Religious rituals, for example, surround the bereaved person with our most important resource — other people.
|
|
What if there was a software program that enabled a bereaved person to communicate with a lost loved one by creating an avatar using the deceased's digital footprint?
|
|
"I think that writing on the profiles of the dead is a beautiful, new way to express feelings – to yourself, and to other friends and family of the person who died – that really is not the same as a note to the bereaved person, what people usually did to mark the moment," Turkle reflected when I asked her about the practice.
|
|
Aaron asked Moses whether he should eat consecrated food on the day that his sons died. Aaron argued that since the tithe (which is of lesser sanctity) is forbidden to be eaten by a bereaved person prior to the burial of his dead, how much more certainly must the meat of the sin-offering (which is more sacred) be prohibited to a bereaved person prior to the burial of his dead. Immediately after Moses heard Aaron's argument, he issued a proclamation to the Israelites, saying that he had made an error in regard to the law and Aaron his brother came and taught him. Eleazar and Ithamar had known the law, but kept their silence out of deference to Moses, and as a reward, God addressed them directly along with Moses and Aaron in When reports that "the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them," Rabbi Hiyya taught that the words "to them" referred to Eleazar and Ithamar.
|
|
Traditional letters, however, are often considered to hark back to a "simpler time" and are still used when someone wishes to be deliberate and thoughtful about his or her communication. An example would be a letter of sympathy to a bereaved person. Bills and invoices are often sent through the mail, like regular billing correspondence from utility companies and other service providers. These letters often contain a self-addressed envelope that allows the receiver to remit payment back to the company easily.
|
|
It was observed that, in contrast to Western interpretations, the widows were not concerned about their sanity and made sense of the experience in religious terms. In the Western world, much of the bereavement literature of the 20th century had been influenced by psychoanalytic thinking and viewed these experiences as a form of denial, in the tradition of Freud's interpretation in Mourning and Melancholia of the bereaved person as 'clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis'. Freud, S. (1917).
|
|
Andrews pointed out that the law allows plaintiffs to recover from defendants who had no duty towards them: orphans may recover for their negligently-killed parents; a bereaved person may recover for negligence in the death of a spouse. An insurance company may sue in subrogation and recover the sum paid out from the person who started the fire. "Behind the cloud of words is the fact they hide, that the act, wrongful as to the insured, has also harmed the company."Palsgraf, 248 N.Y. at 350 (Andrews, J., dissenting).
|
|
Bereavement and the adjective bereaved are derived from a verb, 'reave', which means "to despoil, rob, or forcibly deprive" according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Thus, a bereaved person is one who has been deprived, robbed, plundered, or stripped of someone or something that they valued. Reaction to this state or impact of loss is called grief. According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984), coping strategies are the "constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing on or exceeding the resources of the person".
|
|
For example, the griever may become more depressed or angry due to not being able to fully express his or her grief. Secondly, disenfranchised grief means society does not recognize the death or loss; therefore, the griever does not receive strong social support and may be isolated. As disenfranchised grief is not legitimized by others, the bereaved person may be denied access to rituals, ceremonies, or the right to express their thoughts and emotions (McKissock & McKissock, 1998). When supporting someone through disenfranchised grief it is important to acknowledge and validate their loss and grief (McKissock & McKissock, 1998).
|
|
Although extremely painful, grief is the normal process of accommodating to a new life without the deceased loved one. Most bereaved survivors manage to get through the worst of their grief and continue to function and find meaning in life. Normal grief differs from PGD in that it is not as intense, persistent, disabling and life-altering and is not experienced as a severe threat to the survivor's identity, sense of self- worth, feeling of security, safety or hopes for future happiness. Although normal grief remains with the bereaved person far into the future, its ability to disrupt the survivor's life dissipates with time.
|
|
Freud, in 1959, in an article, called this a process of "working through" the grief. Healthy coping is achieved when the bereaved person is enabled to go forward with healthy, productive living by effortfully developing "new normals" to guide that living which is characterized by lesser stressful demands compared to the initial phase of grief. Greenblatt has reviewed spousal mourning as being essential for transition. He describes four phases of mourning: the initial reaction of shock, numbness, denial and disbelief; followed by pining, yearning, depression then in a healthy environment resolution phase begins with emancipation from the loved one and readjustment to the new environment.
|
|