JADES Network

The dictionary describes Grief as: a cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow.

What it should stand for is:
Gut
Ripping
Indescribably
Excruciating
Feelings

Anyone who has experienced the death of a child or family member can understand what I am talking about. As a Mother of a child that drown, I know these feelings first hand.

When I went to groups or talked to Doctor’s they all described the grief process as stages. The stages that they said I would go through were: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
I am not sure if there is a script for grief or a stage that we must pass through before we get to the next. Can we expect to feel any of our emotions as a stage? Or do they ebb and flow going back and fourth in constant movement. Oh, believe me I went through some phases. I was numb, depressed, angry, and disorganized. I felt these “stages” in no particular order. The “stages” of denial and bargaining that they talk about, I don’t believe I passed through. I knew what happened, Brandon drown, and I knew there was no way to bargain my way out of it.
I think what I came to understand is that the grief process is not linear, but it moves in cycles. I saw it described once as a spiral staircase, as though it seems as if you are going in circles. Sometimes it feels as if the staircase goes on forever. Yet by moving forward through the process you are making progress. I think for me the important thing was to make progress. In what stage or order they came in was not as important as it was to move forward. I could not hold on to those gut ripping indescribably excruciating feelings of suffering. I chose to move on through the “stages” to the last of which they call Acceptance and hope.

As a parent it is hard to even think about accepting the death of a child. There is fear that if I accept it then that means I am forgetting my child, or we might feel guilty that somehow we are okay even though our child has died. Now, that does not mean that I do not miss Brandon, or that I still don’t cry sometimes or that I will ever forget what a blessing he is in my life. I just wanted to put my energy in a place where I could take what happened and somehow make a difference for others. For me getting to acceptance meant I could honor Brandon because it was and is an honor to have him in my life. But grief is an individual process. There are no timelines, completion dates or a right or wrong way to grieve. Being an individual with different knowledge bases and coping abilities will give us different emotional reactions to our varied life experiences. I feel that it is important to know that we must move forward somehow. I feel that to prolong the process or not feel because of fear only keeps us on that spiral staircase longer.