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Bereavement to Grief Its All a Process

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Bereavement is the time after a major loss or the experience when loosing someone. Grief is the emotional response. Your grief process will depend heavily upon the way in which the death took place. I am going to explore the bereavement process that takes place when loosing a loves one due to terminal illness and the experience of grief after the loved is gone. Sandra P. Aldrich writes, "Anticipatory grief may very will be cancer's only redeeming factor." When loosing a spouse to terminal illness both you and your spouse begin the grief process together and will go through 5 stages of grief together, that Elisabeth Ross Kuegler has identified. The words bereavement and grief will be used interchangeably, however bereavement is a choiceless event. Grieving is the experience is understood as an active coping process permeated by choice.(Thomas Attig) How the dying and the survivor go through the process will have many determining factors, such as their ability to be honest with each other about how they may be feeling about the inevitable death. Are they prepared financially? What is their spiritual strength? Are there children to be considered? Does the survivor know the wishes of the dying? The first stage of th bereavement is denial. This stage begins almost as soon as the words come out of the doctor's mouth. Immediately the couple is searching for second opinions, convinced that the doctor has read the chart wrong, got charts of the one dying mixed up with someone else's chart. As the spouse of the dying they start grasping at straws to find the cure. Only to find them exhausted and still faced with the reality of death. Robert A. Neimeyer PhD professor of Psychology as the University of Memphis refers ti this as the avoidance stage of grief. How long does this stage last? According ti Granger E. Westberg, a professor of medicine and religion, believes

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