The Stages of Mourning

"99% of Us is Failure" - Matthew Good

I've been doing a little reading about the Kübler-Ross model, where there are five stages that define one's progress through the process of grief:

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

While I think that this is a very accurate representation of the process, I believe that there is one more stage. I hazard to put forward an opinion given that I have no grounding or research in the field other than my own experience, but as always, I will regardless.

I see grief as an addiction. I've realised that whenever I grieve over someone or something that is lost, so many feelings rise to the surface, filling me with the same emotions, just of lesser toxicity. The Kübler-Ross model evokes a sense that you fall through the stages, one by one, until you are swimming in the ecstasy of Acceptance. But I feel like I can go through the entire cycle in a day - in a moment. Like an addiction, I go through those five stages as if the curtain of tragedy had fallen only moments ago - and that is why I think there is a sixth stage: Relapse - the final stage, that assures you only one thing: that this is not the final stage.

Every time those feelings begin to collect and swarm towards my consciousness, I get that desire, that need for the thing/s I miss most. Of course not all tragedies can be (quite negatively) correlated to drugs - it's just the feeling.

Grief unfortunately strikes us all. The meagre consolation is that it gets better over time. Relapse becomes less frequent, the feelings become less potent, and the fond memories, the happiness, the lingering warmth of what's lost always remains. Constant.

Goodbye From Ethan..