Running Head: HEALTHY GRIEF

A Comparative Study of the Grieving Process
HLT 310 V Spirituality in Health Care
May 21, 2010.

A Comparative Study of the Grieving Process Grief is the natural reaction to a major loss such as the demise of a loved one. The grief has many components such as physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual. A person can feel grief during a serious, long-term illness or with an incurable disease. The symptoms can be a great level of depression, gloominess, guilt, and hopelessness. The common grief responses feelings include numbness, shock, anger, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue, and yearning. The other common grief responses to physical feelings such as not being able to sleep, tightness in
If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way. Finally, acceptance is the final step in the grieving process in which the grieving person eventually comes to accept the state after a certain time has passed. The person comes in to the reality by mending something positive out of miseries. The person may feel the life finally get back to some semblance of normalcy for him. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones.

The story of Job in the Bible has lot of similarities with the Kubler Ross’s stages of grieving process. Job was a devoted, righteous, and a wealthy man who suffered miseries in the Bible story. He lost everything including wealth, property, and even his health. The situation of Job is similar to steps mentioned in Kubler Ross’s stages of grieving process. At one stage, Job is in much suffering, and in deep pain. He was very anxious, emotionally alone, tormented, confused, angry. He sees himself doomed to die a broken, lonely, hated and despised person. Job himself does not understand why this evil is happening to someone who has faith in God. Why has a good God allowed such terrible things to happen to a, if not perfect, at least decent, God-fearing human being? Job, in short, is asking, "Why me, Lord?" The situation is very much similar to the denial stage of Kubler Ross’s grieving