| None touch or embrace. Each is stunned and still, frozen in place and lifeless. Each is withdrawn and vulnerable, reacting in isolation. Each recoils from the death and from the changed reality he or she now confronts. Each is suspended between the world as it was and the world as it is now, transformed utterly by the death. The absence of the one they love is palpable. Each seems at a loss as to what to do or say and how to go on from here, and especially at a loss as to what to do with the feelings he or she still has for the one who has died. None appears ready to leave the room, to face the world and life without the deceased. Yet that is precisely what each must do. For now, the death chamber is both the scene of the event that has changed the world as each experiences it and a quiet refuge from the challenges that a new world presents to each. Fortunately, although no one can grieve for another, when they leave the room, none will grieve alone. They will face the world together with fellow survivors and, in interaction with them, build new patterns of living in the absence of the deceased. |
| Few who have ever lost another can help being moved by Munch's treatment of the first moments after a loss. Bereavement, even when expected, leaves indelible memories and defines some of the most important turning points in our lives. We absorb the impacts of loss within our unique life circumstances and as the individuals we are. Each of us experiences the world in a way that is uniquely our own; within our worlds of experience we learn to feel, behave, think, expect, and hope as if those we care about will continue to live. When someone in our world dies, we remain postured in that world as we were before the death, but we can no longer sustain that posture. We are challenged to learn new ways of feeling, behaving, thinking, expecting, and hoping in the aftermath of the loss. As we learn these things, we cope. Grieving, by definition, is just such coping with the challenges that bereavement presents. Grieving is what we do in response to what happens to us in bereavement. |
| This book contains one philosopher's reflections on grieving as the centrally important human experience it is. It grows out of some twenty years of teaching and writing about death and dying, grief and bereavement. The teaching and writing, in turn, are rooted in at least that many years of careful listening to the stories of persons who, like those depicted in Munch's lithograph, have lost someone dear to them and struggled with how to go on living without the deceased. The book is written for all those who, with me, wonder what going on without the deceased involvesthose who grieve, as well as the |
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