Supporting People through Loss and Grief by Wilson John

Author:Wilson, John [John Wilson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857007391
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2013-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Case study: Betty

It was ten years since Betty’s husband had died when she was referred to me by her GP, where she had presented at the surgery with depression and thoughts of suicide because life appeared to have become pointless. Her GP, who she had seen for many years, correctly identified a delayed grief reaction. In the decade from bereavement to being referred for counselling, Betty said that she had coped well and hardly gave her late husband a thought. When invited to talk about him she was dismissive and dispassionate about him. Although I had no way of being certain about this, I suspected that she had suppressed her grief and her yearning to the point at which it became a habit. I also suspected that if Betty could develop a healthy, re-negotiated bond with her husband she would be able to bring the happiness of her marriage into the present and into a more optimistic future. Fortunately, Betty’s husband had been an amateur potter and Betty still had some of his creations at home. I asked her to bring one or two pots and bowls to her counselling. As she talked about the pots she recalled her husband’s workshop, which she said was chaos to her, but he seemed to know where everything was and she was forbidden to clean or tidy it. She began to be able to laugh at this account and at his other quirks and foibles as she saw them. Effectively we were bringing him ‘back to life’ and Betty became able to talk about him and to recall the happy memories she had apparently blocked out. Her dear husband’s memory and the fun they had shared became part of Betty’s present and her depression lifted. Six years after the counselling completed, Betty was able to let me know that the change was lasting and that she was continuing to enjoy life.

Dodie Graves’s book Talking with Bereaved People (2009) is an invaluable resource for finding appropriate ways to develop a helpful continuing bond and I cannot improve on the ‘Six Elements’ for working with the bereaved that she outlines in her book. All I would add is to reinforce once again that a helpful continuing bond is not one where the client clings desperately to a lost attachment in the hope that the deceased can magically return one day. Healthy lasting bonds appear to be based on acceptance and symbolic transition. At the beginning of this chapter I gave as an example of readiness for support a client I have called Jayne. An attempt to keep her close relative ‘alive’ by denying the death had left Jayne in an unhappy place for ten years. By the end of her counselling she had developed a healthy continuing bond. In our last session she recalled what she saw as the most significant moment of our work together. She remembered a tearful session when I had said to her, ‘He is dead, and he’s not coming back.’ I recalled how she had sworn and gasped.

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