According to researchers*, there are five distinct stages of grief the majority of individuals will experience.
These stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
I read this and thought: Shit. Failing at grieving.
Every website or editorial or app I read or listened to discussed these stages and I felt like I was failing at grieving because I worry that I’ve not done that... or I’ve done it too quickly, or I’ve skipped a step.
So I thought back about what happened and how I’ve got to here - functioning - since Pete died.
I feel like maybe explaining this might take some of the anger or disbelief out of other people’s grief. Because I know some people are angry at the injustice of it all.
In my household, that anger is manifesting itself in a 7-year-old child who cannot get her little brain around what has happened and why it has happened to her Dad.
She is a fiercely independent little creature who will be as affectionate as you could ever imagine and as determined as a trooper but with an insanely short fuse when things don’t go her way.
Losing her Dad is definitely something that didn’t got her way and as she tries to understand this new normal she is trying to get what she wants in any way a clever little 7yo can - tears, anger, a bit of sibling violence, yelling and a whole lot of screaming about never getting what she wants.
Because the thing she really wants isn’t the chocolate bar at the supermarket check out, or the fizzy drink or the seat in the car that is not in the middle - it’s her Dad.
And it’s the only thing I cannot give her (but she is also not getting the chocolate or fizzy drink...and she definitely has to take her turn in the middle seat).
Each of the children is grieving differently and the same. They are the perfect mix of Pete and I and they are going through these emotions in their own way.
But every single one of them needs me - usually at the same time - and I cannot split myself into four pieces for each of them to have. And I’m struggling the split myself into five pieces to make sure there’s time given to me.
But my grieving, I think because of the kids, ran through some these five stages pretty quickly. In fact, I reckon I zipped through a couple within a few hours of Pete dying.
There was denial. When the Dr sat there and told me Pete was gone I remember desperately searching the faces of the two people sitting in front of me, not really able to process what they were telling me. I remember asking ‘what?’ quite a few times. There was a bit of denial at what I was hearing.
I actually wonder if it wasn’t denial as much as overwhelming panic... But then it had to very quickly turn to logical functioning thereafter when I had to answer the questions people were asking me.
There also isn’t much place for denial when you are standing in front of your husband’s dead body. And sitting in a room with it for four hours. You can try and deny it all you want but there is a very very real and confronting reminder that it’s real right in front of you.
I wasn’t angry. I haven’t been angry. I can’t foresee me being angry about this because Pete didn’t choose this. He didn’t do anything to make this happen. I didn’t do anything to make this happen. I’m pretty confident if, given the choice, he wouldn’t choose leaving us alone without him.
There is nothing that anyone else did or didn’t do that could have prevented it - I don’t actually know how I can be angry at that.
The same goes for bargaining. There isn’t anything I can do or could’ve done to to change what has happened. There isn’t anything Pete can now do the change it. It is what it is. There is no bargaining. No what if’s or maybes if I had the ability to go back and have more time. I have no regrets - no what ifs or maybes that I wish we had done.
Because we did it all. We might not have travelled the world or Australia but we did the things we wanted to do. We took the trips we did. We saw the things we saw. We spent the time with the kids. The kids have absolutely no doubt their Dad loved them because he was at all the sports, the ballet concerts, the instrument performances, the school concerts, the good days, the bad days - if not in person, then on the phone.
There might be depression. Who knows?
Mostly it’s just sad, not depressed. I’m sad he’s not here. For me, for the kids, for our families, for our friends, and even for all the people who worked with and around him. He was just so loved. People so genuinely enjoyed his company that I’m sad none of us will ever get to enjoy that again.
My sadness has other elements. I’m sad I don’t have anyone to debrief my day with like I could with him. To discuss work issues or friendships or conversations I’ve had. To gossip with. To laugh with. To parent with. To warm my feet up in bed. To curl up with on the couch when the kids have gone to bed.
I often feel I need to apologise to people who seemingly cannot understand my acceptance of this monumental grief. But it was so very clear in my head when I first saw him lying dead on the bed in hospital that it was real. He was really dead. And right then and there was the acceptance that I had lost him and there was nothing I could do about it now was there. I didn’t like it or embrace it. But I accepted it as fact. I’m not an irrational person (most of the time) and so it was a very known thing in my head even back then.
While I might know he is dead and seemingly have quickly ticked off the boxes on the grieving checklist - I now have to deal with the reality of the ones I cannot skip through. I cannot skip the sadness. It can be overwhelming some says. And I cannot rush the children through their grief.
So we keep muddling through our days that sometimes work so perfectly it’s like clockwork, and some days I am sitting in tears at the kitchen table at 8.50am dressed ready for work but with only a fraction of my children in any state to attend school... and other days that are on the scale of something in between.
* My psychologist may have since told me this has been debunked. But it certainly appeals to my inner control freak tendencies that I can tick off a list.
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