September 26, 2005
Grief
Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of "waves." Erich Lindemann, who was chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1940's and interviewed many family members of those killed in the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, defined the phenomenon with absolute specificity in a famous 1944 study: "sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from 20 minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental pain."
Tightness in the throat.
Choking, need for sighing.
Joan Didion deals with death in After Life.
Posted by lainey at September 26, 2005 11:57 AM
Comments
i had read the article at the time. very good read. if 'good read' is applicable to a sad parting anyway.
Posted by: zeep at October 4, 2005 05:38 AM