Stages of Grief and Loss

At times I feel that we humans are still lucky..., at least we can express our pain, cry, shout, scream, find a shoulder to cry on... I was just watching the movie 'Hachiko'. If you have seen it, you would know the pain that must have resided in Hachiko's heart, and a never ending hope, that made him wait for his deceased master till he took his last breath. Every day, he would wait outside the railway station for his master to come...and he continued to do that for 10 years, without any fail. For those of you who don't know, Hachiko was a real dog and this movie is based on his life.

Be it humans or animals, we all have feelings and attachment. We all feel a stabbing pain when we lose someone we love. There is a series of emotions that drive us when we go through the stages of grief and loss. But in the end we do accept the fact and move on with our lives, we have to, because we're humans. The development of human psychology is based on the experiences we have. Mentioned below are the stages of experiences that one tends to go through, when suffering from grief and loss.

The 5 Stages of Grief and Loss

The 5 stages of grief and loss are also known as the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and loss. These stages were introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her book named, On Death and Dying which was published in 1969. She was among the first person to give importance to this matter and throw some light on the stages that people go through during the loss of a loved one. Be it the loss of children, or a parent, the emotions and the flow of feelings remain the same for everyone. These are explained as under.

Stage 1: The Denial
This is the first stage of grief and loss. In this stage, a person's mind is filled with thoughts like, "This can't be happening to me!" or, "Everything is absolutely fine, the rest of them have gone crazy!" People simply refuse to admit the fact that they have lost a loved one, or are going to lose a loved one.

Stage 2: The Anger
Once the stage of denial has passed, it is followed by the stage of anger. In this stage the person gets angry with himself and the people around. He becomes angry with God and asks to himself, "Why me?", "What wrong did I do to deserve this?", "This is simply not fair!"

Stage 3: The Bargaining
When the person has passed through the second stage of anger, and understands that denial and anger would not make things better, he moves on to the third stage of grief and loss, which is, bargaining! In this stage, the person ends up bargaining with God within himself. Thoughts like, "Please let the person (loved one) live until her son gets married!" and so on. This is the stage when the person chooses the path of negotiation with God to bring things back to normal.

Stage 4: The Depression
The denial is done, and so is the anger and bargaining! In the fourth stage, the person realizes that these reactions will not work, neither will they help in making things better. Here comes the final stage wherein the person finally realizes the situation and gets into the depression stage. Thoughts like, "How does it matter now, things cannot change anyway?" come into picture. This stage includes constant grieving and crying. The person spends all the time alone, refuses to meet people, disconnects himself from everything and everyone.

Stage 5: The Acceptance
This is the final stage of grief and loss wherein the person finally ends up accepting the loss that he has suffered from! Thoughts like, "I can fight it and handle the situation." Or, "Everything happens for a reason", etc., come into play. The person begins to cope up with the situation and deals with it along with the love and support of other people who are close to him.

As I mentioned earlier, we cannot understand how it feels unless we go through it. And for those who have gone through these stages, would pray hard so that no one else would go through them. Coming back to the movie I saw, my sister always wanted to have a pet dog. But after visualizing the pain and loss Hachiko went through, she doesn't want to keep a dog anymore. I said, I still do... because we are humans after all, we can express what we feel, talk it out or cry it out, and then finally move on with our lives. But for those who keep it within, they live in these stages until their last breath!