Grief is not a process with five stages. It is shattered glass
psyche.co
psyche.co
I lost my wife 3.5 years ago. She was in her late 40's. We knew she was going to die, and it was an awful process. We thought we were prepared. But there'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 'curve' if there is such a thing.
I've come to the conclusion that I'll never be over my wife. Even if I remarry, there will always be that part of me that's hanging on.
You don'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's not fatal to the sufferer.
You can recover,* yet at the same never actually do so. You can laugh at jokes, go on a fun trip, yet at the same time the sense of loss is everpresent. The whole heaven myths, IMHO, are less to give us reassurance about our own individual fate, and more to try to ablate the grief that occurs while you're alive.
Having to get up every morning to get the kid ready for school, feed the pets etc is a valuable forcing function. I don't know how people who live alone manage.
* I wrote "can" because I imagine some people cannot.
I found the advice strangely comforting. Like many, I did not want to let go of the grief. In my grieving mind that would be tantamount to no longer caring. Knowing that the grief would never truly leave however, helped me move on. I’ve found the friend’s advice to be true. Like you, I was able to integrate the grief as part of a new life. The person lost has always remained a part of that new life.
Don’t.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/13601954-Death-Is-Nothing-At-All-...
I am fortunate to have started working with my Dad when I was around 7 years of age. He was a master electrician and started his own business in the 1970s after realizing he could do it better. Outside of school and sports I worked with him everyday doing electrical work until I went off to college. He was not happy when I decided to go off to school for computer programming in the early 1990s which unknowingly then shattered his business dream of “& Son”. At his celebration of life I had so many electricians approach me that were overly grateful to finally meet me as they informed me that I was all my Dad talked about all the time. I had no idea and these relived moments in my mind have been my solace.
I will never truly be the same and the reasoning for me cuts even deeper as a serial entrepreneur as my current startup has returned me to my electrical roots and with every forward step of progress I make I must accept that my father will never get to see this energy storage creation his son invented. I now move forward with my efforts in his honor because without his love and guidance I would not be where I am today.
Damn was this difficult to type. Miss you Dad.
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'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.
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 something 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.
/s
I think the 5 stages do make sense for self grief as it was originally researched, during time spent with those actually dying.
As someone who lost both parents in my early 20s I think it is helpful model to be aware of during the acute phase of a terminal diagnosis ... but yeah, it's inadequate in the extreme.
The 5 stages were from what I like to call the "just make shit up" era of psychology. Because if it sounded true it was psychology! Some would argue that era never ended, but I think that's just cynical.
As for the article's metaphor I thought they were going with another obvious direction - a broken glass is just suddenly, irreversibly gone.
I wish the author had laid out a timeline, because it feels like this was written early on in their grieving process, and I think the whole appeal of the stages model is that your perspective/understanding will change as time moves on.
Highly recommended!
1. Denial - she would run out of the apartment with me and try to follow me, because Papa would NEVER leave without her.
2. Anger - once herded back into the apartment she would bark loudly, indicating her frustration with me leaving.
3. Bargaining - the barks would become yips, begging for me to come back
4. Depression - the yips would become long, morose whimpers
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
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's far, far more complicated than that.
Joshua Thomas is definitely onto a better description of the process here. Thx jyunwai for posting it; it increases understanding.
A principle I've tried to follow is to minimize regrets over one's life. In your case, it sounds like you will live with the full experience of moving to a new place—you won't have the regrets expressed by some who didn't move away. Some people who give up opportunities out of passiveness have grown to truly regret that decision. In my situation, closeness to parents was one of several reasons: if it were the only one, it’s likely I would have regretted not taking an alternate path.
You can also call your parents often over the phone or video. I was very close to a person who moved to the opposite side of the globe from the person’s parents for more than five years, but spent a lot of time video calling them (nearly every day). The person confided in them and talked about plenty of subjects. This person truly has a great relationship with them: I wouldn't be surprised if the topics of conversations were often deeper than those with my own parents, despite being half a world away.
It also may not be too late to move later in life (though understandably, sometimes there are barriers, such as a partner who can't easily move, or restrictions in either country that make a move difficult). Many people in my country move to the US to earn money and gain experience, then decide to move back home after a number of years to raise children and care for family members. From another perspective, I've known other people who moved to my country, then worked with immigration services to bring their family to move with them.
Though I don't know your parents, they might also have regretted or been heartbroken if you gave up on your dreams or plans in life just to stay closer to them. If I were to become a parent one day, I would also hope my children would similarly be able to live a full life, even if that meant an empty nest at home.
I think it's good that you are actively considering the question. A future step may not involve any person moving in the future, but a starting point could involve deepening the relationship with your parents by calling them and sharing more about your life.