Five stages of grief

This too shall pass…So they say.

…And you smile with thousand thoughts in your head about how ‘they’ don’t understand what you are going through. You are convinced that your situation is unique in its own way, so much so that worldly logic and past examples do not apply. You may also feel like a martyr or hero facing a completely unparalleled situation which has no precedence in world and hence, no way out.

And then days pass, few or many and you realize things have sunk in. You realize you are looking back lesser and smiling more often. This may take you a week or year, the range is indefinite but you get yourself back again. Your mind wanders less to the grief that once captured every minute of your waking hour and one fine day you realize it has been days that it occurred to you that you haven’t had a thought about your ever lingering grief for days. C’est la vie!

It’s true for any grief, losing a loved one, upcoming death, break-up, divorce, addiction withdrawal… anything. Time heals or at least makes you better equipped to handle the situation.

This is described in precision by Kübler-Ross model of five stages of grief in his book ‘On Death and Dying.’ Once you read it, you can identify with each emotion you experienced stage-wise. I heard of it first by Hugh Laurie in the series House MD. It describes stages of impending death in essence. Ross argues the stages are not definite and can be skipped or felt interchangeably but together they encompass every emotion that is felt:

Denial
Denial is known to be the most preferred choice of justification. When confronted with situations unforeseen, unwished or unwilling, humans tend to keep themselves in denial. Trust me, people go on for years, even for life, living in denial. It may be in hope of things improving by themselves or something better coming along the way. People in bad relationships refuse to confront or acknowledge that there is a problem. Loved ones of people suffering with terminal illness live believing that a miracle will happen. Life has a knack of supporting denials to keep them going on forever. It maybe a good idea for happiness and peace of mind to live in denial unless you realize the garb of lies you are covered in. Denial is anyway a castle of cards. It crumbles once you try to fix it…

Anger
Anger is good. It at least indicates the cognizance of situation. It means you have taken hold of your life, acknowledged that there is a problem and that something needs to be done. Anger can be directed at own self for living in denial, at god for being mean, at life for being so harsh or at a person who has been responsible for shattering your world.
People behave differently in anger. Some become violent, some bottle it inside and some contemplate. It means asking yourself why? Why did it have to happen, why did it have to happen to you? What happened to karma that it had to be you when you have been a good person? Anger comes with a flurry of detachment and recklessness. Good thing is, you can’t remain angry forever.

Bargaining
Bargaining follows next, when you get tired of being angry. It comes when you realize you need to take a toll of the situation, address it and find a solution. Unfortunately it doesn’t necessarily come along with sanity. In fact it most often comes with desperation. Bargaining is also the stage that makes you do things you will tend to regret the most once you are over it. People dying start bargaining with God about how nice they can become if given few more years. Those on receiving end of a break up or divorce get desperate and propose to change their ways, change the very things that led to break-ups or at worse, want to be in touch in hope of a later reunion. This is a negotiation people do with those around or god but in essence it is what they do with themselves…The mind tosses between multiple possibilities and trade offs that are hypothetically possible to restore what they lost, or are about to lose.

Depression
Depression is defeat. A person has given up trying. They are too tired to be angry and already know that bargaining is futile, and, unrealistic. Depression is also triggered or accentuated by the low self-esteem owing to deeds done in the past and during the earlier stages. Depression is facing the reality as of today and also a gate that will open up to better days. This stage doesn’t mean you are now in control of situation but means you are aware that this is what it is. It is coupled with silence, suicidal behavior, rejecting perks of life, forming notions of being alone and cold for life. It’s also about trying to ensure that you are not vulnerable anymore. In the nutshell, this stage ensures that a person is aware of uncertainty and can do nothing about it but to wait and let things take their course.

Acceptance
Ah the sunshine! As I said, no one can stay angry or depressed forever. Acceptance takes you towards life and life takes you to acceptance. One realizes that nothing lasts forever. Neither pain nor grudge and definitely not happiness. It does make you stronger, or at least better equipped to handle the cycle…

Now what no one tells you is how you as a person change in the process. You may become cold-hearted/ superstitious/ over-cautious/ reckless/ and gazillion of other things. I feel only thing to take away is a lesson. It’s just a lesson that life happens, things are meant to happen. Take good things and learn from what went wrong. Don’t punish yourself or other unrelated people for what happened. Life is not hard or easy – its a series of events; You lose some, you gain some!