Stages

I think nearly everyone is familiar with Kubler-Ross and the five stages of grief and loss. I certainly am. My profession is all about those five stages. My job is to help families navigate the end of life for their loved ones. It is a difficult personal journey. No two families navigate impending loss in the same way.

My own losses have given me personal experience navigating grief as I’ve worked through those stages myself. The hardest to navigate was the loss of my daughter. As all parent’s who have lost children know, we are not meant to outlive our children.

My father’s loss has left me slightly unmoored. It isn’t the same grief as losing my daughter, as It’s the expected course of events. But I feel orphaned nonetheless.

Our lives hold smaller griefs, of course; the loss of a marriage or of health, or of income.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Over-simplified perhaps, but true nontheless.

Most of us bounce around those stages for a while before we finally find the grace to accept what is and move forward. Notice I didn’t say” go back to normal”. The old normal has gone and will never return. Never. You can add that loss to the smaller griefs if you like. Grief alters us. The profound changes that precipitate that grief always effects who we are. How we react to that change is in a large way up to us. While we cannot change what has happened, we can and should control how we respond. We can move forward step by haltering step. One foot in front of the other. Acceptance is not forgetting. It is not the absence of sadness and loss. That would be horrible. Acceptance is the act of integrating the truth of that loss- no matter how horrific or insignificant -into who we now are and who we will be.

It is a sometimes long and always difficult process.

Always.