In January and February I was having a lot of depression, but in March I started having anxiety. I'm not usually an anxious person, and it's a stage of grief I hadn't had much before. In general, I don't find the idea of stages of grief a helpful idea, as they are much more fluid than step by step stages, but I do flow through them and it can be helpful to just recognize the feeling and then just let it flow through. - washing the emotion down the river is a helpful visualization for me. The most commonly recognized stages are: denial, anger, anxiety, depression, and acceptance. Many days I experience them all.
Denial: I think I am able to cope with day to day life by being in denial frequently. My body is still waiting for Lev to return, as if this isn't really a permanent situation. The denial usually passes quickly and leaves sadness.
Anger: I don't often get angry, but looking at Facebook posts about someone's happy family, hearing someone complain about something stupid, or thinking about what Lev is missing out on can make me quite angry. The anger usually passes and leaves just a bitter taste.
Anxiety: Anxiety is a tricky one. It comes unexpectedly and takes some focus to help is dissipate. I am often unaware of the trigger that has caused the anxiety. Sometimes it's being in a toy store, seeing someone with hair like Lev's, thinking about a birthday can cause my heart to race. Fortunately I have done a lot of yoga, and have been going regularly lately, so I am able to slow my breath and get through it pretty smoothly. It is unsettling, however, and my least favorite stage as it is the hardest to control. I am not accustomed to it and am definitely finding it a challenge.
Depression: This is an emotion I have become comfortable with as long as it's not too strong. I can usually hold it in a slow burn, like a comforting cloud recognizing the pain and loss of losing a child, holding Lev close while truly feeling his loss. Sometimes it can be too strong, and that doesn't feel healthy, but a little depression can be similar to acceptance.
Acceptance: True acceptance comes in fleeting moments. Sometimes I feel at peace with the world. I understand that people die, and it's not our choice as to when it happens. It just sucks, but it is. We were lucky to have Lev for almost fifteen years, and unlucky to lose him, but it is what it is. I'm sure he appreciated the time he had and would be mad about dying, but it happened and there isn't anything we can do about it at this point. We are fortunate to have Liana and Jaal and our friends and family, and there are no guarantees in life. As my favorite first grade teachers say in class when handing out supplies, "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit."
The phase I would add would be exhaustion. It sits in between depression and acceptance. Sometimes the heart just gets so heavy it is hard to imagine going on for so many more years. The realization that you are going to need to slog through the rest of your life with out your child, carrying this loss on your shoulders. It's not suicidal, as that is the last possible thing a person who lost a loved one would want to do to other loved ones. It's just that the expanse of the other half of your life is huge and overwhelming. Gaining perspective on life enables you to see the expanse of a lifetime, to understand it briefly, and this can be both overwhelming and exhausting.
When doing a little reading about anxiety, I found this quote I liked: "When we lose someone we love, we are thrust into a world where we feel more vulnerable than ever before. Suddenly we must face the fact that there are absolutely no guarantees in life. Everything that once seemed sturdy is now fragile, particularly the people we love. These feelings can be incredibly overwhelming and oftentimes terrifying. It takes time and work to overcome them, to feel secure again in such a now-delicate world."
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/02/five_stages_of_grief_revision_anxiety_should_replace_bargaining.2.html
