This isn't how grief goes
September 29, 2022 7:45 PM   Subscribe

"...many people, even professional psychologists, believe there is a right way and a wrong way to grieve, that there is an orderly and predictable pattern that everyone will go through, and if you don't progress correctly, you are failing at grief. You must move through these stages completely, or you will never heal."

This is a lie.

“There are really only two stages of grief, ... who you were before and who you are after.”

"Introduced to the world in the 1969 book On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the Kübler-Ross model (sometimes called the DABDA model) surmises that there are sequential stages of various emotions that a patient goes through when diagnosed with a terminal illness, starting with denial and ending with acceptance."

In reality Kübler-Ross developed her stage model after interviewing many individuals with life-threatening illnesses. It was only the experiences of these patients that she attempted to model.

In short, grief isn't a linear model of behavior to something or someone, but an individualistic response to a loss. We all grieve differently. The commonly known and erroneous 5 stages of grief was developed from conversations with terminally ill patients and shouldn't be seen as textbook stages.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (66 comments total) 83 users marked this as a favorite
 
In short, grief isn't a linear model of behavior to something or someone, but an individualistic response to a loss. We all grieve differently. The commonly known and erroneous 5 stages of grief was developed from conversations with terminally ill patients and shouldn't be seen as textbook stages.

Thank you for this. My grieving hasn't typically followed these stages, and I have definitely been judged and given unhelpful advice by (well-meaning) people.
posted by Literaryhero at 8:04 PM on September 29, 2022 [15 favorites]


Grief is like a river that flows where it will.
posted by orange swan at 8:12 PM on September 29, 2022 [21 favorites]


Grief is the background radiation of my life. My parents died over fifty years ago, and their not being alive is a fact of my daily existence.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:24 PM on September 29, 2022 [39 favorites]


No. This thread will fill up with the many many ways that people have experienced grief. It's obvious that there's no progression or hierarchy or timeline to address it.
posted by bendy at 9:03 PM on September 29, 2022 [3 favorites]


The idea that there can be any sense of starting and finishing a process, when grief described takes so many different shapes and manifests in so many moments, it’s not even a sentence I can finish.

What’s more personal than grief? By all means help if you know how.

To me grief teaches us that we don’t know anyone as well as we thought we did, and that’s okay. It especially teaches us that we didn’t know ourselves half as well and now nothing’s sure anymore.

If we’re in a second or third tier of lucky ones it teaches us something, but it doesn’t have to and what we learn might be confusing or wrong and that’s okay too.

Especially some of us fool ourselves thinking a process is complete, she’s birds now or the sun is smiling again or this peace won’t break, and then when it does break it’s because something tangential, some unexamined fear or forgotten smell makes your knees buckle, is there someone there to hold you?

Can you hold yourself? It’s been years or decades and that’s no process, that’s something personal and I appreciate your kindness but I need you to leave me alone about it right now.

And someone could say yeah, that’s because you haven’t gone through the proper steps and that’s probably true too, but some of us got past our drinking without doing a twelve step program. It’s not for everyone, for good reason.

Does it help some people to think we’re all the same? I hope so, because I think they need that. Just the same as some of us need direction, and need everyone else to need it too. It’s scary to be alone.

And just now by this train station bench, a sparrow flits in and out of the sunlight, is joined by a second, and they spin away across the tracks to the bike lot fence to chatter. Thanks, mom, I love you.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 9:06 PM on September 29, 2022 [36 favorites]


Waterfall grief has failed, we need Agile grief
posted by Damienmce at 9:10 PM on September 29, 2022 [83 favorites]


In my deepest grief, I had an amazing therapist (since retired) who reassured me that there was no wrong way to grieve. "Just try to wait a few months before making any huge life decisions." She probably saved my life because I thought I was totally broken. This article really rang true to me - thank you for sharing it and I hope it offers some comfort to the ones who need it.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:17 PM on September 29, 2022 [13 favorites]


Grief is indeed like a river. It’s also like a wave which crashes out of nowhere. The peaks might lessen over time but the wave will always be with us. In time it becomes if not a comfort then at least a core part of us. Ensuring that the good memories, the joy, the love will stay with us.

Be kind to yourself,
posted by fallingbadgers at 9:18 PM on September 29, 2022 [5 favorites]


The well of sadness fills slowly sometimes, or perhaps quickly. Sometimes we don't notice it starting to overflow, just can feel the dark void starting to press on us subtly or crushingly.
posted by Jacen at 9:54 PM on September 29, 2022 [2 favorites]


I also found an amazing therapist shortly after being widowed at 34. She said to me: “This isn’t a straight line, it’s a dance. You’ll move back and forth between the steps, some days in one and some days in other.”

That there could be an elegance, a flow, to the process was really life-changing for me. Be where you are. That’s where you are. Trying to force the process is what was getting me stuck. Letting it flow is what helped me the most.
posted by susiswimmer at 9:55 PM on September 29, 2022 [19 favorites]


Waterfall grief has failed, we need Agile grief

Regular Grief Standups where you and all of your close friends talk about how you've been able to move forward in small ways on each of the losses you're processing. Grief Lanes with cards you can move around to indicate how you feel on the road to Acceptance. Assigning Grief Points to the cards based on how emotionally close you were. I dunno, I think you might be onto something there.
posted by wanderingmind at 10:19 PM on September 29, 2022 [23 favorites]


(To be clear, that was a joke, but I'm starting to wonder if that process might help some subset of people.)
posted by wanderingmind at 10:20 PM on September 29, 2022 [10 favorites]


One of the most traumatic experiences of my adult life was after my father died, a bit less than 5 years ago now. It was one thing to to deal with the unexpected rapid illness and loss of my remaining parent, who had previously been in such stellar health that none of us would have been surprised to see him live well beyond 90, but afterward I was effectively extorted to perform my grief according to my eldest sibling's expectations.

I wasn't given the opportunity to grieve my father's death in the way that suited me, but as the "youngest" (but still 40-something) child, I had to contend with the chalice of my own grief while enduring a needlessly protracted process of salting my wounds every Saturday for six months to conform to my eldest sibling's notion of the process, doing utterly pointless things like assisting in the removal and replacement of a patio at the house in which my father passed. Nearly every. Fucking. Saturday. For six months.

I have since cut that eldest sibling from contact for entirely unrelated reasons, but this experience certainly didn't make that call any more difficult to make.
posted by tclark at 10:34 PM on September 29, 2022 [11 favorites]


related recommended listening: radiolab’s the queen of dying. so interesting to hear a bit about the context in which kubler -ross was conducting her research.
posted by tamarack at 10:41 PM on September 29, 2022 [2 favorites]


I am an only child, with a widowed aunt, so I am looking at the Grief Boulder and the Grief Cliff lying ahead waiting for me on the Grief Road

Over, under, through, around, in, on - not sure how its going to work
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:18 PM on September 29, 2022 [4 favorites]


indicate how you feel on the road to Acceptance

There is no Acceptance; not as a Destination. There is Acceptance as Moments. The goal is to stay present long enough for those Moments to extend the length of weeks or months.

Grief is an atemporal thing, and is exactly the shape of How You Love and How You Want To Be Loved.

I have a friend who lost her mom when she was 14, who tells me the story of being in NYC because of an artistic grant she’d won, and starting across an intersection, and for reasons she still doesn’t understand, collapsing in the middle of the intersection sobbing, suddenly missing her mom so much that it caused a physical pain in her abdomen so intense that she could not stand.

I don’t know how any of us end up carrying our grief, really. And there are some griefs so big that you don’t really carry them — it shatters you, and then a new You is built from those shards, roughly the size and shape of the old You, with a lot of similarities to the old You, but not the same at all.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:23 AM on September 30, 2022 [29 favorites]


My mum died when I was about 10, she was Romany. Even then I knew she was mysterious, deep, even magical, people were wary of her, called her fey. I believe she was a spy (from joining dots as I've found them). BUT she died (along with all ability to learn her ways) and my father's family wanted to move on. That is my grief (and it took a effing long time till I even strarted to recognise it), but also my power as I subsequently moved far more in her direction than my fathers'.
posted by unearthed at 2:41 AM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]


I'm fascinated by the hold this kind of popular pseudo science has on people.

Like the left/right brain thing, and Meyers Briggs, and the so called mystery of bumble bee flight.

Why are these things so seductive? Is it because they seem "sciencey" and usually have a little bit of truth to them, and that they also align with something people already believe intuitively but can't articulate ?
posted by Zumbador at 2:48 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]


People love a roadmap. Plus the 5 stages implies/promises something very special for grief, i.e. one day it'll be over. Which is an absolute lie, but the seduction power of that lie is very understandable.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:06 AM on September 30, 2022 [30 favorites]


When my mother died, I was in my mid 20s, and we were in the middle of repairing a difficult relationship. I was sad for a while and angry with other people (I didn't connect the two) but someone older and wise said to me "when you are hanging out the washing or doing the dishes you will feel it again and she is talking to you" and that really helped me.

My dad died a couple of years ago, not long after I turned 50. We had become closer after my mother died, and I looked after him in his decline. It hit me much harder. I still tear up sometimes. I am older and have more experience of life, I am a bigger person (I hope) and so there is more to the experience of loss. And I miss my mum more too. She missed out on so much, and I wish I could talk to her. But anyway, grief is an irregular and episodic thing. It isn't a process at all. I hope a self-link is not out of place here.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:08 AM on September 30, 2022 [8 favorites]


The book It's Ok That You're Not Ok, by Megan Devine, opens with a passage that hit home for me:
THE REALITY OF LOSS

Here’s what I most want you to know: this really is as bad as you think.

No matter what anyone else says, this sucks. What has happened cannot be made right. What is lost cannot be restored. There is no beauty here, inside this central fact.

Acknowledgment is everything.

You’re in pain. It can’t be made better.

The reality of grief is far different from what others see from the outside. There is pain in this world that you can’t be cheered out of.

You don’t need solutions. You don’t need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hands while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life.

Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:26 AM on September 30, 2022 [46 favorites]


Obligatory Office quote:

Michael: There are five stages to grief, which are [glancing at computer screen] denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And right now, out there, they’re all denying the fact that they’re sad. And that’s hard. And it’s making them all angry. And it is my job to try to get them all the way through to acceptance. And if not acceptance, then just depression. If I can get them depressed, then I’ll have done my job.
posted by fortitude25 at 3:50 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]


May I recommend Cariad Lloyd's Griefcast.

Personal favorites: Adam Buxton, Dr. Kathryn Mannix. But so many good conversations.
posted by jaruwaan at 5:15 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Not only does everyone grieve differently, but it can also vary in one person. I've been widowed twice, 15 years apart. I loved them both beyond all reason, but the grieving experiences were very different, I suppose because of my age, life circumstances, and experience.
posted by Miss Cellania at 5:33 AM on September 30, 2022 [10 favorites]


Philip Jenkinson spent many more years than was good for him at the helm of Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital palliative care unit. There he saw hundreds and hundreds of people over The Threshold and learned from the multiplicity of these experiences that pretty much everyone has the same fears; although each articulates a rather different set of anxieties.

The film Griefwalker was made in 2008 by Tim Wilson, a long-time friend of Stephen Jenkinson's. Wilson made the film because both he and later his infant son had spent critical time in ICU fluttering between worlds and Jenkinson had been present for him. Wilson has been there . . . and back but still he finds it hard to understand what his friend is saying. It's a foreign language and you need to listen really carefully as the words are spoken really slowly and the meaning will still run through your grasping fingers like water. You can watch the whole 70 minutes at the Canadian National Film Board
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:29 AM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


Thanks for posting this. My dad died a little over a year ago and my mom is now in assisted living with Alzheimer's ( so I kind of feel like I'm grieving her pre-Alzheimer's self) and it's comforting to confirm that there's definitely no "right way"--it just is what it is. Some days hard, some days lighter, always there .
posted by bookmammal at 6:39 AM on September 30, 2022 [6 favorites]


afterward I was effectively extorted to perform my grief according to my eldest sibling's expectations.

Thanks for sharing this article, it is interesting and helpful. Although my grief for my mother did roughly map to Kubler-Ross's wisdom, I'm only now coming to realize that the fact that I did not perform loudly enough for my sibling is one of the reasons we are estranged today.

There seems to be no end to the ridiculous reasons people find to judge each other.
posted by rpfields at 6:43 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]


Thank you for posting this.

But anyway, grief is an irregular and episodic thing. It isn't a process at all.

This matches my experience of it, at least so far.

Something I am grateful for is that my grandfather, after his first wife and then 20 years later his second wife died, and my father, after his own father died, showed young me that being sad and grieving isn't "unmanly" or something that needs to be hidden or repressed.

But that said, I feel like I have a great deal of my own grief bottled up still -- not accepted or healed, just pushed down such that it bubbles up unexpectedly now and then.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:50 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


a sparrow flits in and out of the sunlight, is joined by a second, and they spin away across the tracks to the bike lot fence to chatter

"I have heard about the lives of small swift birds.
They dazzle with their colour and their deftness through the air.
Just a simple glimpse will keep you simply standing there.
Legendary journeys made on fragile hollow wings.
The night skies rich with whistling each and every spring.
And then there's the day we look for them and can't find them anywhere."
-- Cowboy Junkies Small Swift Birds

Today would have been my mom's 76th birthday. She would not have been a healthy 76. She had a lot of underlying medical issues and the pandemic would have been very hard on her.

Yet, even with what the head knows the heart will still disagree. Five years on and there are still some moments that are terribly hard to bear.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 6:55 AM on September 30, 2022 [11 favorites]


There seems to be no end to the ridiculous reasons people find to judge each other.

I've been reading the live coverage of the testimony of the various family members of Sandy Hook victims testifying about the abuse and harassment they have faced thanks to the vile lies of Alex Jones, and one point that has come up in quite a few testimonies has been that Jones and his jackals would seize upon family members not "properly" performing grief as "evidence" for their defamation. We often see innocent people railroaded by law enforcement because their "improper" performance of grief is seen as "proof" of their involvement in killing someone in their circle - in some cases letting the actual killer go on to kill again.

These false beliefs about grief have victims - and a body count.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:16 AM on September 30, 2022 [9 favorites]


My first thought when I saw this was of Albert Camus's "The Outsider", which is a novel that I was given to read in high school. The protagonist, Meursault, is sentenced to death for murder after killing a man in an altercation. The prosecutor at his trial claims that because he didn't grieve his mother's death in a socially acceptable way, he must obviously be a monster who deserves to die.

My parents are very old, and soon I will face grieving their passing. At least part of what I dread is having to perform the standard tribal rituals of death in a socially appropriate fashion.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 7:17 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


It's about time. My mother's family disowned us when my father remarried two years after she died. They had no idea what my father was feeling yet they decided he hadn't mourned long enough.
posted by tommasz at 7:23 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


When my brother killed himself a few weeks before my mother died, I came to be acquainted with a very helpful metaphor about a box with a ball and a switch inside it. The switch triggers grief. In the beginning, the ball takes up all the space inside the box, always pressing against the switch. As time goes on, and you carry the box with you, the ball slowly gets smaller. It still hits the switch occasionally, and the grief can be just as sharp and excruciating. But over time, it comes to be less and less. But you always carry the box with you. Years later—eight years now, for me—the ball will hit the switch, and there my grief will be.

As a matter of fact, there it is...

You are not your grief, but your grief is part of what defines you. Without it, you would hardly be human. Remember that everyone has their own way of carrying that box.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 7:44 AM on September 30, 2022 [27 favorites]


Grief really makes people do very strange things.

When my mother died, my brother brought his new girlfriend, who hadn't met my mother, or any of us yet, and took her into my parents' bedroom to see my mother's body.

That poor woman, it must have been a surreal experience for her. Like one of those European films about disfunctional families.
posted by Zumbador at 7:57 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]


When my mother died, my brother brought his new girlfriend, who hadn't met my mother, or any of us yet, and took her into my parents' bedroom to see my mother's body.

That poor woman, it must have been a surreal experience for her. Like one of those European films about disfunctional families.


I was the recipient of that once -- many years ago, a young woman I was semi-dating brought me to the viewing of her grandmother's body. Everyone there was -- as you would expect -- all "WTF? Who is this? Why is he here?" and it was very awkward all around.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:13 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Zumbador, my brain immediately went to Death at a Funeral (the 2007 version, although Loretta Devine was AMAZING as the grieving wife in the 2010 remake).
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 8:14 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


There's a point in your life, usually after you've lost someone important like a parent or partner, where you realize that almost **everyone** around you is dealing with a similar level of grief. After my dad passed away, I realized that my father lived with the loss of his father for 40 years, my mom lived with the loss of her dad for about the same. Then it dawned on me that I'd never known who my parents were when their fathers were still alive. I didn't know who my boss was before her mom died. I never met my best friend before she lost the love of her life. All of these people around me who had a missing part where something or someone was taken and they'd either managed the grief and were able to function or they'd just contented themselves with walking around the gaping wound for forever.

For me, it made me appreciate my people more and it also made me a little kinder to those who were in latent pain because there's no what kind of person they were before the hole came.

Now that my mom's gone it's a different grief and a different understanding but it's still a journey I'm working on. I'm never going to be the person I was before people I loved died, but I can honor her and be kind to those on the same journey.
posted by teleri025 at 8:17 AM on September 30, 2022 [19 favorites]


She would ask me what will you do when I'm gone? and I couldn't answer. I was a different person before you, and I don't know who I'll be if (if!) you die. It's been a couple of months since it finally took her, and I still don't know. Whoever he is, I have no wish to meet him.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:21 AM on September 30, 2022


For me, mourning people I miss differs from my grief over opportunities lost due to their deaths. Years on, I may actually lament that my father's death meant that he would never enjoy retirement (scheduled to begin very soon after his rapid demise), or bemoan that my mother's passing signified the end of my hopes for a healthy relationship with her, or grow teary about how a friend died too young, as much or more than I grieve for the people themselves. Some memories of them have become like well-worn grooves in a record, while the smaller moments and personality details have faded over the years. But the poignancy of lost possibilities remains strong.
posted by carmicha at 8:50 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


It strikes me that part of the confusion is that Kubler-Ross didn't call it the Five Stages Of Grief - she called it The Five Stages Of Dying. As in, they're purported to be the five stages you go through before you or someone you love dies, after you've learned that whatever illness they have is terminal.

That strikes me as being very, very different from the grief that comes after someone has died.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:55 AM on September 30, 2022 [24 favorites]


For me, mourning people I miss differs from my grief over opportunities lost due to their deaths.

Almost twenty years after he died, I was devastated anew when I realized that my stepdad and my spouse would never be able to meet each other. They would have been best friends, and he would have been really important to her, I have no doubt. I still miss him terribly 30 years on, but this kind of 'future loss' is a particular ache.


My first thought when I saw this was of Albert Camus's "The Outsider"

I was really confused, thinking 'wow, Camus didn't vary plots much, did he?' until I checked and it turns out that L'Étranger was published in the U.S. as both The Stranger and The Outsider. TIL.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:02 AM on September 30, 2022 [8 favorites]


I'm fascinated by the hold this kind of popular pseudo science has on people.

Like the left/right brain thing, and Meyers Briggs, and the so called mystery of bumble bee flight.

Why are these things so seductive? Is it because they seem "sciencey" and usually have a little bit of truth to them, and that they also align with something people already believe intuitively but can't articulate ?


To your list I'd also add e.g. Maslow's Hierarchy, empaths/narcissists, and increasingly the very system of mental illness diagnoses itself, as it becomes imported into the broader culture as signifiers of identity (this should be an FPP in itself).

But they seduce people by flattering our fantasy that something as inscrutable and powerful as death (or the human mind) can be so neatly carved up and digested. The article quotes Kubler-Ross expressing regret about how she wrote her original work, but I think she's being quite too hard on herself: what she wrote simply got picked up and carried away by this fantasizing tendency that humans, and American culture in particular, have always had. Had she written it with greater nuance, complexity, and room for ambiguity and not-knowing, we can be pretty sure that no one would've cared much outside of the niche for which it was originally intended.

It strikes me that part of the confusion is that Kubler-Ross didn't call it the Five Stages Of Grief - she called it The Five Stages Of Dying.

This is a great catch, and makes for one hell of a Mandela(-ish) Effect.
posted by obliterati at 10:39 AM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]


I actually stand corrected - she didn't say Five Stages Of Dying as such. But from what I'm seeing here, she didn't necessarily say they were the Five Stages of Grief either (despite the site describing them as such; that seems to be Wikipedia's words, though, not Kubler-Ross').

But they are still something more suited to a process that happens before someone dies, as opposed to something that happens after.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:44 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


It's not just grief, how we experience any life change is very individual. Everyone has their own experiences, temperament and way of dealing with life. It feels trite to say it, but what works for one person will not work for another.
posted by mon_petit_ordinateur at 12:16 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Pseudo science? How 'bout religion? Maybe the pseudo science comforts and somewhat appears to inform, those for whom religion offers no comfort.

You lose someone. Before you met them, you were who you were, then, which led you to make a relationship with them. Suddenly, you seem back at square one, but no, parts of them are with you. This is the luck. The grief is going onward up a road you used to walk, with good company.

My onetime doctor, described as a bucket of water you balance on your head. Eventually you cry away all the water, if you don't, it will still be there, and come down at surprising times.

Anyway I can't get my head around the grief in the world today, so much of it. It won't be tidy and many are far from even the tiniest amount of resolution.
posted by Oyéah at 12:18 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


We're coming up on the 4th anniversary of my best friend dying. My grief continues, and has gone through many stages and changes. Above all, it continues. I think this Robert Montgomery light poem reflects my most solid belief: THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE BECOME GHOSTS INSIDE OF YOU AND LIKE THIS YOU KEEP THEM ALIVE.
posted by BlahLaLa at 12:31 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


Sometimes I share my own experiences of grief with friends who are Going Through It, and some times I just say, "This super sucks. I am here." And then we are quiet. Quiet isn't bad.

teleri025: There's a point in your life...where you realize that almost **everyone** around you is dealing with a similar level of grief.

My grandpa died when I was five, when my dad was 35. Dad turns 80 soon, and has been carrying that with him more than half his life. And as I grow up and pass through the milestones that he's already hit (births of children, graduations, etc.), I turn to him to share my joy -- and it always hits me like a gut punch that he never got to share many of these good times with his father the way I have. He's kind of just....done it on his own, with my mom and siblings and aunts & uncles but without his dad.

I don't know if that makes him stronger or braver or what -- not that it was ever a choice. Makes me want to hug the guy more often, though.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:54 PM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]


There are no canonical stages of grief but there are four helpful tasks:

"The psychologist J. William Worden, critical of the popular five stages of grief theory, gives the bereaved four tasks instead: The first three are to accept the reality of the loss, experience the pain of grief and adjust to an environment without the person. The last task is to find an “enduring connection” with the dead, perhaps by answering the question: What did the person give you?"

from How to Talk to Kids about Death and Loss. This simple NYT piece helped me when I lost my beloved mother a year ago.
posted by storybored at 2:12 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


I did not look at TFA, and I did not really read the thread, but I scanned it. And then I searched it for the word "closure" and didn't see that at all.

As the volume of responses attests, grief is a pretty much universal experience. We are of a nature to experience grief, and if we live long enough we will. So it's kind of curious that there's such an emphasis on efforts to grieve the right way and be done with it. Because this near-universal experience insists stubbornly on not being like what the self-help approach winds up insisting it must be. And don't even get started on the self-help approach's blindness to and denial of the fact that there are some hurts that people just don't get over.

I'm old enough to have read Kubler-Ross as about dealing with cancer diagnoses, and not as an attempt to turn it into a prescriptive approach to the very different subject of grief. It doesn't surprise me to find that she's been misappropriated that way, if that's what happened.

Anyway, the being done with it part. The world really wants you to get over whatever is troubling you about your dead friend or spouse or parent or lover or dog or child, so that you can get back on the job and get back to consuming. Too much moping around and not producing and consuming, that's the sin.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 2:16 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


What I say to people is that you get used to the idea.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:38 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


As far as getting back to it goes, I appreciate mourning customs that give the family time and space. Sitting shiva, lying in state and a wake, in my country the tangihanga. They don't give closure exactly, but they can let you express in a supportive space and get to a better place.

When my dad died it was in the early months of the pandemic, and New Zealand still had stringent public health measures in place. And, he was with me in my city, whereas the extended family was all in another city. It was a week and half before we could organise a funeral up north. Luckily restrictions relaxed during that period so we could have more mourners present at the funeral. Meanwhile no one came to visit me because we were all in "bubbles". Dad lay in a mortuary. I was pretty unhappy about that, on top of everything else. I was still grieving in bursts a year later, and I feel that is partly because of the weird circumstances around the time of his death.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:40 PM on September 30, 2022 [6 favorites]


I. So. Dislike. The. Word. Closure.

It means nothing.

"Making peace" is a better term.
posted by goalyeehah at 5:07 PM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]


I am struck by the eloquence in this thread, and find it curious because I did the best writing of my life—by far—when I was grieving, and about grief.
posted by HotToddy at 6:43 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]


The best thing I ever heard on grief was Robert Kennedy quoting Aeschylus at a political rally the evening of the day MLK was killed.
posted by Pembquist at 8:38 PM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


RFK Aeschylus: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
Here are two other English translations. First, Ian Johnston in 2002: “Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise, has established his fixed law– wisdom comes through suffering. Trouble, with its memories of pain, drips in our hearts as we try to sleep, so men against their will learn to practice moderation. Favours come to us from gods seated on their solemn thrones—such grace is harsh and violent.” Second, Anne Carson in 2009: “Yet there drips in sleep before my heart a grief remembering pain. Good sense comes the hard way. And the grace of the gods (I’m pretty sure) is a grace that comes by violence.”
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:52 PM on September 30, 2022 [9 favorites]


Having gone through losing Mr. Peach a couple of weeks ago, and my mother fourteen years ago, I agree that "grief is as individual as love: every life, every path, is unique. There is no predictable pattern, and no linear progression." (from the first link).

The Kubler-Ross typology was such a relief when it was published because it implied a diversity of responses. It opened up possibilities. Of course it has been oversimplified, rigidified, and turned into a lock-step list because that's how people do what they do.

I won't even go into the ways in which my grieving process differs from everyone else's. That's beside the point, isn't it? But there are some positive aspects to loss of a loved one after a prolonged illness, you know. And that's okay too.
posted by Peach at 7:04 AM on October 1, 2022 [15 favorites]




But there are some positive aspects to loss of a loved one after a prolonged illness, you know.

Yup. Relief that they aren't suffering any more. I'd lost my dad many years before he technically actually died. Life was much sadder watching him suffer than once it ended.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:14 AM on October 2, 2022 [9 favorites]


I have also experienced that sense of relief after losing a loved one who had been very ill. But it was mixed with a sense of just how awful their illness had been, the scale of which was even more clear somehow now that it was over. And it was more clear to me how unfair it was that they'd have to go through all that.
posted by BibiRose at 11:22 AM on October 2, 2022 [4 favorites]


I still can't really even talk about my dog that we lost a few months into the pandemic. Grief's long tail is weird.
posted by lazaruslong at 8:51 AM on October 3, 2022 [10 favorites]


I'm late to this because I was away this weekend, but I spent about a year volunteering in a grief support capacity and there are just so so so many toxic ideas floating around our culture about grief that we impose on each other, and on ourselves. I don't know how many hundreds of times I have said, "No, this is normal. It's all normal, you are not doing it wrong, the manner in which your grief manifests doesn't 'say something' about your actual feelings. But that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't or aren't allowed to reach out for help, too."

But just like...people thinking the only actual expression of grief has to be tears, or that they're monsters for being capable of working and parenting and going to school, sometimes being shunned by family for not performing to their requirements, the partners saying things like "it's been two weeks, what are you still upset about" and the friends saying "well maybe just don't think about it" and the managers demanding someone go home and find a physical paper newspaper with an obituary in it to prove they get bereavement leave.

When I started, my primary advice for people who don't know what to say to someone who is grieving is that it's always okay to say that you are sorry they are going through this and that it is hard and that you care. I have since advised to also say that everyone grieves in a million unique ways, and it doesn't have to look like TV or books or a friend's experience, and it often goes on for much longer than society is comfortable with. That it's always okay to ask for help and support, and that you (the friend) will not judge them for the bad days OR the good ones or any of the especially difficult thoughts and sentiments that can come. That most grief is a marathon, not a sprint. That you're going to re-grieve the really close ones (and sometimes just random people, you never really know how it'll go) over and over, at milestones, at random moments.

And yeah, so many people tormenting themselves for being relieved, or for finally feeling free from their abuser, or for feeling sad about someone who was terrible, or mourning a parent that the other parent hated. I talk to them about the Death of Opportunity, where even though we all know he was never going to apologize or she was never going to take responsibility for what she did, as long as they were alive there was a 0.001% chance and now it's just plain 0. Maybe it could have gotten better, but now it definitely can't. We don't just lose the person, everything in their orbit is gone or changed.

Anyway, for anyone who's ever felt they must be doing it wrong: no, it's all normal. But you also deserve support and any help you need, and if you find you are hurting yourself or someone else because of it you may need extra support and help and that's okay. It doesn't say anything about the quality of your grief.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:46 PM on October 3, 2022 [10 favorites]


I still can't really even talk about my dog that we lost a few months into the pandemic. Grief's long tail is weird.


I have been remiss in failing to mention that MetaFilter was really, really helpful in helping me with my grieving process. This community helped me know when it was time, and helped me find literature to grieve. A very kind user even recommended the Dog Chapel in Vermont, and we did end up traveling there and leaving his picture among the many others.

While it is true that I can't talk about him yet with my spouse (which sucks a lot and is something I'm trying to work on, as my spouse would benefit from talking about him with me I know) it is also true that grief shared is grief divided, at least for me. And this community did a lot to divide the grief. And I am so grateful.
posted by lazaruslong at 1:34 AM on October 4, 2022 [4 favorites]


I have a friend who lost her mom when she was 14, who tells me the story of being in NYC because of an artistic grant she’d won, and starting across an intersection, and for reasons she still doesn’t understand, collapsing in the middle of the intersection sobbing, suddenly missing her mom so much that it caused a physical pain in her abdomen so intense that she could not stand.

I lost my mom when I was 12. When I was 30 I got wrongfully terminated from a job (clear cut retaliation, I got a lawyer and won a settlement), and that started a four year downhill spiral mentally. I found a new job but to say I was underemployed, underpaid, and overworked would be the understatement of the year. I got harassed out of my apartment by a psychotic landlord who threatened my life (and my cat's), he then sued me for breaking my lease, I got another lawyer and we countersued which involved me re-telling the whole story several times and retraumatizing myself. I was depressed and having panic attacks and sobbing attacks and lashing out at my boyfriend. I was suicidal. Eventually one night I said something pertaining to a suicide plan that frightened my boyfriend so much that he called 911. He lay down on the floor with me and held me until the ambulance came. And then, out of nowhere, I started saying over and over again "I want my mom. I want my mom. I want my mom. Where is my mom. I need my mom. I want my mom."

I don't remember much about that night but my boyfriend does, and I e since read the medical reports from the psych ward that confirm that I kept begging to talk to her on the ambulance ride over to the hospital. I remember him crying but I assumed at the time it was because I had scared him. It was partly that, but he says the fact that in that moment when I was actively considering ending my life I suddenly started asking for her broke his heart. He desperately wanted to call her and hand the phone to me but it was impossible.

Nothing in the mess of my life in that moment had anything to do with my mother but that was the first time I ever really understood how the trauma of her loss informed every bit of trauma I experienced and may experience after that. You learn to live with grief. I don't think you ever accept it. I don't think it ever goes away. It's like a houseguest in my life. It sweeps in periodically and I have to deal with it, entertain it, not ignore it, not diminish it, and let it leave, knowing it will always return.

“There are really only two stages of grief, ... who you were before and who you are after.” Yes. Exactly.
posted by nayantara at 11:57 AM on October 4, 2022 [22 favorites]


Any attempt to quantify human behavior is a fool's errand.
posted by AJScease at 8:37 PM on October 4, 2022


"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

I find this comforting to read, but I wish I could believe it was true for me. It's possible I am misinterpreting it in a simplistic manner.

My dad died 6 years ago from cancer, I am managing familial illness again now and doing all those things I did while my dad was ill - emergency hospital visits, medical admin, measuring vitals at home, etc etc. The thing is - having gone through the loss of one parent has not made me stronger, more experienced, more prepared for future losses. On the contrary I feel like losing my father has made me weaker, more anxious, more scared of the future, because I know that losing a loved one is a billion times worse than you anticipate it's going to be, it doesn't matter how hard I grieved in advance of my dad's passing, losing him was the hardest thing I have ever experienced. A pain so intense it felt bigger than me, totally outside my control. I am so much more terrified now of losing more loved ones for having gone through it once already and having a taste of that sort of life-altering, personhood-shattering kind of loss where you basically have to learn to be a person again, but this time a person without a father.

Since losing my dad I have also lost two dear friends close to my age, and... I am not wiser, better, stronger for losing people who meant so much to me. The world is just objectively worse without them. They were such special, brilliant, loved people and now they are not here. Maybe wisdom and strength and some sort of benefit will come in time, but all I can say for now is that I'm learning to live with the pain of their absence.
posted by unicorn chaser at 10:20 AM on October 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


I. So. Dislike. The. Word. Closure.

It means nothing.

"Making peace" is a better term.


This is very true. I mean, I understand what people are getting at when they talk about closure. But closure implies a definite ending, a finality, a kind of resolution that isn't possible when it comes to the human experience of grief. Grief doesn't have an end point. If someone you love dies, you will go on remembering them and will think about them at least occasionally as long as you live, and the way you think about them will evolve over time.

Making peace is definitely a better term, because when you are overcome by a fresh grief what you can hope for is not the end of grief but that you'll get to the point where grief is no longer consuming you or threatening your emotional well-being or significantly negatively impacting your quality of life, and there are things other than time that may help you learn to live with, or make your peace with, your grief.
posted by orange swan at 4:47 PM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]


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