WEBVTT

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I came to home after work one day
and I was getting ready to go

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out, and his truck was in the drive way and
I thought he was here. And I turned around

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and, Hen(ph) went into the other
bedroom, and he had... he, he had hung

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himself on some athletic
equipment that he had.

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It was when Ma had called.

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I thought she was there. I don\'t know.

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Something told me of something, I felt it.

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[music] Every year,

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nearly five million Americans suffer the
death of a loved one. We will all have this

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experience, yet we are unprepared for it.
Unprepared because we are not

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taught what expect, nor
we thought what to do.

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And we don\'t know how to help ourselves and we don\'t know how
to help others. This lack of knowledge has a cost for us

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as individuals and as a nation. In the next
hour, we will explore the personal and

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social effects of bereavement. Through
the eyes of seven different people,

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we will look at the pain, the process,
and the healing of grief in America.

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Dr. Gerald Larue is an
emeriti(ph) professor of

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religion and an adjunct professor of gerontology at
the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

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The term \"grief\" ah, refers to the intense,

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complex, emotional and physical
response to loss. \"Bereavement\"

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has to do with the, the working
through of the grief, the period

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that it takes to resolve the grief.
Michael was born profoundly deaf.

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And so we had a hard time. His life
was not easy, and he struggled

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all through his 23 years. When we had
some real problems that he felt he

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couldn\'t handle, didn\'t wanna
tell anybody about him,

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and he made a decision
to take his own life.

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How did my mother die?

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She passed, ah, as a result
of cancer, and, ah, it was a,

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a year heart-rendering ah, experience.

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That\'s my brother Cricket,
and he passed away on,

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but(ph) it\'s gonna be about
six years ago. And, uhm,

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I was right there when it happened. We\'re
hanging around in the park with my

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friends and then some guys came, got
out of car with guns, and then,

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you know, he was calling my name, and then the next
thing I know I hear some shots. I turned around, I see

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my brother falling. He moved
to California in 1963,

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and, ah, changed his name legally
from Philip Birely(ph) to

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The Owl. And he lived in The Owl Mansion.
His car was The Owl

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Limo. Eight months ago, my
friend The Owl died of AIDS.

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And, ah, I missed him very much.
Within the last

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nine months, I\'ve lost my mother,
my father and my sister. In

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each case for my mom, she died of
a heart attack. My father died

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from lung disease and a heart attack.
My sister died of a heart attack.

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All three. In the reports,

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they listed my mother is being murdered.
Uhm, as soon as she walked in,

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someone went in back of her, and strangled her with
some kind of wire or something, cuz her throat was

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slit in an upward direction, uhm, and
she was stabbed below the neck like

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in the collarbone. He had
what we commonly refer to as

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Alzheimer\'s disease. Suddenly, I was
experiencing this with my husband. I

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lost, ah, what was among
the most treasured people

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in my existence.

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[music]

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After the death of a loved one,

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there\'s an overwhelming sense of loss. Unprepared
for the death of this experience, most

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people are surprised and frightened at the
intensity and duration of their emotions.

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How many of you have had that experience where it\'s like you
open your mouth and one of your parents bleeds right out there?

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John W. James, author and lecturer,
founded the Grief Recovery Institute in

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1977 after the death of his infant son.
The common character

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traits that are demonstrated
by a person following a loss

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are things like the inability to
concentrate, ah, feeling very

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confused even about simple decisions. Uhm,

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they\'re very lethargic. Ah, there
is almost no reason to eat, ah,

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sleep patterns will be disrupted, and
so forth. Those are all normal and

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natural. Uhm, the problem is, is
that the person, the griever who is

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experiencing these things does not know
that they are normal and natural, because

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we don\'t teach anyone about this
emotion, normal and predictable

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experience in life. And that is that we are
going to experience loss. I would go to work, I

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just cannot concentrate. I\'d go play
basketball, whate... ever I would

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wanna do for recreation, could not
concentrate. That just my mind with a

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3,000 miles away just thinking about
them, total loss of concentration.

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Someone would ask you something, wouldn\'t remember
what it was. Four... I\'d say three or four

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months anyway to give it a time
frame, I just felt numbness. I walked

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around as if I were in a,
uhm, 3 miles thick fog. And

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I attempted to respond, and I guess I was fairly
successful at responding to out... outside

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stimuli. But, uhm, I was buried
some place deep in the center.

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I remember going to market and not
even being able to function. I...

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And I, I broke down and I started shaking
in the market, and, and normal, just

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everyday of things I couldn\'t do.
I, I couldn\'t work, I couldn\'t ah...

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I would wake up screaming every
morning, screaming and the

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reality was, was worse, ah, than my
worst dreams. My worst nightmares

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had been realized. The event
that, that the... of her death,

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although it was shocking, wasn\'t
something that... I didn\'t lose my

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appetite or, ah, change my work schedule.
I think that in the case

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where a, a person has the loss
of a parent, for instance,

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there is less dependency and perhaps
less intermingling of emotions, the

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adult child who\'s moved away and has
ah, achieved an independent status.

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I cherished the beautiful moments
we had together. I think what was

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uppermost in my mind, what el... a lot
of things that she wanted to do. And

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she denied herself many things while
she raised us. There were lots of

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trips and so forth that she didn\'t do.
But that, ah, she did with us,

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and, uhm, those memories which I think, those
fun things that we were able to do and

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accomplished together linger in my
mind as making her life complete.

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So I think the degree of
interrelationship, ah, will govern the

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time of grief and the intensity of grief.

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Dr. J. William Worden is a Harvard psychologist and
author who is conducting the childhood bereavement

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study at Massachusetts General Hospital.
One of the things that

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often confuses people who have recently
been bereaved is that they have

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experiences that they\'ve
never had before. But that

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their experiences, which are normal
to the grieving process, that is

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a normal profoundly in a number of
people who are bereaved, I think a,

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a good example of the would be, ah,
hallucinations of the dead person,

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ah, hearing the dead person\'s
voice or maybe seeing

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the dead person at the end of the bed, and so forth.
This can be very scary to somebody who is, ah, who

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is ah, ah, bereaved in. Well, on the other
hand, it can be comforting to some.

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Every time I\'d see a, a young boy in a baseball
cap, turned around, he always work(ph)

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turned around or on a skateboard or...

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Remembering when he was little, I, I... the
memory was just I couldn\'t take it. I\'d burst,

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burst into tears, I\'d break down.
If I saw a red truck,

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Toyota truck, boy, that was... I\'m

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looking for him. And finding myself looking for him and
thinking, \"Am I going crazy?\" It\'s not unusual for somebody

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to think rather obsessively about

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the death of the individual, the vast
conversations, what I could\'ve done, what I didn\'t

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do, what I could\'ve said, what I should\'ve said,
and so forth. I played the scenario in my

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head over and over and over, I rewind
and replay, and rewind and replay. And,

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uhm, the things that I saw in my head, I\'m like, \"Why don\'t
the detectives see this? Why don\'t the detectives see this?\"

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Constantly, if I\'d only end this?
\"What if I had come over early?\"

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\"What if I had been here?\" \"What... was there
anything I could have done to change it?\"

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The memory is really strong. I don\'t think it will
ever get weaker. But it just doesn\'t happen as,

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as occasionally as it did before.

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[music]

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We, Americans, are afraid of the feelings
associated with loss. Talking about death has

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become a taboo subject much the way pornography
once was. As a consequence, we deny

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our own grief and ignore others. Linda
Cunningham is the founder and director

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of Teen Age Grief Incorporated, a non-profit
organization providing education and

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support to teens. Margaret Mead has a quote
that may not be absolutely accurate,

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but she says \"When someone is born, there was
excitement and joy. When someone marries, we jubilated.

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When someone dies, we pretend
as though nothing has happened.

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.[14]And that is very much the way our

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society deals with loss. I didn\'t
go back to school. I got pulled out

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right away. I had to go back for records and stuff,
I wanna say goodbye. No one said \"goodbye\" to me,

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no one said \"hi\" to me. Uhm, if I said \"hi\" to
someone, I\'d be \"Oh, hi,\" and then turn and leave.

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Uhm, people that I would think were my best of(ph)
friends in the whole world would just say, \"Oh, hi! How

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are you doing? Okay, thanks, bye.\" And those are the
people that I was dependent on, and they were gone.

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I think that\'s one of the main problems with
grieving for teenagers, that there has been

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very little out there for kids to relate
to, because people run for grief.

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I\'m afraid it\'s not a whole lot different with
adults, although there are many more adult groups

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available now as compared to those for
teenagers. There\'s an interesting idea of

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death as pornography. Ah, it really isn\'t a
pornography, but it has the same kind of

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status that pornography has. We don\'t talk
about it. In fact, we talk more about

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pornography now that we do about death. We use
euphemisms for death. Well, our people don\'t

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die, they passed away or they, they go over
to the other side. We have a whole series of

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this. There\'s a difficulty with its language.
We don\'t like to think about it, because

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it marks termination, it marks the
end of everything. And that\'s scary.

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I felt quite turned off by
somebody who told me that

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I should lighten up a little, uhm,
that I take things too seriously.

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And so when I\'m around people like that
I, I put on a little extra shell and

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try to think of a latest joke I\'ve
heard of, or whatever. It is difficult

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to, to introduce the subjective death ***
people don\'t come around and saying, \"How are

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you feeling today?\" \"Are you feeling weepy
or whatever?\" A study done some years ago

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identified a 141

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comments following a death
that are... they are... these

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comments are so common
that there is a 95% chance

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the griever will hear everyone of
them multiple times within the first

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72 hours following with the death.
There are 19 helpful

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and a 122 that are not helpful. And that is

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85%. Grievers often hear statements that
exclude any expression or acceptance with

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their feelings, such things as,
\"It will just take time, or

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he\'s in a better place, or be grateful
you had them in your life at all.\"

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My boyfriend would say
he\'s in a better place or

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it was meant to be, or, or
he... and he doesn\'t have pain

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anymore or suffering, and I... it didn\'t
help me. Na... all these things that people

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said, and maybe things I used
to say to people didn\'t help.

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They just... I just want... I said, I just wanna
say, \"Don\'t, don\'t say those things to me,

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that\'s not helping me. Don\'t, don\'t tell me
that. Don\'t tell he\'s in a better place.

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I don\'t believe he\'s in a better place.
He\'s not supposed to be there,

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he\'s supposed to be here.\" So there are

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a lot of... there was a lot that
helped, but because I\'ve worked on

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being able to be honest in my life, I,
I, I have been able to say, \"Please

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don\'t say that to me, it\'s not helping
me.\" So the griever automatically thought

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that what they\'re feeling is not appropriate.
So instead of feeling that, please think

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something else, and that
happens 85% of the time. My

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best friend, his mother told me that...
She talked to more than he did. And she

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told me that he was intimidated, and we\'d get mad at
her for talking to me, because he thought that would

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make me cry. So I guess, they were pretty much trying
to protect me. But they were actually hurting me

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more. The reason people don\'t wanna
hear the negative or painful aspects of

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grief is that we, as a society, are
not familiar talking about half

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of our feelings. Uhm, as an
example, if someone goes

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on vacation, and then they come back to the
office or whatever, everyone in the office goes

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over and indeed encourages them to talk about the
experience, \"Where did you go? Who did you meet?

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What did you see? Did you have a wonderful time?\" If someone\'s
mother dies, you are expected to be back at work in three days and

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you are expected to be

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absolutely the same as you
were the day your mother died.

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I felt it very strongly at work,
ah, when I came back from Virginia

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to work for my mother\'s school, that
was a kind of painful things for me,

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because it seems like no one really cared
that you\'ve gone and your mother\'s died.

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For my father, I, I distinctly
remember going in afterwards and

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talking to my boss, I, I had to spend a couple
of weeks away to take care of business. And

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I said, \"Boss, I need to move
out a couple of date for, ah...

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Because I\'ve been gone a couple of weeks and I need to
adjust. \" \" Well, we can\'t move out these dates. This is

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important, I can\'t do it.\" So I felt
very hurt, very hurt. And one of

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the mandates for hospices
is bereavement after care.

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It\'s mandated by the charter
of the, ah, National Hospice

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Organization and other organizations
that, ah, credential this

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particular hospice programs.
But there\'s not money

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allocated to do bereavement follow-up very
often. We can say, we espouse bereavement care,

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but we\'re not, ah, not
supporting it financially, and

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third-party payers, and so forth do
not support bereavement. Finding

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social support for grievers is difficult.
Those who are disenfranchised by our society,

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suggest homosexual men and women, often
don\'t get the help they need. During this

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pandemic of AIDS, finding that support is
twice as important and twice as difficult.

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Sandra Jacoby Klein of West
Hollywood, California is a

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grief therapist and an author who
counsels gay men and lesbians.

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In a traditional setting, there may be
many support systems available to a

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survivor. In a gay setting, that\'s often
not available. The deceased\'s family

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is often not there, even the survivor\'s
family maybe very distant, emotionally

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or geographically. The workplace, often
people can understand why this person

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is so emotional over someone who is just
a friend. And many times there are not

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even mental health support systems
available or clergy available

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who can deal with the issue of homosexuality
and grief. It\'s very unusual to find

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the deceased\'s family available
as a support system for

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the survivor. His mother called
me in my office and said that

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\"Owl(ph), he\'s gone?\" So, I
immediately left my office

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to be with his mother. I was supportive
of his mother. I spent a lot of time

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with his mother. She had a lot to, to deal

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with, with the funeral arrangements,
and, ah, so I was... I would... I

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tried to be there whenever I could. And I think
there are other models of families that are

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emerging in our society that are
always very acceptable to the far

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
right, ah, but they\'re nevertheless are there.
And I think one of the, the clear examples is

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
in the gay community around
the issues of AIDS, where the

00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
normal nuclear family may not
be there for, ah, men and

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
women who are experiencing AIDS death. But
I\'ve seen friends and others come together

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
and create this kind of supportive family
life structures and become the families.

00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
And, ah, I see this is healthy.

00:18:55.000 --> 00:19:03.000
[music] Grief that is

00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
unresolved is often complicated by such
symptoms as depression, alienation and illness.

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
The social cost of this complications can be
measured by increased medical bills, substance abuse

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
and delinquency. The kinds
of physical problems

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
experienced by a, a person who
survives a loss experience have

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
indeed never been investigated in the
United States. We\'re not interested.

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
The Finnish government, however, recognized
that there was a direct cause and effect

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
relationship between the amount of money that was
being spent on medical intervention following the

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
death of the spouse. And so they went out and did a
research project that lasted for years and involved

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
95,000 widows and widowers. The,

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
the suicide rate amongst this
group was 242% higher than

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
normal.

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
The automobile accident rate, remember it\'s hard to concentrate, the automobile
accident rate amongst this group was 93% higher than, than a non-grieving

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
public. In the days from the day
of the loss till the seventh

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
day after the loss, the death rate of
this group of people was actually double.

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
And here we are in the United
States still trying to call grief,

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
stress. That(ph) there are number of studies
that have looked at the relationship between,

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
ah, bereavement and a person\'s,
ah, developing of an

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
illness after a loss or even in terms
of possibilities of death. The

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
findings from most of these studies are really
mixed. Most people can give you anecdotes

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
around people that they\'ve
known who have died

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
shortly after the death of a loved one. My first
death was the death of my grandmother and

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
grandfather, on the... on a... my father\'s side of
the family. They died within a week of each other.

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
The irony of the whole thing
between both of their death is my

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
sister died nine months to the
day after my mother died. And my

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
sister was buried on my mother\'s birthday.
Sometimes I think my sister\'s death

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
was brought about by a broken heart.
One of the things that

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
we see in the children that were following
in this Harvard Child Bereavement

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
study is that children
develop somatic or bodily

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
symptoms after the death of the parent. I
made myself sick with mostly headaches

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
and stomachaches and stuff. The lack
of eating, because you just don\'t feel

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
like it at that time. And, and making
myself sick. I slept a lot, because

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
that\'s the only thing I could do by myself,
uhm, and no one had to hear about it.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
I slept an awful lot, it made me feel better.
How do we get these doctors over here?

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
They\'re, they\'re, they\'re good practitioners, technicians,
but they don\'t, they don\'t... they\'re not thinking about the

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
psychosocial dimensions. They
don\'t really think of quality

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
of life. And the next problem which
I would hope that all grievers

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
don\'t have to, ah, to participate
in, is the... the person was

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
started to participate in short-term
feeling relievers. The, the

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
one in our society that
most grievers use, ah, is

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
food. They\'re iso... they\'re
isolating, they begin to eat more.

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
Ah, the digestive system diverts them
from the feelings. And so they think,

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
there\'s relief. The truth is, however, about
an hour or later, guess what comes back?

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
The other classic in our society
is alcohol. And those kinds of, of

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
feeling-relieving actions
are really just putting off

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
till later, what\'s gonna have
to be done sooner or later. I\'m

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
kind of, ah, a compulsive person, and I
always seem to have a problem with, with

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
eating, ah, like I go to sugar or something when
I, I, I kinda... I was... I had a lot of help from

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
friends. I did not use or
abuse food or alcohol or

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
anything during that time. I\'m very grateful
for that. And one study we did for teenagers

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
who\'d been hospitalized for drug and alcohol
abused, we found out that 86 to 92% of

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
these kids had had a loss and have not had
been abusing drugs and alcohol prior to the

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
death. And I feel that\'s a very
direct tie-in with abuse of

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
drugs and alcohol in a grief process. There\'s no
question in my mind especially with teenagers.

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
Yeah, I miss him. I miss him a lot.
And then I used to drink,

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
I used to drink, and do, do drugs.
Or a long

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
time ago, just drink mainly.
Yeah, (inaudible)

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
coz I won\'t facing(ph). I
think that grief can lead to

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
delinquency, uhm, in many
ways, because they are not

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
the people around to explain to kids what
grief looks like. And I had anger in me,

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
no one that will bring it on. And then
what happened, I got more homeboy skill. I

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
got more homeboy skill. A lot of the times
when I\'ll talk to a teenager for the

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
first time, I\'ll ask them, \"What would you like
to do if you could do anything right now?\" And

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
usually they\'ll say, \"I wanna punch someone
out, I wanna hurt somebody.\" And, ah,

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
very often I get in trouble. I just, you
know, go back around to see if I\'ll

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
see anyone there. You know, he was(ph) didn\'t
get along with us, just go out for me.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
We\'re just, we\'re just doing that.

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
They may wanna numb out their pain
with drugs and alcohol. They may find

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
themselves getting sexually active, because if I\'m sexually
active, I don\'t have to feel and then I\'m dealing with this

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
pregnancy, this abortion, or I may decide that
I wanna take my own life, because this just

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
doesn\'t feel like it\'s
worth living.\" Fr. Gregory

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
Boyle is a Jesuit priest at Dolores Mission at the
top Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. Since

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
1986, Fr. Boyle has worked passionately
at gang reform. Frankly, the number of

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
funerals that we do here largely
are, are young men, you know, who

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
have been killed in gang violence.
And, ah, rare(ph) frank...

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
Frankly are, are the old folks that you
bury around here. Like I buried 26 kids

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
mainly in the last four years.
Everybody says

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
teenage suicide is on the rise. I\'d never, in
my life as it... I\'d been a priest eight years.

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
I\'ve never had to bury a kid who killed
himself or herself. And yet maybe I buried

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
26 here. No, I didn\'t get in any trouble at all just to
be sad(ph), being yelled at for sometimes showing my

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
grief in front of the family or getting sick
when I should\'ve been working, uhm, but now no

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
trouble otherwise. Actually I achieved
more, because ah, I grew stronger

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
as I was lonely. And because I
was lonely, I did a lot more

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
to fill the empty space. I did get a job.
I worked on my schoolwork

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
an awful lot. And I graduated with honors.
I think it\'s

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
important that were not just paying attention
to the kid who has become delinquent. There

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
are a lot of other kids out there who appear okay, but
because you don\'t see it doesn\'t mean that is not happening.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
And they get overlooked, so they
wanna just look for the demonic.

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
Unresolved grief is not the only a cause of
a social ills. But it is a factor we have

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
been ignoring when dealing with the
problems based on our society.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:38.000
[music]

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
A common myth about mourning is that you
must do it alone. This is false. You cannot

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
grieve alone. Healing requires reaching out
to others and accepting their support.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
Grief is a, is a social phenomenon.
Ah, oftentimes

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
people don\'t recognize that sufficiently.
That is, one doesn\'t

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
adequately grieve alone. Ah, we\'re
built so that when we sustain

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
of loss, we share that loss with one
another and need that kind of social

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
support. The best social support comes when
people who knew the dead person come together to

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
support one another. There
were probably 800 people

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
at the funeral. The hundreds
of deaf friends of his, we

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
had an interpreter. And I gave
the eulogy, my son John(ph)

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
stood with me. I just did it.

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
And I wanted to do it because I wanted
everybody to know what a good kid he was.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
And I think I succeeded in that.

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
And I think I felt, I felt good about it.
In a complicated

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
situation, not only do you have to take more
responsibility for yourself, but your friends have to take

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
more responsibility for you too. Grieving is
a social process as well as an individual

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
process. And, ah, the most
difficult grief or the

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
people who are isolated and who are all
alone. I just want them to just come by

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
and just, just, just like the usually did.
And that... ah, it has a lot

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
easier for me... for those people who were able to
come by and said, \"Well, how are you doing? How is

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
everything?\" I didn\'t want a lot
of sympathy this. Just let me know

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
that you will be here for me. It\'s all
I need. More than anything else, the

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
bereaved need to heard. Open-ended questions
that encourage a response are most

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
welcomed. Questions such as, \"How did
you find out that he or she died?\"

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
Or \"What happened to them?\" Or
\"What was your relationship like?\"

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
Most valuable, our two friends,
both of whom have lost their

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
husbands, so we can sit down
as equals, not only do we

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
value each other, but I\'ve known them
for 40 or 50 years. And we don\'t have

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
to apologize for the intensity of our

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
feelings. We can talk about it and if we
feel like crying a little... Grievers need

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
acceptance. Yes you are in pain, yes I
understand, and yes I\'m here if I can help.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Rev. Cecil Murray is a board member
for the National Council on Aging and

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
pastor of the First African Methodist
Episcopal Church of Los Angeles. Most

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
people die, never really having lived.

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
And, and to live is to love. And you

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
never can show love better than when

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
someone\'s loved one has died. You can do
nothing for the dead, that\'s God\'s property.

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
You can do everything for the living.
So we want the bereaved person

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
to weep and know you are
not weeping alone. To cry,

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
to hurt, and know you\'re not alone.
And that\'s what the loving

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
community must do.

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
Another part of social support
has to do with our ethnic

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
and religious background, because our
ethnic and religious background sets

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
the tone for how that social
support is delivered, so that if

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
we are Jewish, we may set shiva a period
of a week where people come to the home

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
to, ah, facilitate the mourning of the immediate
family and there are certain, ah, temple

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
rituals that one goes through for a period of time,
perhaps the unveiling of the headstone at the first

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
anniversary. All of those religious
traditions then suggest how

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
people support one another in a more
formal ritualistic kind of way.

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
The African culture and the
European culture tend to approach

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
death, grief, sadness in
different ways. So I was

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
there expecting my workmates, whom I work with
most of them for eight years or more, ah,

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
just to be there to support or
maybe send a card or, ah, plant or

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
flowers, something that\'s how... when I grew
up in my small town in Virginia. That\'s

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
the way we expressed our, our grief and showed
sympathy. And it was none that they had,

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
so I felt like, \"Wow, this is really
incredible.\" They really just don\'t care. Black

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
people weep, blap(ph)... black
people wailed. At a funeral, they

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
may fall out in trash, this is fine.
And, and sitting

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
there, there will usually be someone who will
sit next to the person and just fan them.

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
It isn\'t hot, it\'s the attention.
It\'s saying, \"We\'re here for you.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
It\'s all right.\" We worry
only if the people are too

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
straight, stiff upper lip,
Anglo-Saxon type. No, no, no.

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
That is not our culture. We even have
an expression, \"Let it all hang out.\"

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
And that\'s what we should do at
the time of pain. Let it go,

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
and then God can fill the emptiness. The
role of the church in the grieving process

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
at a place like this, which is the poorest
church in the city of L.A., and largely

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
Latino, ah, Mexicano, is to really

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
accompany the people in their grief, you
know. It\'s not, it\'s not a kind of ah,

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
to tell them that this is God\'s will, that, that
this awful thing happened, or that an untimely death

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
happened. They\'re(ph) always would kind of say, you
know, \"God has never abandoned us or left us.\"

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
In the church sort of... or the hope would be that
the church would model that for the person and

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
say, \"Here we are not just priest, but community,
and you know kind of... embraces you, and

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
walks with you and supports you, and, and together
we will get through this.\" The historical

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
center of Los Angeles is Alvaro Street. It is
also the culture of center for the City\'s Mexican

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
residence. Every year, on November
1st, All Saints\' Day, the Mexican

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
community celebrates Dia de los Muertos,
or the Day of the Dead. Although the

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
celebration corresponds with Halloween, it is
radically different. It\'s a very holy day and

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
a blessed day. It\'s not celebrated
like Halloween, because

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
today it\'s a... the day we, we call the

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
pan de los muertos, we break bread with our
families or friends, food, place it(ph)... an

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
important part. Also, we share, invite
people over or we boarded their

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
house, and we remember our deal.
We\'ve(ph) with, ah,

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
make altars to the... our loved ones.
We put fruit, bre(ph)...

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
Food, bread, around their
photograph, with oration to

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
Guadalupe. They can be gone for
years, but you, you feel them so

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
close to you. Then it helps
you, so that you don\'t

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
grieve so deep and so hard, cuz you feel
they\'re here. I know they\'re here. I sense

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
them. I can feel them.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
[music]

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
One aspect of healing
grief involves completing

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
the relationship with the deceased. Achieving
closure prior to death is a courageous

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
and important step. We spent our lives,
ah, at the Institute helping people

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
complete relationship with the people who
have died. It is far easier to complete

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
relationships with people before they die.
Now interestingly enough,

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
dying people almost always will
lead the way for grievers.

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
We got close ones, we sat at the dinner
table and he said, \"I know I\'m dying.\"

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
And... but he didn\'t go
any further than that.

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
And I realized I should\'ve said, \"Tell me
how does it feel, I know how I feel.\" And

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
I told him how I felt, but I didn\'t say, \"Honey
tell me about it.\" I should\'ve made him cry,

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
weeps, something like that. And
now all I can do is regret it.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
I think closure is one of the most
important things that we can do at the

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
time of death. And that is to say there
are gaps in relationship. People need to

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
say \"I love you,\" people need to say \"It\'s okay,
I, I\'ve forgotten all about what you\'re... ah,

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
the thing that\'s troubling you, and
so on.\" About two months before he

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
died, he started talking about his feeling.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
I didn\'t even wanna hear about death.
So about three days later,

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
I went over to visit him and started talking
about it again, what he wanted at his

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
memorial service or at the funeral services. And
I said, \"Okay, we need to write these things

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
down. What hymns you want? \" Who you
want to speak?\" Different things

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
like that. Once we do talk about
it, we get over our initial fear.

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
We carry with us a sense that we have
accomplished something that helps

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
us as we go through the grieving process,
through the mourning and this very healing.

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:08.000
[music]

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
Mental health professionals often
speak of grief as a path or a

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
steps, or even the stages that one
must move through. Dr. Worden prefers

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
to think of grief as four nonlinear tasks.
I prefer to think about

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
the mourning process as related to tasks.
There are basically four

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
tasks which people need to deal with
after the death of a loved one.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
These tasks are not in any particular order,
but if they\'re not adequately dealt with,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
then the person isn\'t moving through
their, their bereavement. The

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
first task of mourning is to accept the
reality of the loss. When somebody dies,

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
there\'s always a certain(ph) set of unreality
even in the case for the death who expect

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
it. There\'s several things that will help a person
with his first task of mourning. One is being

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
able to talk about it first, ah,
including talking about the person in

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
past tense, using difficult
words like, \"My son was killed\"

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
Ah, and that... and so forth. What
really happening was knowing

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
that I could let down
and, and show my grief,

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
because I had never... I always tried to
be strong, and I can handle stress and

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
deal with all these things, but this was
something I couldn\'t handle. And being able to

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
let my friends know how I felt was
a big help. Another, ah, thing

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
that will help the first task
of mourning is to, if possible,

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
see the person dead. It\'s pretty hard they go
on believing that the person is still alive,

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
if you\'d seen the person, ah, go on.
We had been

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
told by the funeral director

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
that we could attend the cremation
or not as we chose. And I

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
told my son and daughter that I did not want
to. I wanted to remember Leo as he had been.

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
But thank Kevin, I decided
to go, because when I saw

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
his face after his death,

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
he had a lot of such piece, such an
affable piece, and it erased all of the,

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
ah, terrible looks of torture, and

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
uhm, deterioration that he had
had for the ensuing... or the

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
preceding months. And it was as if I can
let him go after seeing that piece.

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
Another friend of ours made a panel for
the eight\'s(ph) quilt. It was dedicated

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
at the Methodist Church in Hollywood.
And I went and videotaped this,

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
so that helped me as well to
physically see these things that are

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
being done. Ronald Beams is manager
of Clergy Relations at Forest

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. I don\'t
even use the word \"funeral\" anymore in

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
my own vocabulary in discussing the funeral
service. I use more like \"memorial

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
service,\" because that service is
really a wrap-up using a production

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
term. It is a wrap-up for that person\'s
life. The second task of mourning

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
is to experience the pain of the loss,

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
ah, and I mean, pain everybody(ph) can
see, physical pain, mental pain, emotional

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
pain, behavioral pain and so forth.
And the pain was like a knife,

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
just like a knife. And I beat the
covers every morning. I wake up

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
and I still didn\'t wanna get out of
bed and face the day. It feels a

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
lot like a knife in a stomach, particularly
because of the three people, and

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
each one it seems like it just turned it
even more. Thus it will just increase the

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
pain and see how much you can bear.
I was filled with rage. I

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
felt that he was betraying me, \"How dare he\'d
be this ill, how dare he do these stupid

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
things.\" In my head, I knew
that he couldn\'t help it. But

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
in my... in my visual
reaction I thought he\'s

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
doing it for some purpose. He could fight
harder, he could do better if he really try.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
Anger that is suppressed and that doesn\'t
manifest itself is like putting a

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
cap on a volcano. You, you stop it from coming
out of the top, and it comes out the sides.

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
And that can be in all kinds of
physical ways. I started getting a lot

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
of pain in my back, and I talk to

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
somebody about it, and, ah, a
nun from the church gave me a

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
thing on, on how we hold in
anger, it comes out. And I

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
realized that I was angry. My anger is that

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
my best friend is gone. He was a

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
young man. He died young and that\'s
what I\'m angry at. I\'m angry at the

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
disease, not of his passing. I\'m angry
at the disease that killed him.

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
There\'s anger at the disease,
there\'s anger at the frustration,

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
there\'s anger at the system that gets in the
way. The insurance companies that won\'t pay, the

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
hospitals that won\'t protect people,
and certainly society which still

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
continues to discriminate against
this population. The experiencing of

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
relief when someone dies is a very
interesting experience, because two

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
things can happen. First of all, the
pressure is off, the long-term care is over,

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
and one can breathe a sigh of being free.
And immediately you do

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
this, you feel guilty because one
shouldn\'t feel that way. When my husband

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
died, gradually the rage I felt...
Had felt during his illness,

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
uhm, turned to guilt. And I wonder how

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
I could possibly have been so
selfish and inhuman as to feel this

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
kind of anger. Uhm,

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
I discussed the guilt feelings too in
a group, because I realized gradually

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
that is a normal part of the grieving
process. The anger that I had

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
felt toward him for do... taking his

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
life actually came out that
I was... I had to forgive

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
him. The hardest thing of all.
And then forgiving Michael

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
for taking his life. I\'d forgive myself

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
for the things I didn\'t do,
for the things I didn\'t say,

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
for the times I wasn\'t there,

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
and to just believe that, that I
did the, the best I could do,

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
because I did. If it\'s a bad
death, if it\'s an untimely death,

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
then people are going to vent their anger at whoever
happens to be in their way, especially a new

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
person that\'s not part of their life. And
as a result of that, things will be said.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
And I will say that we in the funeral
industry are, are very, very

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
sensitive to those issues. If someone wants to
lash out in their anger, we understand that.

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
We are not going to come back at them defensively.
We will let them share their feelings.

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
But it\'s my thesis that people need to
experience the pain, because if the pain is not

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
experienced, it\'s either gonna manifest itself as
some kind of physical symptom or the person is going

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
to develop some kind of psychological symptom
or the pain is gonna reside there to

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
come forth later on in some kind of subsequent
loss. Part of the second task of mourning,

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
feeling the pain, means being responsible
for your emotions. This is accomplished

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
when the griever makes the decision
to heal. Most people are surprised to

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
discover that they have a choice in grieving,
because they\'ve never been told that. They\'ve

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
always been told, \"Well, it just takes
time, and there\'s nothing you can do about

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
it. It\'s over now.\" And, and they said
are foolishness. To me, it takes work

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
to get better, didn\'t just happen. I had to

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
make the decision and make that
choice to wanna feel better. Don\'t be

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
afraid to cry. I cried as many a night.
And I\'m not

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
afraid or ashamed that I did. I have
to grieve, I have to do whatever I can

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
to grieve. But she didn\'t, you must go on.
My job was to get in touch

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
with my feelings, and think about
the past and try to, try to

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
resolve and to, ah, complete,
as they put it in the book, the

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
relationship. I think it\'s
tremendously important

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
to... for anybody in a grieving
process to have a support group.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
The group was great. It... uhm, we talked.
Uhm, someday as you\'d come home

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
sad. Sometimes, you\'d come home as...
Absolutely ecstatic. Sometimes we do

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
exercises that relate to the person
who died. If there was not closure

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
before the death, we can have closure in
the session, we can write a letter to the

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
person, we can talk about what you would\'ve
like to have said that you didn\'t say.

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
We had different kind of workshops. We,
ah, had the racket bats(ph) and the

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
racket dolls(ph). We tore Kleenex out
of boxes, tore apart telephone books.

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
Uhm, we cried, we ah, we had a,

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
a good trip I would say. I\'m not
sure what we call that, ah, a

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
guided, guided imagery. Because I did
the footwork, I remember talking

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
to a counselor s... afterwards and saying,
\"This is like a miracle when I got

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
through the book, and this pain... I felt the
actual lifting of the pain by the time I

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
got through the steps. And I said,
\"It\'s like miracle.\" And he said,

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
\"That\'s not a miracle.\" He said,
\"That\'s your willingness to work.\"

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
When we think about the third task of mourning,
adjusting to an environment where the

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
deceased is missing, it\'s not only adjusting
to living in an empty house or paying

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
bills or how do you talk to children
and so forth. But I think it also

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
involves how that death
changes how we see ourself,

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
in terms of our self-concept.
Ah, but also it

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
challenges how we see ourself in the world.
I\'ve been keeping active in sports

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
and exercise, and even watchin\' what
I\'ve been eating lately, so that I\'ll

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
be healthier. I think, when the heart attack is
involved, I\'m just a little bit more cognizant

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
now. And perhaps I should take even
better care of myself. The living

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
person has to now define who they are,

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
absent of this other person
that was part of them,

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
and that is a process of discovery.
As the intensity of my

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
loss gradually lessened,
I tried to remember

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
what I had wanted to do,
what my goals were,

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
perhaps, 40 or 50 years ago. In high
school, I knew I wanted to be a

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
psychologist. So I volunteer at
Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
Additionally, ah, I had always
enjoyed the visual arts,

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
and increasingly I am
working with assemblages,

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
calligraphy and making various kinds of wall
hangings. When I worked with teenagers,

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
I think my main goal is to help that
teen discover the strength that

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
is already inside of them and to believe in
that strength. When you\'re in that kind of

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
pain, you think you have nothing to give and nothing
to give to yourself, you\'re just in a survival

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
mode. And it\'s important for them
when I discover that strength.

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
What it does is it helps to take them out
of that victim role. But I don\'t want a

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
teenager to end up doing this for the rest of
their life. See themselves as a victim, \"If my

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
father hadn\'t died when I was 14, my life
wouldn\'t be this way. As long as I\'m a

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
victim, as long as everything that goes wrong is
because of the death, I will never heal,\" victims

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
don\'t heal. I helped out a
lot with different people

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
grieving basically. If I knew how bad I felt
then I didn\'t want anyone else to feel so bad.

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
So I, I helped a lot in grief groups now.
In a hard case of a

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
person who will not adjust, we ask
them to take a job in the church, give

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
them 20 or 30 people, and make them a leader,
they\'ll be so busy with the mission.

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
They may come out of themselves. They may.
Working with kids at, at Childrens

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
Hospital too has given me a perspective.
I think I got problems,

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
I look at kids who maybe won\'t live
beyond, you know, name it, you know,

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
six months, two years, whatever. So that
this made me realized that death is a

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
constant in our life. The fourth task
of mourning is more difficult to

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
define. But it involves relocating
the dead person in your life,

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
so that the person is still in your
life, but that you can move forward

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
with your life. My father took us all...
The whole family to Hawaii, it\'s really

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
just a horror to them. And it was a beautiful
thing, my brother\'s kids and all that,

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
we all got to go, we got this one station wagon for
a couple of days, we drove the island and so forth.

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
We did all these things together. We had all that
together and we share those memories. And I had

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
books and photographs, all of that,
that helps sustain us. And I know

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
that she lived to fulfill her life. That
gets me over, that helps me overcome that,

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
that period of loss. I mean, you must
keep in mind that when someone dies,

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
the only aspect of a relationship
that truly ends is the

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
physical aspect. I still have
emotional aspect or relationship with

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
everyone I ever loved, even those some of them happened
to be dead. The Owl lives on and Quil(ph), he also

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
lives in and lives on in my heart,

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
because he\'s a part of me. One of the things
in our child bereavement study in Boston

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
we\'re aware of is how much children
need as they go through life to

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
rethink about the parent that they lost.
Now, I\'m just facing life itself.

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
Uhm, like with girls, there is the
marriage, their graduation from high

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
school, their graduation from college, meeting with boyfriends
and proving they have the boyfriends, just things that most

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
girls are gonna have, like going out to
lunch or dinner, dressing for prom. Uhm,

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
I may(ph) know I miss out on that stuff that
I really wish she could have been there for.

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
When I\'m with my grandchildren, I tell them
about their uncle Michael, we talked about

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
him as if they knew him, even
though they don\'t remember.

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
I have pictures around, and
there are days when it\'s

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
painful, but there\'s never a day that goes
by that I don\'t think of him and pray

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
for him. But I don\'t have the
agony and the grief that

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
I had in the beginning or in the first
few months. There is an ongoing

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
relationship with the deceased and loved one. Here
at Forest Lawn, it is not uncommon to see people

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
coming back very regularly to go to our grave site,
that\'s why you have a cemetery to be able to go

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
back to remember.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:38.000
[music]

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
The general, when the sadness changes
from the more wrenching sadness

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
to a more mellow sadness, that\'s a
pretty good indication that a person is

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
beginning to move through the grief.

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
Ah, getting back in touch
with my dreams in the

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
very specific ways I described
gives me a sense of

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
forward emotions of moving positively
toward something life has offer me.

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
So the more they discover themselves, the more
they reach around and help others in a process,

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:16.999
having more quickly (inaudible)

00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:18.999
and they go on to (inaudible)

00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:20.000
.

00:52:20.001 --> 00:52:24.999
And they also had picked off some tools along the
way to deal with other losses and problems that are

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
going to come in all of our lives. Because
due to her death, I do help out people now.

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
I am in pure counseling, I help out other people
who\'ve been in grief or have problem. I can

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
see how it\'s been a positive effect to us to know
people get more out of me. And I can help people more.

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
But in personal way, I\'d much rather
had to see her here. The grieving

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
experiences can in fact, if they
are successfully completed,

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
enhance your life rather than limit it.
To think guilt has come out of you

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
other the... is the thought
that has made me stronger.

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
Amazingly enough, I thought I
just fall apart but I haven\'t,

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
and I\'m strong. I think it has
me made more peaceful, ah,

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
tend to be a lot less excited as it
seems even I worked out it\'s such a

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
noticeable difference in there, so much common
now. And I think it\'s because I realized

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
that you can go at any time. So
it\'s not tough one in the rest

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
of life and being too concerned about a lot of
different things, cuz you don\'t know when your

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
time is. I don\'t know when my time is
gonna come. So it\'s maybe calm, ah,

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
peaceful and perhaps a lot stronger.
A good friend of mine who was

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
a priest said to me ah, that he was
told that the person has a normal

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
\"life\" as somebody that
loves and works and plays.

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
And that\'s what my life is today. I feel
like I\'m normal, comfortable person

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
today because I have my work, I
have my grandchildren, I have my

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
good relationship with my
friends, and, and my home, and

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
I\'m, I\'m, I\'m much happier today than I\'ve ever been
in my life. And I never thought I would be able to

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
say that. I did not think I would ever
live to hear myself say what I am

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
about to say. I do not... I am
not happy that I had a son who

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
died. But it is also true that I
would not be the person I am today

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
had my son not died. I would
say I\'m, I\'m much stronger

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
than I have been for many,
many years, ah, I hope to be a

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
survivor for a long time, and because
there are so much in life to reach out

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
for. Although at one time, it seems as
if the end of the world had occurred

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
when my husband died. I realized
that there\'s still a lot of life

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
out there to experience. Grief is not
about forgetting those who have died,

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
it\'s about honoring them. It\'s about redefining
those relationships and including them

00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
in your life as you live your life.
Healing is about creating new

00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
relationships and allowing yourself to enjoy
life again. But we cannot do this alone.

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
As we begin a new millennium, the
challenge facing us as Americans lies in

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:20.000
tempering our individuality with
a strong sense of community.