Essay - IT is Estimated that Approximately 800,000 Older Americans Experience Spousal...

It is estimated that approximately 800,000 older Americans experience spousal bereavement annually. Bereavement is the state of having experienced a loss, and grief ***** the generally passive ***** involuntary reaction to the ***** of bereavement, and although grief is commonly considered an emotional state, it actually extends well beyond the realm of emotions. Bereavement *****ten leads to depression, which in turn may cause sleep*****g disorders, substance abuse, panic attacks, decrease in appetite, and increased risk for suicide as ***** ***** other diseases and infections due to the effect of ***** upon the immune system and the fact ***** older adults are particularly at risk for immune disorders.

Late Adulthood and *****

***** the June 2000 issue of American Scholar, Francine Gray writes in her article, "The Work of Mourning," that there is now a myri*****d of published volumes on "grief work," ***** the counseling industry now calls bereavement (Gray pp). However, she claims that the bulk of this literature ***** is a subdivision of the "recovery" genre ***** is filled with such buzz phrases as "coping responses," "task-based *****," "tactics for healing," and "tools for recovery," is more pragmatically inclined, and many are described as "a comprehensive, well-thought-out pl*****n for preparing ***** death" (Gray pp). ***** contributes the ship of consciousness to ***** pioneering work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who has urged, for the last thirty years, ***** weave the expectation of death into the understanding of life, and to view it as an expected companion rather than a dre*****ded stranger (Gray pp). According to Gray, baby boomers are beginning ***** confront the anxieties of aging ***** mortality, and believes that ***** AIDS epidemic, "which makes us cohabit with death more poignantly than at any other time in recent memory, may also be playing a dominant role in loosening our traditional reserve" (Gray pp). Moreover, men are increasingly taking over the role of public mourner traditionally assigned, especially in the West, to women, however, the literature ***** widowhood is still predominantly a female genre (***** pp).

***** writes ***** according to Freud, mourning is "hard, slow, patient work, a meticulo***** process that must ***** carried out 'bit by bit' over a far vaster amount of ***** ***** twentieth-century society ***** allotted ***** ***** ritual ***** grief" (Gray pp). And crucial to ***** *****il, is careful examination, 'piecemeal,' as Freud puts it, of each association, each place, ***** belonging once shared w*****h ***** departed, thus "don't sell the house ***** first year, don't hasten to put the clothes away, and continue to polish his/her silver (***** pp). Moreover, equally essential are those traditional gestures of ritualized grief, such as memorial services, visits to a grave or commemorative site, that confirm the absence of the dead one (Gray pp). In this slow, long-drawn-out, ***** gradual work of severance, ***** writes, each single one of ***** memories and situations of expectancy ***** demonstrate the libido's attachment to ***** lost object is met by the verdict of reality that the ***** no longer exists.... When