Are the stars just as bright from above as they are down here?
Do you get to see the ones you love? Your parents, your brothers and sisters, your old neighbors, that one special friend who always made you laugh?
Is there coffee in Heaven? Is it better than your favorite blend on a cold desert morning?
Do you remember everything now? Things once forgotten.
And now that you know, what do you know?
Do you hear us when we talk about you? When we laugh at your stories and try to retell them just right?
Do you miss us, or does love work differently there?
Can you see how much we love you still?
Are you proud of the life we’re trying to live?
Do you see how we carry your lessons forward, quietly passing your wisdom down, one small act at a time.
I wonder if you recognize your love moving through our family in the lives your grandkids and great-grandkids are creating.
And I was just wondering…
When it’s my time, when I finally get to see what you see, will you be waiting for me with open arms, and smiles, and one of your special meals that feels so much like home?
“Time heals all wounds,” people say when someone we love dies. It’s a phrase offered like a Band-Aid for a broken bone. Well meaning, but inadequate for the depth of what we’re facing.
For those who have lost a daughter, a son, a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a dear friend, the truth is something different. Time doesn’t heal. It changes things, yes. It allows us to move, to function, to smile even, but it does not erase their absence. That lives inside us, a permanent resident.
When I searched for quotes and stories from others who had walked this path before me (writers, psychologists, fellow travelers through loss), I discovered that my feelings aren’t unique or abnormal.
The bereaved across time echo the same truths I’m living.
I’ve heard that grief follows a pattern of denial, anger, bargaining, withdrawal, and finally, acceptance. That may all be true. It sounds like a clean process. Just a series of steps we must go through to get to the other side.
But that path has no clean endpoint. It can stall, restart at the beginning, skip and repeat steps while never reaching a conclusion. The grieving process never ends. We merely learn to function with our grief, and we do so in our own way, as imperfectly as we do everything else in life.
Author Jamie Anderson found words for what many of us feel but struggle to express: “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
This captures exactly what happens when we reach for the phone to call them or save up a story we can’t wait to tell them. Only to remember a second later that they’re gone.
Grief isn’t a single event but a series of small realizations, each one a fresh cut.
C.S. Lewis, after losing his wife Joy, wrote about the persistence of absence: “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” In his book “A Grief Observed,” Lewis documented what it feels like to live inside loss. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed.”
This is the lived experience of a body trying to process what the mind struggles to accept.
Joan Didion echoed this truth when she lost her husband, John Gregory Dunne. In “The Year of Magical Thinking,” she wrote, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. It’s a foreign country with its own customs, its own weather, its own bewildering geography.”
There is no timeline. No tidy arc where pain transforms into peace according to some predetermined set of rules.
Dr. Lois Tonkin, working as a grief counselor in the 1990s, discovered a different truth about what healing actually looks like. A client whose child had died years earlier drew her a picture showing how her grief had initially filled her entire life. A small circle almost completely consumed by loss.
But over time, something unexpected happened. The grief didn’t shrink. Instead, her life grew larger around it. There was now space for new experiences, relationships, and meaning alongside the loss. This became known as Tonkin’s Model of Grief.
Like a tree growing around a piece of metal embedded in its trunk. We don’t absorb or eliminate the foreign object. We grow around it, incorporating it into our new shape.
This model shows us that time doesn’t diminish our grief. But it expands our capacity to hold other things along with it. Some days our grief surprises us with its suddenness. A song, a scent, a birthday or anniversary, seeing a classic car they used to drive. Other days we’re living fully in the expanded space around our grief, discovering we can hold both the wound and the wonder.
We must learn to carry the sharp pain of their absence while having gratitude for the gift of having known them at all. Our capacity to feel gratitude for the life we shared can provide much needed comfort, even though we’ll never stop missing them.
Some of the most tender truths come from those who’ve lost children. Elizabeth Edwards, who lost her 16-year-old son Wade in a car accident, offered this reminder, “If you know someone who has lost a child, and you’re afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died, you’re not reminding them. They didn’t forget they died. What you’re reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and that is a great gift.”
Writer Megan O’Rourke, in her memoir “The Long Goodbye” about losing her mother, captured the peculiar contrasts of grief. “You look fine. You act fine. But inside, you are not fine. And you know it will never be the same.”
This is the hard reality of grief. The simultaneous existence of functioning and not-functioning, of healing and not-healing, of being okay and not-okay. We learn to carry both states, often within the same moments.
So no, time does not heal all wounds.
Time teaches us that we can be broken and whole simultaneously. That we can miss someone terribly and still find reasons to laugh. That love doesn’t end with death. It merely changes form, expressed as the very grief we wish we could escape.
In learning to live with our wounds, we hopefully discover something about ourselves. Our capacity to grieve deeply is evidence of our capacity to love more deeply than we ever thought possible.
And maybe that’s the real truth about time and grief.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” – Mathew 5:4
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:18
At kilometer 32 just south of San Felipe, where warm breezes wandered, and stars blanketed the sky — more stars than anywhere I’ve ever been.
Off-road racing brought us there, wide sandy beaches just a short walk away, bathtub-warm waters stretching out forever, the tides carving their quiet stories in the sand.
Under their shady palapa, watching the sun rise and fall on the horizon, Mom and Dad built their place from scratch, one humble project at a time. It was luxury camping at its very best.
Their place was just across the arroyo from the beach, where Dad taught Julianne to drive a stick shift on the wide-open sand.
How I long to beam back there. To see them again.
To hear their voices busy with new plans, to see what they’ve been working on, to sit with them in the shade at cocktail hour, chips, salsa, and all the shrimp we could eat, as the afternoon melts softly into evening.
I’d love to hear who’s come to visit lately.
Both are gone now, but the memories remain. Their laughter rides the breeze, as fresh as the salty air, that still stirs in my heart.
Backstory: A Campo Sahuaro Adventure
When Mom and Dad bought their lot around 1988, it was nothing more than a small concrete slab and four stakes marking the corners of their sandy “oasis.” What made this campo special was its access to a fresh water well…rare in that part of Baja.
Their lot sat on a bluff overlooking an arroyo, with the Sea of Cortez just beyond the sandy beach. In Mexico, buying a lot like this meant purchasing a long-term lease from the property owner. As long as you pay the annual lease (which was under $1,000 per year) you control the land. Anything they built on it was theirs.
Because Mexico has nationalized property in the past, many Americans build semi-permanent structures that can be dismantled and hauled away if needed. That kind of caution remains, even though nothing like that has happened in a very long time.
Being a concrete guy, Dad’s priority was pouring a lot of concrete. He laid down a huge patio that would become the base for everything else, including one of the largest shade structures I’ve ever seen. It didn’t happen overnight. This was a multi-trip (multi-year) endeavor, often coinciding with supporting Team Honda’s off-road racing efforts. They’d haul supplies and tools down along with pit equipment. In the early ’90s, sourcing building materials in Baja was still hit or miss so they brought most of what they needed with them.
By around 1991, Dad was ready to build a workshop. It would be like a shipping container, made of wood, with big swing-down doors on each end that doubled as ramps. He welded little leveling stands to the top of each door so they could serve as sleeping platforms when opened. I slept on those doors under the stars every chance I got.
As with everything at Campo Sahuaro, there’s a story behind that build.
We were down there pitting for Team Honda, which meant several fellow pit crew members were staying at my parents’ place. At that point, it was mostly a shaded patio and a small pump room. Many of the guys were carpenters, so they brought their tools and were ready to build.
Dad’s motorhome was packed. The center aisle was filled with 2x4s, stacked at least five feet high. Getting around inside was nearly impossible. Behind the motorhome, he towed a converted motorcycle trailer that he’d built at least ten years earlier. It was loaded with a perfectly stacked cube of 4×8 plywood sheets. The walls of the future workshop.
I happened to be traveling with them on that trip, ready to help with both pitting and construction. About 50 miles from the campo, we heard a loud crash and scraping noise. We were driving across a dry lakebed, the road raised 15–20 feet above the flat terrain. I looked out just in time to see the trailer tumbling down the embankment.
Dad got the motorhome stopped, and we rushed out to assess the damage. The trailer tongue had sheared clean off under the weight of the plywood. Thankfully, it hadn’t failed earlier, during high-traffic sections of our trip. The trailer was upside down in the lakebed, still lashed to its cargo. That cube of plywood was completely intact.
Within minutes, two vans carrying some of our crew pulled up behind us. We counted heads — at least ten of us, including a few high school football players. It wouldn’t take long to relocate all that wood.
A chain gang formed. We passed sheet after sheet of plywood up the embankment and loaded it onto the vans, lashing them down with tie-downs and ropes we’d salvaged from the trailer. We even hauled the trailer carcass back up the hill. At the very least, we figured we’d salvage the tires and axle.
That’s when an old Toyota pickup rolled up. A local man hopped out. I greeted him with my high-school-turned-Baja-race-pit-guy-Spanish. Lots of smiling, gesturing, and broken sentences later, we learned he was a welder and fabricator. He was heading to San Felipe to visit family and watch the race.
He looked over our trailer, nodding thoughtfully. He said he could take the trailer on his truck bed along with the remains of the tongue and hitch. He’d rebuild it and leave the rebuilt trailer at his brother’s restaurant in San Felipe. We asked him how much he’d charge us for that service. His response was $20(!).
I confirmed that his plan was to haul our trailer back to his shop (about 40-50 miles back), rebuild it, and then he’d tow it all the way down to San Felipe for $20. We told him there was no way we’d let him do that for anything less than $200. His eyes got real wide. I don’t think he believed what I was saying. I said that we’d gladly pay him that amount for all that he’d be doing for us.
We loaded the trailer carcass onto his truck bed, shook his hand, and paid him the agreed $200. We wouldn’t be able to see him at the conclusion of the job, so pre-payment was our only option. He turned around with his new load and headed back to his shop.
We mounted up and continued to Campo Sahuaro, wondering if we’d ever see that trailer again.
The Workshop Rises
The race went great. The workshop was built in a day or two with the expert help of our crew. The carpenters led the way and the rest of us did our best to help and stay out of their way. Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed around the campfire, many snacks and excellent meals were eaten, heroic stories (some of them true) were shared with lots of laughter along the way.
On the way home, we stopped at Baja 2000, the restaurant where our mystery welder said he’d leave the repaired trailer. And there it was.
Not only had he fixed it. He’d reinforced it, straightened the bent parts, and welded it all back together better than before.
Legacy
Over the years, I visited Campo Sahuaro many times, sometimes with my wife and daughters. As mentioned earlier, Dad taught my oldest daughter to drive a stick shift truck on the beach in front of their place when she was probably 12 or 13 years old.
I loved knowing the stories behind everything built there. Most of the stories involved improvisation, imagination, and always perseverance. There were a ton of lessons at their property about staying focused and overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of your goals.
I loved sleeping under that blanket of stars, watching satellites traverse the sky (there’s a lot more of them up there nowadays). I loved swimming in the warm ocean. Most of all, I loved being with Mom and Dad, sharing good times and making memories with them at their special place, 32 kilometers south of San Felipe.
p/c – I asked ChatGPT to make an image of a starry night on the beach based on my story. Amazingly, the image it rendered is mostly how I remember it…except for the houses on the front row (Mom and Dad’s place was on the second row), and the dry-docked fishing skiffs that used the campo as their base of operations.
“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”
– Terry Pratchett, Source: Reaper Man (h/t – James Clear)
Every so often, we’re reminded of our mortality…especially as we get older and face the loss of loved ones, both young and old.
Truly, it’s a matter of time for each of us. Not an if, but a when.
I appreciated seeing this quote today.
It’s a reminder of the enduring mark we leave on others. Far beyond the days we live, we influence the lives we touch, leaving lasting impressions.
A tribute to those we’ve lost and how they continue to be with us. Our memories of them, the lessons they teach us, their legacy of connections. All of it remains and echoes in our conversations, our thoughts, our choices, and even in the way we approach the rest of our life.
We are here only briefly, but we’re each given the opportunity to plant seeds. Seeds that, in time, may bear fruit for others long after we’re gone.
A gentle reminder to make sure that our legacy is a positive one, filled with love, wisdom, and warmth.
So the ripples of our lives continue to inspire and uplift those we leave behind.
“Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people – they always go away, sooner or later.
You can’t hold them any more than you can hold moonlight. But, if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours.
The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.”
– Bruce Coville (h/t James Clear for sharing)
I’m working on a project for my kids and grandkids that has me writing answers to a series of about 75 questions. It’ll be an autobiography of sorts…a collection of memories and stories about life from my perspective.
While answering a question that asked me to describe a typical school day, I eventually got to my life in high school.
I found myself thinking about the first person who I’d known well that died.
Mr. McNally, my freshman pre-algebra and senior year chemistry teacher, was killed by a drunk driver who ran a red light and broadsided his vehicle.
I hadn’t thought about Mr. McNally for many years, but the moment I thought about my time in high school, all the wonderful memories about him came flooding back. I could see his witty smile; the lab coat he always wore in the chemistry lab. I remembered where I sat in the chem lab and the goofy glasses we had to wear when conducting experiments.
His untimely death was devastating news for our school and all of us who knew him. Mr. McNally was loved by his students. He was one of the special teachers in my life. The kind that not only teaches their subjects extremely well but had a profound impact on my growth as a person.
The unfortunate truth about life is that as the years go by, you’ll have to say goodbye to countless special people. Family members. Friends. Teachers.
Some will die, some will move away. In each case, we will lament that it was too soon. Their departure leaves a shadow on our soul where once they belonged.
I think the most powerful part of Coville’s quote is the way it highlights the transience of love and our relationships. We can’t grasp or possess the moonlight, but we can admire it and the feeling it gives us. Similarly, we can’t possess the people or experiences we love. We can only cherish the memories and the impact they’ve had on us, and hope that we were able to return a positive impact to them.
Coville’s quote encourages us to appreciate the moments and connections we have while we have them. Knowing that if they end, the love we shared with them and their significance endures, enriching our lives.
May the memories you have of your loved ones remain with you always, and may those memories be a source of light and inspiration even as your journey continues without them.
I have one favor to ask. If you enjoyed this post, please forward it to others.
I remember thinking how simple it all sounded, and I was relieved to know I had a model to follow. What I didn’t know at the time is that this simple model is anything but simple…
Denial.
Anger.
Withdrawal.
Acceptance.
I first learned about these stages of grief when Grandma Anne died (over 30 years ago). My cousin, who was a newly minted police officer at the time, described how he received training on this model in the police academy.
I remember thinking how simple it all sounded, and I was relieved to know I had a model to follow. What I didn’t know at the time is that this simple model is anything but simple.
Models provide a basis for understanding a concept or an idea…and that’s helpful. Models make the complex seem simple. But models rarely capture the layers of detail or the often-gut-wrenching processes they describe.
Today, the DAWA model is a bit outdated. Additional “stages” have been added over the years to the original model. Stages like shock, bargaining, depression, and testing are layered into discussions of the grieving process nowadays.
How does all of this relate to the Coronavirus?
Thanks to Coronavirus, we are suddenly sharing a grief experience with every person on the planet, at the same time. Every single one of us has lost something extremely important because of Coronavirus.
The normal that we knew, the normal that we understood, the normal that we took for granted…died over the last 30-60 days. If you could ask all 6 billion-plus people on Earth when, exactly, normal died, their answers would vary by a few days or few weeks. But nobody would deny that their normal is gone.
When we grieve or face a major crisis in our lives, we come together with others, we gather closer to the people we love, we comfort each other with hugs and shared laughter. We cry together. We cook together. We share meals. We share stories about what we’ve lost. We might go to an inspirational concert and hold hands while we sway and sing along with tears streaming down our faces.
We love to be with people, even if we describe ourselves as introverts or “not a people person.”
Unfortunately, that part of normal has also died (at least for a while).
While it doesn’t look like it (because our beloved normal is gone), we are all grieving. Every one of us.
Make no mistake about it. Something we loved, something we treasure, and something we counted on has died. We are grieving our loss, even as events unfold in front of us that may make things worse before they get better.
We probably don’t think we have time right now to grieve. But, we’re each somewhere on the DAWA continuum of denial, anger, withdrawal, or acceptance. In fact, we’re bouncing around on that continuum today.
We’ve lost our normal, and we’re being forced to live in a new normal. This new normal will probably give way to yet another new normal a few months from now. None of us know what any of this will look like. That mystery is an unfortunate part of our new normal (as crazy as it may sound).
It’s normal to be in denial. It’s normal to be angry. It’s normal to withdraw or try to escape. It’s also normal, and necessary, to find acceptance.
Acceptance doesn’t mean giving up. It means that the energy we’ve been using to fight the new normal can be channeled toward making the best of what’s in front of us.
Sure, we all miss our beloved normal from the past. We’d prefer to have our old normal back in our lives. But we must find a way to accept, to allow ourselves to rest, and let go of our longing.
The good news is that we’ve each had normal die before. We’ve had to adjust to new normals throughout our life and we’re generally pretty good at it:
Moving from one school to another and making new friends
Graduating high school or college
Starting our first “real” job
Leaving our first job
Starting our second job
Meeting the person of our dreams that we plan to spend the rest of our life with
Divorcing that person
Experiencing the death of a loved one
Becoming a parent (or a grandparent)
Starting your own business
Selling that business
Losing a house and everything we own in a fire
The knee injury that forced you to stop playing your favorite game
Having your house destroyed in a tornado
These are all examples of events in our lives that require us to let go of the old normal and embrace the new normal. Sometimes the new normal is because of something amazingly good, and other times it’s caused by something amazingly bad.
I’m not sure I’ve reached the acceptance stage in my own grieving process. I tell myself that I’m there, but I know it’s not always true. As I work through the process and prepare myself for what lies ahead, I like to keep this list of ideas in mind:
Take things one day at a time
Prayer is your instant connection to someone who loves you completely
Celebrate your victories, no matter how small
Give yourself a break
Be grateful and enjoy what you have
Forgive yourself for not knowing exactly what to do (none of us know, which is true a lot more than we’d like to admit)
Only allow yourself to worry about the future for a few minutes each day and move on. I’d say to stop worrying completely since worrying is a non-productive use of energy, but I know it’s not possible to eliminate it completely.
Check-in once each day for the news on Coronavirus, and what the latest government directions are (social distancing, masks or no masks, etc.). By now, you know the symptoms, what you’re supposed to be doing to prevent the spread, and what you’re supposed to do if you or someone close to you become symptomatic. The rest is probably not super useful, and you can catch-up on all of it during your once-a-day check in.
Be kind to others. Your kindness will go a long way and may lead to more kindness in your “downstream.” Even a smile to a stranger letting them know we’re all in this together is helpful. By the way, your eyes show your smile, even if your mask doesn’t.
Realize that you are grieving, and so is everyone else. We will each have good days and bad days in our grief journey.
Take time to gather with your friends and family members by phone, video conference, or even a nice email note. These are your people. Embrace them remotely.
We are living through future history. The events happening around us and to us today will be discussed, debated, and written about for decades to come. Our lives are forever changed, and the changes are continuing to unfold.
We can use our energy to reach back to the past with all that we have, searching for the normal that’s gone.
Or, we can channel our energy to reach toward the future, creating the best possible new normal for ourselves and our loved ones.
While I grieve for the past, I choose to reach for the future.
I have a friend. I haven’t seen him in at least 40 years. Though all these years have passed, I have nothing but fond memories of our childhood together…usually in the desert, climbing on rocks, playing in the dirt, getting too close to the campfire.
His name is Jack now, but he’ll always be Jackie to me. Just like I’m Bob now, but I’ll always be Bobby to him.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard Jackie’s wife had died. It was sudden and unexpected. There he was, facing this tragedy, trying to tell their daughter where her mom had gone. I couldn’t imagine the heartbreak.
For some reason, each time I thought about Jackie and his daughter, I couldn’t help thinking about playing momma’s song and singing along. I had no idea what any of it meant, but still, this refrain continued…singing along to momma’s song.
A couple weeks later, I was sitting in an airport (as I often do nowadays) waiting for a delayed flight to take me home. I decided to pull out a yellow pad and see where this refrain about momma’s song would take me.
Here’s what was on that yellow pad when they finally called us for our flight:
Momma’s Song
Looking back…
We were so complete
Everything was sweet until that day
we heard the news.
Our silence grew
How could this be?
We never knew until that day
The doctor said it was too late
Her momma was gone, all too fast
There was nothing the doc could do
He shook my hand and held me close.
My only thought was of her song
That one I used to sing along
It was our Endless Summer
It had just begun
And now, alone, I faced her setting sun.
Oh Lord, please won’t you play her song!
I only want to sing along
You know the one I need, won’t you help me sing along!
And there she was, our sweet Lorraine
I could see through all her tears
All she felt was numbness and pain
Who would ever play her song?
Especially now that momma’s gone.
Oh Lord, please won’t you play her song!
She only wants to sing along
You know the one she needs—won’t you help her sing along!
We sat and cried
I held her close
I felt so weak, but it was our sweet Lorraine
Who gave me strength.
There we sat, I had no plan
What should we do now that momma’s gone?
And there it was, her words so sweet
The melody we knew complete
She was singing to us once again
The sun was rising, her new day was born
We could feel her in those words
We couldn’t help but sing along.
It’s been many years since that day
It’s our sweet Lorraine’s wedding day.
As we started to dance the Father’s dance, my daughter cried
Oh Daddy please won’t you sing her song
The one momma used to sing
I only want to sing along
You know the one, won’t you help me sing along!
And so we danced, and her momma sang
Her words so clear, she’s singing now and that’s all we can hear
The questions we ask when someone dies miss what really matters…
How old was he?
How did he die?
Did he suffer at the end?
Was his family with him?
Various versions of: Who is he leaving behind? How are they doing?
These are all worthwhile questions. They show how much we care.
They also provide a small glimpse into our future, and the future of the people we love and care about. We will each take our final breath someday. It’s just a question of when and how.
These questions do more to quench the morbid curiosity we have about our own future than to learn about the life of the person who just died.
We used to receive a local monthly newspaper. I was always fascinated by the stories in the obituary section. Each person had a story. An arc through time. Milestones. Achievements. Lives they touched. But, these were merely stories someone else had written to encapsulate an entire lifetime into a few paragraphs of highlights.
It’s impossible to capture someone’s life in a few paragraphs or even an entire book.
Our lives aren’t just a series of events and milestones. They’re an almost infinite collection of moments.
Moments that often seem trivial when they happen, but are anything but trivial. These moments would probably never make the “highlight reel.” These are the moments that (with the benefit of hindsight) are turning points in our life, and the lives of the people we touch.
Our lives are also a feeling. An energy. An impression we leave behind. It’s not tangible, and it can’t be seen or touched. But, it touches everyone around us. It’s something they can only describe with a far-away look in their eyes when we’re gone.
The questions we ask when someone dies miss what really matters.
I’d like to add some new ones:
What are the moments you shared with him that you remember most?
What stories did he tell you?
Which stories had the most impact on you?
How did he make you feel when you were around him?
How did he impact the direction your life is going?
What did you learn from him and the way he lived his life?
What type of energy did he bring to your life?
What impression did he make on you?
What comes to your mind whenever you think about him, now that he’s gone?
And, one final question to consider while we’re still here:
How will those that you love and care about answer these questions after you’re gone?
Grieving is unavoidable, no matter how busy or tough we think we are.
When someone we love dies, we often hear about the grieving process. We hear that we should take time to grieve. It’s something we can’t skip.
Grieving is unavoidable, no matter how busy or tough we think we are.
I remember when my Grandma Anne died (over twenty years ago). My cousin, Devin, told me about DAWA, the four stages of the grieving process that he’d learned as a policeman:
Denial—we deny that the person has died, or that this is really happening. We may also deny that it’s impacting us emotionally, or deny that we even understand the mix of emotions that are welling-up inside of us.
Anger—we realize this is real. We wonder what we could have done differently. We wonder how something like this could have happened. We may question the justice in the universe, or how God could allow this. Bargaining phrases like, “if only…” come into our mind.
Withdrawal—sometimes the only way to cope with the reality of our loss, and the emotions we can’t control, is to withdraw. This may be within ourselves, or to some place where we can be alone. Denial is giving way to reality. Anger is turning to sadness. We look within ourselves for the strength to overcome our sadness.
Acceptance—we begin to get our head wrapped around what is happening. We start to make peace with this new reality. Acceptance doesn’t mean we’re “over it,” or that there isn’t an irreparable rip in the fabric of our soul. It means we start to understand how to go forward with our life.
It’s easy to list these stages and assume grief is a simple process with a beginning, middle, and end. It doesn’t work that way. Some people never get through all the stages, or, they may cycle through one or more of the stages numerous times. It’s a process without a true endpoint…only the hope of eventual acceptance.
The grieving process applies to more than our loved ones passing away. It can apply to losing just about anything else we love (whether we realize it or not).
Maybe it’s a friend who we don’t get to see anymore, a hobby we can no longer participate in, moving into a new house (and leaving the old one behind), graduating from college and saying goodbye to our friends, losing that job we thought we’d have for many years to come.
It doesn’t matter if we’re the ones driving the change in our life, or if the change is thrust upon us without warning. It doesn’t matter if our loss is a stepping stone that leads us to something even greater (which is often the case).
Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership 
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