Death Among the Living

I am glad to see that when I did a search on the internet about the grieving process that many things/articles appear to address this subject. That means to me that society is starting to become more open about accepting grief.

As I was digging around for articles to help people grieve one of the questions I noticed was, "Do you need someone to talk to?" And that was the very thing that we weren't allowed to do. Grief is a process of changing ourselves in order that we can function in life in the absence of the loved one. For some, the stages of grief will go be swiftly. For others, who are not encouraged to express those feelings, painful as they may be, may spend the majority of their life stuck in grief.

As I reflect hearing about the death of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife, I recall one of my older siblings saying it was so similar to our mother's death, even right down to the barking dog.
That was the beginning of my grieving my mother's death. I was now 30 years old and my mother was murdered when I was five years old. Because of the nature of her death, with possible abuse and my father's abuse of alcohol, I don't recall ever getting to discuss my mother's death.

And I believe the family simply goes through the motions of what society or their religious beliefs tell them to do. And very possibly some people do find comfort in each of those things. My mother's death was in the late '60's. I found it very ironic that, even though counseling was never offered to my siblings, counseling was one of the first things that I heard mentioned in the news reports regarding the Simpson children after the death of their mother. In fact, I remembered being angry at how this was never offered to us.

It is tragic in many different ways for children who experience the death of a parent, especially when it is a murder. In my case, my father was convicted of the murder. So I essentially lost both of my parents at the same time, my home, neighborhood, and was moved to live in a different state over 900 miles away. The only comfort in this situation was that three of my siblings moved with me.