Some of you already know, and now the rest of you will know as well, that I am a volunteer with the local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, and within the community I present different lessons concerning Alzheimer’s disease. I have delivered classes in senior centers and assisted living facilities, at the “Y”, in a college course, and at “lunch and learn” events at a dental clinic.
About halfway through one of my earlier classes on dementia, a young woman asked a heartbreaking question: “When will my father get better? Why can’t the doctors do something?” It turned out I was the first one to really let her know her father’s disease was terminal, or perhaps she was just not ready to hear it yet.
Now, understand what I’m about to say is a broad generalization based on my own observations of our society but confirmed for me by the spontaneous conversations in my classes, some of which focus on how people don’t really address the concepts of death and dying very well. Furthermore, this is not a comment on the formal processes carried out by the funeral service industry, nor on any traditions or rites followed through one’s religion or culture, thus this opinion piece is based strictly on MY personal experiences outside these established areas.
In reference to the aforementioned woman and her father, and a collection of comments made by others in my classes, I thought I should get better versed in handling these questions. I signed up for a 16-hour in-person course titled “Understanding Your Grief” (two-hour sessions one night a week). We (nine attendees) did have a course book to read as a foundation for class discussions, and there was also time to share particulars about our own personal losses which proved to be quite cathartic.
The book is Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart, by Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt, 2nd Ed, Companion Press, 2021. Three of the author’s many points I want to share are as follows: first, all loss is personal. This means regardless of the number of people who share the same loss, each will experience it through the lenses of his or her own experiences, thoughts, and emotions. In short, all involved may not see the loss, nor deal with it, equally.
This leads to a second point, that even though an outsider may have also experienced a similar loss, such as a parent dying, again these losses will not be the same. Because of this, as someone trying to console a grieving person, it serves no purpose to vocalize such attempts with phrases like “I know how you feel…When I lost my dad…etc.” Using this approach can make the consoler the focus of attention instead of having it on the one who is grieving.
The third thing I recently learned goes back to an old understanding I gained years ago, but first, some background. In 1969, the world became attuned to the “Five Stages of Grief” as studied by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Counselors following the work of Kubler-Ross latched onto these stages as a roadmap to working through the grieving process with the end goal of “getting better.” The problem with this approach is that the Kubler-Ross studies were based on the anecdotal experiences of HOW her patients themselves got through the process, and counselors turned these individual experiences into a wide-casting net they could apply to all grievers.
Now back to the current teachings from the class. Whereas Dr. Wolfelt does not reject or contradict the research of Kubler-Ross and others, he contends that persons may go through the stages of grief again and again, and Wolfelt really prefers not to use “stages” at all because they imply a linear motion of actions leading to termination of grief at a certain point.
A physical analogy may help. Say I lost a leg for some reason, I would have to relearn to walk with assistance, and there will be some things I could no longer do or at least it would become harder to do them without prosthetic help. In short, I can work through all the grieving stages I want, but I will never get my leg back and I will always miss it; however, the general presumption is IF MY HEART IS IN IT, I can work around the loss, but never really get through it. Nothing can ever be the same, I will never “get better,” the best I can do is learn to understand the loss, accept it in some form, and move on.
Another source book I have often used is How to Survive the Loss of A Love by Dr. Harold Bloomfield and others, originally released in 1976 and re-released in 2000. The authors set their studies into the major headings of understanding loss, surviving it, healing, then growing. The book is more like a collection of thoughts under the umbrellas of each of these main points, and a reader can easily pick topics of interest from the table of contents.
For this writing, I have obviously only scratched the surface of the issue of grief, but I wanted to share with you the resources I now have for my attendees in the Alzheimer’s classes. Both books I’ve referenced are available on Amazon or other sources. Finally, if you live in the Colorado Springs area, I also recommend the Voices of Grief Support and Education Center at https://www.voicesofgriefcenter.org/ .
Best regards to all, and let’s be safe out there.
