In staying with one of my goals for the new year, of continuing to
work through my grieving process over the loss of my mother in December
of 2007, I decided to do some research on GRIEF. Some of this
information came from general websites and some of it came from a book
about the stages of grief written by psychiatrist Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross. (I will make sure I give her the credit for the excerpts I
take from the book.)
How does grief make a person feel? Empty and numb
… in shock … maybe some physical changes like nausea, trouble
breathing, trouble sleeping. Even some anger is mixed in. You may also
have nightmares and have trouble staying on task (absent minded, they
call it).
How long does grief last? As long as it takes you
to accept and learn to live with your loss. The amount of time we
grieve depends also on the relationship with the person we lost and how
prepared we were for the loss.
When someone we love dies after a long illness … as in the case of
my mother … we experience something called ANTICIPATORY GRIEF. That
means we begin the grieving process long before the person dies. That
doesn’t mean we’re less devastated at our loss. But it may mean that
our grieving process can be completed sooner. It doesn’t matter how old
the person was who died, or how sick they were. You lost someone you
love, and it hurts …
Here’s the excerpts from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ book:
(Kubler-Ross proposed these stages of grief which were originally
written to represent the feelings of people who were themselves facing
death. But they can be applied to experiencing the death of loved ones,
too.)
- Denial: The first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss …
We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on … We
try to find a way to simply get through each day … there is grace in
denial … it’s nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
- Anger: Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process … there
are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in
time … You may also ask “Where is God in this?”
- Bargaining: After a loss we want life returned to what it was … we want our loved one restored … we want to go back in time.
- Depression: Empty feelings present themselves and grief enters our
lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined … It’s important
to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It
is the appropriate response to a great loss … To not experience
depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully
settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get
better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing.
If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many
necessary steps along the way.
- Acceptance: Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being
“all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. Most
people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one.
This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is
physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent
reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually
we accept it and we learn to live with it … it has been forever changed
and we must readjust.
She says of these stages: “They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss, as there is no typical loss. Our grieving is as individual as our lives.”
Express your feelings in a tangible or creative way (ie, journal,
artwork, etc.); Take care of yourself physically; Don’t let other
people tell you how to feel and don’t tell yourself how to feel either;
and Plan ahead (birthdays, anniversaries, holidays).
Hopefully, more to come at a later time. | 
