Stage 3.5 and a Brilliant Analogy

Many people are familiar with the “Five Stages of Grief:” denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Originally conceptualized by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross to describe the feelings of people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, these stages are now often used to categorize reactions to any negative or traumatic event. Of course, they’re largely unscientific and not at all universal, but we’ll ignore that part for now, because the model partially fits my thoughts from this past week or so, and I’m going to use it if I damn well please.

As I’ve thought about 3 over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time telling myself that if only things were a little different, I would feel better in my grief. If only that friend would ask me how I was doing, if only I had a significant other to lean on, etc. I know that “bargaining” won’t bring 3 back, but maybe if I just do something a little differently, some of the pain will go away. My own Stage 3.

Then, naturally, I remember that nothing is really going to fix things. My brother is dead, and no amount of hugging or fictional boyfriends is going to make that fact better. Grief is grief, and I’m going to have to deal with it – with ALL of it. Because my brother is dead, and that is absolutely and completely horrible. Stage 4: everything sucks, and nothing is going to make that not true.

Part B: At some point in the past few days, I made what I consider to be a pretty big stride in my coping with 3’s death. I was able to acknowledge the possibility that, at some point, I will likely regain the level of happiness that I had before December 30th. It won’t be the same, obviously, but there is no way that the entirety of my life from here on out will be wholly less enjoyable that the 26.5 years before 3 killed himself.

Here’s my analogy: Losing 3 is like having to take a huge chunk of money out of your retirement fund well before old age. That money is gone, and it’s a big setback to your savings. You keep investing, and keep building up your account. Eventually, the account reaches, and then surpasses, the level it was at before you had to take out the money. Things get better, and you have more savings than you did before, but no matter how much money you accumulate, you know that it will never be as much as it could have been had the fund not taken such a big hit.

Losing 3 knocked me back quite a bit. I don’t know how long it will take to regain the level of contentment I had before his death. Good things are still going to happen; I fully expect that the best years of my life are ahead of me. I’ll just never know how much greater my happiness fund could have been if 3 was there to celebrate with me.