Tag: Grief

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Health

Mourning Households Search Solace From the ‘Grief Purgatory’ of Covid-19

Mourning Families Seek Solace From the ‘Grief Purgatory’ of Covid-19

“For us Native Americans we need to be together, eat, share stories, and pray so that our loved ones who are dead can reach out to the Creator,” said Robert Gill, a funeral director from Buffalo, Minnesota, and a resident of the Sisseton tribe of the Wahpeton Oyate.

Mr Gill said he kept some bodies for months to give people an opportunity to organize a larger funeral. When these gatherings finally take place, attendees will be served “liquor platters” – with ancestral favorite dishes such as fried ribs, aronia jam and fried buffalo.

Many families use the extended planning periods to create detailed reminders.

Frederick Harris, a Vietnam War veteran, loved Smirnoff vodka with grapefruit juice and Motown music, so daughter Nicole Elizabeth, 34, will serve and play at his memorial ceremony in Hadley, Massachusetts later that year.

“It’s daunting to plan because I want to be fun and be able to share memories with so many people,” she said. “But I hope it will bring me some peace, because for many of us it was just that limbo.”

About 60 people attended church in June to honor the father of Mrs. Zimmerman-Selvidge. Those present passed a microphone over the benches and exchanged memories of him.

Finally it was his daughter’s turn. Mrs. Zimmermann-Selvidge sighed. “He loved us all so much,” she said, then paused.

Her father’s urn was on a table in front of her. In her purse was a letter she had forced herself to receive after his death.

It started with words that were sometimes too painful to say out loud, “I miss you”.

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World News

Grief Mounts as Efforts to Ease Israel-Hamas Battle Falter

Grief Mounts as Efforts to Ease Israel-Hamas Fight Falter

GAZA CITY – Diplomats and international leaders failed to broker a ceasefire in the recent Israel-Hamas conflict on Sunday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to continue the fight and the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a joint response to the worsening Bloodshed.

The diplomatic clashes came after the fighting, most intense in seven years in Gaza and Israel, entered its deadliest period to date. At least 42 Palestinians were killed in an air strike on several apartments in Gaza City early Sunday morning, Palestinian officials said, the deadliest episode of the conflict to date.

Mr. Netanyahu’s vow proved true a few hours later when The Associated Press reported: Israeli warplanes launched a series of heavy air strikes in several locations in the Gaza Strip early Monday.

Explosions rocked the city from north to south for 10 minutes in an attack that was heavier, covered a larger area, and lasted longer than a series of air strikes 24 hours earlier that killed the 42 Palestinians – the deadliest single attack of the final round the violence between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules Gaza. Previous Israeli air strikes flattened three buildings.

According to local media reports, targets hit early Monday included the main coastal road west of Gaza City, security links and open spaces. The power distribution company said the air strikes damaged a line that supplies electricity from the only power station to large areas in the south of the city.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

According to Palestinian officials, the number of people killed in Gaza rose to 197 in the seven days of the conflict, while the number of Israeli residents killed by Palestinian militants rose to 11, including one soldier, the Israeli government said.

On Sunday afternoon, the street bombed in the airstrike created a desperate scene when Anas al-Yazji, a graphic designer, climbed over the rubble in search of his fiancée Shaimaa Abul Ouf. Between the fragments of the broken walls was a wallet, a necklace, a Koran, and even a couple of handbags.

But 12 hours after Israel hit the building – aiming, the Israeli army said, at an underground network of Hamas tunnels – there was still no sign of Ms. Abul Ouf.

“I’ll wait here until we find them,” said 24-year-old al-Yazji as a yellow excavator shoveled debris from one pile to the other. “Then I’ll bury her.”

As darkness fell, the fighting showed no sign of subsiding.

“Citizens of Israel,” said Netanyahu in a speech on Sunday afternoon at the headquarters of the Israeli army in Tel Aviv, “our campaign against the terrorist organizations is continuing with full force.”

He added: “We want to put a price on the attacker, as we do with all forms of terrorism. It will take time to restore calm and security and to rebuild deterrence and governance. “

Mr Netanyahu’s promise came amid mounting international criticism of Israeli air strikes in Gaza that began last Monday after Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem after a month of mounting tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in the holy city.

The Israeli army says its goal is to destroy the military infrastructure of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave of about two million people that is under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Israel blames Hamas for the civilian casualties in Gaza and says the group is hiding militants in residential areas.

That statement was scrutinized over the weekend when Israeli jets destroyed a tower in Gaza City that housed two major international news outlets, The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, after calling the owner of the building and telling him to rent evacuate. An Israeli strike killed at least 10 members of the same family in a home in a refugee camp and caused collateral damage in a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid group.

Then on Sunday morning the air raid hit Ms. Abul Ouf’s house. Two relatives said the strike killed two members of their immediate family, at least 12 members of their extended family and more than 30 neighbors, and left their mother in critical condition.

In a statement, the Israeli army said it had “hit an underground military structure of the Hamas terrorist organization that was located under the street”. It added: “Hamas is deliberately locating its terrorist infrastructure under civilian houses and putting them at risk. The underground foundations collapsed, causing civil housing to collapse above them and unintentional casualties. “

American Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield urged Hamas and Israel to exercise restraint at the Security Council meeting on Sunday to find a way to end the violence.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Updated

May 16, 2021, 7:21 p.m. ET

“The United States calls on all parties to ensure the protection of civilians and respect international humanitarian law,” she said. “We also call on all parties to protect medical and other humanitarian institutions as well as journalists and media organizations.”

The Security Council adjourned with no action or statement indicating that members could not agree on what to say. China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun, whose country holds the presidency this month, said after the meeting that he was working to ensure that the council “take immediate action and speak with one voice”.

Hady Amr, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli and Palestinian affairs, concluded a day of talks on Sunday with key Israeli officials and the office of the Quartet, which mediates peace negotiations in the Middle East. He is said to have similar talks on Monday with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, which rules parts of the West Bank but lost control of Gaza in 2007.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas last week sparked a wave of related violence between Arabs and Jews in Israel itself. This and demonstrations in the occupied West Bank have led analysts to wonder if the Palestinians are on the verge of a major uprising, the third since the late 1980s. The protests and clashes were less intense on Sunday after massive crackdown by police in Israel and the Israeli army in the West Bank.

But Arabs and Jews clashed in the Negev desert in southern Israel, in East Jerusalem, and in Lod, a mixed Arab-Jewish town in central Israel. Police response to last week’s riots has mainly centered on Arabs following attacks on synagogues, which some had likened to a pogrom.

On Sunday, an umbrella organization for Arab leaders in Israel appealed to the international community to protect the Palestinian citizens of Israel “from violent attacks and human rights violations by state and private actors”. The group added: “Palestinian citizens share a fear for their lives.”

On Sunday afternoon, a Palestinian rammed a police checkpoint and injured several police officers in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Seconds later, the police fatally shot the driver. Several Palestinian families are evicted from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in a case that has fueled the Palestinian national sentiment and created the conditions for renewed conflict in Gaza.

The rocket fire by Hamas and other militant Islamist groups in Gaza over the weekend included a large barrage over central Israel early on Sunday morning.

Most of these missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome, an anti-missile detection system partially funded by the United States. But wherever they met, they terrorized Israeli residents, especially in cities like Sderot, which are near the Gaza Strip.

An explosion this weekend destroyed a fifth-floor apartment in Sderot, killing a 5-year-old boy and tearing a hole in another where Eli Botera, his wife Gitit and their young daughter Adele huddled into the baby’s bedroom.

“My wife panicked and started screaming,” said Mr Botera. “After all, everything is up to God. Everyone has to do what they can to protect themselves, but if it is your fate to die, you will die. “

The deadliest attacks were in Gaza – and the most important of them was the air strike on Ms. Abul Ouf’s house in Al-Wehda, a busy, affluent neighborhood in Gaza City, full of shops and apartment blocks.

Ms. Abul Ouf trained as a dentist and lived at home with her parents and siblings, relatives said. By Sunday morning, two were dead and three were injured and torn from the rubble, relatives said. Ms. Abul Ouf’s father, a supermarket owner, was unharmed after fixing a neighbor’s internet one night.

Ms. Abul Ouf was due to marry Mr. al-Yazji in two months. You last spoke early Sunday when the bombing began, Mr. al-Yazji said.

“Hide yourself,” he remembered telling her in a text message.

But the message never got through.

Mr. al-Yazji spent hours on Sunday searching the rubble for her. Government rescuers hurled rubble away stone by stone, and when they discovered a corpse, Mr. al-Yazji rushed over, and the rubble and the sand of the rubble formed his feet.

The person was still breathing. But it wasn’t Mrs. Abul Ouf.

The Israeli bombardment has forced 38,000 people to seek refuge in dozen of UN schools, the United Nations said. Gaza now faces power outages for at least 16 hours a day, while damage to a desalination plant has threatened access to drinking water for around 250,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Israel’s air strikes have also halted all Covid-19 vaccinations and virus testing in the Palestinian enclave, increasing the risk of virus contamination as civilians rush into shelters for security reasons, UN officials said.

Mr. al-Yazji stood in the rubble on Sunday, giving up hope of finding his fiancée that afternoon. He took a box of her dental kit from the ruins, a small mark to remember. Then he and his brother went to the nearby hospital where the victims of the air strike were killed.

After each new ambulance arrived, it rushed to its back doors to look in and see if Ms. Abul Ouf was inside. Each time he went back disappointed.

After a few hours he went to the morgue instead. And there, lying motionless on a stand, was Shaimaa Abul Ouf’s body.

Mr. al-Yazji became hysterical with grief. “Be happy,” he said after identifying her body.

“I swear to God,” he added, “she laughed.”

The reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner from Sderot, Israel. Lara Jakes from Washington; Rick Gladstone from New York; Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel; and Adam Rasgon from Tel Aviv.

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Entertainment

A Choreographer Diving Into Grief Appears to be like to Whales

A Choreographer Diving Into Grief Looks to Whales

For the film, a collaboration with composer Everett Saunders and cameraman Suzi Sadler, Brooks also thought of “Moby-Dick”. However, the main focus has been on the black body throughout history.

Whales “carry all of these toxins because of their bacon,” Brooks said. “There is a completely different aspect that has led me to how many black bodies died from Covid and how many toxins black bodies carry, whether it is trauma or whether they live near fallow land or the cost the poverty. I felt that the whale body is very similar to the black body. “

For Ali Rosa-Salas, the program director at Abrons, virtual work has its advantages with such dark themes: the viewer is responsible. “You can pause if you need to, you can play, you can come back to it,” she said. “It takes a slow pace to process grief and all the emotions that are supposed to arise in connection with what Mayfield’s research will produce.”

Brooks, who calls her practice improvising, while Black, a roof that encompasses both teaching and choreography and dance, finds connections between “Whale Fall” and “Letters to Marsha,” an earlier work based on danced and written notes to Marsha P. based. Johnson, the transgender activist whose body was found in the Hudson River in 1992.

“I think a lot about their bodies in the Hudson River and the cellular existence of bodies in the water,” said Brooks. “Like even if the body breaks down, the cells can still survive” and the idea that “their molecular structure may have communicated with some of the whales that surfaced in the bay last year.”

Recently, 50-year-old Brooks spoke about an artist’s lonely life during the pandemic, the black body, the whales, and somehow the whole point: that there is life in decomposition. Here are edited excerpts from that interview.

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Health

Easy methods to Begin Therapeutic Throughout a Season of Grief

How to Start Healing During a Season of Grief

If you have young children or teenagers, there are a variety of books and films out there that can also help them deal with losses. These articles teach you how to talk to children about death and how you can help children with pandemic grief.

Kristin Taylor, 39, of Oak Park, Illinois, who lost her mother to pancreatic cancer in November, tried everything: meditation, talking to friends who had lost their parents, long walks, journaling, and yoga. “Nothing was too much,” she said.

Then she started speaking to a grief counselor once a week.

“I feel like I have a place where not only can I cry and grieve openly without burdening another person, but now someone to help me resolve the trauma I was experiencing when I’ve dealt with an aggressive and reckless cancer that is taking over my mother’s body. ” Mrs. Taylor said.

A November survey of more than 800 US adults who lost someone to Covid-19 found that two-thirds of respondents suffered from debilitating states of grief, a type of grief that affects a person’s ability to lead a normal life. can affect.

If you use drugs or alcohol to deal with it, or if you have problems with function, it’s important to speak to a professional, said Sherman A. Lee, associate professor of psychology at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia , and one of the study’s authors. The website of Dr. Lee, The Pandemic Grief Project, offers a brief test that people can use to assess their plight: a score of seven or higher indicates the need for additional assessment or treatment.

The demands of the pandemic have made it even more difficult for some people to find a mental health provider, especially one who takes out insurance.

Psychology Today maintains a large list of providers that you can filter by location, insurance, specialty, or other criteria. However, if you can’t find a provider who is accepting new patients, ask the provider you contacted or your primary care provider for referrals.

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Health

Disenfranchised Grief in a Yr of Pandemic Losses

Disenfranchised Grief in a Year of Pandemic Losses

Lockdowns had an immediate financial impact on Annabelle Gurwitch, a Los Angeles writer who lost assignments and lectures. The advertisement for her new book “You go when ?: Adventure in downward mobility” has become virtual. But when her kid’s graduation from Bard College went online, she cried in her backyard. Her child had worked hard and even started a sobriety club on campus.

“I was so proud of them that they graduated from college in four years,” she said. “David Byrne should be the speaker. There is so much suffering going on and I felt like such a terrible person, upset that I couldn’t go to graduate school and see David Byrne. That is low on the level of suffering. But damn it, we got our kid through four years. The child sobered up while studying. May I say we were disappointed? “

Around the same time as graduation, Ms. Gurwitch developed a cough. She received a coronavirus test and a chest x-ray, which eventually led to a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. After being diagnosed with cancer, Ms. Gurwitch noticed that her friends were starting to downplay their own struggles and grief. A friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy, but didn’t want to tell her because she felt that breast cancer wasn’t as bad as lung cancer.

“I had her from cancer,” said Ms. Gurwitch. “It’s terrible not to feel that your suffering has a place.”

38-year-old Erin, who asked that her full name not be used to protect her privacy, said she lost another year of fertility during the pandemic lockdowns. After miscarriage a few years ago, she tried to conceive, but her husband did not think it useful to start a pregnancy during a pandemic. “Mother’s Day came and I was close to my 38th birthday and it became clear that I didn’t have much time,” she said. “This biological clock – The tick is very noisy and it’s a very real thing. “

Erin said that their marriage was starting to fall apart and she realized that she would probably have to do it alone if she wanted to become a mother. She and her husband are now getting divorced, she is taking steps to freeze her eggs, and she is investigating adoption and promoting parenting. She said grief over infertility and miscarriages was only compounded by living in a pandemic as she gains insight into people’s family lives through video calls.

“A staff member, every time we talk, she talks about the Lamaze class,” she said. “This is great for her, but it’s not OK for me to say that I’m struggling with it. I lost a child. I’ve lost my fertile years. This is one area where I am really having trouble. As a society, we don’t talk about it openly. “

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Health

Grief Movies For Kids – The New York Occasions

Grief Films For Children - The New York Times

There’s no way to gloss it over: the pandemic has plunged the world into a crisis of grief. It caused the deaths of over 290,000 people in the United States, including many grandparents and parents. According to a study by the United Hospital Fund, 4,200 children in New York state alone lost a parent or caregiver to Covid-19 between March and July. (These were the latest available numbers on the death of the parents from Covid.)

For every family who lost a loved one this year, regardless of the cause of death, the pandemic has prevented them from properly mourning their loss. And now the holiday season has arrived, which can be a cause of grief, especially for children.

Children who lose a parent are at greater risk of permanent mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. To support a grieving child, one needs to normalize their feelings and give them tools to cope with – but talking about death can sometimes feel overwhelming. Parents and children may both be reluctant to have conversations that create difficult emotions, but it is important that parents provide opportunities to recognize their child’s feelings.

Film can be a gift in these times. Often times, a film about death can provide just enough space for productive discussion. Providing examples of the loss of others can help children feel less isolated in their own bereavement. Watching a character in a movie can make the child think about their own journey of grief and the tools they may be able to cope with.

The films below, suitable for children ages 6 and up, provide helpful ways to explore death and the emotions associated with it, as well as a chance for parents to talk about loss. Contents that could be disruptive to young children are noted.

109 minutes; Rated PG; available on Disney +

Based on the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), this colorful, Oscar-winning Pixar film follows 12-year-old Miguel’s journey to the land of the dead. There he reveals family secrets and learns that the dead continue to exist in the memory of the living.

118 minutes; Rated G; available from Amazon.

After a young boy named Alec and a horse were washed up on a desert island by a shipwreck that killed Alec’s father, the orphaned boy and the animal soon form an inseparable bond. The couple is rescued, and Alec is determined to turn “The Black” into a racehorse with the help of an old trainer. Alec’s connection with the horse brings him comfort and helps him deal with his grief for his father.

107 minutes; Rated PG; available from Amazon.

After her mother dies in a car accident, 13-year-old Amy (played by a young Anna Paquin) is sent from New Zealand to Canada to live with her father. She adopts a nest of abandoned goose eggs, and when they hatch she is responsible for teaching the goslings’ survival skills – including flying south for the winter. While Amy takes on the role of mother for the goslings, she can mourn her own mother. Please note: the car accident is shown in the opening sequence of the film.

100 minutes (subtitles); available from Amazon.

After her mother dies, 6-year-old Frida has to move from Barcelona to the countryside to live with her aunt, uncle and younger cousin. The young girl soon struggles with grief and her place in this new family. The film is often presented from Frida’s point of view, with overheard conversations and waist-high camera angles, and is based on the director’s personal experiences with loss.

128 minutes; Rated PG-13; available from Amazon.

Conor’s mother is seriously ill and the 13-year-old struggles with anger, sadness, guilt, and expectant grief. To deal with all the overwhelming emotions, Conor (Lewis MacDougall) conjures up a monster who offers three fables and then demands one of him – it has to be his ultimate truth. MacDougall gives an authentic performance as a boy who learns to face the truth even though it is contradicting and complex. Please Note: There is some property demolition, physical bullying, and verbal abuse.

103 minutes; Rated PG; available on HBO max.

In this feature of the Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli, Anna is sent by her foster mother to bring relatives at the seaside into the fresh air after an asthma attack. There she ventures into an abandoned mansion and discovers a new friend, Marnie, who may or may not be her grandmother’s ghost. Anna is then forced to grapple with feelings that she has avoided because of the loss of her family.

98 minutes (subtitles); Rated PG; available from Amazon.

The matriarch of a family in China is diagnosed with terminal cancer, but no one told her. The family gets together one last time under the guise of a grand wedding, but it really is a goodbye. The film is based on the personal story of the writer and director Lula Wang and shows profound cultural differences in attitudes towards death and grief.