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'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement QUOTES

'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement QUOTES

1 " [...] my own instinctive feeling is that you do not work through bereavement. It works through you. It is the passivity that’s involved in bereavement, the feeling that something terrible is being done to you – which it is – that is the most frightening. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

2 " Even nowadays, children are often left at home during funerals, like dogs. Why should children be excluded from funerals when they’re so welcome at christenings and weddings? Not only can their presence be therapeutic for other adults and useful reminders that life, whatever death may do, goes on; not only is it unlikely that very young children will be upset, simply because they have only a vague idea of the concept of death. But not attending the funeral of someone close can be tremendously damaging for some people in later life. Middle-aged people who were not allowed to attend the funerals of grandparents or even parents, can still feel full of rage and sorrow. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

3 " Some find that they can keep bereavement at bay by staying busy. This is a perfectly normal way of coping which works well for some – but if you keep bereavement away by constant action, you may pay for it later. The action may turn out to be an avoidance technique, like putting a finger on the pause button on the bereavement video. When you stop doing whatever you were doing – going to parties, helping others, seeing movies – you still return home to a film which hasn’t moved on since you stopped watching it. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

4 " Particularly difficult for partners is the reassertion of self, unless they have been very strong as individuals throughout the partnership. Learning to say ‘I’ instead of ‘We’ can be a painful task for two people who have grown into each other and become enmeshed. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

5 " It does seem that the more in tune you are with life, the more you live in the present day, the less emotional baggage you carry with you in your daily life, and the happier the relationship you had with whoever it was who died, the more easy, surprisingly, it is to feel sad – and then move on. But the more loss a relationship contained, and the more emotionally uncomfortable the bereaved person is with his own life anyway, the worse can be the effect of a death. [...] Since people tend to mourn bad relationships more than good ones, and because of the confused feelings of guilt involved, they may over-compensate to make up for their bad feelings. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

6 " When you’re bereaved you’re so all over the place that you might find a book heart-warming on a Tuesday and mindless nonsense on a Wednesday. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

7 " Death makes us face up to our own mortality. When my father died and I was suddenly parentless, I felt pushed into the firing line. It was as if I’d been sitting in a trench all those years smoking my cigarettes and brewing tea in my billycan while everyone had been out there getting shot, and suddenly my officer had shouted: ‘OK, Ironside! Over the top!’ Now I was in no-parents’-land with snipers all around. I was next. We have to face the fact that we will die, that we will die alone. We have to face the truth that even with others we basically always are alone, and that unless we give it meaning, life is meaningless. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement