Loss In My Family Life

Loss is never an easy thing to cope with, to recover from or to easily discuss. When a parent loses a child, it’s the kind of hurt that runs deep. A hurt that can never be forgotten because it has permeated the mind of that parent, family and community. For example, when my brother was 21, he lost his battle with sickle cell. This happened in Nigeria in the early 90’s where there was no adequate access to quality healthcare. It just so happened that he was away in college, at a rural area, at the time when he began to experience one of his episodes. With no easy access to phones, there was no way for his roommate to contact my parents on time. By the time he was rushed to the hospital, it was too late. The news of my brother’s death came as …show more content…
The B in the abc-x model, is the family’s resource/strength. In my family’s case, we coped by reaching out to our church, our extended family, our friends and our community. my mother in particular was encouraged by my father to join a women’s group in church, which focused on grief and loss. That helped a lot because it helped my mom meet and socialize with other women who had gone through somewhat similar or if not the same plight as her. Today, many parents go through the same event of losing their child. In addition to some resources they may already have, social media resources may also contribute to their recovery or coping mechanism. For instance, I find that Facebook is one social media outlet to find groups that deal with loss, grief and losing a child, specifically. Finally, the c in the abc-x model refers to the family’s perception of the stressful event. My family at the time, saw the event as life being unfair, and we just couldn’t understand why our beloved brother could be taken away from us so soon. My mother saw it as punishment for allowing her son to be so far away from her knowing he would sometimes have sickly episodes. She allowed this guilt shape her perception of death of her son as punishment for not being there for her son. Although, this isn’t true, but in my mother’s mind, this was her cross to bear, as she would put it. “In general “off time” (e.g., a child dies before a parent dies) and unexpected (a family member dies in an accident) transitions create periods of greater stress. This greater stress could, at least partially, be attributed to the family members’ perception of the stressful situation as being overwhelming or unfair” (Price, Price, & McKenry, 2009, p.