Death & Time

"In the higher worlds, there is no such thing as time. You're always in the right place at the right time, saying the right thing to the right person. There is no free will."

"...it may be argued that bereavement fractures the sequential experience of time and that any model of grief and mourning that relies on a straightforward passage of time construct is inappropriate...
Full recollection and retention [of what is lost and its incorporation into the present] may be as vital to recovery and wellbeing as forfeiting memories... [Myerhoff]
In effect the modernist understanding of time, like the modernist constructions of order and control, does not survive the impact of extreme experiences like bereavement. The modern exists as a layer on top of other ways of making sense of experiences; for example, faith, fate, and so on. Once fissures appear in the veneer of the modern we are allowed glimpses of the underlying residual belief systems, many of which are pre-modern. The coming together of the dying person or the bereaved, within this complex of beliefs, and the professional trying to cling to the structures of the modern creates the sort of dissonance that can make for problematic encounters with bereavement services." (Neil Small)

"The notions of phases or stages is helpful up to a point, but we can get trapped into thinking people ought to be at a certain stage at a certain point. I much prefer a wave kind of model which says that you can be up one day and down the next."
(Ann Eyre, disaster management expert, cited in Woodthorpe, 2009)