Death & Dying

[Guest guest]

Wedding Night

The day I've died, my pall is moving on -But do not think my heart is

still on earth!Don't weep and pity me: "Oh woe, how awful!"You fall

in devil's snare - woe, that is awful!Don't cry "Woe, parted!" at my

burial -For me this is the time of joyful meeting!Don't say

"Farewell!" when I'm put in the grave -A curtin is it for eternal

bliss.You saw "descending" - now look at the rising!Is setting

dangerous for sun and moon?To you it looks like setting, but it's

rising;The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.Which seed fell

in the earth that did not grow there?Why do you doubt the fate of

human seed?What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?Why

should the Yusaf "Soul" then fear this well?Close here your mouth and

open it on that side.So that your hymns may sound in Where-no-place!

~ Annemarie Schimmel "Look! This is Love - Poems of Rumi"Shambhala, 1991

I died from minerality and became vegetable;

And From vegetativeness I died and became animal.

I died from animality and became man.

Then why fear disappearance through death?

Next time I shall die

Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;

After that, soaring higher than angels -

What you cannot imagine,

I shall be that.

~ Rumi

Gone to the Unseen

At last you have departed and gone to the Unseen.What marvelous route did you take from this world?

Beating your wings and feathers,you broke free from this cage.Rising

up to the skyyou attained the world of the soul.You were a prized

falcon trapped by an Old Woman.Then you heard the drummer's calland

flew beyond space and time.

As a lovesick nightingale, you flew among the owls.Then came the scent

of the rosegardenand you flew off to meet the Rose.

The wine of this fleeting worldcaused your head to ache.Finally you

joined the tavern of Eternity.Like an arrow, you sped from the bowand

went straight for the bull's eye of bliss.

This phantom world gave you false signsBut you turned from the

illusionand journeyed to the land of truth.

You are now the Sun -what need have you for a crown?You have vanished

from this world -what need have you to tie your robe?

I've heard that you can barely see your soul.But why look at all? -yours is now the Soul of Souls!

O heart, what a wonderful bird you are.Seeking divine heights,Flapping

your wings,you smashed the pointed spears of your enemy.

The flowers flee from Autumn, but not you -You are the fearless

rosethat grows amidst the freezing wind.

Pouring down like the rain of heavenyou fell upon the rooftop of this

world.Then you ran in every directionand escaped through the drain

spout . . .

Now the words are overand the pain they bring is gone.Now you have

gone to rest in the arms of the Beloved.

~"Rumi - In the Arms of the Beloved", Jonathan StarNew York 1997

A famous monk, who was a great teacher, died. He was best known,

however, because of his chief disciple. Thousands of people came to

pay homage to the monk when he died and to their amazement they found

the chief disciple weeping. They were at a loss to understandhim -- an

unattached person should not weep, especially one who has always said

that the spirit never dies! Someone came and asked, "Why do you

weep?"The monk replied, "I cannot always live with 'whys.' There are

moments when there is no why. I am weeping, that's all."Still they

insisted, "You have always said that the soul is immortal. Why do you

weep then?"He replied, "I still maintain that the soul is immortal.

But that does not stop me from weeping."~ Zen Bones, Zen Flesh

Today was an exact-fitting glove, perfectIn the nowness of this

momentfitting into itself –Except there was no hand attached andYou

were not here beside me.The sobhet softened, just so,just so,and the

worldSpun in on themcalling up cosmic storms,Storms of loved ones

left behind,Heart-piercingand poignantly reminiscent of a

familiarsound.Autumn has a Voice that I have never, everFailed to

follow…

"I will follow you into the depths of Hell."O Beloved!"Wheresoever I

shall be, there Thou Art."O God. O Beloved!

And as You once followed God into the sea,Rip-tides of karmic

conversationcrashing in,I begin to realize that weare going to feed

the Heart of Mystery.Shakti entertains the idea, the very idea!Of

serving us up to Shiva!Allah is Merciful in meting outthe Quantum

CuriosityIts due.

"It is as natural to die as it is to be born; and to a little

infant,perhaps, the one is as painful as the other."

~Francis Bacon

"Death is psychologically as important as birth...Shrinking away from

it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of

life of its purpose."

~Carl Gustav Jung quoted in Time, obituary, June 16, 1961

"The wise man looks at death with honesty, dignity and calm,

recognizing that the tragedy it brings is inherent in the great gift

of life."

~Corliss Lamont Journal of Philosophy, January, 1965

IdobelieveIdobelieveIdobelieveI don't believe in anything.Tonight at

the Marina on Suisun Bay as we feed the seagullsSwallowing food for

Shiva Who's swallowing usWho's swallowing Nothing. . . O Gawd!Nothing

but Light these days,These d a y s . . .I think tonight, I'll inquire

into thiswith b.That's if God spares us.~ Mazie

There's Nothing Ahead

Lovers think they're looking for each other, but there's only one

search: wandering this world is wandering that, both inside one

transparent sky. In here

there is no dogma and no heresy. The miracle of Jesus is himself, not

what he said or did about the future. Forget the future. I'd worship

someone who could do that. On the way you may want to look back, or

not. But if you can say, There's nothing ahead, there will be nothing

there.

Stretch your arms and take hold of the cloth of your clothes with both

hands. The cure for pain is in the pain. Good and bad are mixed. If

you don't have both, you don't belong with us.

When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us. There's

no place like that anywhere in the world.

~Rumi

"The people asked, "Do you weep for the body?"The monk said, "Yes, it

must be for the body that I am weeping. The body, too, was beautiful

and it will never be seen again. I weep for the body.""But you are a

spiritual man," they said. And the argument went on. They accused him

of confusing them."I myself am confused," he said. "Life is such! The

soul is important, but so are my tears. Such is life -- so

contradictory. It exists in contradictions. I myself am confused; but

I am at ease with my confusions, I am at ease with my contradictions,

so I am not tense. You see my tears, you see me weeping, but I am at

ease. I amrelaxed. I am blissful."~ Zen Bones, Zen Flesh

PERSONAL IMPACTS OF DEATH

When a person is born, we rejoice, and when they're married, we

jubilate, but when they die, we try to pretend that nothing happened.

--Margaret Mead

Odd as it sounds, there can be little question that some deaths are

better than others. People cross-culturally have always made

invidious distinctions between good deaths and bad. Compare, for

instance, crooner Bing Crosby's sudden death following eighteen

rounds of his beloved golf with the slow motion, painful expiration

of an eighty-year-old diabetic. Bedridden following the amputation of

his leg, the old man eventually began slipping in and out of

consciousness. This continues over a period of years, exhausting the

emotional, physical. and financial resources of his family. The

essence of a "good death" thus involves the needs of the dying (such

as coming at the end of full and completed lives, and when death is

preferred to continued existence) as well as those of their survivors

and the broader society.

Whereas the prevalence of unanticipated and premature deaths led to

preindustrial cultures to focus death fears on individuals'

postmortem fates, the death fears of modern cultures are more likely

to focus on the processes of dying. Thus contemporary fears of dying

involve the anxieties of dying within institutional settings, where

often life is structured for the convenience of staff and where

residents suffer both physical and psychological pain in their

depersonalization. They also involve fears of being victims of

advanced Alzheimer's Disease: being socially dead and yet

biologically alive. In sum, the dreaded liminality between the worlds

of the living and the dead have historically shifted from the period

after death to the period preceding it.

Cultural coping mechanisms have not kept pace with the dramatic

changes in when and how we die. With a generation or two (rates

varying by social class, religion, etc.) having died within

institutionalized isolation, Americans are forgetting about how to

learn to focus on dying as a human process, how to include the dying

in their dialogues, and how to learn the lessons of their existence.

Instead, the dying process now too often features silence or

diversion.

However, not surprisingly in our service-oriented economy, there are

challenges to this medicalized, depersonalizing cultural route toward

life's conclusion. For instance, there is the rise of hospice and such

programs as Paradigm.

SOCIALIZATIONS FOR DEATH

Like those at the dawn of human species, young children understand

neither the inevitability of their own mortality nor its finality.

Death fears must be learned. Paralleling the attempts of

anthropologists and historians to map the death ethos of Western

culture over time, there is a sizable research tradition in

psychology and psychiatry on exactly how children's concepts of death

unfold developmentally. As social scientists have studied the

long-term social and cultural consequences of mass epidemics or total

war, psychiatrists attempt to gauge how early firsthand death

encounters later affect the motivations, psychoses, and fears of

adulthood.

And what lessons are learned in childhood about death? Consider the

Saturday morning catechism. The lessons begin with the selection of

breakfast cereals. Consider the products to the right, featuring

flawed but immortal creatures (Frankenstein, a creature created from

body parts, and Dracula, who subsists on the blood of the living).

While eating their immortality flakes, children may watch their

favorite cartoon: "The Roadrunner." The story line never varies: a

coyote employs a number of strategies to kill (we assume to eat) the

bird, only to have each attempt lethally backfire before he is once

again resurrected to resume the hunt. This cartoon is followed by

others bearing similar messages of violence, death, and

indestructibility.

Since 1985, I have surveyed my students (n=512) about their death

socializations and beliefs. The following is the breakdown of their

responses to the question "When you were a child, how was death

talked about in your family?"

Openly

38%

With some senseof discomfort

19%

Only when necessaryand then with an attemptto exclude the children

13%

As though it were a taboosubject

2%

Never recall any discussion

27%

TOTAL

512

For nearly one-half of these students the first personal involvement

with death was the loss of a grandparent; for one out of five, it was

the death of a pet. Consider how different these lessons received by

children of America's upper-middle class vary from those from the

lower rungs of society's stratification order. For the former, death

typically comes to the old--to those who have lived full and

completed lives. For the latter, death too often comes prematurely

due to violence or accident. Consider, for instance, the following

table derived from the 1988-90 NORC General Social Surveys (n=4194),

summarizing Americans' responses to the question "Within the past 12

months, how many people have you known personally who were victims of

homicide?"

PERCENT OF AMERICANS KNOWING ONE OR MORE HOMICIDE VICTIMS

AGE

WHITE AMERICANS

AFRICAN AMERICANS

18-25

11.6%

41.8%

26-35

9.5%

30.6%

36-45

8.4%

22.9%

46-55

7.4%

11.9%

56-65

8.0%

23.7%

66+

3.8%

6.6%

TOTAL

8.0%

24.0%

In addition to individuals' social class, death socializations also

vary across the lifespan. Late adolescence and early adulthood are

periods when individuals are drunk with future time. Senses of

immortality are lost during the middle years, when those of one's

parents' generation routinely die (and one realizes that one is next

up to bat with the Grim Reaper) and when the first of one's

friendship circle dies of "natural causes." In old age, individuals'

futurity dissolves as their time runs out.

Is there a life-cycle pattern of death fears? To find out, consider

the responses to the statement "Thinking about dying doesn't bother

me much," which was asked to 1,201 randomly-selected Americans in the

1994 AARP "Images of Aging in America" survey. In total, 31 percent of

Americans disagreed somewhat or strongly, females (33%) more than

males (27%). Those 18-34 were most likely to disagree (38%) while

those 65- 74 disagreed the least (23%). Click here to see how death

fears vary by age and sex.

Some resources for explaining death: secular lessons:

Terry Beard's "Raindrop: A Treatment on Death Education for Children of All Ages"

LIVING WITH DYING

Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself.

--Albert Schweitzer

In his posthumous Autobiography of Dying, Archie Hanlan wrote "Death

seems easy, but dying sometimes seems impossible. Death is oblivion

and dying is an intense, unrelenting awareness. You are about to

leave everything you love, to interrupt whatever you are doing, to

give up all you hoped for."

All too frequently death has come to affect members of my death and

dying class. The following was submitted over a decade ago by a

first-year student shortly after she received her death sentence."

It was a regular Monday evening. I was feeling a bit weak. I blamed it

on being out in the sun for too long a period of time. It was about

seven o'clock when the phone rang. It was my doctor and life-time

confidante, Rick. Rick just didn't seem himself that night; he was

groggy and seemed troubled. I asked him jokingly why he called and

then stated several jokes about dying of some rare disease. It was at

this point that I knew that something was wrong. Rick then proceeded

to tell me my brief and boring medical history. By this point I was

eager to hear what he had to say. Finally, he laid it on me. I had

cancer and it was terminal. Talk about a mouthful!

The days that immediately followed were difficult ones. The reactions

varied from person to person. Dad told me to be strong and reassured

me that he was there for me. Mom decided not to believe the doctors,

and still doesn't believe the cause of my "little weakness" spells.

Joe, by boyfriend, was shocked. He didn't know what to say, which

hurt me even more. I felt ostracized from my family and friends.

Everyone said that they were concerned, but didn't have the slightest

clue what to do. I didn't, and still don't, know what to do. I know I

need some answers, fast!

I began to rationalize. I thought things like, "oh it can't be so

bad," or, "God, I'm glad that at least I was informed." Can it really

be "not that bad" or can I be happy to know my approximate, if you

will pardon the expression, "deadline"? Through my long walks and

periods of silence, I came to the point where it was necessary to

acknowledge the realistic nature of the cancer, and the final outcome

it presented, I was to die. In my mind I knew that dealing with death

was a very necessary factor, but my "gut" feeling was, "Heather, you

still have faith and hope to hold on to." I knew through my Death and

Dying course what I could to help myself, I had to deal with it. In

helping myself, I was, to a point, admitting defeat. I don't lose

easily, ask anyone that I have had the chance to compete with. I'm a

sore loser in both a game in basketball and the unending game of

life.

Physical changes started to occur in my life as a result of that phone

call. I began to take large doses of medicine three times daily, just

to keep me going. My favorite hobbies, basketball and racquetball,

were "put out to pasture." For the first time in my independent life,

I was not calling the shots. I lived according to regulations, I ate

according to regulations, and I cried and cursed against regulations.

The phone became my number one escape. I called old boyfriends,

renewed old friendships, and talked about anything under the sun with

one very large exception, death and any aspects it involved. I can

remember my old girl friend Lisa joking about her boyfriend and

saying, in so many words, that he deserved to be shot. I flew off the

handle, rattled off a quick good-bye, and got right off that phone. If

she knew about me would she feel the same way about life, anybody's

life? Life seems so precious to me now. In a way I am thankful that I

finally got my priorities straightened out. Designer jeans, fast cars,

and cute guys are nice to have and to look at but fulfillment, for me,

doesn't come by reaching perfect measurements, a 4.0, or lots of

friends. Fulfillment, for me, is making the best of the situation,

accepting it, and loving every precious moment that I am given. All

that glitters can never make me truly happy. To me, money provides a

comfortable way of living, but I minimize my spending. Sure, Mom and

Dad can send me to Hawaii, but until they realize all I want is love,

none of us will be happy. As the song goes, "I don't care too much for

money, money can't buy me love."

When Americans do think about their dying, what do they worry most

about? What kind of comforts do they hope they will have as the end

draws near? In 1997, the George H. Gallup International Institute

posed such questions to a random sample of 1,212 adults in a study

commissioned by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Fetzer

Institute. Click here for summaries of "Spiritual Beliefs and the

Dying Process".

Last Acts: A national coalition to improve care and caring at the end of life

Americans for Better Care of the Dying

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Last Acts--care and caring at the end of life

Channel 3000's "In Search of the Good Death" (Oct. 1998), including

interview with terminally ill Kübler-Ross

The limits of death: between philosophy and psychoanalysis

"The quality of death, for instance, affects the quality of grief.

Here let us focus on the experiences of the survivors and

survivors-to-be. Three key concepts thanatologists employ to

understand those affected by the death of others are: bereavement,

grief, and mourning. Bereavement is the social status allocated to

those experiencing legitimate grief--a status of diminished

expectations toward one's role performances much like the "sick

role." Grief entails the emotions triggered by the death of other. In

American culture there is the expectation that these emotions feature

extreme sadness and even depression as other's death is understood to

be a personal "loss" (as opposed to, say, a "gain," as in cultures

where parental death might mean one's entry into full adulthood).

Mourning refers to the "grief work" that one must do to emancipate

himself enough from bonds with the deceased to return to one's normal

social responsibilities.

Society does not grant the bereavement status to all experiencing the

loss of a significant social bond, even though these may be every bit

as profound and grief-inducing for the survivor. Examples include the

surviving member of a homosexual couple or a close friend of the

deceased, neither of whom would be given the time off from work that

would be given to those losing a parent or spouse. Though a son- or

daughter-in-law may have a closer relationship with their

mother-in-law than with their own mother, at funerals their loss is

often not acknowledged as all condolences are given to spouses and

offspring. Such absence of social recognition of one's loss can

compound the void of grief, hence the rise of support groups even for

those having lost a pet.

The grief associated with bereavement is one of the most profound of

all human emotions--and one of the most lethal. According to the

General Social Surveys, more than 14 percent of Americans 18 and

older--or about 36 million-- have experience the death of either a

parent, spouse, sibling or child each year. Studies show that such

losses disrupt life patterns for up to three years. According to the

National Academy of Science, of the approximately 800,000 Americans

widowed each year, up to 160,000 are thought to suffer a pathological

grief.

Certainly contributing to the challenges of individuals' "grief work"

is the privatization of grief, the underinstitutionalization of the

bereavement role, the fading of the consoling role, and the dramatic

shrinkage of the acceptable duration for mourning over the past

century. In Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin notes how Emily Post in 1927

reported that a widow's formal mourning period was three years.

Twenty-three years later, this period had declined to six months. And

by 1972, Amy Vanderbilt advised the bereaved to "pursue, or try to

pursue, a usual social course within a week or so after a funeral."

While over 90 percent of American companies grant official time off

for bereavement, most have established three days as the formal

bereavement period.

Also contributing to the challenges of "grief work" are its unique

facets. Note the increasingly specialized nature of support groups

here on the Web: they are determined not only on attributes of the

griever--such as on the basis of their age (groups exist for

teenagers, the middle- aged, and older persons) and sex--but also on

the nature of their relationship with the deceased (whether spouse,

lover, grandparent, parent, or sibling) and the cause of death, such

as death by suicide or cancer or in the line of military service.

Some of these are even further refined, such as the parent grief

groups. These include support systems for those parents experiencing

the neonatal, SIDS, or homicide deaths of their children, or, in the

case of In Loving Memory, for those parents coping with death of

their only or last surviving child. Click here for further thoughts

on the deaths of family members.

Finally, and not surprisingly given the commodification of so many

aspects of life, we note the commodification of bereavement.

Art of Mourning NPR on Philadelphia's Museum of Mourning Arts GriefNet

GROWW--Grief Recover Online for All Bereaved

Crisis, Grief, and Healing (Tom Golden LCSW) HYGEIA (Dr. Michael R. Berman)

NetKin: a place of solace on the web

ACCESS--AirCraft Casualty Emotional Support Services Founded in 1996

by the fiancé of a TWA flight 800 casualty, this site is for victims

of air accidents to share their memories and pains

Compassion Connection

Mourning Light Grief Support Webring

Bereavement and Hospice Support Netline Kathleen Gilbert's "Grief in a

Family Context" course TLC Group: Publications for Transition, Loss,

and Change

Emotional Support Resources

London Association of Bereavement Services

CRADLE MY HEART

Last night,I was lying on the rooftop,thinking of you.I saw a special

Star,and summoned her to take you a message. I prostrated myself to

the Starand asked her to take my prostration to that Sun of Tabriz.So

that with his light, he can turn my dark stones into gold.I opened my

chest and showed her my scars, I told her to bring me newsof my

bloodthirsty Lover.As I waited,I paced back and forth, until the

child of my heart became quiet.The child slept, as if I were rocking

his cradle. Oh Beloved, give milk to the infant of the heart,and

don't hold us from our turning. You have cared for hundreds, don't

let it stop with me now.At the end, the town of unity is the place

for the heart. Why do you keep this bewildered heart in the town of

dissolution?I have gone speechless, but to rid myself of this dry

mood,oh Saaqhi, pass the narcissus of the wine.

~Hush Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi Translated by Shahram Shiva

The Chemo Room

The chemo room was, as usual, filled with extraordinary people. I

spoke with a woman who has metastasized breast cancer and goes to The

Wellness Community as we do. We spoke of walls and hearts and true

friends....schedules dominated by cancer treatments and all that they

entail. I told her that I was ready to take down my wall. “You can,"

she said, "for I have taken down mine." Her eyes were washed with

tears of empathy and I hugged her gently, for she is such a treasure.

 

There was a woman who had just had a port installed earlier that

morning and her husband sat down in the chair across from me. These

two were life-partners, no doubt about it. She spoke of her azalea

garden even as she fished a book on Braves baseball from her purse.

Tamara, the chemo nurse, was showing us pictures of her daughter who

had just graduated. You see, we are family to each other. No

appointment needed to get a hug or wipe a tear. We are there anyway

-we might as well be there for each other.

Yesterday I saw a therapist to get some help in dealing with all of

this stress and sorrow. He helped me by confirming my path. He is a

writer, too, and we talked of the windhorse way and courage and

webpages. He stuck an acupuncture needle in my ear and I wore it

proudly into the barbecue joint where we ate after my appointment.

But this was the best thing of all. Someone sent me this e-mail:

"Thank you for embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly as well as

the beautiful. Your thoughts speak more of spirituality to me than

religion." From a 69 year old clean and sober AA memberThat letter

makes it all worthwhile. To write about the hardest journey of my

life and have it received by even one person is a form of healing for

me.

There is a silence that falls upon the soul when it has said too much.

All of the anger and bitterness has been expressed. Remorse has now

reared its ugly head. God, I didn’t know that I had so much anger in

me. Cancer is a curse. It can bring forth blessings, but it is a

curse for me right now. My husband is weak and sick and I am sick

and tired. All of my best hopes and resolves have vanished like

smoke and I am in need of renewal. But from where will it come when

no one can take my place in my soul? I must live in my own being and

somehow find rest and renewal there.

I have trod the halls of too many hospitals to be well-disposed

towards them. I have cried too many tears to believe they will lead

to burdens being lifted. I am a psalmist for the insanely

grief-stricken mind. Writing flows from deep within like the tears

that I have been shedding for days. But anger is a mask for grief

and I am grieving like hell. For normalcy, for hope, for optimism

and an end to serving the suffering body.

It is a good thing that paragraphs like these are written in water and

wind like all other transitory emotions. These words, too, shall

pass. Things get better and things get worse. The nondual soul who

witnesses the personal suffering is always silent. It is the bird

that never sang a note.

My Body

This morning I had a physical therapy session for my neck. The

therapist, Kent, was taking me through my range of motions and we

were getting to know each other. Like Bernie Siegel, he has a shaven

head. I told him what Bernie said about why he shaved his head...to

bare his emotions, spirituality and love.

He commented that when he told me to let go, I wasn’t able to do so.

“A lot of times,” he said, “people will be telling me one thing and

their body will be telling me something else. And that’s where the

rubber meets the road.”

I have known for a long time that I am unable to let go. But knowing

and doing are far removed. It is good to know where you need to do

more work...at not working. I say that tongue-in-cheek and also in

truth. Without descent into the depths, we will never ascend to the

inner heights. That’s just how it is.

Bernie had asked me what my pain in the neck was about. I honestly

cannot put it into words, so I am putting it into my body. But I am

good at words, if nothing else, so I will try. I need to be

embraced--not braced. Bracing myself against emotional pain hurts my

body. I write a lot about letting go. Bernie says that you teach

what you need to learn.

Those of you who resonate to what I write know that we are all in the

same boat. We are each other. We mirror each other. Thank God that

this is true. Sometimes we can all be a pain in the neck and what we

really need is to embrace and be embraced. It seems the logical

thing to do, but how hard it is to stay open, to contain the pain.

The body can be an alchemical vessel if we allow it to be. We can

let the pain remain, embracing it with our own higher consciousness.

I know this--but not all of the time.

I would like to say a word to my body, “I am sorry that I have allowed

you to get so tense and in such pain. Forgive me. I am getting you

some help. Thank you for all that you do.” My body doesn’t speak in

words but I saw the tears in its eyes. We will be okay.

~ Vicki Woodyard, http://www.bobwoodyard.com

PARENTAL LOSS

As the limelighted boomers enter middle age we'll be hearing much more

about the meaning of parental death (i.e., Jane Brooks' Midlife

Orphan). Every year eleven million American adults lose a parent; by

age 62, roughly three-quarters have lost both. Unlike earlier

generations, however, their "orphan" status typically occurs much

later in life; Boomers will have had their parents longer than any

other generation. Mary Gordon, in her recently published The Shadow

Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father, writes that her father's

death (when she was seven years of age) was the defining event of her

life. George Pollock, director of the Chicago Institute for

Psychoanalysis, has identified hundreds of writers, artists,

philosophers, for whom mourning over a parent's death was an

adaptation that tapped creative energy. For Franklin D. Roosevelt,

Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Darwin, and Tolstoy, the death of a parent

seemed to spur them on to greatness. Certainly the quality and form

of one's death experiences reacts with the quality and form of one's

moral, emotional, and intellectual development. Death can spawn

depression and social withdrawal, or it can invigorate, stimulating

individuals to pursue new heights to their social

performances.Newsweek's Final Farewells-- "Millions of baby boomers

face one of life's saddest rites of passage: watching parents die."

SPOUSAL LOSS

Widowhood is not only a label assigned to surviving spouses, but is a

social status as well--and female status at that, given that 85% of

wives outlive their husbands. Unlike other bereavement-based

statuses, this one is permanent. And as is the case with all social

statuses, there are normative patterns to its timing and behavioral

expectations. For instance, in American society, widows are frowned

upon if they begin dating a week after the funeral or remarry a few

months thereafter.

In our death-denying and couple-based culture, there is a certain

stigma to being widowed, which is amplified by the fact that it is a

status typically occupied by females. Few married women escape the

status. One facet of sexism is the general pattern of older males

marrying younger females. Not only does this often imply greater male

power in the relationship but, because of the females' eight or more

years of life expectancy advantage, it often guarantees that it is

the woman who must cope with the dying and death of a spouse, with

the spectrum of emotions associated with grief, and with singleness

in a world of couples. In fact, widows often find themselves neither

in the world of singles or of marrieds.

Links from Widow Net

Bereavement Research Network

WidowNet "an information and self-help resource for, and by, widows and widowers"

LOSS OF CHILD

- Pregnancy Loss

Houston's Aid in Neonatal Death

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Network

Hygeia, An Online Journal for Women's Health and Healing

ZOOM--A parent grieves

Bereaved Families of Ontario

LOSS OF SIBLING

Welcome to Twinless Twins

The Compassionate Friends

http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/death-6.html

Our death is our wedding with eternity. What is the secret? "God is

One." The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.

This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes; It is not in the

juice made from the grapes. For he who is living in the Light of God,

The death of the carnal soul is a blessing. Regarding him, say neither

bad nor good, For he is gone beyond the good and the bad. Fix your

eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible, So that he may

place another look in your eyes. It is in the vision of the physical

eyes That no invisible or secret thing exists. But when the eye is

turned toward the Light of God What thing could remain hidden under

such a Light? Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light Don't

call all these lights "the Light of God"; It is the eternal light

which is the Light of God, The ephemeral light is an attribute of the

body and the flesh. ...Oh God who gives the grace of vision! The bird

of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire. ~ Rumi

LoveAlways,

"This is how I would die

into the Love I have for You:

as pieces of cloud

dissolve in sunlight."*Mazie Groove on the latest from the hot new

rock groups! Get downloads, videos, and more here.