The Five Stages

Yup, here we go. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s often cited 'five stages of grief' are as such: 
- Denial & Isolation
 - Anger
 - Bargaining
 - Depression
 - Acceptance

These various stages were first posited by her in the book On Death and Dying (1969). Nearly 50 years later and we have done very little new in the way of looking at the process of grief. The kicker for me, however, is that Kübler-Ross’s interviews that generated these five stages were done with terminally ill patients themselves.

What this means is that these steps of grief were specific to people who were literally losing themselves. This is not grief for a loved one, but grief of the knowledge that one would cease to be in this world. I have to imagine that the grieving process is somewhat different for those of us that have lost someone significant, because we are sitting with the memories of our loved one. We are the ones that have to face new experiences without them. We are the ones that can no longer pick up the phone or have a Skype session with our parent just to chat. We are the ones that live with the memory of the good moments, and the bad moments, and the should have been moments. 

Our grief is not about losing ourselves, but of losing a connection. That loss of connection does not go away or get filled by another so much as it becomes like sea-glass, beginning as jagged and rough, but over time it gets smoothed over. I anticipate that this hole I feel is something that will dull over time, but it will never be a thing that goes away entirely.

Acceptance. That's the only one of the stages that I feel the survivors really have to get through for emotional health. The rest is for those that are losing themselves. We are the ones that simply have to accept the outcome.