Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. These are the five stages of grief. I don’t love this description of grief. I feel like these stages try to generalize grief into categories when not everyone goes through grief in these stages. A question I find myself asking is whether grief can be never-ending, or at that point is it no longer grief? Grief is defined as “deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.” So by this definition aren’t you always grieving whenever you have deep sorrow in missing that person? Grief is also said to be “a natural response to loss. It's the emotional suffering you feel when something or someone you love is taken away.” However, at what point does this grief end? At what age do you have to be to go through grief, can you delay your grief until you fully understand it, or can grief come in and out of your life?
I lost my brother, Jacob, when I was 5 years old. He was three years old and way too young to die. He was born with health issues so it wasn’t surprising, but I can still remember the day it happened. 12 years ago this month. I can picture myself at my aunt and uncle’s house in my taekwondo uniform waiting for my parents to come home. Soon enough they walked through the door without my brother and I broke down crying on the couch. Every year I revisit this scene but somehow I seem to place myself older than I really was. Other times this doesn’t even seem like something that happened in my life. I was 5 and you don’t do many things with a sick sibling at 5, so the memories are limited. I have memories of laying on his bed with him watching cartoons or rolling his bed out to the family room, but really not much else. Sometimes I even feel like these memories aren’t my own but instead, a story told to me. However, the pictures and handprints on my wall reassure me that this, that he, was part of my life. At that age, I don’t know if I went through the process of grieving. Of course, I was sad, but then again I was in kindergarten and I’m pretty sure they don’t teach you how to grieve in kindergarten. I think maybe at such a young age you grieve as much as you can process, but maybe you don’t go through the whole process. Another thought is that maybe you grieve as your parents do. My parents said they allowed themselves to grieve with one being stronger at times than the other. However, even being surrounded by this ability to grieve, I still don’t think I grieved just because of my age. I feel like I grieve now as I see things that make me think of what could’ve been and make me miss him even more. Junior year of high school I had this recurring thought, “this was the year I would have had my brother at school with me.” I see other siblings hanging out or even fighting and tend to put myself in their place with my brother. I don’t feel like I fit into one of these stages of grief, but instead, I'm stuck wishing for what could’ve been and seeing it everywhere. A song could come on in the car and I look at the seat next to me and wonder if I would’ve been driving him to school. Some days I’m fine, but other days I am just sad. Is this still considered grief, or is it just sadness?
I often feel “stupid” because I’m so sad over something that happened 12 years ago. Even as stupid as I feel, I would say that I am grieving. Grief has such a negative connotation around it as if it's such a horrible thing to go through. However, I also think it's good to fully go through grief. People seem to have this defense mechanism which includes suppressing their grief and shoving it down. Trying to stop your grief can then lead to an explosion of these emotions later in life, which is why you have to allow yourself to feel whatever you feel. I don’t think this is what happened to me, but I think that my mind couldn’t comprehend the grief and how to go through the process. Grief has somehow become seen as this monster plaguing your life. However, I like to think of it as this freeing process. As I grieve now, I can better understand my feelings and even come to recognize my own story. I don’t usually tell people about my brother and I’m pretty sure most of my friends don’t even know, but this is because I'm not defined by my loss. However, it makes me who I am and it is part of my story. Going through it so young has made me more independent and even brought me closer to my parents. Not having a brother with me at high school has probably brought me closer to friends as they have become more like siblings. I’m also probably closer to my sister not having another sibling around every day. Grief is difficult but it shouldn’t be shied away from. Everyone has some sort of loss in their life and has probably experienced grief at some point. Your grief or loss is part of your story, just as mine is, and has to be allowed to be felt, even if it seems like a weird time to be grieving. I’ve come to understand that it’s not stupid to be grieving 12 years later because this is what my mind and emotions can handle now, that they probably didn’t understand earlier. Grief is not a simple emotion, it can be delayed or broken up, and it does not have to fit into a certain stage.
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