Anticipatory Grieving Case Study

When my mother was told her father was going to hospice she made her three children aware. At that point I started mentally planning to be there for her emotionally, looking at my funds to plan this trip to south Florida, and begin planning for my brothers to be there as well. He passed two weeks after she told us he was in hospice care. He died due to not eating and simply giving up. He was only 85 years old. The moment my uncle called trying to reach my mother I sent out a group text to my two brothers making them aware of his passing and specifically telling them they should try to make plans to attend the funeral. I knew our mother would want everyone there for support. That was on a Thursday. As the days went by I started looking more at my funds. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to …show more content…
However, I feel that I could have done more. It wasn’t the financial side that was the most important to her it was dealing with all of the feeling that was front and centered. My mother was experiencing anticipatory grief, which is doing part of the grieving prior to the actual loss (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008, p.214). This grief started when the family mentioned that he was going to hospice. It was at that time that I could have been more available and willing to listen. School is my first priority and that was in the way at the time of her wanting and needing me there. She was more prone to get upset quickly at anything that may have offended her about her father or his side of the family. If I would have made my brothers aware of what mental state she was in then I believe no one would have been honest with their feelings on the matter of his death. We should have not made any correlation to how we felt and just put her feelings as priority. One thing my bother and I did suggest, that was great, was counseling. We suggested that she should go and maybe at some point we can all go as a