The Common experience

Title

Creator

Spring, Chedbourne A.

Language

English

Year

1968

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

THE COMMON EXPERIENCE For all practical purposes I believe it can be said that only man grieves. Only man loses a part of himself and knows he loses a part of him self and feels the loss in tensely. The more deeply man feels, the more, deeply man is involved in life, the more he grieves. Further more, grief is an almost in evitable part of the life of any normal person. Sooner or later he loses a limb or an ear or his nose. Or he experiences separation through divorce; or he finds close friends moving away; or he faces the imminence of his own death. Any situa tion that involves drastic se paration, including unwanted retirement, is a grief-produc ing situation. The only way to avoid grief is not to live. The very fact we are alive and involved in the lives of other people means the vir tual certainty of eventual grief. The minute we marry we invite the likelihood of grief. The minute we have children we invite the possi bility of grief. Life means grief — in time. Love means grief — in time. But grief is more than be ing sad for a while. “Grief work,” to use Freud’s expres sion, must be done and this requires time. During the period of grief the emotional ties to the lost object are broken, even as the ties to the lost object have been physically broken and mentally recognized. The emotional ties must be broken so that new emotional ties may be created. In the normal course of grief there will be a feeling of loneliness and unreality, an emptiness in the stomach, a feeling of insecurity, a strong temptation to with draw from all activities. Questions will be asked that can not be answered like “Why did God permit it?” There will be feelings of guilt. A tendency to lash out May 1968 31 against anyone who pre sumably might have preven ted the. loss. To facilitate grief’s work let there be tears. Tears, as one psychiatrist has pointed out, is a mechanism for re ducing the tension caused by grief. Tears are not a distor tion of nature nor evidence of weakness. They are a means by which the griev ing persons works his way up from the depths. Then let there be talk. Repeat over and over again all the details surrounding the grief-producing tragedy. This makes the loss more realistic and the expectation that the loved one will re turn is dissipated. When tears and talk flow freely, grief’s work is being done and in time the bereaved person comes to realize what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.”—Chedbourne A. Spring In recent years the “Waling-Waling” has played a prominent role in orchid hybridization work. Orchid hybridizers in Florida, Hawaii, Singapore, Bangkok and other orchid centers of the world have crossed this versatile vanda with other orchid species and genera to produce prolific blooming hybrids. These hybrids exhibit a wide range of shapes and colors in their flowers. Some outstanding examples are the golden-flowered Vanda Tan Chay Van, the pinkflowered Vanda Nellie Morley, the blue-flowered Vanda rothschildiana, and the red-flowered Vanda Jane Shimamoto. In the esoteric world of orchid col lectors, these handsome hybrids command near estronomical prices. 32 Panorama

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