Dr. Victor Sierpina is one of the excellent columnists of the Galveston County Daily News. His description of the grief process, based in part on Good Grief by Granger Westfield, goes beyond a shorter list of stages. The first four stages, shock, discussed in his first column on this subject, are:
- Shock
- Emotional pain
- Depression and loneliness,
- Physical distress
The next six include the possibility of :
- Panic
- Guilt
- Anger
- Resistance to life without the lost person
- Gradually becoming hopeful again
- Struggle to affirm reality
This was illuminating to me as I come upon the 50th anniversary of my mother’s death. I consider all that pertains to her to be in a special set of connections in my brain. It took me at least three and a half decades to not break into tears when I mentioned her, or somebody else mentioned her to me, even though I did not feel sad in general, and would quickly recover my composure.