Capturing Moments: A Caregiver's Guide Through Anticipatory Grief

This book is intended to be a caregiver's guide through anticipatory grief by describing a behavioral technique that will lead to a healthy and positive hospice experience called, "Capturing Moments."  Anticipatory grief is a grief that occurs before the experience of normal grief, which begins after the loss of the loved one.  While there are services offered for grieving after a loved one passes, there is not much formal attention given to handling anticipatory grief.  Anticipatory grief can include emotions such as irritability, emotional stress, depression, and over-preoccupation with the patient.  Life is full of moments that, if captured by our attention, would enhance the positive and best of experiences possible in any situation.  It is not the whole of life's experiences that are held in our memories but those salient moments where time seems to stand still and our breath is taken away and we see, hear, and live a unique experience that will never return.  We gain an insight into a person's life, or we participate in a conversation, or do an extraordinary act, and in that moment our life purpose is distilled.  It is these moments that define our lives.  Every emotion is like a two-sided coin that can be "flipped."  There are two sides to every emotion, a negative side and a positive one.  On the negative side, we find ourselves feeling the negative effects of an emotion and the longer we stay on that side of the coin the deeper into the emotion we stay, the more exacerbated and unhealthier the negative emotion becomes.  The other side of the coin is the positive side of the emotion.
 When we learn to "flip the moment" to the positive side of the emotion, we find that we are able to capture a special time of life.  The decision is ours--although it remains difficult to make. Do we have the internal strength to flip the moment?  If we can do that, we will become stronger as each opportunity arises until we are able to master the art of flipping each moment and stringing them together into happy and desirable memories.