The Stages Of Grief

Many years ago doctor Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book called On Death And Dying in which she wrote down what came to be known as the Five Stages Of Grief. Later she wrote a book entitled On Grief And Grieving.  In later years others have added to her original idea to come up with the Seven Stages Of Grief. Whether five or seven, they all cover the same ground.

The stages of grief are not a timeline or a check list. They were never intended to help us organize a chaotic, messy mass of emotions into a tidy neat package. They are the result of years of observing how real people react to dying, and in observing how survivors deal with grief. They describe the responses to loss of real people. I have experienced all of them.

According to Dr. Kubler-Ross, the five stages of grief are:

1.Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

At a later time I will go through all of these to explain what they mean.

Another professional listed the stages of grief like this:

1. Shock

2. Denial

3. Anger

4. Bargaining

5. Depression

6. Testing

7. Acceptance

Again, while these are similar, I will go through them one by one to explain them in order.

These lessons are for people suffering with real loss and death of a close personal relative. You can grieve the loss of a lot of things. But the deepest, hardest grief journey definitely comes from the death of a spouse, a child, or a parent. My wife of 40 years died and her death threw me into the maelstrom of grief that I am surprised that I survived. But I did. You will survive too.

"...you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." John 16:20b