Story #14: Healing and Concluding the Relationship [1] Posted 04 Mar 2022
This is one story in a series of 15 on End of Life.
Getting stuck in any kind of emotional unfinished business prevents us from completing our mourning. We may sustain an unbalanced image of the deceased, seeing him or her as our lifelong nemesis or as a saint who could do no wrong.
After a death, whether expected or sudden, we are challenged to communicate all of our conflicting emotions, frustrations and unexpressed regrets. If we didn’t do so previously, we will also need to conclude our relationship and say goodbye.
Jenny, an old friend of mine, showed me her account of her encounters with death, which was written for a college class. In two pages, she described in great detail her father’s illness and death, which had occurred three years earlier. I was startled to see one sentence standing alone at the end of the story: “Six weeks after my father’s death, my mother died.”
Complete your reading on Healing and Concluding the Relationship
[1] Extracts from Facing Death and Finding Hope:
A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying By Christine Longaker, Broadway Books, New York 2001, 262 pp
