Sunday, December 09, 2012

Children and Grief - An excerpt

5-9 Years: Children in this age group may hide their feelings to avoid appearing babyish, to protect others from feeling sad, or if they are unable to tolerate the pain of grief.  Death is seen as possible, but the child continues to see themselves as invincible.  These children often seek out very concrete information about the death, although they also have a strong fantasy life that they use to make everything as it was before the death.  Symptoms include regression, crying, anxiety, headaches, stomachaches, denial of death, hostility toward the deceased, inability to concentrate, and bad dreams.

SC said when her and her fiance called it off she just had to pretend he died and deal with it that way.  And what if you run into him?  Would it be like seeing a ghost?

Contemplating grief while in a good mood on a dreary winter afternoon while listening to Tonstartssbandht (happy sad music).

My earliest memory of grief and death was about my cockatiel Buddy dying.  I don't remember much about the process except making myself as small as possible and lodging myself between the wall and my bunk bed.  I must've stayed there crying for hours, finally my Ma found me and told me I was being ridiculous.  It was just a bird honey.  Grief is an out of body experience for me, I always just want to lodge myself between a wall or an armpit for fear of expanding into nothingness.  I don't know.  I certainly couldn't handle being a pediatric nurse, ha ha.  I suppose either way in my line of work I should get used to the grief process.  When L dies I don't want to go to her funeral.  I will, because that's what you do, but funerals are for the living not the dead.  Of course it's the living people that make dealing with grief such a heartbreaking work.  This is your life with a hole in it.  This is your life without me, deal with it, cause you don't have a choice.  And you just carry on and not let your grief become complicated and drawn out, but when that happens you think of the person or thing you loved less and less until you don't really think of it at all and if you are lucky you can fill that hole with something in its stead.

1 comment:

The Last Unicorn said...

Lack of Feelings: Children are children first and grievers second. They often resort to typical, carefree and child-like behaviors as a way to protect themselves. What may appear as indifference is actually a self-protecting measure.

Word replace: LastUnicorn in place of: Child

Or maybe those holes make up the delicate framework of your personality and they shouldn't be filled in at all, for better or worse.