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Nadine ReimerPenner
Nadine Reimer Penner ACSW, LSCSW, s Director of Bereavement at Harry Hynes Memorial Hospice. She is certified as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and by the Academy of Certified Social Workers. Nadine's memberships include National Council of Hospice Professionals, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association. She has made presentations to the National Hospice Organization, and the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Your can reach Nadine at (316) 219-1761 or FAX (316) 265-6066, or by e-mail at nreimerpenner@hynesmemorial.org
Hospice
2002-08-01 11:55:00
Grieving after a loss
Question: How do men grieve after losing a loved one? Is it different than the way women grieve?Answer:  Men's Grief is much like the Tectonic Plate Movement.  Plate tectonics is the theory that the outer layer of the Earth is made up of moving plates. These plates have created mountains, volcanoes, and earthquakes throughout Earth's history. Neil Chethik uses the tectonic plate theory to describe how many men grieve. Recent research indicates some differences in the way men and women grieve. Women often react by crying and talking about their grief. Men do, too, but many grieve in ways that may be harder to detect much like the shifting of the earth's surface.Mr. Chethik, in his book Father Loss, describes men's emotions as though they "moved more like tectonic plates, shifting far below the surface, sending out tremors and shudders, perhaps the occasional tear… these men tended to release any energy around the loss only gradually, in small rushes, often thinking it through and expressing it by moving their bodies and changing their world."His national survey of over 300 men who had experienced the death of their father found that it was difficult to predict how men would react when their father died. Sixty-one percent said they cried in the month after their father died. Yet, 39 percent said they did not cry at all during the first month. Tears were more likely to occur when the death was sudden as opposed to occurring after an extended illness.  Others reacted by doing something that reminded them of their father. Michael Jordan's father had urged him to retire from basketball and become a professional baseball player. Initially he had resisted but after the sudden death of his father, he made the decision to follow that advice. Four months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Dwight D. Eisenhower's father died. At the time General Eisenhower was busy planning a response to the attack and was unable to attend the funeral. He showed little emotion on the outside. Yet during the exact time of the funeral he wrote about his memories of his father's life.         Some men react like Pat Page and release emotional energy. Pat writes in “Cowbells and Courage” about the experience of caring for his wife before she died of lung cancer. He had put an old cowbell on the nightstand beside her bed to ring when she needed assistance. Pat says he began to hate the cowbell, as he would frequently awaken during the night as any sound became the cowbell even when it was just the neighbor's wind chimes. When his wife died after many exhausting nights of caregiving, one of the first things he did was to grab the cowbell, take it to the back yard, and smash it flat with a hammer.  Mr. Chetkik also uses the analogy of tectonic plate theory to describe how the aftershocks of the initial grief experience for men continue to be felt years later. More than 40 percent of older sons in the survey said they experienced shifts in their relationships and in how they viewed work and spirituality. In the movie “Field of Dreams”, Kevin Costner plays Ray Kinsella. During the film, we discover that Ray's "field of dreams" is an attempt to make peace with his deceased father.For all these men, taking action was a way to deal with grief. Often that action consciously connects men to the memory of the deceased. The act of doing becomes a way to honor the person who died. Like the silent shifting of Earth's moving plates, continued small actions can result in cosmic changes.
 
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