The Loss Of An Adult Child Essay

Loss can mean something very different, depending on who you ask to define it and what their history is with it. However difficult the obstacle may be, Tim O’Brien’s words can help alleviate someone’s conscious, because he points out the importance of all those stories lived with that certain person or thing that was lost. Even with my personal losses, I can relate to O’Brien’s views of loss and the importance of all the memories of the lost thing. Loss would not be so impactful if it weren’t for all those sentimental memories and emotions that come with it. It’s necessary to sometimes remember the happy times lived before the loss, to slowly fill up the hole that it created in the heart. It’s true, losing something is rarely anything to be happy about, but if anyone has something that makes saying goodbye hard, they would be considered

Grief is a natural response to a major loss, though often deeply painful and can have a negative impact on your life. Any loss can cause varied levels of grief often when someone least expects it however, loss is widely varied and is often only perceived as death. Tugendhat (2005) argued that losses such as infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, adoption and divorce can cause grief in everyday life. Throughout our lives we all face loss in one way or another, whether it is being diagnosed with a terminal illness, loss of independence due to a serious accident or illness, gaining a criminal record (identity loss), losing our job, home or ending a relationship; we all experience loss

Loss is something we all share and experience in life. There are different types of loss which affect our everyday lives, emotions and relationships. If our attachment is strong then we will feel stronger emotions. The complexity of our attachment will also dictate how we move through our grief.

Death is a universally experienced phenomenon. In the United States alone, over 2.6 million people die each year (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). For practitioners, it is of utmost importance to better understand the process of grief to develop better interventions for bereaved individuals.

Life involves many losses. There are small losses: losing a football game, failing a test, or forgetting an assignment. At some point, though, all of us will experience a major loss: the death of a close family member, a major illness, or a divorce in the family. Loss is inevitable for all of us. If you have ever experienced grief and loss, or if you are currently experiencing it, then you might be trying to recover the wrong way. You might believe that you have gotten over it, but it could come back even years later. When it comes to grief and loss, there are a lot of components that people do not understand, but today there are many methods to coop that will lead you down the path of healing.

The Two-Track Model of Bereavement is a model that states loss is conceptualized along two axes. Track I pertains to the biopsychosocial functioning in the event of a loss and Track II pertains to the bereaved’s continued emotional attachment and relationship to whoever is deceased. The effect of Track I is seen through the bereaved’s functioning, including their anxiety, their self-esteem and self-worth, and their depressive affect and cognitions. Noting the ability of one to invest in life tasks after experiencing a loss indicates how they are responding to the loss of the deceased. This Track is seen as an expression similar to one of trauma, or crisis. Track II holds that the bereaved has difficulty physically separating from the deceased. This can be seen in emotional, interpersonal, or cognitive ways. It is shown through imagery and memories that the bereaved experiences surrounding the deceased, whether positive or negative, as well as the emotional distance from them. These pictures in the bereaved’s head explain both the cognitive and emotional view of the person who has died (Rubin, 1999).

Grief is a normal part of coping with a loss but for some people, it can be far more serious. In

The research article Dyadic Coping of Parents After the Death of a Child explores how parents grieve after the bereavement, known as the loss of a loved one, of their child to a life-limiting illness. This study includes 23 married couples (a total of 46 participants) who discuss life after bereavement and the ways in which they coped after such an unimaginable loss. The particular focus in this study is dyadic coping, which is a questionnaire that determines the degree of which couples communicate and hold up one another when they are faced with stressful measures. Those who agreed to participate in the study filled out the dyadic coping questionnaire and attended a 50-120 minute interview, separate from their spouse. After obtaining all their

Coping with a parent being seriously ill or the death of a parent can be extremely hard for children. They go through the feelings of loneliness, depression, and grief. When children are a witness to an ill parent or a deceased parent it causes an extreme amount of stress according to Buchwald, Delmar, & Schantz-Laursen (2011). Buchwald et al., (2011) also mentions that children may lose a sense of security when confronting a parent’s illness or death. Because of this, the child’s relationships are changed dramatically as well. The child must reestablish a relationship with the “healthier” parent since the other may be seriously ill or deceased. Like Buchwald, Koblenz (2015) also believes that maintaining a healthy relationship with the surviving or “healthier” parent will ultimately produce more positive results for the child that is coping.

The loss of a loved one is a very crucial time where an individual can experience depression, somatic symptoms, grief, and sadness. What will be discussed throughout this paper is what the bereavement role is and its duration, as well as the definition of disenfranchised grief and who experiences this type of grief. I will also touch upon the four tasks of mourning and how each bereaved individual must accomplish all four tasks before mourning can be finalized. Lastly, with each of these topics, nursing implications will be outlined on how to care for bereaved individuals and their families.

Loss is a phenomenon that is experienced by all. Death is experienced by family members as a unique and elevated form of loss which is modulated by potent stages of grief. Inevitably, everyone will lose someone with whom they had a personal relationship and emotional connection and thus experience an aftermath that can generally be described as grief. Although bereavement, which is defined as a state of sorrow over the death or departure of a loved one, is a universal experience it varies widely across gender, age, and circumstance (definitions.net, 2015). Indeed the formalities and phases associated with bereavement have been recounted and theorized in literature for years. These philosophies are quite diverse but

The life transition of death and dying is inevitably one with which we will all be faced; we will all experience the death of people we hold close throughout our lifetime. This paper will explore the different processes of grief including the bereavement, mourning, and sorrow individuals go through after losing someone to death. Bereavement is a period of adaptation following a life changing loss. This period encompasses mourning, which includes behaviors and rituals following a death, and the wide range of emotions that go with it. Sorrow is the state of ongoing sadness not overcome in the grieving process; though not pathological, persistent

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

A loss is something most people find difficult dealing with. A term mostly used to refer to loss is bereavement which is the position of having lately departed with someone important in one’s life through death. It is normal in the human world to experience such a loss and people ought to know how to manage such experiences when they do happen. Bereavement is never easy; it is a period that individuals experience too much suffering that leaves them feeling vulnerable. Some people are also at risk of developing physical health and mental problems. Adjusting can take as long as a few months up to years depending on the individual in question.

The child who died is considered a gift to the parents and family, and they are forced to give up that gift. Yet, as parents, they also strive to let their child's life, no matter how short, be seen as a gift to others. These parents seek to find ways to continue to love, honor, and value the lives of their children and continue to make the child's presence known and felt in the lives of family and friends. Bereaved parents often try to live their lives more fully and generously because of this painful experience.