7 Stages of Grief

The 7 stages of grief. I hate when other people are right. About anything. You think, “Maybe this once I can avoid the know-it-alls and the lectures. Maybe I won’t have to stare them in the eye and admit they’ve just made light of the catastrophe of my lifetime and turned it into the Scientific Formula.” Darwin’s theory in action. There used to be 5 stages of grief. Then, “that guy” had to expand on the ever-expanding philosophy of philosophy that turns everything into an infinite question about semantics and reasons why. Let’s have an existential crisis for lunch this afternoon, shall we? The one thing you hate to hear, especially when you don’t want to hear it, usually turns out to be the root of truthfulness and the first step to healing. The spoken word closest to your truth that will ever exist is the one that hurts to acknowledge; a bad sympathy gag reel. Some cheesy advice guru’s cliché self-help quote must be running on a teleprompter floating right above my head. Eventually the sympathy stops coming, if it ever was offered. What is left is a wounded, dying animal in the woods who was abandoned by the pack. Really, I can’t blame them. Even animals in the wilderness can smell decay before it substantiates. When bad things happen to you, or around you, the people in your life distance themselves. You become contagious. As if the ugliness in your life is a cancer that will spread to all those who dare to come near. As if your tragedies and traumas will rub off when you bump into them. I don’t believe most of us realize we do that, but we do. All of us. I can’t harbor anger toward my loved ones who opted for self-preservation. Like a friend once told me, a former friend, “The world owes you fuck all”. He’s right about that. The world doesn’t owe me anything. We owe it to each other to stick together when someone can’t get back up on their own but we don’t. It’s every man for himself in this selfish, disconnected world. Even the word “friend” means something different depending who you ask.

I’m angry. I’m so deeply enraged at everything, everyone, every broken system, every ignorant comment, every ungrateful child, every fair-weather friend. I was 32 years old before I was faced with the question that changed my whole life. The question that changes existence and time and purpose and reason. The nosy neighbor, the frienemies you keep close, the jealous boyfriend, the nagging spouse, the monster in law. We carry the burden of hate and resentment with us every moment because that is what we have always done. That has become socially normal somehow. Now, take a good look at the person you love to hate and ask yourself, “Can I live in a world where this person doesn’t exist?”

I bet that’s not something you’ve had to think about often, if ever. What if those you resent and take for granted suddenly died tomorrow? What if they ceased to exist? Now, really let that sink in. My father was a mean son of a bitch. I mean, he was capable of horrible things. If I told you the half of it, most “normal” people would be disturbed and horrified. For 18 years, I watched cirrhosis slowly eat him up until there was nothing left but a shrunken, shriveled man with flesh like old papier-mâché. The monster he could be, he had been at times, was part of the duality of his being. His spirit of passion, love, creativity, sentiment, family values, loyalty, and caring was so much greater than the shadow part of himself he had to invent to protect his good parts. My father never changed, but the last year of his life I learned to forgive him. Truly forgive. For my sake and his. In forgiveness, I discovered the man behind the beast. Now, I realize I love him for all of him. His darkness was just as much a part of him as his magnetism, his gift for singing and writing music, his unconditional devotion. I am my father. Until my perspective had adjusted, I was misunderstanding and resentful of all those traits in me, too.

Even in your 30s, you are too young to lose a parent. I still need my dad every day. January 3rd, 2021, Cory, the father of my youngest child, had an asthma attack and suffocated to death the night before we were supposed to move into our first house. A forever home. He was 39 years old. Our son was three years old at the time. Weilyn, my son, recently asked, “Can you play the video of daddy when he passed out in the car on the way to the hospital?” My dear boy doesn’t realize it’s a memory of his own and not a recording. I understand. Some things you can‘t compartmentlize, especially at 3 years old. I experience a similar out of body motion picture memory of watching the prison where my father had been locked up disappear in the distance while my mom drove toward home. To a 5-year-old, it feels like watching your parent die. Like my son‘s father, my dad never made it back home. Not entirely. He was never the same man.

The last thing Cory said to me was, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He was never great at keeping promises. I don’t struggle with denial. Not like someone typically would. I’ve lost many people I love. As bad as it sounds, eventually you become more adept and accepting of finality. The sorrow never gets easier, but somehow you keep breathing and move along. Time is a fickle mistress. I’m young enough I still wrestle with surrendering to time, mortality, and not having immediate knowledge of outcomes (or beginnings).

In my 7 stages of grief, I’m somewhere between shock & denial and pain & anger. Anger seems to be my default during difficult times. The older I get, the less I default to pissed off, but sometimes the trials set in front of you force you to regress. Regression is sometimes the only safe place to retreat if the trauma calls for it. Ever day, I practice letting go of “why” because existence doesn’t always give us the luxury of reason.

I’ve never felt such red hot anger before. It’s not blind rage. This is no bar fight. The one person I depended on to exist, the one person my son and I needed in the living world up and died on us. I hate him for it sometimes. We had already worked through the superficial traditional expectations, the very insignificant disagreements, the breakups. Eventually you say, “as long as this person exists, as long as they are the best father they can be for my kids, I am happy with that.” We loved each other unconditionally, realistically. He was my best friend and the father my baby boy needed. He was my family. No matter how my logical brain argues, “It wasn’t his fault. He would still be here if he had a choice”, my spirit feels betrayed and abandoned.

”How could he do this to me? How could he do this to our son? Why now?”, I ask myself each time I catch my little boy trying to make sense of his loss. Every kids’ worst nightmare, to wake up one morning and your daddy just isn’t there. It kills me every time I see the look on that boy’s face when he can’t make sense of it, and the pain he tries to cover up when surrender isn’t enough. He’s too young for such thoughts; feelings he’s old enough to know are very wrong but not mature enough to find the comfort of belief in matter he can’t see. The anger grows with every confused and hurt and lost and inexplicable gaze of suffering in my son’s eyes. What’s worse? I can’t make it better. I can’t explain away his pain. I can’t make him believe in God or angels when I’m not sure they exist anymore either. Most of all, I can’t bring myself to lie to him and tell him everything happens for a reason because reason is lost on me.