Dealing with Suffering and Loss

Suffering and loss is a regular situation in the human life cycle, it is vital to learn how to deal with it so that it doesn’t affect the rest of our lives negatively. In Scott Russell Sanders’s Ten Reasons Why We’ll Always Need a Good Story he explains that one of the reasons is to help us deal and become aware of suffering, loss, and death. During our youth we often don’t consider the end of the life cycle. However, in life we will always encounter grieving from a loved one’s death. The first time we experience some sort of grieving it may be very hard to handle and may cause depression. Stories help us prepare for moments of suffering, loss, and death with fictional experiences which show us how to deal with these unfortunate events. In the three short stories we read at least one character in each story is forced to deal with suffering, loss, or death. In the short story Bluffing by Gail Helgason, Liam has an unfortunate accident and experiences physical pain as well as the emotional pain of his deteriorating relationship with Gabriella. In Two Words by Isabel Allende, Belisa Crepusculario is devastated by the death of her entire family due to their impoverished lifestyle and the love between her and the Colonel causes them to miss each other. In The Indisputable Weight of the Ocean by Darryl Berger, Edmund deals with not being able to see his father and deals with the suffering of moving to a suburban area.
First of all, breaking up with your partner can cause heavy depression to some people and it makes us feel like we’ve lost someone important in our lives, also enduring a large amount of physical pain causes us to more careful to avoid feeling anything like that again. In Bluffing we do not get to witness how Gabriella and Liam’s relationship continues, however, the author leaves us to infer that the relationship is coming to an end. We are also left to infer how they both feel after they breakup. Gabriella feels that Liam is not committed to the