Five Stages of Grief
LUCY FISHER
August 10th, 2011, five minutes past nine in the morning. Dr Weckler, appointed psychiatrist, introduces the five phases. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.
Neat and organised into boxes that, once experienced, will get stored in the memory warehouse of your mind. Dr Weckler goes on to describe that the emotions in the boxes are like waves and the mind like an ocean that holds them all. Grief, she says, is just another series of waves. Each one builds and crests before crashing into the ocean of your mind, doing its very best to drag you under before you can take a breath. Her metaphors, however, are conflicting because waves do not fit into a box, and the ocean cannot be categorised and sectioned like a warehouse. Waves are wild, powerful, and often messy; they do not have an agenda to drag you under. They just exist in a cycle of push and pull. The ocean is vast and does not adhere to the structures of humans. The only likeness between the ocean and one’s mind is its ever-changing nature and mysteries.
I, of course, did not bring up this conflict with Dr Weckler. In the stereotypical way of a British import, the doctor was not one to accept any challenge to her imperial way of thinking. I learnt this vital lesson in the waiting area when I witnessed the powers that be confront her about her inability to arrive on time to the sessions. Dr Weckler’s stiff British upper lip hardened further as she primly responded, ‘I am here to help these poor souls and I will not apologise because my methods do not adhere to your rigid structures. If you wish for me to continue my vital work, I suggest you amend your expectations.’ So, that was that. Dr Weckler’s way or the highway. The doctor sat down in front of me, effectively dismissing anyone else in the room and on we preceded.
I don’t actually remember many other details from those initial moments from my first session with Dr Weckler. It was like I had cotton wool in my ears and cellophane over my eyes. I would’ve stayed in that protective, disassociated state had I not realised I was still alive. I had survived. I needed to continue living, even in this totally new reality. And so, in an attempt to clear the cobwebs, I took a deep breath, shook my head, and then I stared the doctor down and asked her:
‘How do I survive this?’
There were a few seconds where I regretted asking the question. An odd look sparkled in the doctor’s inherited crystal blue Nordic eyes that unnerved me. It was a feeling that itched the back of my neck, my body warning me to be cautious. Something I had learned to listen to a long time ago and was only now discovering did not imply that every person I met who made me nervous was an actual threat. The feeling evaporated almost as soon as it appeared, and I just became sceptical. Dr Weckler had pulled out her dogeared and well-loved copy of On Death and Dying by Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. She wasn’t a threat, just a nutcase. Copy and pasting a whole treatment plan from a quack psychiatrist from the 70’s seems typical for a free psychologist. Just my luck. It made me wonder: how many shrinks likely need head-shrinking themselves? Just because you put words in a linear flow chart and publish them in a book doesn’t make your theory accurate for each individual… or remotely helpful. But Dr Weckler says following the five stages of grief, DABDA for short, will help, and documenting my feelings is mandatory. So here I am, taking notes while deep diving into my grief, hoping that I can learn to live again. Whatever that means.
Apparently, this is private and only for me – Dr Weckler is big on inner reflection – but I call bullshit. Nothing is ever private anymore; eyes and ears are everywhere, but they won’t learn anything new here. So, if this is what it takes, then off we go.
*
May 1st, 2011, at a quarter past eight in the evening. City-wide power outage meant that dinner went cold.
Feels like a lifetime has passed in the three months since that night. A thick fog choked my mind from the moment the yelling and vitriol began in the final moments before the incident. Like my subconscious had been wrapped in a protective cocoon. The hours and days following still feel like a surreal nightmare. Not something I experienced whilst awake. It was like the language I had spoken my whole life suddenly didn’t make sense anymore. When the police asked ‘time and cause of death’… all I heard was a buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees had become trapped in my skull.
I kept expecting to wake up and tell him about it. I waited for him to tell me how stupid I was for getting upset about a bad dream. Waited for the impact and harsh words that would swim through my head for days after, dissected and replayed over and over to learn where I went wrong. I had lived for years in nervous anticipation of every poisonous word, so even though it was no longer possible to hear them physically, they still echoed in my mind.
I don’t know precisely when I woke up and realised it had all been real. It wasn’t the day I was questioned by police. When there were hours upon hours of questions that I was sick of answering. It wasn’t the day we buried him. So many faces were staring and offering condolences, all forgotten, as I looked for the one face that wasn’t there. It wasn’t even the day they moved me into this waiting space. The blank walls were as empty as the hollow space in my chest. But one day, I woke up, and I was barely able to lift myself from the bed. The weight of reality had settled onto my shoulders and invaded my bones. The protective cocoon the doctor diagnosed as a shock and denial, my body's natural defence system against overwhelming grief, had shattered and everything I had held back rushed in to fill the void. He was gone, and I was alone, and my mind could no longer suppress the truth.
*
August 31st, 2011, nine fifty in the morning. Forty-five minutes into my fourth session with Dr Weckler and she was trying to make me mad.
I remember that day vividly. The empty space that my whole being had curled around to shelter and protect was suddenly ignited with fire. For what felt like the first time in my life, I was filled to the brim with rage. The burning sensation travelled through my veins, and at first, I was frightened. When you practice day in and day out to hide your true feelings, burying the fire deep down inside you, the moment it erupts, you fear the consequences. Dr Weckler and I spent our whole session in what she repeatedly referred to as my safe space, trying to coax that fire to the surface. The doctor assured me that I had to learn to feel my anger to process my grief. It felt like that session had given me permission to voice something I had fought for so long to keep locked inside. And so, I feel I can finally let it out here.
How dare he do this to me. How dare he leave such a mess for me to get on my knees and clean up once again. All my life, I have submitted, believing the scripture, that the meek shall inherit the earth. But the only thing the meek and submissive inherit is carnage to clean up. Over and over again, I am left to deal with the fallout from death, and I am no stronger now, having survived this than I was before. I am sick of death. Sick of being left behind. I am definitely sick of being the only person left to answer the torrent of questions that follow death. Women are told from the moment they can comprehend that our role is wife and caregiver, but now all that has been taken from me, what am I? Am I to forever be just a widow or that woman? It’s not fair. I have never been given the opportunity to find out who I am without him, and now, all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, I am alone and trapped. It’s not fair and I will no longer submit to keeping my anger locked inside.
*
September 14th, 2011, quarter past four in the afternoon. Dr Weckler was so late that the morning had come and gone and then she asked me about a bargain.
What do I have to bargain with? I never finished school, I never had a job, and I have been told repeatedly that my housekeeping leaves much to be desired. I have nothing. I am nothing. Who would want to make a deal with the likes of me? I don’t know what I would even bargain for to not be alone? To be free? No one believes what I say, so what would be the point of asking? Am I bargaining with God? Because I have to say, after he took my devoted church-going parents who prayed day in and day out, I kind of lost faith in a higher power protecting those who pledged their lives… I believed that God heard all our prayers for the first nine years of my life. Every Sunday, my mother would dress the family in our finest clothes, and we would go and speak with God. I remember the long, hard seats, the heady smell of incense and my mother’s delicate fingers wrapped around my left hand whilst my father’s callused palm swallowed up my right hand. For nine years, I believed we were safe and protected because we had a deal with God, but that was all a lie.
I’m going to have to go back and question Dr Weckler about this one. Her data seems off. This is apparently the false hope stage, but after what I have lived through, I know hope is always false. There is no point in throwing out empty promises into the universe because there is no one out there willing to deal in pipe dreams.
*
September 21st, 2011, eight minutes past nine in the morning. Dr Weckler had not one but two boxes of tissues with her, and her first words were, ‘tell me about your childhood’.
Sadness is an old friend of mine. I have known it since I was nine years old, sitting in the back of a police car, as my life was thrown into black garbage bags, and I was entered into the foster care system. My parent’s car had gone off the side of the road and wrapped around a tree on their way home from a church prayer meeting. I always thought it ironic that they spent their last night praying for the souls of others when they should’ve been praying for themselves to get home safely. There were questions on that night, too.
‘Why were you home alone… is there any family we can call… you’re really the only one left?’
After that night, it was almost two years before a single word passed my lips. Unlike what my first foster parents said, I wasn’t trying to be a brat or seek attention; every time I tried to speak, it felt like my throat closed. My eyes would sting, my throat would burn, and the words I wanted to say would sink back into my belly. So, I just didn’t try any more. Until him. My third foster home was where the fog started to lift, and I began to make new friends besides sadness. There were yellow curtains in my room, and the kitchen always smelled like something yummy. I was allowed to swim in the pool until the sun disappeared, and that’s where I met him; he lived next door and rode his bike in the alley. One day, he asked me if I wanted to play sink or swim, and I, giddy at the prospect of a new friend, said yes, the first word that made it through after all that time. The rules: Eyes closed, no peeking – you can only use your left hand to push your opponent under – you must sink your opponent for over five seconds – the winner can ask for whatever they want.
A silly, naive little girl who didn’t understand the game she was playing was just a practice run at being his wife; he would always be the winner, and whatever he wanted, he got. And so, I continued sinking, until that night, I no longer wanted to play the game.
Dr Weckler explained that foster kids interpret relationships differently. They will often remain attached to the person they feel rescued them from their sadness, even if that person causes more sadness. That was what he was to me, my rescuer. After my parents died, I bounced from house to house, never wanted, always a burden, and then he gave me attention, so I latched onto him and held on tight. Only now can I look back, guided by Dr Weckler, and see that my friend sadness never left; it just became embodied by the boy next door. The confident boy became my controlling husband. The game of sink or swim became a lifetime of obey or hide, until the night I couldn’t obey anymore and found nowhere to hide.
*
October 5th, 2011, thirty minutes past ten in the morning. Dr Weckler announced it was our final session. The doctor’s diagnosis of battered woman syndrome had been accepted, and my appeal was successful.
I’ve made it to the end of this debacle. I am rethinking my stance on confronting Dr Weckler about her conflicting metaphors. Through this process, this crashing of waves upon the page, I have felt the ocean of my mind swell, pulse and shift but never submit. These stages of grief have not occurred on the straight line of Kubler-Ross’s flowchart; like each wave feeds the next, my emotions have tangled into an impossible knot. I have realised something, though, whilst writing this diary of sorts, and I know it isn’t what Dr Weckler expected…I am not grieving the loss of my husband. I am grieving MY loss. The life I could’ve had if I had never let the boy from next door drag me under. A life without poisonous words and hateful looks. A life where I never had to hide bruises under scarves or long sleeves. A life of quiet mornings and peaceful nights. A life of freedom. That is what I am grieving. Not the life I took.
Lucy Fisher is an aspiring editor who writes to better relate to the authors she collaborates with. She loves to escape the chaos in her mind in her book nook with a cup of tea, her cat Penny Dreadful in her lap and retriever Loki at her feet.
