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| Coping with bereavement http://www.nelsonandhisworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6 |
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| Author: | Sylvia [ Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:23 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Coping with bereavement |
I work for an organisation which helps people with a mental disorder and their caretakers/family members. This afternoon I joined a meeting organised for people who got stuck in the middle of a bereavement process and are unable to move on. It has been a very emotional afternoon. I cannot help but wonder how did people in Nelson’s time cope with such loss. Their religion may have been a support and a source of comfort. I admire them for being able to concentrate so much on their work. I read somewhere that in the first letters Collingwood wrote, after Trafalgar, he did not even make one mistake. While he still must have been very upset about Nelson’s death. Sylvia |
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| Author: | tycho [ Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:05 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
It is difficult for us, I think, to understand the attitude to death in Nelson's time. Certainly, as far as the navy was concerned, the notions of resolution in the face of death were almost cultish. The experience of battle must have been so horrendous that having in mind an unbreakable code of honour to keep you focused was one way of coping with the prospect. Adam Nicholson's 'Men of Honour' explores this phenomenon. There is an account, I think in Ludovic Kennedy's 'Trafalgar' in which a young officer describes sailing towards the enemy for the first time and Alexander Ball, a seasoned warrior, took his hand, and, without taking his eyes from the enemy, assured him that he too had felt a similar apprehension in his first battle, and this gave him courage. One reads accounts of ordinary seamen actually relishing the prospect of battle and prize money. I wonder if anyone has explored the psychology behind this. The influence of the group on the individual is very powerful and maybe the lust for action was infectious. It seems incomprehensible that men were prepared to risk so much for so little. Regarding the deaths of others: when one reads letters of condolence of the time they seem almost formulaic 'we must all die...accept God's will etc' but one wonders if people were always so sanguine. There are frequent articles in journals and magazines giving advice from medical men about coping with melancholia and low spirits often precipitated by bereavement. And the incidence of insanity amongst seamen was high. It is not difficult to imagine a connection between this and their exposure to the gory deaths of their shipmates in battle. |
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| Author: | taywhaler [ Fri Feb 22, 2008 9:54 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
That is a fascinating topic.Certainly the Georgian age saw a more open and accepting attitude to emotion of all kinds.It was not seen as "weak" for a man to cry - Pitt broke down and wept in Parliament after he had qurelled with a close male friend, and Collingwood was observed to break down and weep when he received news of Nelson's death, as did his men. My point being that it was perhaps this openness regarding a man's ability to weep for the loss of a friend without being ridiculed or thought weak that helped them to accept such things , and move on. It is well known that "bottling up " grief makes the healing process much harder, which is why ( at the risk of incurring male wrath!)t women, who are generally more comfortable with tears tend to heal more quickly and completely, after all, how many women like a good "weepie" film!.-tay |
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| Author: | AbbieG [ Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:03 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
I think the whole attitude of the era focussed not so much on the individual - the me and the I and the ego and what the individual had lost by bereavement - but on the community (whatever the community was) as a whole and more of an acceptance of the transience of being. Childbirth was not without danger. Infant mortality was not uncommon. The simple cough or cold was enough to snuff out the flame of even the most hearty. Men went to war whether it was part of their chosen way of life or whether they were simply dragged into it. I also think faith played a large part in this acceptance as did the daily grind of the need to go on. There was little room for long term weeping and wailing yet this did not discount the mourning black and the wearing of widows' weeds. All in all - life went on and was more practical and prosaic that today. That doesn't mean the hurt and pain was any less - just dealt with differently. |
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| Author: | Belladonna [ Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:43 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
People were more accepting of death - particularly early death - in the past, but were also more accepting of grief - perhaps more so than we are now. The conventions of mourning meant that a someone's status as a bereaved person was respected for a long time. During the outbreak of plague in the 1660s, for example, the bills of mortality regularly listed people as having died of grief. Right up to the late nineteenth century it was common place for people to 'go into a decline' after the death of a loved one - it was accepted that dying of a broken heart was perfectly possible. |
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