Stages of Grieving

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, author of "On Death and Dying," identified five stages on the grief cycle which was later extended to seven stages: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. Let me start by protesting the very idea of a grief "cycle" because it implies that at some point you must return to the beginning and start all over again. That being said, I have a larger objection to the idea of the grief cycle because it has a larger implication that with acceptance comes the end of the grieving process. Grief, for many, is a lifelong process that travels not in emotions but in life stages. It changes in magnitude, growing and shrinking and growing again as life stages pass, but grief as an activity does not end with mere acceptance. With this in mind, now seems like the perfect time (if there can be such a thing) to explain my own theory on the grieving process.

My friend Nicole Lynn Edwards died exactly ten years ago today. Together, we left school during an open hour with the intention of traveling to the mall and then returning to school in time for our last class of the day. She wanted her paycheck, and I wanted a light shirt to replace the sweater I had put on that morning. We went to Coral Ridge Mall, entered through Sears, and I spent my time in the clothing racks while she went to retrieve her paycheck. She came back, and we decided to peruse the jewelry and lotion displays for a few moments while we waited for my turn to pay. I purchased a sleeveless navy blue shirt, but we agreed that I would wait until we returned to school to change. As I paid, we realized that we were nearly out of time and would surely be late for our last class of the day. We ran out to my '88 Oldsmobile and decided together that we would be better off taking a shortcut on the old gravel road that connected the Coralville Strip to Melrose Avenue, just a half a mile or so from the entrance to our school. We even joked as we went that Megan, Nicole's best friend, would not approve because she never drove down Deer Creek (or "Stoner" as it is better known) road. We turned out of the parking lot of the mall, and that's the last thing I remember. I can remember details down to the clothes we wore, the song on the radio, the conversation we had, and the cigarettes we smoked, but after we made that fateful turn . . . nothing.

The rest of my memories are a fog of people telling me what happened, visitors drilling me with questions, and nurses and doctors treating me with varying states of sympathy and frustration. There were police officers assuring me the crash was not my fault. A semi was traveling back to the quarry on that road and veered into the lane of oncoming traffic in order to make a turn a little bit easier. He hit my car head on. The waiting room was filled with people from my high school, all there because they were apparently so close to me, but when I awoke from my coma, my family soon learned that I didn't know who half of my "close friends" were. There's nothing like life-threatening drama to make a person popular. Once I was awake and communicating, most of these people disappeared. By the time I was transferred to a physical rehabilitation center two and a half weeks later, everyone outside of my family was gone. While in rehab, I had one visitor: Megan. She who was closest to Nicole and, outside of family, was most affected by the events of the day, was also the only person who would travel the twenty miles to see me again.

At this time in my life, my injuries seem mundane. I know the story, and I've told the story more times than I can count. Doctors, friends, acquaintances, most of them ask, and nearly half of them actually listen to the response. I've found myself abbreviating my answers in the interest of time: "My legs were more or less crushed" takes a lot less time than, "The impact of the engine fractured every bone in my right leg, shattered my left femur, tore my left PCL . . . " With no small amount of irony I can say that life is short, and who has time to explain all of this time and again? I've stopped talking about blood loss, lung damage, broken ribs, and brain damage completely because it's less interesting. After six years of these explanations I finally acquired a copy of the initial report and carry it with me to every doctor I see. Now my medical forms are like a job application, and instead of filling out every job I've ever had and every bone I've ever broken, I can save us all some trouble with a simple, "See attached." I only wish I had come to this conclusion before encountering a doctor who failed to see the humor when I answered, "Have you had any surgeries?" with "You could say that."

But I digress. All of this information is about myself, and that's not what I carry with me now. Injuries and surgeries become old hat after a while, but grief stays with me in different shapes and forms. Grief is like a mark on the wall as your child grows up. You keep marking every few months, every few inches, until finally they reach the age of majority and cease to grow. You may stop marking then, but you still don't paint over the marks because they've always been there. After a while you stop looking, but milestone events like graduations, weddings, and grandchildren make you return to the marks to remember how it used to be and all the time that's passed. You may move over the years, God knows I have, but you find yourself marking the wall all over again in your new house, and the path continues.

My initial grief was of the obvious kind. Guilt, shock, and depression enveloped me like nothing I had ever experienced before. I began drinking heavily and engaging in behavior that became more fun for others to talk about than participate in, and within a few months I dropped out of high school to make more time for my new lifestyle. I used my new surroundings and beverages of choice as a way to continue my grieving process, but all that came from it was some lost chances, some lost friends, and a bad reputation. Still, I thought as I rebuilt my life that surely the worst had passed and now I could begin again. I drank through most of the last day of high school, also the first anniversary of Nicole's death, and then prepared to move on.

I moved on to college (thanks in large part to some last minute assistance from Mike Rose, a man to whom I will always be grateful), but my grief came with me. There I didn't grieve through guilt but through the idea that this was another stage Nicole would not experience. I remembered listening to her talk about how she would work for a year, and then she and Megan would travel for a summer before starting college together. I worked and studied and did what I could, but everywhere I turned I was still "that" girl. I was the one in the car accident, the one who was out of control the year before, and in one truly awful moment in a bar, I was labeled the girl who killed Nicole. On the second anniversary, Megan and I, along with my sister, took a day of silence to remember. We grieved not only the loss of our friend but also this new and exciting stage of our lives that Nicole would never experience.

I knew after the second anniversary that I would need to leave Iowa City and as many of the memories as I could. I used graduate school as an opportunity to leave, and Tracey and I moved to New York. Another anniversary came and went, but even on the other side of the country I found myself caught up in thinking of how Nicole wanted to leave Iowa City some day, how she and Megan had plans to see more of the world, and how I was once more experiencing such an incredible life that Nicole would never see. So went the third stage of the grieving process.

In an attempt to avoid making this my own memoir rather than a description of grief, I can abbreviate my own life now to say that marriage, more graduate school, and buying a house were all moments, months, and years when I have thought of Nicole and what she will never have the opportunity to do. I look at my life and see blessings, but all too often I close my eyes and see her face in the senior picture on her headstone, and I think of all the things about this life that I don't understand. On December 3, 2007, my grieving process changed again.

That day was a Monday, the day that changed my life forever for the second time. On that day, I received my greatest blessing, my daughter. I experienced what I had previously only heard and I felt what I only knew through secondhand descriptions of a love greater than any love I had ever felt before. My baby daughter, my Ellie, is the greatest gift I will ever receive. With her I felt a renewed celebration of life and love, and I thought of how much I want to live and flourish with a greater purpose of making her life better.

On the second day, though, while she was still in the NICU, I began to think of Nicole again. Rather than grieve for her as her friend, her peer, or her classmate, I began to grieve for her as a parent. I began to think more of her parents, whom I had thought of before but in different ways, and I began to only imagine the grief and despair her parents must have felt after losing their oldest child. It was then that I realized that I would not find freedom from grief through time or emotions, and I would not and will not experience grief in a cycle of emotions but rather in a path of life stages.

Today is the tenth anniversary, and somehow I feel like this is a moment I've been waiting for since that first day. I've set myself up in a way to believe that with this landmark would come an incredible sense of relief. Well, the day is half over, and the time of the crash is nearing, and I don't feel relief. I do, however, feel clarity. A long conversation with a stranger several weeks back has helped me to realize that grieving is not something to "get over" and it's not something to "grow out of." Instead, grieving is a way of remembering. I remember Nicole, and I remember that day, and now more than ever as a mother, I remember her family. I will continue to remember on the milestones, the graduations, birthdays, and grandchildren, and I will continue to remember and grieve on the anniversary of the crash. I won't cycle, and I won't limit myself to five or seven psychologically-approved emotions, but in acceptance, I also won't forget.