Remember life to deal with death, professor says
Jonathan Crabtree
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: News
One of the best immediate responses when grieving is to be able to sit in a kind of safe place and tell stories, a UA social work professor said.
It's memories - the positive ones - that help people get through the unexpected grief that comes from a tragedy they didn't foresee at all, said John E. King, a UA professor of social work who teaches the course "On Death and Dying."
This week, three students around the country have been murdered on college campuses. One of those students - who was found dead in her apartment Sunday morning - was UA senior Katharine Wood.
"Twenty-four-year-old college students just aren't supposed to get murdered, and particularly not three in a week," said Jonathan Perry, director of the UA Counseling and Psychological Services.
"Special friends are going to be trying to figure out how to deal with the loss of her space in their lives," King said. "The closest people to her that she spent time with will find that that's going to be the uneasy part."
April Love, another UA student, was murdered in the fall of 2005.
"April's case is a very parallel case," King said.
"We've unfortunately had several of those in the last couple of years," he said.
"When April died, it was the first time that I had lost anybody, so it was kind of hard to know what to do," said Bertha Gutierrez, a recent UA graduate and close friend of Love.
"At the beginning, I just didn't want to talk about things because I would break up really easily," she said. "You have to give yourself time and just start talking when you're ready.
"One of my professors said, 'You just have to move on. Life is not going to stop just for this.' And I felt really bad when she said that. I was like, 'How can she say that? My friend just died and I feel like life should just stop for a moment and wait on me to catch up,'" Gutierrez said.
"A counselor tried to talk to me, one of the CAPS counselors, but it was like, 'Yeah, I don't know you.' It works for some people because I know some of my friends at that point were going for counseling at CAPS," she said.
It's memories - the positive ones - that help people get through the unexpected grief that comes from a tragedy they didn't foresee at all, said John E. King, a UA professor of social work who teaches the course "On Death and Dying."
This week, three students around the country have been murdered on college campuses. One of those students - who was found dead in her apartment Sunday morning - was UA senior Katharine Wood.
"Twenty-four-year-old college students just aren't supposed to get murdered, and particularly not three in a week," said Jonathan Perry, director of the UA Counseling and Psychological Services.
"Special friends are going to be trying to figure out how to deal with the loss of her space in their lives," King said. "The closest people to her that she spent time with will find that that's going to be the uneasy part."
April Love, another UA student, was murdered in the fall of 2005.
"April's case is a very parallel case," King said.
"We've unfortunately had several of those in the last couple of years," he said.
"When April died, it was the first time that I had lost anybody, so it was kind of hard to know what to do," said Bertha Gutierrez, a recent UA graduate and close friend of Love.
"At the beginning, I just didn't want to talk about things because I would break up really easily," she said. "You have to give yourself time and just start talking when you're ready.
"One of my professors said, 'You just have to move on. Life is not going to stop just for this.' And I felt really bad when she said that. I was like, 'How can she say that? My friend just died and I feel like life should just stop for a moment and wait on me to catch up,'" Gutierrez said.
"A counselor tried to talk to me, one of the CAPS counselors, but it was like, 'Yeah, I don't know you.' It works for some people because I know some of my friends at that point were going for counseling at CAPS," she said.
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Fasting
posted 3/15/08 @ 1:44 AM CST
The death of a friend is one of the hardest things in life to deal with. But it also reminds us of what we will have to face someday.
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