Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief in Wolterstorff’s Lament for a Son

Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief in Wolterstorff’s Lament for a Son
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Institution
Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief in Wolterstorff’s Lament for a Son
Introduction
Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief provide a platform for the understanding and comprehension of the effects of death or loss of a loved one to an individual. Kubler-Ross summarizes the grieving stages across some various emotional stages, which facilitates further studies, research, and analysis of grief phenomenon across various fields. The five stages of grief may take various forms depending on a person’s or community’s socio-cultural orientation. An individual’s religious belief or spiritual orientation is integral to how they deal with the loss of a loved one. The religious construct or a person’s faith in a given deity may provide the required spiritual support during the period of grief by providing a deeper understanding and meaning of the inevitable fate for all humanity, death. Christianity offers such underlying meaning and hope of overcoming the inevitable fate for its followers through the genuine belief of life after death by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nicholas Wolterstorff, a strong believer in Jesus Christ and a faithful Christian, echoes the sentiments of his faith in grief through the book, Lament for a Son. The book provides a platform for the analysis of Kubler-Ross’ model of the stages of grief through the lens of Christianity or from a Christian’s perspective. An articulate analysis of the narrator’s ordeal upon the loss of a son coupled with Kubler-Ross’ work on grief helps in determining or rather establishing how Wolterstorff overcomes the grief to find joy as well as the meaning and significance of death to Christians. Wolterstorff’s reflections further highlight the significance or influence of a Christian’s belief and hope for the resurrection during the various stages of grief.
The analysis of the narrator’s grief on knowing about his son’s, Eric, demise provides an understanding of how joy manifests itself even after the heavy loss of a son. Wolterstorff is at pains to understand how death takes away his son with his future shining bright ahead of him and his peers. He even blames himself for not providing the fatherly protection for his son against such tragedies, wishing instead that Eric would have been crippled by a disease to have enough time to say goodbye to his father and the family as a whole CITATION Wol87 \l 1033 (Wolterstorff, 1987). In the midst of all this pain, Wolterstorff finds solace in the staunch teachings of Christianity, which reminds him of the important fact that his son will resurrect and that they will meet again in eternity after overcoming death CITATION Wol87 \l 1033 (Wolterstorff, 1987). The nar...