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Wolterstorff's Reflection And The Five Stages Of Grief

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Analysis of Grief: An Examination of Wolterstorff’s Reflections and the Five Stages of Grief
Introduction
Death is inevitable. Death is unforeseeable. Death is unknown. One of the most difficult aspects of life is the prospect of death. In Lament for A Son, Wolterstorff reflects on the agony and lamentation of losing his son in a tragic accident (Wolterstorff, 1987). He explains the grief and pain associated with the death of someone close (Wolterstorff, 1987). One of the main themes present is the premature death of the author’s son, which alludes to the five stages of grief (Wolterstorff, 1987) (Kübler-Ross, 1972). The last stage is the stage of acceptance (Kübler-Ross, 1972). Death is possibly one of the most difficult things to accept and understand. Through the analysis of Wolterstorff’s Lament for a Son, this paper will attempt to understand finding joy in loss, the meaning of death in the light of the Christian narrative, and the role of hope in the resurrection.
Joy in Loss In the story, the narrator, who is the author, struggles with knowing that his son died. He finds no joy and no consolation (Wolterstorff, 1987). He must fly across the ocean in order to claim his son’s body in order to bury him (Wolterstorff, 1987). No parent should bury their child is something the author heartily believes. He draws parallels of placing his son in a cradle as he places him in the coffin (Wolterstorff, 1987). This is hard for him because he only sees the darkness and cannot find God in such darkness.
Stages of Grief With a different perspective, analyzing the author’s grief will be easier. There are five stages of grief, according to Kubler-Ross’s model (Kübler-Ross, 1972). It begins with stage of denial. This can be seen in the author’s writing, that the author cannot accept the fact that his healthy, young child has died (Kübler-Ross, 1972). The next stage to follow is Anger which is seen in the fact that the author believes no parent should bury their child. The third stage is bargaining (Kübler-Ross, 1972). The author tries to reason through his thoughts with God in the hopes of having his son back even though there is no possible way that can happen. The fourth is depression which is seen in the darkness

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