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Essay / Death of a Loved One: Coping with Loss and Healing
Table of ContentsIntroductionThe Tragic Death of a Loved OneCoping Mechanisms After DeathConclusionIntroductionLife is filled with many recurring implications, for which we continually seek answers answers in the guided question of why? As the days grow shorter, I find myself thinking about the many elements of this world. Throughout my 18 years of life, I have been subjected to countless events. I have been through a perilous journey that has involved moments of despair and hopelessness. Significantly, I have seen an infinite number of my loved ones leave this earth and pieces of myself slowly disappear with them, struck by a grief that, even years later, still haunts me. For many, the death of a loved one can be a difficult thing to understand. Often, individuals can use an experience like the death of a loved one as an opportunity to redefine their own lives, while transforming their perspective on how they experience life. The idea of death has always been a recurring subject in my own life, since I was 6 years old. I believe that many humans can analyze the idea of death as a scary, terrifying and undeniable subject. However, the reality is that a human being is about being born into this world and facing the challenge of death, as a part of our life journey which then becomes a shadow cast upon us forever. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay The Tragic Death of a Loved One Initially, as a teenager, I always perceived death as temporary and reversible, a belief enhanced by cartoon characters who had died and come back to life. As a result, this miraculous belief would never be the case for my father, a healthy 53-year-old man, who collapsed at work on Boxing Day 2008 and was immediately taken to the hospital. After various tests, he had two MRIs which revealed a tiny brain mass and underwent emergency brain surgery the next morning. About a week later, a phone call advised him to attend Princess Margaret Hospital, where the biopsy results revealed that my father had a stage IV glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor. Thus, this primary brain tumor is recognized as the most aggressive and invasive form of cancer, in which many people, including my father, only survive with a survival rate of 9 to 12 months. Reflecting on this experience, I believe it had a negative influence on my life, due to the series of events that occurred. In the last month of my father's life, one of his colleagues organized his illegal release from the hospital without legal authorization or consent. Hours after my father left the hospital, Community Care contacted my mother regarding his release and despite numerous attempts to have my father removed from this person's control and private residence, the authorities, the Public Guardian and Trustee did not act. We had no knowledge or contact regarding my father's welfare as it was all part of an elaborate plan to defraud my father's estate. This colleague continued to make false statements, without any proper legal authorization. Unbeknownst to him or us, my father was isolated and confined to his co-worker's home because he was bedridden, unable to walk, and unable to speak. He was under the domination of his colleague and his family at the end of his life. My father died in a hospital in Toronto and his funeral was the next day and weWe were never informed. This denied us our right and privilege to attend his funeral and say goodbye, which left my mother and I in a void of any sense of closure. As I analyze this experience, there are many unfair elements that I now see differently than when I was a child. . In an attempt to obtain a death benefit from the government, a monumental stone was placed on my father's grave, once again denying us the privilege to record his name correctly and place appropriate wording. My father died without knowing that a fraudulent “last will” document had been signed, two months before his death. Three lawyers facilitated the estate fraud, one wrote the fraudulent will, another removed the title to our house, another falsely ordered documents. A judge ultimately declared the fraudulent document “null and void” and named my mother the only legally appointed “estate trustee” 4 years later. Although my mother was the prevailing party and due to the filing of the lawsuit, the judge ordered my mother to pay the defendant's legal fees of $50,000 by September 2022. The defendant had no money to pay for my mother's legal fees, but because our house was When we returned, it seemed we ended up paying for our own flight. Coping Mechanisms After Death These circumstances imposed challenges, limitations, and sacrifices, but I grew immensely through the experience. Coping mechanisms such as writing have played a vital role in expressing my emotions effectively. Writing became the path to acceptance, while also allowing me to express my experience of grief and become aware of the loss itself. For many years, I struggled to understand my father's death, due to the refusal to dream of this event as an illusion, something that was not real, because I never had the chance to say goodbye to him. However, this mechanism facilitated reflection, a way of exploring and discovering my own thoughts and feelings. Writing has mostly been a never-ending process of giving in to new ideas and thoughts that could be expressed in words leading to clarification and understanding of certain situations, including death. This creative outlet has continually encouraged me to incorporate events based solely on my own life when writing poems, short stories, and more. For example, my child's book outlined the challenge of losing my father to a dangerous disease called brain cancer around Christmas. Notably, this book was a way for me to describe my feelings in a place where I felt safe, comfortable, and could communicate effectively. Nonetheless, I thought this story could not only help me in my gradual grieving process, but also help many other children who were trying to cope with the loss of a loved one at such a young age. Due to the premeditated financial greed surrounding my father's estate fraud, the outcome of this event can be presented as unjust, through the agonizing trauma that was inflicted on my mother and I, the innocent parties. I have many questions as to how such individuals could have allowed themselves to commit such criminal acts, let alone organize a funeral without notifying their immediate family, as well as the installation of a monumental stone. In many ways, I view those four critical years as the ultimate transformation of my life, a family that had always been together, never apart, denied closure, and left with an ongoing legal dispute..