On grief and grieving.

Did you know that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ 1969 book “On Death and Dying” was written for medical practitioners? She wanted to address the treatment protocols for dying patients by providing information to fellow practitioners on what the experience was like for their terminal patients. It’s not a blueprint for people going through the grieving process after they’ve lost someone as I always assumed, though there are overlaps and commonalities.

I blame television. It trains us on a variety of matters, and it trains us wrong.

Kübler-Ross was a Swiss American psychiatrist and a pioneer of studies on dying people, and she proposed the patient-focused, death-adjustment pattern that includes the now fairly ubiquitous five stages of grief. Those stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and while they make for a nice soundbite, there are more than five stages in the book. The book is also clear that the stages aren’t a checklist: you get to them when you get to them, sometimes all in a single day, or hour.

We do like to simplify the complex.

This was good information to get. I’ve been worrying that I’m doing impending loss wrong. I’ve been worrying about my grief what with my mother not being dead yet. Should it be intense already? And why is it that sometimes I’m fine?

My mother is palliative now. My mother’s status is palliative. I’m not sure how to use the word anymore. It’s odd what grabs your attention.

It would be nice if doctors could give you a definite date, but that’s not how life rolls. But death is coming, and soonish, and there’s no escape.

Anger is an easy stage to get to.

Her doctors excluding her GP have said goodbye. There is no more oncologist, no more heart specialist, no more internal medicine, no more nephrologist. It is this, more than knowing the diagnoses, that has been the biggest blow. Her doctors saying goodbye has made this more real, even though it has already been so revoltingly real.

There is literally nothing more that they can do. Space gets made in the practices for new patients. Life goes on.

On death, and dying, and closet organization.

I can’t find the right baskets. I’m not sure what I need them for: my cupboards are organized from the kitchen to the storage room. Maybe red baskets in the bathroom? But I have red ones in the hall closet for my crafting stuff: that would create some confusion perhaps.

Perhaps wicker? All my baskets are plastic. That was probably a mistake. Maybe I should change them all?

I put rocks on all my plants. Except the Monkey Flower and the Rattlesnake Plant and the Anthurium. They interact with the dirt differently. Some are brown river rock, some are shiny black, and some are pink. I picked up the first bags when I got balloons for my son’s twenty-fourth birthday dinner. I didn’t get nearly enough. Rocks, not balloons.

Mom was so tired that night. They came over here, but getting dressed following the afternoon nap and then the drive over – ten minutes – left her exhausted. She didn’t each much of the lasagna or ice cream cake. I know what it means that she’s eating less and less. I want to scream.

I understand now why people bring foodstuffs to the sick.

I didn’t buy enough rocks, so I had to go back to the dollar store for more. I thought maybe I should get Mom some for her houseplants, and then I remembered she’s been getting rid of all her plants so as to not burden my dad, and I sat down on the floor and cried for a while.

I’ve been wondering if I should get the garage painted. The previous owners built the house, and they had the garage walls blown on. It’s a chunky, popcorn-like finish that was popular in the nineties. But I’d have to take a lot of stuff out of the garage – just off the shelves down one side. I’m not a hoarder – I park in my garage. But I have artwork on the walls. Stuff I don’t want up in the house anymore but also don’t want to get rid of.

I wonder if I should sell the freezer now that I’m an empty nester?

Life and death are about paperwork.

My parents’ cremations are preplanned, but that’s it. I told them not to go cheap, but the decisions we make for our future selves aren’t always the best. How else do you explain smoking?

I went to the funeral home today to review what’s been decided on and to see what we need for a home death. I worked in a funeral home years ago, but I couldn’t seem to remember the protocol. You need your GP to sign a Notice of Expected Death in the Home. I remembered after they told me. That way, you don’t have to call 911.

Like most things, this is easier in the abstract or when it’s for other people. It was easier last week. I don’t want to decide that my mother is dead.

I need to get her numbers together. We’re made up of numbers, accounts, and passwords, and I have to get all those things organized. My dad is technically her executor, but this is beyond him for a variety of reasons.

I just realized that I don’t know her favourite song. A friend of mine has a funeral playlist put together already. She wanted to make sure there was enough of The Tragically Hip. I should know what my mom’s favourite song is. Or maybe she’s like me, and there isn’t one. I know she loves Andrew Lloyd Webber and Queen and Elton John and Christmas music.

We saw Starlight Express together in London. She took me to England when I was twenty-one, when I was waiting to get into the hospital for my eating disorder, when I was dying. She saved my life. She’s done that a couple of times.

I’m angry that I can’t do that here.

Death and dissociation.

It is hard for me to stay in the moments. I have a lifetime of practice at mentally withdrawing. When the going gets tough, I disappear and autopilot comes into play. It’s a down-market autopilot with an anger-management problem, but she is reliable: she’s kept me moving forward for years.

I want to get away from this. I want to disappear from the pain. I don’t want to sit in it, I don’t want to help my mother, my father, and my family through it, I just want to withdraw until I’m absent. This is a very bad idea, and I know it, but that doesn’t stop the urge.

I would find the consequences of withdrawal hard to live with.

Shopping is not making it better in flagrant violation of what the commercials promise. I go to thrift stores and consignment stores. I go to the dollar store. I go to Marshall’s, to Winners, and to HomeSense. I go to PetSmart and Walmart. I scroll through Amazon incessantly, and I’m making sure the people at MasterCard have a nice holiday season, but I still haven’t found the thing that will fix everything with purchase.

I want that thing that will make this better. I want the new purse, or the new shoes, or the piece of décor that makes my mother not be dying. And I can’t find it, and that’s a frustration to me because if I can’t buy my way out of grief now, it bodes ill for escape in the future.

Five of the stages.

The stages may have been written as a model for medical practitioners, but they also help those of us who are left behind. It’s interesting – I’ve lost people before, and I know about the stages of grieving as well as most. But this is my first go-round with an immediate family loss, and my expertise has abandoned me.

1. Denial – in many ways, denial is a gift. It allows you to approach the unmanageable. It allows us to spread our pain over time. True denial – a wholesale refusal to admit to the reality of the situation – is a real problem that needs to be addressed. Denial ebbs on its own for most, but laying down arms in the fight against reality also helps.
2. Anger is a natural reaction to loss. The target is somewhat irrelevant. It can be yourself, the deceased, the doctors and care team, god, or the universe. Anger is one of the ways we express pain, and expression is vital when one is grieving. Anger is also a masking emotion, hiding our feelings of helplessness, guilt, and so on. It’s helpful to remember that death isn’t personal, or so I’m told. It comes for all of us, and that I know to be true. No one gets out of here alive.
3. Bargaining after a loss often involves “if only” thinking. It often walks hand in hand with guilt, and it’s another way of distancing yourself from the reality of the situation. It’s important to remember that the emotions of grief can arrive solo or in groups, and the feelings can last minutes to days. Or, you may not feel a particular one at all. As with most things, with grief, there’s no one true way. There are mistakes, like thinking you can avoid or outrun it, but there’s no “doing it right.”
4. Depression hits when the loss starts to impact your life in profound ways. It’s the sadness that comes with the realization that the absence of your loved one is permanent. It’s deep and dark, and it can feel like it will last forever, but it’s a natural part of the grieving process. There is, however, a caveat: if the depression lasts too long, or the hole gets too deep, seek out support. We all need a hand at times.
5. Acceptance is an emotional state that trips a lot of us up. We interpret acceptance as being okay with what has happened. That’s not it at all. Acceptance is recognizing and acknowledging the reality of our situation. Someone we loved is dead. It doesn’t mean the grieving is over. Grief never ends. The profound depths that happen in the immediate aftermath will wane, but death is a permanent absence, and the loss always aches.  

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And a note: if you find your struggles with grief unmanageable, or if they persist without any ease for months, seek out help. We’re not built to navigate things alone, and profound grief isn’t meant to last forever.

Header image: Valentina Shilkina 

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