Stages of Grief
The stages of grief, identified by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, are often listed as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I long suspected that even Elisabeth Kübler-Ross herself had not believed that these stages come in any orderly fashion, and that there is no time limit for passing through one, let alone all, of the stages, but memorial cards are something that can help.
This suspicion was confirmed by grief expert David Kessler, who worked directly with her. So if anyone—even a professional—tells you that you are not grieving properly, don’t take it to heart. Know that you are grieving exactly the way you are supposed to.
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”—ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS
Some people question her use of the word “heal,” as well as the capacity of a grieving person to be whole again. To me, the important part is the simple statement that after a loss we will never be the same, and why would we want to?
The quote acknowledges the duality of the griever: the ability to learn how to be fully alive while knowing that loss has changed us forever. “If you are working with a therapist . . . or anyone else who is trying to help you navigate the wilderness of grief and they start talking about the groundbreaking observations of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross suggesting there is an orderly predictable unfolding of grief please please please. Do yourself a favor. Leave . . . Grief is wild and messy and unpredictable.” —TOM ZUBA This is also where ritual can help, including the ritual of funeral memorial cards
It is unfortunate when those you seek out for help do not understand grief. In the name of helping, they want to label your grief process and show you the “inappropriateness” of certain feelings. You have the right to your own personal grief journey. Learning that the very nature of grief is to be surprising in its intensity and longevity is more useful than being given impractical goals to meet. If you are about to ride an untamed horse, isn’t it better to be told that, rather than being told you are getting on a gentle pony?
“Grief is not linear. People kept telling me that once this happened or that passed, everything would be better . . . But it is not linear . . . It is a jumble. It is hours that are all right, and weeks that aren’t. Or it is good days and bad days. Or it is the weight of sadness making you look different to others and nothing helps.” —ANN HOOD
Grief takes a jumbled and disjointed path; one that is framed with both sadness and joy. It is in the darkest times we can learn to recall the glimmer of joy. In her blog Ann writes: “Oh! The human spirit never fails me. How we ache! How we love so deeply!”
“[Some] psychologists out there will tell you that grief is a process . . . Others say that grief should only last two years at the most, otherwise it’s ‘abnormal’ . . . Take away a person’s grief and guaranteed they’ll only be a frozen shell of a human being afterwards. Grief is only love, it’s nothing to hide or send away with happy pills. Grief is a lifeline connecting two people who are in different realms together, and it’s a sign of loyalty and hope.” —REBECCA MCNUTT
When I listen to the stories of grieving people, I try to focus on the love rather than the pain. The sadness that lasts for the rest of our lives is born out of the grace of this love. Grief remains a lifeline connecting us, and the loyalty and hope implied by this connection can show us how to find inspiration in our grief, and memorial cards UK can be the manifestation of that hope.
“Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.” —ANNE LAMOTT
With grief, as time goes by, we regain some control over what the lazy Susan offers us and how fast it spins. It may not be a steady control, but some control comes with what we learn day by day. Day Six “Apparently there were seven stages of grief but that was a neat way of putting it. Grief was messy and didn’t [color] inside the lines.” —EMILY GALE
“The five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frameand identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.” —ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS
Here Kübler-Ross confirms that her five stages of grief are only tools to help us understand what we are feeling. They are not meant to be experienced once then never revisited. You might have anger mixed with depression. You might accept the death of the person you love most on Tuesday and refuse to accept it on Wednesday. You might think you have left bargaining behind, but then there it is again. You might have feelings and stages of your very own that are not on anyone else’s list. You aren’t crazy.
