Stages

Must of us know the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, but, with no intention to undermine any psychologists, I believe I have found some new ones, or maybe some more accurate ways to portray and inform those stages. (nobody can prepare you to grieve)

Denial, you clearly know what is happening or happened or is in the very imminent future going to happen, and this is just our simple way of not killing ourselves over our grief. We don't deny what's happening we only try, usually unsuccessfully, to bury our pain so it doesn't kill us, because that's what we feel it will do to us.

Anger is a natural and instant response from me for most things, so I know first hand how it feels and how it works my whole system, mind, body, soul, everything. So I don't believe anger is an accurate stage of grief, moreover, I believe it might be called indignation, or impotence, because all anger is doing here is pushing your face to the fact that your grief is real and there's nothing you nor nobody else can do about it.

Bargaining always felt a little weird to me, as there's nothing to bargain with, sometimes we wish we'd live in a fictional magical world where you can trade your eternal soul to save the life of someone you love, or a broken dream, but, here in the real world, this doesn't make sense. There's nothing we can offer, to anyone to fix our ailing, and there's only the built up frustration of being completely helpless in a situation, that even if it's not your first, you'd love to change for the better, but will never be able to.

Depression, now this is completely accurate, however maybe an understatement. When you're literally waiting for the death of a loved one and you've gotten to this stage, depression can come out of nowhere, or non at all, sometimes sadness, as the little brother, is filling in for the eldest. Desperation comes to mind as well as sadness or depression are feelings we are indoctrinated to avoid, which also sometimes leads to shame, a shame nobody should feel for grieving, on top of all the feelings we know and understand, and all the ones that we didn't even knew we had bouncing like rubber balls, all agains our hearts, SHAME is the one that should be an spectator and not an active participant. However feelings in this situations, have full command, and you can't pull the remote from shame's hand. Also, at this stage, fear plays an incalculable roll, as we're unsure and fearful of what will come afterwards, I'm not a fearful person per-se but that's not to say I'm not afraid of anything, I usually charge almost blindly into the unknown and deal with whatever it brings, but this new kind of fear, has me stuck in a way I've never felt stuck before.

Acceptance, this comes as a bit of a surprise to myself as to how easy is to accept something, and still be firmly set in all previous stages all at once. Acceptance doesn't meen I agree what's going on is as it should be, it doesn't make me feel any better knowing that the best I can do is suffer in place of a loved one, acceptance for me comes in the way of resilience: you suffer, you never accept or get over your grief, but you survive, because the love you feel, is what brings the pain and suffering that you're also feeling, which in a weird and paradoxical way, makes this, the pinnacle of our pain, worth it.