On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss

by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

This first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

It is important to remember that the anger surfaces once you are feeling safe enough to know you will probably survive whatever comes.

The will to save a life is not the power to stop a death.

“I’m angry that I have to keep living in a world where I can’t find her, call her, or see her.

Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal.

If we ask people to move through their anger too fast, we only alienate them. Whenever we ask people to be different than they are, or to feel something different, we are not accepting them as they are and where they are. Nobody likes to be asked to change and not be accepted as they are. We like it even less in the midst of grief.

Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss.

Do not bottle up anger inside. Instead, explore it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.

Don’t let anyone diminish the importance of feeling your anger fully. And don’t let anyone criticize your anger, not even you. BARGAINING Before a loss, it seems you will do anything if only your loved one may be spared.

But in grief, depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervous system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle.

As difficult as it is to endure, depression has elements that can be helpful in grief. It slows us down and allows us to take real stock of the loss. It makes us rebuild ourselves from the ground up. It clears the deck for growth. It takes us to a deeper place in our soul that we would not normally explore.

Acceptance is not about liking a situation. It is about acknowledging all that has been lost and learning to live with that loss.

Acceptance is a process that we experience, not a final stage with an end point.

In grief we often have a deep well of different emotions occurring at the same time, which is what makes grief confusing. We don’t have to choose which emotion is right or wrong. We can feel each emotion as it occurs and understand that relief is not disloyalty but rather a sign of deep love. Even as you are an unwilling character in your loss, you know that your loss will be easier for you to bear than the suffering was for your loved one. That is real love.

you heard a story your loved one told over and over again at countless dinners and parties, and now you realize you have questions about that story but no one is here to answer them.

Unexpressed tears do not go away; their sadness resides in our bodies and souls. Tears can often be seen as dramatic, too emotional, or a sign of weakness. But in truth, they are an outward expression of inner pain.

Telling the story helps to dissipate the pain. Telling your story often and in detail is primal to the grieving process. You must get it out. Grief must be witnessed to be healed. Grief shared is grief abated.

When someone is telling you their story over and over, they are trying to figure something out. There has to be a missing piece or they too would be bored. Rather than rolling your eyes and saying “there she goes again,” ask questions about parts that don’t connect. Be the witness and even the guide. Look for what they want to know.

The truth about loss is that the resurgence of old pain and grief has an important purpose. As the pain emerges, we find new ways of healing ourselves that may not have existed before. Return visits to old hurts are an exercise in completion, as we return to wholeness and reintegration.

The Grand Canyon was not punished by windstorms over hundreds of years. In fact, it was created by them. Your loss may feel like a punishment, but you are not the product of a God who punishes you with a loved one’s death. You are a creation with the unbelievable power to weather life’s toughest storms. If someone had tried to shield the Grand Canyon from the windstorm, we would never have seen the beauty of its carvings.

When the first year and other yearly anniversaries come, you may want to do more. On yearly anniversaries, especially the first, you may want to commemorate your loss. Find your own way to honor your loved one’s memory. It is an occasion that may bring up your greatest sadness along with some of your best memories. It deserves its spot in your heart. Just do what feels right for you. Attend a service, visit your loved one’s grave, or just talk to friends and family. Honor the love and the memories left behind.

Anniversaries may also be a time to honor yourself for having strength and courage. A year ago or years ago you were a different person. The person you were is forever changed.

Eloise grabbed her sister’s hand and said, “I know how much you want everything to be just right for Frank. And it will be fine, or if there are some glitches we will make it through. But more important, Judith, this is the one and only time that all these people will ever gather together for Frank . . . and for you. You will continue to see about thirty percent of these people, but the majority you will never see again. Today, though, they’re here to share their sorrow and yours. Today is the day they will openly and tenderly share their love for Frank, and you will grieve, for the rest of your life, mostly alone. Today, you have the opportunity to grieve with so many others, and I would hate to see you miss that.” Judith was then able to stop and be fully present for the funeral and the shared grief.

When someone asks how you are, don’t automatically say, “Fine.” Instead, you could say, “I’m having a tough time, so thank you for checking on me.” Or “I need help but I don’t know what to ask for.”

Very few of us are used to saying, “I’m okay, but check back with me in a month.” Let yourself receive the help, the support, the love. If you want to make a particular call personally or do a particular task yourself, fine. If you don’t, allow a friend or family member to help.

You don’t ever bring the grief over a loved one to a close.

Children are old enough to grieve if they are old enough to love;

We often imagine that our children don’t think about deceased loved ones on birthdays, holidays, and other significant days. But they do, even if they appear to be fine.

A friend can simply say, “I’m so sorry this happened.” A family member can ask, “Is there anything you want to know about your mom dying?”

Children will let you know whether or not they’re ready if you make yourself available to them, and when they’ve had enough, they’ll let you know that too. They will probably want to change the subject or leave. If they appear engaged and ask questions, keep talking in an age-appropriate manner.

Children, unlike adults, don’t stop and give you their full attention. They may be fiddling with something while you talk, but don’t mistake this for not listening or caring.

Words carry emotions and have unimagined consequences. For instance, in describing cremation, you might say that the body goes into a heated metal box rather than describing it as an “oven.” It is an oven, but since we have ovens in our kitchens in which we prepare our meals, try to avoid the emotional association. Say, “The body is heated until it turns to ash” rather than “burned.”

Even a seemingly simple statement like “Mom went to heaven” can be misinterpreted. “Why can’t we take a drive there and bring her back?” the child might ask. Or “Why did she choose heaven over us? Doesn’t she love us anymore?” A seven-year-old boy’s father told him that death was really called the Grim Reaper and was a Halloween character. Old people, he explained, couldn’t run fast enough to get away from the Grim Reaper, which is why Grandpa died. The child never enjoyed Halloween again.

I want you to know that the hardest thing for me in dying was leaving you behind. I tried and tried and tried not to leave you, and in the end I had to go. I know you will think of me often, as I will of you. On those days when you’re busy in your life at school or with friends, and out of the blue I pop into your mind for no reason, just know that at that moment I’m thinking of you. There will be times in your life when you may feel lonely, but you will never be alone. I will always be as close as your heart.”

Children often take on a heightened sense of responsibility when a loved one dies, but it isn’t always expressed so positively. They often think the death is their fault, not a result of something else that happened.

The fact that a funeral motorcade never travels faster than twenty miles per hour sends a message that with death, we should not rush.

Social isolation is a huge danger in suicide, because it produces the kind of grief we don’t often share. We alone are left with part of their pain as well as our own. This isolation leads to a lack of the very support systems that may be so helpful to your healing.

“One of the hardest parts of the grief is that people don’t know what to say to us. They’re afraid to say the wrong thing, but it really makes no difference how someone died. People can just say, ‘I’m sorry your mother died.’

Whatever you did, take comfort that you did it out of love and hope, trying to do the right thing when there was no clear right thing to do. You chose a direction in a medical world with too many mixed messages to understand what is and what is not the right decision. Whether you lean toward aggressive treatment or a more passive approach, questioning what you did after your loved one has died is normal. Fortunately or unfortunately, though, there is some relief in the air because they are no longer suffering.

There is no better or worse death.

Death is a line, a heartbreaking dividing line between the world we and our loved one lived in and the world where they now are. That line of death on a continuum becomes a Before and After mark. A line between time with them and time without them. A line that was drawn without us or our permission.

If you do not take the time to grieve, you cannot find a future in which loss is remembered and honored without pain.

I now know that the purpose of my life is more than these stages. I have been married, had kids, then grandkids, written books, and traveled. I have loved and lost, and I am so much more than five stages. And so are you. It is not just about knowing the stages. It is not just about the life lost but also the life lived.

Although I was too young to articulate it, I knew that my grief deserved a place but had none.

My career is living proof that we teach what we need to learn.

It somehow happens that to teach hard lessons, you must affect the vitality of an otherwise strong man, his mother, and the family. It taught me a lot about disenfranchised grief, which is grief that is unacknowledged and unvalued. Families would not show up to grieve their children dying of AIDS and disowned many of them at death. I remember calling the parents of a young man who had died of AIDS and informing them as gently as I could that their son had died. The father denied having a son.

When we first lose a loved one, our lives feeling meaningless. As we experience the five stages of grief, we are returned to a life with the possibility of meaningfulness that was unimaginable when we first dealt with the loss. I believe that grief and its unique healing powers take us from meaninglessness to meaningfulness again.

Grief is the intense emotional response to the pain of a loss. It is the reflection of a connection that has been broken. Most important, grief is an emotional, spiritual, and psychological journey to healing.

In today’s culture there are so few models of grief. It is invisible to the untrained eye. We don’t teach our children how to cope with loss. People don’t say to their children, “This is how you heal after a loved one dies, this is how we mourn.”

Why grieve? For two reasons. First, those who grieve well, live well. Second, and most important, grief is the healing process of the heart, soul, and mind; it is the path that returns us to wholeness. It shouldn’t be a matter of if you will grieve; the question is when will you grieve. And until we do, we suffer from the effects of that unfinished business.