My Very Untraditional Stages of Grief

The emotional ride when it comes to a close one's passing

People always tell you the stages of grief when someone special to you passes away; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and lastly, acceptance. Nonetheless, most of them forget to mention how complicated whole process is and how much of an emotional roller coaster it could get, since everyone has their own feelings and coping mechanism when it comes to loss. Here is how I dealt with the loss of the most important man in my life.

I was a junior in high school when my father got diagnosed with cancer. Although I had a little bit of hope within me, I knew it was too late and he was going to die anytime soon because there is no going back if a deadly disease spread all over your body, and when you get scanned all of the cells look like polka dot design. Hence, when my mom sat me and my sister down to announce the passing of our father it wasn’t much of a surprise on my part. I didn’t cry for a while, just sat there trying to process the entire concept of death, whilst my younger sister was crying her heart out. 

Stage 1: Baffled with Misery It took me few hours to finally process the whole idea that the man that was so dear to me was no longer with us and I would never be able to see him again no matter how bad I wanted to. Thus, when these toughs crossed my mind the reality hit me like a truck, that was the moment I burst into reckless tears, laying down on my sister’s bed. I was crying like the whole world collapsed and I was the only one left under the wreck, even though the whole apartment was filled with guests and they can all hear and pity my miserable sobs. The concept of death is extremely tragic, but it is also very confusing, because no matter how much I prepare for myself for that moment, when the time came it still felt like a shock. I filled my mind with questions like; why didn’t I stay with him till last minute, why didn’t I visit more regularly and the most painful one why didn’t I tell him that I love him more often? In the end, I realized these questions did nothing more than add misery to my already miserable state, so I stopped and get myself together in order to function like a normal human being. But that didn’t last too long as I dragged myself into a depressive period and isolated myself from people I cared about in all aspects of my life.

Stage 2: Paranoia With the passing of my father the concept of death became an energy consuming topic for me. Yes, just like the rest of the human race, death has always been a topic that gave anxiety to me. But with my dad’s death it was easier to see how it can happen anytime, to anyone in such a swift manner. That is why I started getting paranoid of not only deadly illnesses, but also the most mundane things ever such as, getting into a car, or substance usage (which later becomes ironic if you read stage 3). Since I have realized that death was a close concept and could happen all of a sudden I would get scared of losing my other loved ones. Because of my fears consuming my mind I would consistently call my mom whenever she wasn’t around, make sure my other family members were also alright and probably the most paranoid thing I have done was go to my mom and my sister while they were sleeping to check whether they were breathing or not. Eventually, I got over this phase by realizing I was just harming myself mentally and how should get back to my normal life with less worries.

Stage 3: Distractions After getting the realization that I should get back to the real world and function on my own I found myself coping with multiple distractions at once. First one had to be technology, whether it was doom scrolling on my phone for hours looking at lives of strangers or watching few movies a day to forget about my life and focus on the lives of the characters on screen. Then there was my love life. The funny thing about this part was, I was trying to distract myself from my broken heart while getting my heart broken into millions of other pieces. Because I was giving attention to these guys more than they were giving to me, since I was trying so hard to forget about my other worries. Thus, once they did not fill the fantasy of them I had in my head I would spiral and get obsessive. As the years went by and I didn’t have to sneak alcohol with my friends anymore, we were able to go to bars and drink freely. The start of the night this situation would always be fun. I was able to forget about my sadness and just hang out with people by my side. But, it was a matter of fact that as the strong drinks would get into my system a flood of gloominess also entered my body and just destroy the not so strong wall I built within myself. As I felt all of those things happen in me, I would burst into tears and tell my friends about my inner sadness that won’t go away (you know things I were not able to do with my sober, trying so hard to look strong, mind). While I was crying on my friends shoulders’ I got into the realization of the fact that I was not healing, was just keeping my mind busy from all of the thoughts I was dying to ignore.

Stage 4: Humor With the passing of years I have realized that it was time to make some lemonade with the sour lemons life gave to me, and that was making jokes about a tragic situation, that left the room with an awkward silence. The funny thing about these jokes weren’t usually the jokes themselves, it was the way the jokes were leaving the people confused on whether or not it is appropriate to laugh at them. The only person who didn’t shy away from laughing was one of my childhood best friend. Her dad and mine died the same year, because of the same cancer variant, thus she was the only person who actually understood what I was going through.

Stage 5: Life Goes on It is truly funny how the thing that felt like the end of the world few years ago, can feel like nothing once you get through the hardships. I know that I lived such intense emotions when it comes to the heavy loss I experience and I know that my father will never be able to walk me down the aisle or get to see his grandkids, but if I kept my mind insanely busy with those ideas, I could never move forward and live my life as an individual, plus I know that I am not the only one who have gone through such messy feelings. Thus, I am trying to learn to see a bright future after a tragedy and sure there are some bumps on the road, there are some days where I just spiral, but it is my life and my grief therefore I shall be the one who gets the cope with it in my own messy little ways.