How to deal with loss -- grieving is a necessary process to better understand life
According to the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler Ross, founder of psychopathology, after the death of a loved one there are five stages: denial, anger, plea bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
Grieving is a process whose duration is subjective, which should not be accelerated or criticized, but simply accepted and respected.
Mourning a loved one is an important rite of passage in life as well as a precious moment of personal growth, and here is why.
When someone you love dies, you tend first of all to reject the event by refusing to accept reality. Then follows anger, to feel angry with fate and what has befallen you.
At this point comes the stage in which an attempt is made to give an explanation, to try to analyze what has happened and consider it as the consequence of something that perhaps had already been destined to happen.
Then, it is the moment of sadness, of despair, and in this stage one falls into a profound state of depression, in which nothing seems to make sense and the mind and heart are filled with the sweet taste of memories and the bitter taste of half-finished projects.
Each individual has their own way and moment in time to go from one stage to another, and it is often the last one, that of depression that is the hardest to overcome.
This stage is, in fact, a sort of limbo in which one lingers because one has thus the illusion of keeping a small part of the person who has passed away alive - inside and outside of oneself.
Although we must not force ourselves, sooner or later we must react and to move forward becomes a duty, towards ourselves and toward those who no longer exist.
Those who leave the world can do it slowly or suddenly, and in both cases there is no better or worse way. Whoever knows that they are sick has perhaps more time to settle their affairs, to say and to listen to what has never been said, to forgive, receive forgiveness or even forgive himself.
However, if the transition is unexpected, the sense of emptiness is stronger because it does not allow any time for a person to realize what is happening. For this reason, always and in any case, never postpone things that you want to do or say.
Grieving for a loved one is therefore not only a necessary transitional process but also the moment in which one can learn the most important lesson of all, namely that in life, everyone is just passing through and that one must always remember to live life without remorse and regret.
Acceptance is precisely the stage that coincides with rebirth, with the awareness of one's own condition of living a precarious existence, while developing immense gratitude for every minute, every second received and for all those still to come.
At this point, perhaps the end will begin to be less frightening, like something that has been waiting since the moment of birth, not cruelly but fair because it happens to everyone.
When the day of leaving comes for everyone, the greater their love of life has been, the smaller their fear of death will be.
