Grieving is Different For All of Us The Process of Grieving Many people immediately assume that they know how a person should grieve and that if the person grieving hasn’t gone through the ascribed stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance (Kubler-Ross), then the person cannot move on. There are many problems with thinking that way. The biggest problem is simply this. The people researched for these stages were dying—they were not the people left behind. I know that it is easier for people to understand logical and sequential patterns of grieving. In fact, there seems to be a time line on grieving. People are perceived and judged to be grieving too long or not long enough, however people who have lost people far too soon do not always grieve in the same pattern or at the same rate. It does not mean that a loved one was loved any less if a person can smile, find happiness, or even love again. The time line and process is different for each and every person. As part of this degree that I am pursuing, I am having to look at death, dying, and life. Grief is hard and there isn’t a magic want or pill to get a person through the darkness. People are 7 times more like to commit suicide after the death of a loved one. I can’t speak for what anyone else thinks or the process they are going through, but I can speak of my journey. I am a happy person by nature. I am the girl that is sparkly and optimistic just because I love life and I love the life that I have been given. I have had hard times before—many of them, but I always could see an end or a silver lining. I can’t say that I felt this way with Phil’s death. I broke and I couldn’t find my footing. While I made a conscious choice to fall into my faith, the darkness consumed me. Many, many people reached out to me and carried me and the key for me was that I let them help me. Maybe they did not have words, and maybe sometimes the wrong words were uttered, but they showed up and were fully present when I couldn’t help myself. I hurt so much that my body hurt for months. Sometimes, I felt like I was having a heart attack and I wished it to be. During this darkness, I felt stupid and I felt helpless, I couldn’t remember things and I would have to leave myself notes to eat. Yes, eat. I operated on auto pilot and the routines eventually helped me find stability. It wasn’t easy to get up and go to work in the morning, but the schedule forced me not to hide behind four walls suffering in silence,. Eventually, the masks started to come off and what I showed the world was the girl I always had been except I wasn’t pretending any more. Do those dark days creep in and do I struggle with wearing the masks? Yes…and sometimes I wonder if there will ever be a 27 November, Jan 11, April 4, or 27 April where I won’t feel my heart strings pulled, but this numbness or this widows’s fog is probably the most realistic first stage of grieving. I felt overwhelming fear. If Phil could be so wrong about his assassin, then who am I to make decisions about people or even for myself? I was scared and unsure. I drifted not knowing where to go or who to call. I wished to die, but I couldn’t give the assassin the bonus of getting me too. I began to fight back into life one small step at a time. As time crept by, I became aware of shifting friendships and the fact that I no longer felt like I fit it. I know that even among my family members, people pulled away. I do not think it was an intentional severing, rather, I think it was all of us grieving an unnatural death in our own manner. People who had been long term friends pulled away and have not reached out. I am not sure if it was because they thought that somehow my moral compass might have changed, if they thought I was a third wheel, my sadness was too much to bear, or if I was too much of a visible reminder as to what could happen to their spouses. It made me feel broken, deficient, and deeply lonely. I have changed—I am a better friend because I know all too well about how fleeting life is. I no longer sit in the shadows afraid to say things or to wait for life to happen. I struggle because after 23 years of marriage, I new how to be the traditional wife and the traditional mom. I don’t know how to be single or how to fix my car, electronics, drive long distances, and I could go on. I have discovered that I am capable of speaking and that I like certain foods I would have once never had in my house because Phil couldn’t stand the smell of stronger foods. I have discovered that I know where I want to live and where “home” is. Before home was Phil and wherever the military sent us. Colorado is beckoning me—Come home, come home. Like an adolescent, I have moments of self-doubt and moments of anger, but those moments of self-discovery have compelled me forward. These opportunities and this quest to find meaning and to honor the men and women gone far too soon and the families at home waiting for them have opened doors I never imagined for myself. I saw, and often still see, myself as an invisible behind the scenes kind of girl, but in my darkest hours, a fire was fuelled. I need, I want, and I try to honor Phil and his incredible story, but more than that, I know that every name flashing across the television screens had someone at home waiting for them, loving them, and whose lives were shattered in the most unspeakable way. This is part of what I consider to be the true second phase of grieving for most people. It is so strange to publicly addressing military loss and grief and to know that Phil would have hated every moment of this part of me. It is so breath taking to consider whether he would even like this new Linda. I have changed and sometimes there is guilt there. Phil got 44 years and it was not long enough. He was robbed of so much—not just with his career, but his children and grandchildren. He missed out on what he had waited for with us. I missed out and my dreams ended—every one of them, but I cannot stay in the staid pooling mucky waters. I have begun to take steps to consider what I want my life to look like however many days I have left. I am lonely and I do believe in a chapter two, but it is sobering to realize that I am not the girl I once was and that she no longer exists. That girl is buried and gone. I trust myself and I trust the God who carries me. He has not brought me thus far to let me fall. Finally, I believe that these grieving stages, per se, are static. Days or life events can knock me to my knees. Most days are diamonds, but other days are an albatross around my neck. I still cannot celebrate Christmas. I plan to try this year, but there are some areas where the fun is still sucked out of my life. I still want to turn to Phil and ask his opinion as I step forward and consider a life without him. I still hate airport reunions and military homecomings not because I don’t want others to have them, but because it is unbearable that Phil never got that in any deployment. Time is marching on and I have so many blessings and happy times, but when the hard times hit, people almost think that I should be finished with negative emotion. To put it into perspective, people never tell another person to get over being happy, but they will think or tell a person that it is time to move on. Is it? Only the griever knows and it is different for each and every one of us. The process is static and shifting and there is no one pattern or sequence that we all follow. I step forward because I choose to trust the faith I fell into in my very darkest hours.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:03:20 +0000
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