapters discussing subjects such as bereavement and guilt; bereavement and marriage; bereavement and siblings; bereavement and religion; and the far-reaching bereavement and the rest of your life.

Schiff talks about taking small, positive steps even during the beginning stages of grief. Schiff gives examples for these small steps such as cleaning, cooking, or putting on make-up. She cautions that the steps will naturally cause pain, and the individual may not feel like attempting anything else for a period afterwards, but that done in small doses it does move the person forward in a positive manner.

Schiff's book ends with hope for the bereaved parent that there is a way through the sorrow. She notes that the bereaved parent no longer fears the unknown because they have faced the worst and survived. I can relate to her statement that the thought of living for any length of time after the death of my son was an awful thought. However, just like Schiff, as the years have gone my life has moved forward and I have managed to move through the seemingly unendurable pain of the beginning stages of grief to a time when there can be laughter and expectations of future events again.