On Pathologizing Grief

2021

A found poem responding to Empirical Arguments for Complicated Grief Disorder

The symptoms distinctive of grief are now

considered normal; an acute biological response

to reality’s continuous forward motion, a sharp object

hitting the body with force.

Researchers have offered

proposals, categories, diagnostic criteria,

empirical answers to this syndrome.

Surely mourning must have a trajectory

of recovery? Something has gone 

wrong with the process; we are caught

in a loop of chronic longing

for the past and its light, that lost world.

We want to hear/see/touch the self

that has died, a complicated bereavement, 

the desperate pathology of change – Instead there is

a numbness (i.e. an absence, i.e. disbelief 

at the loss: not even a bruise 

after history has broken open?)

There is no cogent rationale for this.

Who would remain persistently grief-stricken,

we question, and infect their future

with their own bitter hands? But we all would. 

We still do. The fact is:

The individual is an interminable wound 

that will not heal, breakdowns in tissue

with no function, frozen at the time

of death, not heading for mending.

Taken from Should Prolonged Grief Be Reclassified as a Mental Disorder in DSM-5? by Jerome C. Wakefield, PhD.

CONSTANCE GOH (CLASS OF 2023) IS TURNING SEVENTEEN SOON. CONSTANCE’S WRITING PROCESS INVOLVES OPENING A GOOGLE DOCUMENT, OPENING THESAURUS.COM, OPENING RHYMEFINDER.NET, OPENING RHYMEZONE.COM, OPENING RHYMEZONE.COM, OPENING R…