Grief Reflection Paper

1007 Words3 Pages

It is inevitable to experience grief, but grief does not stop life. It changes you and teaches how to hold yourself in place. When I was flying to Pakistan, I knew my grandfather was on his death bed and I knew I had to say goodbye, but I was in denial. When I reached Pakistan, I went straight to the hospital and saw him. He was breathing! It gave me a comforting feeling and I talked to him even when he was in a coma. As I sat next to him, I saw my dad in the distance talking to someone and telling them how he was making arrangements for the funeral. It abruptly struck me that if I felt so much pain seeing my grandfather like this, my dad must be feeling it with ten times the intensity. Despite all these hardships, my dad was very strong and …show more content…

My grandfather, who was very ill, put a lot of responsibility on my parents ' shoulder. Since I am the eldest child and was my grandfather 's favorite granddaughter, I was aware of the roles that I was to conform to, and the responsibilities that were expected of me. The entire family came to our house to see him before he deceased, so it was my mom’s responsibility to take care of the families’ basic necessities. During this trial, I helped my mom around the house and made sure to show her that I was coping well. As the news spread in the neighborhood about my grandfather’s death, friends and families visited us to mourn and give their condolences. In less than an hour, we had had countless phone calls and guests visiting our house. Most of the people who knew my grandfather personally slowly started to weep. Experiencing all these strong emotions, I decided not to let my guard down and instantly started helping my mom with all the chores while proving to her how strong and firm I could be. Even though I wanted to scream and cry, I could not, and would not do it because I had to stay strong for my parents, especially for my father. In this way, I was effectively practicing emotion management. As a result, I managed my emotions by controlling my tears and I kept myself busy and distracted with tasks to do. This way I did not breakdown in front of anyone and was able to control and manage my …show more content…

In other words, by Symbolic Interactionism, we are able to analyze the development of roles of an individual and identify his/her strengths and weaknesses. According to the role theory, I was adapting to my expected roles and activities in the social structure. My grandfather was my role model and his death did not cause me to collapse. Instead I picked myself up and played an active role in helping my parents. My parents and I stood together and helped each other out during the funeral. According to Goffman 's dramaturgical analysis, my parents and I were constantly engaged in role playing. Our front stage was to be realistic, strong and get everything done perfectly, especially because it was our last goodbye to him. Even though we were emotionally hurt, we had to continue to play our role in arranging the funeral for my grandfather and doing other important tasks. The implication is that we understood that sitting idly and mourning would not be beneficial to us or the family, therefore we overcame our powerful emotions and continued to fulfil our roles. I effectively played my back stage role at night when I went to bed, which allowing myself to cry and mourn for him. Nonetheless, socialization strongly influenced our perspective and responsibilities. Socialization is the process of

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