How to recover from the death of a loved one

There are many ways that a family can feel stress. We talked about losing a loved one in class. This can be one of the hardest things to go through and there is no one way that we can all deal with it. We spoke of a family that lost a 6 year old boy, he was also a twin. How could this bring the family together, or pull them apart? What makes the difference to whether the family bonds, or falls apart?

I think something that might pull a family apart if they grieve alone. I can see that if all of them decide to grieve in their own way then they will become more focused on themselves rather than on the family as a whole. Another that might pull them apart is the possibility of them blaming each other. This same family that we discussed in class had their son on life support, and they had to decide whether they should keep him on it, or give the machine to someone else that needed it as well. The family as a whole decided to take the brother off of the life support. I can see that if the decision was not made as an entire family that they had the possibility of falling apart and pulling away from each other.

I think that the main thing that this family did right was make the decisions together. This is what made them all bond. I know that they did this through the power of prayer. If they had not all been influenced by the spirit then the opportunity for them to help each other would have maybe been lost. There was the possibility of them blaming each other and running apart, but they did not, they made the decision together.

I know that my own family has grown from this as well. I had written previously about my brother dying, but this has brought up the old feelings of gratitude and love that we all felt so close. I know that we get to choose our reactions to the huge stressors in our lives. We can either be devastated by them, or become empowered by them.