The Process of Mourning

Grief refers to the personal experience of the loss of a loved one. Your life is turned upside down and will never be the same. As one donor family member said, “I will always have a hole in my life...”

Mourning refers to the adaptation to the loss, to living life without the physical presence of the deceased. You learn to “make room” for grief, knowing that it will be with you in some way the rest of your life. You learn to live with the “hole in your life” as you “move on.” You will come to know that the relationship with your loved one never ends, it merely changes—from the physical presence to the remembered presence.

Mourning is a process, which means it is something you “work.” There are “tasks” or “actions” that you need to perform. This implies that the mourner can do something and see movement or “progress,” which can itself be healing. It also means that others can help.

Following are some ways to conceptualize the process of mourning, doing one’s “grief work.”

  1. Alan Wolfelt identifies what he calls the “six needs of mourning” as:
  1. Acknowledging the new reality
  2. Embracing the pain of loss
  3. Remembering the person who died
  4. Developing a new self-identity
  5. Searching for meaning
  6. Establishing on-going support – because the reality is: We mourn for a lifetime.
  1. J. William Worden, Phd,, in his book Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner, 4th Edition, in attempting to conceptualize the mourning process, has created the “Four Tasks of Mourning.” He states, “the Tasks concept implies that the mourner needs to take action and can do something.”

Tasks are not “stages” of “phases,” which can imply a sequential movement from one thing to another, but there is some ordering suggested in the definitions. For example, you cannot handle the emotional impact of a loss until you first come to terms with the fact the loss has happened.

Task 1: to accept the reality of the loss

  • To come to the realization that physical reunion is impossible. “I will live the rest of my life without him/her.” (Sometimes the bereaved can use her/his religious/spiritual belief of reunion in the afterlife as a way of denying the loss.)
  • This is not only an intellectual acceptance, but also an emotional one.
  • Traditional rituals, such as the funeral, especially viewing the body of the deceased, the Jewish ritual of shiva, visiting the gravesite, etc. can help attain this full acceptance.

Task 2: to process the pain of grief

  • This means allowing oneself to experience whatever emotions and sensations emerge with the acceptance of the loss.
  • This includes the physical as well as emotional symptoms associated with the loss.

Task 3: to adjust to a world without the deceased

  • External Adjustments – how the death affects one’s everyday functioning in the world.
  • Internal Adjustments – how the death affects one’s sense of self.
  • Spiritual Adjustments – how the death affects one’s beliefs, values, assumptions about the world (assumptive world).

Task 4: to find an enduring connection with the deceased in the midst of embarking on a new life.

  • Find a place for him/her in one’s life in a way that allows a connection with him/her and permits the bereaved to move on with life without the physical presence.
  • Create something physical that represents the connection and memory—a “memorial.”
  • The person has died but the relationship lives on in a way that allows the bereaved to live on.

The tasks need not be worked in a linear fashion. They are typically revisited and reworked over time, each time with a new depth of understanding and evolution.

  1. Intervals of Grief:
  1. Initial Interval

This period is brief and usually immediate upon learning of the threat to survival or the death of a loved one. Characteristically it is one of growing awareness, accompanied by numbness or shock, denial and immobility or, in the instance of a threat to survival, exaggerated vigilance. Gradually, the bereaved comes to the acceptance of the death.

  1. Intermediate

A lengthier period, often lasting weeks to months or more. This is a time of psychic and behavioral adaptation to the realized loss. It is often characterized by sudden onset of sighing and tears, reverie and occasional social withdrawal, as well as lack of stamina and a disinterest in usual pleasures of life. This period alternates intermittently with attention to daily demands of living and grieving and some rebuilding of a new life.

  1. Ultimate

Rebuilding a new life is characterized by an accommodation to and reconciliation of the loss as a part of one’s experience. The bereaved will experience less frequent and less severe reactions then before, and, if resources allow, may make significant (compensatory) lifestyle changes.

  1. In Life After Loss, Volkan and Zintl state three fundamentals to understanding mourning:
  1. Each loss launches us on an inescapable course through grief
  2. Each loss revives all past losses
  3. Each loss, if fully mourned, can be a vehicle for growth and regeneration.

Staudacher in A Time to Grieve, states that some try to think their way through grief. But intellectualization does not work and may lead to further denial. Grief is a releasing process that leads to multiple discoveries. In order for it to be a healing process, the heart must lead—and the brain must follow at a respectful distance.

Reflections:

(Please write your responses in the space following each question.)

These are designed to help you relate the material to your own grief work and how it might affect you as a Companion.

  1. Choose 2 of Wolfelt’s “Needs” or Worden’s “Tasks” that are significant to you and write a paragraph of your experience with them.
  1. How do you imagine having the understanding of these concepts might help you in your companioning others?

When you are finished, SAVE this file and attach it to an email message to the Grief Companion Coordinator – Merry .

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