My professor took us on field trips - a funeral home, crematory, and the cadaver lab of a Medical School. (Note to self - those might be worthy of a blog sometime.)
Journalism was my major at Drake and I worked in the field for ten years. Much of the training has helped me throughout my working life.
I think the Death and Dying class stands out for sharpening and refining how I looked at things and my life experience. It was during the course I was introduced to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' 1969 book "On Death and Dying" and the stages of grief.
Lately, I was introduced to what be another stage or tangent to one of the five defined by Dr. Ross. My description of it is feeling like I'm swimming upstream underwater. (I'm a non-swimmer.)
You may not find it in a textbook. It feels like things are more difficult than they used to be or "should" be. It can result in high levels of frustration more quickly than normal.
When I was sharing this with a Chaplain friend a week or so back after telling them things seemed to be going fairly well overall since mom died, they looked at me and said that underwater feeling is part of the grieving process.
The statement made me step back a moment. It makes sense. I just wasn't thinking of it this way. It could also explain why most counselors suggest not making unnecessary big decisions in the first year after a personal loss.
There's no magic tonic to reach the surface. Just keep moving forward and don't shy away from help offered by friends and family.
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