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The Why Factor: Grief

Grief

07/10/2016 GMT

BBC World Service - The Why Factor, Grief

Why do we feel so many different emotions when someone close to us dies?

Why do we feel so many different emotions when someone close to us dies? Whether it is yearning, sadness, anger, or shame, Mike Williams explores why each person’s grief is unique

Why do we feel so many different and intense emotions when someone close to us dies? Whether it is yearning, sadness, anger or even shame, Mike Williams explores why each person’s grief is unique. 

The pain of losing a loved one initially seems so unbearable, yet most bereaved people do eventually find a way to adjust to their changed life. So what happens when we grieve and why does grief sometimes get complicated?

Mike talks to Bill Burnett, who is learning to live without his wife, Betty. She died in 2010 after 43 years’ marriage, yet Bill still talks to her photo and asks her advice. And, we hear from Rhonda O’Neill who lost her husband in a plane crash and then her young son to kidney disease two years later. She describes feeling tormented by the belief she could have done something more to save her son’s life. 

We also hear from eminent UK psychiatrist Dr Colin Murray Parkes, who describes what happened to one of his patients who buried his grief, and from Dr Katherine Shear, professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and director of the Center for Complicated Grief.        

(Photo: A woman hugging a man. Credit: Vibe Images/Shutterstock)

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