Dr.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross wrote of the five stages of grief—denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She attributed these to people dealing
with their own imminent deaths. The popular media seized these stages and
attributed them to people grieving the death of a loved one. This is not what
she had intended.
Eventually
the stages were debunked as not necessarily uniformly, nor sequentially, felt
by most people. After my husband’s son died, we went to one of her workshops
when she lived in Escondido. It was helpful in as much as we were surrounded by
others who were equally grieving the loss of a loved one. These were children
having lost a parent, parents having lost a child, spouses mourning the loss of
a mate, and even someone bereft after the loss of a dog who had been a constant
companion. Neither my husband nor I went through these so-called stages,
although some people felt helped by being able to put a name to their feelings.
Three
years ago I lost my husband and again went from unbearable pain to eventual
peace without the interim stages and now another death propels me to rethink
whether there are indeed stages to go through. I just lost my son after a long
illness and in trying to understand the processes I am going through, I came up
with the following. This may or may not help others, I did no research to find
out whether these are also familiar to other mourners.
Since
these are not necessarily sequential, I call them “emotional states,” rather
that “stages.” The first I call the “zombie” state. It was days of numbness, of
feeling nothing, of living in some kind of fog, going through the motions like
an automaton. Nothing seemed real. From there, I went on to “free-floating
anxiety,” a kind of pervasive feeling that something awful was about to happen
(when in fact it had already happened), an anxiousness not related to anything
in particular, just this unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach. Next was “the
meltdown,” when tears were hovering just below the eyelids, ready to spill at any
trigger or at nothing in particular. Crying made me feel drained, it did not help.
Where I am now is “get out of your own head by doing something for someone
else.” I had to give a speech I had committed to some months ago, and even
though I considered canceling, I went. It was not one of my best addresses, but
I got through it, and it turned out to be therapeutic.
One
should expect the recurrences of the fluctuating emotional states in bits and
pieces. So today, I am a bit of a zombie while still functioning more-or-less
normally. Tomorrow I may feel anxious when I wake up or shed a tear during
breakfast, but whatever happens, naming the states somehow makes me feel like I
have, if not some control, at least some understanding and I will not get caught
off-guard by the reaction. “Oh,” I will say to myself as a sob starts somewhere
in my throat, “I am in my meltdown state, and it too will pass.”
I
really don’t know whether this is helpful to anyone else. Everyone grieves
differently, there are no rules, no better or worse ways of dealing with death.
We all experience losses, some more damaging than others. Loss of a job can be
devastating; loss of a pet, loss of a home, even the loss of a beloved object
can trigger sadness. But, of course, loss of a person who was part of one’s
life is the hardest to come to terms with. The literature speaks of
“complicated grieving.” This term refers to obsessive grieving beyond one year.
At which point it is suggested that one should seek help.
One
grieves differently if a loved one dies suddenly or after a long illness. One
grieves differently depending on the relationship. One grieves differently for
a parent, spouse, child, or best friend. Everyone grieves differently with some
of these emotional states lasting weeks, others lasting hours, some never felt,
and others I can’t imagine. We need to have compassion and tolerance towards
ourselves as we go through unpredictable emotional states. Healing begins when
the loved person is less constantly in your head and starts resting more
peacefully in your heart.
I
like the Buddhist saying:
When someone you love dies,
the main difference is
that he is no longer
outside of you,
he is inside
Copyright © 2013. Natasha
Josefowitz. All rights reserved.
