USCA Magazine, Fall 2008 Edition
Scrap The Stages & Ride The Rollercoaster
Life Loses It's Ordinary When Death Hits
Everyone can master grief but he who has it.
William Shakespeare
Beginning the Grief Talk
I had my back to my office door as I was pounding away on the computer writing parent permission letters for their child to attend a grief group. After sensing a presence, I turned and saw a student standing there, somber, yet alert and extremely pensive. I didn't recognize him.
"Hi, I'm Mrs. J." I smiled, staying seated somehow believing it was best for him to remain in a taller position than I was at the moment. Silence. Yet no movement from the student. His eyes went to the floor and his body seemed to invisibly shake. The unspoken words continued but the body of the student did not budge. " I was just going to grab a snack. If you would like to sit down, go ahead." I said. I keep an orange in my drawer when I need some food, for sustenance or to engage a student! "Would you like some?" Food usually works to promote a comfortable environment and this approach sets trust in motion because there is no pressure or standard questioning like, "What do you need? How can I help you? Why are you here?" I just have an orange in my desk.
While I peel it, the client (are not our students, staff and families our clients?) can watch something and not look at me, and it smells heartwarming. Rarely do they eat with me, but they watch the orange go to my mouth, I grab their eye contact and say, "Has something awful happened you could tell me about?"
Grief Matters
Though all students don't need encouragement, most visitors living grief need unconditional cues. To be young and living grief is significantly painful & confusing. Students do not want to be different. The death of a loved one changes them and their lives completely. (However, the "Unwanted Visitor of Grief" is overwhelming at any age! Haven't you talked to a staff member about the death of a loved one?) It is not a comfortable event.
Some visitors will walk into your office, sit down and converse for 45 minutes and you have to wind the session to a close (keeping a close rein on the targets that need to be accomplished during the session). Others are defiant, confused, depressed, or sad,. It is our job and responsibility to help those at school who need our counseling services to recognize what is going on inside their hearts, listen to it, identify it, and validate its existence while enduring it and exploring if anything can be done about it.
No Stages
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. was the pioneer in recognizing that dying people had feelings about death, though they rarely talked about it, or were asked to share their feelings. In 1957, after medical school, she began working with terminal patients and created the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This initiated an awareness that the impending death of an individual brings emotions for them & their loved ones.
The diagnosis of a terminal disease elicits feelings from the person dying as well as the significant people in their life. The death of a loved one initiates reactions by their families and friends.
To experience the death of someone we love, no particular stages are inherent. Grief is unique and individuals feel what they feel. The hardest part is nobody talks about it, and not long after rituals of death subside, it isn't mentioned again. The rollercoaster ride of Grief begins and even if you begin to think the ride is truly over, another hill will present itself! The steep climb, screaming, wind blasting your face, and the breath knocked out of you as you reach the crest of the climb to begin your descent, are applicable happenings in grief.
Goals
As counselors, we are in an influential position to provide grief counseling and offer guidance to promote grief work thatcan support sorrow as well as encourage a discovery of hope. A new hope needs to be discovered by a grieving person. After the death of a loved one, they are a different person living a different life and the joy that was is no more.
Grief Tasks
The Harvard Child Bereavement Study (HCBS), co-directed by J. W. Worden, interviewed and tested 125 children between the ages of 6 and 17 who had lost a father or a mother. Standardized instruments, such as the Smilansky Death Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Checklist, and interviews were used in this study. A similar group of 70 children who had not suffered such bereavement were similarly studied.
Worden distinguished among four tasks ofmourning for these children: (1) accepting the reality of loss, (2) experiencing the pain or emotional aspects of loss, (3) adjusting to an environment in which the deceased is missing, and (4) relocating the person within one's life and finding ways to memorialize the person.
Though these are identified as tasks of grief and can be goals of grief counseling, we do not get over the loss of someone we love; we can only learn to live life without them, which is a heart-wrenching ordeal, very lonesome, and exhausting. Our "ordinary," previous life is lost and EveryDayGrief™ begins.
As Auden (1968) stated, "The stars are not wanted now; put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun." Such an apt description of the intensity of grief, we can be the mediator for a grieving child to help their teachers understand their strength may not be study skills, assignments handed in on time, and full concentration and responsibility in class. Many times, I will ask a teacher how they would feel about substituting an assignment for a journal in which they will be writing about the events of the death in their student's life and how it has changed their life. This is a proactive experience of grief work for the student and can often be an extremely educational experience for the teacher.
What Kids Say
I feel like I am in a fog.
No one understands how bad I hurt.
I cannot get out of bed.
I am always tired.
I cannot concentrate.
My homework just sits there.
No one asks me about it.
I don't want anyone to know.
I feel empty.
The fireworks of emotions rule and students need to know they are not crazy. They are grieving. It is all natural and normal. And it will come and go in different degrees, sometimes when least expected. The rollercoaster of grief is an unending up and down journey of sorrow and heartfelt pain.
How Parents Can Help
A call to the mourning family is always appreciated. Suggest to parents, if appropriate, that children need honesty. They often imagine things much worse than the truth. Help their child show emotion and share tears and feelings. Provide honest answers always.
Because lack of control is rampant, find ways a child can make choices (bedtime, when to study, family activity, etc.). Find ways for your child to memorialize their loved one. It is important to remember their lives, keep them close to their heart, and share memories of them. Also, remind children it is okay to get back to the routine of school, to laugh, and to live life.
I often ask students to bring a picture of their loved one, their obituary, funeral program, or whatever ritual was planned at their death. Something is always brought to me. It is the ultimate honoring of someone's life to share them with another.
How Teachers Can Help
Teachers are critical in a bereaved child's return to school. They need to show their concern and care for the student. Send them a card, note, flowers, frame to put a picture in, and ask them how they are doing in private. Students do not forget that a teacher showed them sympathy. One student told me when she returned to school after her father died that her geography teacher hugged her in the hallway and cried with her. This was a major happening in the student's life. Their school life is the major portion of their social life and, as faculty, we need to intertwine with their sorrow and let them know how much we care about them personally as well as about their success in the classroom. They are now a different person and we are a link to their transition back to their educational and social world.
Practical Self- Disclosures
Things to say that might help you build rapport with a student and entice them to share their grief story with you:
- I am much older than you, but since my ___________ died it has been really hard on me.
- Your teachers told me you have had a death in your family. They really like you and care about you.
- I talk to a lot of kids here about death and how it changes their life. If you don't want to talk to me it is okay.
- Sometimes it is nice to know me. I'm a nobody in your life. You won't see me at your neighborhood, church, grocery store and we can keep conversations between us.
Normal Day, Let Me Be Aware of the Treasure You Are.
Mary Jean Iron
References
Auden, W. H. (1968). Collected poems EveryDayGrief, LLC. (2006). Training seminars for helping professionals.
Harris, M. (1995). The lifelong impact of the early death of a mother or father. New York: E.P. Dutton. Ross, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. (1973). On death and dying. Routledge.
Worden, J. W. (1996). Children and grief: When a parent dies. New York: Guilford. ED 405 133.