Stages of Grief...blah, blah, blah!

As I wrote my post yesterday, it didn’t just get me thinking about all the strong women in my life.  I got me thinking about all of the people that have died during my life and left a mark.  Some people my age haven’t faced much loss, which is absolutely wonderful.  Nobody wants to go through this.  Unfortunately, I have lost many people.

Just after I was born, I lost my uncle.  Sure, I admit that I don’t remember him.  Heck, I was two-months-old, but I can say without a doubt that the loss impacted my life.  In my elementary years, I lost my great-grandmother and a family friend.  In my junior high years, I lost my cousin and my grandfather.  I lost a friend and my grandmother in my high school years.  During my college days, my other grandmother passed away and my aunt.  In my adult life, I have lost two aunts, an uncle, my other grandfather, my father, Jeff’s grandparents, and now Jeff himself.  

What did I learn from all of this?  I learned that loss is hard.  I learned that every person handles grief in their own way.  Also, that grief varies depending on who a person has lost.  Basically, I learned that grief has absolutely no rules.

In college, I took a class called Death and Dying.  In that class we studied the book On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.  In this book she talks about the five stages that people now call the five stages of grief.  These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  Guess what?  These weren’t actually written as stages we go through after losing a loved one, but rather more as what a person goes through when they find out they themselves are dying.       

So, what are the stages you go through when you lose someone you care about?  Who the heck knows!  I’m sure we go through some of those 5 stages.  Maybe even all of them.  However, they don’t come in a neat and orderly manner.  It looks more like this…

Grief is not linear.  Grief is chaotic.  It is individual.  I wish I could say that it looks a certain way.  A timeline would be absolutely fantastic.  I still mourn the loss of every single one of those people I mentioned.  I don’t mourn them the same way I did.  The feelings ebb and flow.  They change over time.  So, if anyone tries to sell you on the stages of grief or make you feel like your grief is wrong, you can kindly tell them to get lost.  I may be moving forward.  I may not be giving up.  But I will never quit grieving those that I have lost... Especially my husband.