Grief is not a process with five stages. It is shattered glass

I only got a chance to scan the article, but it tracks.<p>I lost my wife 3.5 years ago. She was in her late 40&#x27;s. We knew she was going to die, and it was an awful process. We thought we were prepared. But there&#x27;s no preparing. When it happens, everything inside just shatters. Even 3.5 years later, I find myself just bawling at times, and I consider myself ahead of the grief &#x27;curve&#x27; if there is such a thing.<p>I&#x27;ve come to the conclusion that I&#x27;ll never be over my wife. Even if I remarry, there will always be that part of me that&#x27;s hanging on.<p>You don&#x27;t really heal. You just find a new balance without that person in your life. You go through the motions until a sense of normal returns. But there will always be part of you that is shattered, never to be whole again. Thankfully, it&#x27;s not fatal to the sufferer.

I think the thing that can&#x27;t be talked about is that there are also different levels of grief. It is hard to talk about because any suggestion that one person&#x27;s grief is worse than someone else&#x27;s seems to trivialize their pain.<p>But the truth is there are levels to this. I grieved when I lost pets. The pain I felt was very real and deep, but it didn&#x27;t really compare to the pain I felt when I lost my grandparents. I was very close to them, and I was devastated when they died. That pain, however, was not even close to the level of pain I felt when I lost my daughter. That is life-changing pain that one never recovers from.<p>So I like the idea of shattered glass because it allows for acknowledgement that all grief shatters us. Some grief, like perhaps a pet loss, might just break us into a few big glass pieces, relatively easy to glue back together. Other loss, like that of my daughter, shatters you into a million glass pieces. No amount of time or effort will put you back together. But you can take the pieces and shape <i>something</i> from them. That something can still be beautiful and have a good life, but it will never be the same thing as it was before.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross&#x27;s original conception on the 5 stages of grief was not a linear process where one progress from one stage to the next, ending in acceptance. Rather, it was meant as a way to start a conversation and gain a bit of self-awareness of the process. That helps start putting some of that shattered glass back together.

When my dad died I woke up the next day on a new Earth that was less bright, where I cared less about all things including myself. I don’t think it gets better, you just gradually forget your old home.

Grief is deeply personal and unique to each individual. When my dad passed away, I irrationally blamed myself, despite him being in a different country and his sudden stroke. I have PTSD, and looking back, it seems bizarre. There&#x27;s no single pattern to grief—just countless variations.

I love articles like this, as I grow older I become more fond of the existential and facing down the inevitability of death for myself and all around me. I find more empathy and patience with people when I consider their loss.

Many commenters have commented with their own loss and grief. One thing that helped me recently is Anderson Cooper’s “All There Is” podcast, both hearing about his own grief and those of his guests (the Stephen Colbert episode in particular will always have space in my heart), but also for the information from those psychologists and other professionals that he has on.<p>Highly recommended!

I liked to joke about my dog going through all five stages whenever I left the apartment:<p>1. Denial - she would run out of the apartment with me and try to follow me, because Papa would NEVER leave without her.<p>2. Anger - once herded back into the apartment she would bark loudly, indicating her frustration with me leaving.<p>3. Bargaining - the barks would become yips, begging for me to come back<p>4. Depression - the yips would become long, morose whimpers<p>5. Acceptance - she would go back and sit with my wife on the couch, adjusting at last to my absence. Of course I would only be gone for 15 minutes or so, and she would leap up on me and maul me when I got back like I was returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan<p>But in reality, I knew the five stages were something somebody made up, kinda like Myers-Briggs. I used to bristle whenever someone lectured me about them. In myself and in others, I could see that it&#x27;s far, far more complicated than that.

This article is spot-on. It is different for everyone, but this arc was remarkably similar to losing my mother just over 20 years ago, also too early and to a short-ish final bout with cancer. Although one of the sharp shards hadn&#x27;t turned up for quite a while now, <i>ouch!</i> there&#x27;s another one, right here and now; they almost always keep showing up where I least expect them.<p>Joshua Thomas is definitely onto a better description of the process here. Thx jyunwai for posting it; it increases understanding.

I know HN is full of people who have moved far from their families. For those living far from your family, do you feel projected grief for having moved away knowing your parents will ultimately die? I feel like I am going through something like this, where I can’t be close to them physically and nothing else compares, and yet I know I’ve made a decision to move and they will die and our time together will have been cut short - by me. I feel grief and don’t know how to cope with it. Anyone else with any experience similar to this, I’d love to hear your thoughts &#x2F; coping mechanism.