Living with loss.

This paper is intended to help reduce the mystery surrounding the pains and suffering we feel when we experience a loss. Although separation and loss are universal experiences, our reactions to these traumatic life events have long remained puzzling and mysterious as well as frightening. The modem attitude to grief has been to shroud it further in a conspiracy of silence in which we are unable to share openly our feelings with friends or family. The death of a loved one is one of the most stressful events in our lives. During our subsequent reactions we can experience sensations, dream dreams, feel emotions and believe in ways which may lead us to question our morals, faith or sanity. Left alone with this distress we feel isolated, our selfesteem threatened and without support. Research has shown that the stress of severe reactions to loss can increase the likelihood ofmany forms of physical and mental illness. Scientific evidence has even shown that we can die from a 'broken heart' (Parkes, 1972). Stress is increased by the fear of the unknown. Stress is also made worse if the need to stifle natural grief responses is imposed on us by our friends, family and society. More recently, research workers have brought to light many important insights into the origins, cause, meaning and importance of separation and loss as a human phenomenon. Understanding these new insights should help us all to live with the stress of the separation or loss of loves ones by allaying our own anxieties and fears about our reactions during periods of grief and mourning. All of us will suffer grief at some time. My first experience of loss occurred when my maternal grandmother died. I was unprepared for my distress and that of my family. Throughout the next two years I experienced cycles of anger and sadness. My parents and friends worried about me, but I had forgotten by that time that it had all began when my grandmother died. I isolated myself from them and continued to feel upset for those two years. Slowly the feelings passed and I found myself more interested in studies, friends, family and life. It was only much later I realized the cause of those years of withdrawal. Explanations of the feelings which we suffer when separation and loss occur begin with a central truth. Our feelings after a loss are the price we must pay for our attachment to other people. Attachment (loving others), separation and loss are all part of the same process of committing ourselves to others. Our attachments are related to similar behaviour in our close relatives in the animal world and can be thought of as being based in instinctive attachment behaviour and bonding. The development of attachments seems to function as an evolutionary necessity. Separation from loved ones results in similar patterns of anxiety, fear, anger and sorrow in children, adults and animals. Separation anxiety seems necessary in order that the object of one's attachment will be searched out and recovered if at all possible. The development of fear of separation and anxious attachments in children and adults is commonplace. Both anger and sorrow play a role in the events following separation so that these emotions are natural consequences to it. Loss, as discussed here, is a permanent parting with a valued person, place or object. The inevitability of loss makes it a universal occurrence. Bereavement is the loss of a loved one. Grief is the feeling accompanying such a loss, while mourning is the act of grieving through which the bereft person passes. Loss is a very special type of separation in that no amount of self-generated feeling or behaviour will allow the recovery of the lost object. There are three parts of this process: attachment, separation and loss. They are a natural progression and serve to give a perspective on the normal mourning process.