Losses and support in the grieving process –– pastoral and media context

Abstract

The loss of a close person is accompanied by various emotional, cognitive, behavioural, physical, spiritual and social reactions. The process of grieving therefore has an impact not only on the course of grief, bereavement itself, and the perception of losses, but also on the human being generally. In accordance with experts, grieving after a loved one who died of the virus that causes COVID-19 is specific. In most cases, it is characterized by a lack of personal contact with a seriously ill person due to infection and quarantine measures during hospitalization, and later a characteristic ban on personal farewells or touching due to the potential threat of infection. In addition, this specifics is accompanied by reflections on how the infection occurred in the first place, or anger at the lost person for not being careful enough, or anger at the health system that provided help to the sick loved one. The paper takes into account the aforementioned as a starting point for the presentation of grief and bereavement, which also takes place in the space of social media during the pandemic. The article seeks to contribute to the overall concept of pastoral bereavement support and contemporary digital support for grief and bereavement. It can be achieved by presenting the possibilities of online support for mourners in the context of the French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch's (1977) relational model of death. Rabatel and eventually Floréa referred to this issue and started the research on the announcement of death in the media. The goal of such studies was to show that the conventional media focuses on the death of distant people that "doesn’t concern us" (i.e., "third person death"), whereas new technologies give the opportunity and space to talk about the death of close people (i.e., "second person death") as well as one's own death (i.e., "first person death"). The text presents the online space as a place where pastoral care and accompanying the mourners or grieving men is not only possible but also beneficial.