The impact of grief

GRIEVING for a loved friend or relative is something that impacts on people in many ways.
Fear of pain and death and the strong bonds of love people have for each other, particularly for children, provide one of the strongest protective shields humanity has.
I admit surprise at the level of concern, outpouring of grief, and support from people toward victims of the Black Saturday fire tragedies.
Also, several people I have since interviewed expressed the view that the tragedy had caused bonding in their communities, which to me is an extension of this inherent safety net.
We see along the roadside evidence of this at fatal accident sites where there is a range of expressions of the loss that is felt for someone who died, in crosses, a bunch of flowers, or as in one recent death a significant number of mementos in the form of clothing and other keepsakes that would bring a littering action in normal circumstances.
Relatives and friends who hold wakes at these sites have paid their respects to people they have lost and can find no other place to be as close to that person as the place they died, often alone.
They say a final goodbye.
Through Europe, particularly in Greece, we see small shrines along the roadsides with candles burning inside, some candles religiously re-lit each day in memory of the people they represent.
These roadside memorials also remind us as we pass by of the perils in driving and hopefully we slow down or at best take more care.
Councils and VicRoads could if they followed their own regulations, clear these sites, but thankfully they don’t.
I feel great concern for people who have been told by cemetery administrators to take away keepsakes and even flowers in vases placed with loved ones who lie in manicured graves. We are reading about people devastated by enforcement of regulations that disallow this sort of expression.
We need to find a better way.
One reason given was because they caused a danger.
Perhaps glass could be a danger and people could be asked to refrain from leaving glass vases, but councils don’t do much to stop louts throwing bottles around our streets.
Why hit on cemeteries where people mostly walk slowly and reverently and are hardly in much danger except for hurt by over zealous regulators.
Regulations that restrict people from dealing with grief in their own way need to be reconsidered. I cannot recall visiting a cemetery where there has not been items left on many graves, mostly flowers, but something is left.
Surely this must send a message of what is needed.
Not long ago I was listening to a eulogy and saw a small child reach out to console her father by putting her hand on his arm.
Then I recalled the emptiness I felt as a child when I was kept away from my cousin’s funeral, and later the funeral of my grandfather, because ‘funerals were no place for children’.
Why not?
Children should be entitled, if they want, to join their families for the final official farewell and hopefully partly understand the finality of what has happened.
Children later think of their siblings or cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents, lying in a lonely grave.
By leaving a flower or a toy or some other keepsake they are leaving a little of their own spirit as company to their loved one.
Those in charge of burial places need to look more closely at the needs of grieving people and if we must have manicured lawn cemeteries, have other types of resting places for those who have this need – particularly where children are involved.
Many of us can leave a funeral service and that is the end of it, but others need to go through a lengthy grieving process, often overt.
How deep is their hurt when they feel the need to contact the press for help and how many are hurting in silence because they cannot bring themselves to come to the press?