The Five Stages

I’m thinking about Elizabeth-Kubhler Ross’s five stages of grief:

 

• Denial: Usually short-lived.
• Anger: A coping mechanism that can be directed at loved ones, God, or the situation itself. 
• Bargaining: A hope to postpone death, often in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. 
• Depression: A period of understanding the certainty of death, which can lead to silence, withdrawal, and crying. 
• Acceptance: Coming to terms with mortality or the loss of a loved one. 

 

There you go. That explains clearly how I’ve woken up these past 10 mornings or so. I am grieving for the death of democracy, of civility, of understanding, of the love for my country and a faith in democracy that is lost at the moment. The way I would grieve for the loss of a loved one or my own mortality is a collective grief but it makes sense that it would follow the contours of personal grief. 

For me, this is not a linear progression. I never know which one will appear, but they all have in some form or another. Yesterday morning was fiery anger that had turned to deep sorrow by evening. Not much bargaining, since I am powerless to bargain with those in power and there’s no wrong turn down a path I’m aware of that I need salvation from or repentance. But the anger and the sadness (not depression, but a more profound sorrow) are very present, with an occasional acceptance that in the big picture, this, too, shall pass and an occasional fantasy of denying the reality by never reading a news item again. 

 

The usual idea is to fix it quick, to heal it, to find a solution or an action or the right story to understand it. To stop the pain. But now I’m feeling that the wise thing is to just sit with whatever comes up. To be there fully with it, to just let it be until it has outstayed its welcome or purpose. The anger is useful, as it cuts through the extraneous and trivial and fuels my authentic honesty. The sorrow is not comfortable, but wholly necessary and even more so if I finally let the tears gush forth. The denial has its own short-lived wisdom and the acceptance has its own danger of accepting too much and too soon. As mentioned, I’m still trying to figure out the bargaining.

 

But one thing is clear. I don’t want to dishonor any of it as trivial, but compared to what Emmett Till’s mother or George Floyd’s family or rape victims or all the millions who survived The Middle Passage, it is such a small thing to ask of myself that I wholly feel the grief, the anger, the helplessness and hopelessness in the face of what others have suffered. 

 

We shall see who will wake up with me tomorrow.