Psychologists and therapists who deal with grief all the time make use of a field of study known as thanatology. Thanatology is defined as "the study of death and the psychological mechanisms for coping with death." Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a pioneer in helping people deal with their imminent death and the dying process, developed the system that describes the 5 stages of grief for people diagnosed with terminal illnesses. The stages of grief for those who have lost a loved one are similar. Fiction writers should have a good understanding of the stages of grief in order to write more realistic grieving characters.
Mourning and grief varies with the individual as does the way we each progress through the stages. Following my husband’s recent death, I found my progression through the stages has not been linear. I’ve been moving in and out of the stages. Every time I work through the stages dealing one issue, another issue crops up and I start the process all over again. Many times I have found that I have the stages overlapping because I am dealing with more than one issue at a time. Though the stages of grief are listed in a specific order, I have found, that I haven’t been going through each stage in the listed order, but rather experiencing them in random order, sometimes experiencing the stages of anger, denial, bargaining repeatedly for some of the issues.
Denial
Denial works differently for terminal patients than for those grieving the loss of a loved one. For the terminally ill, denial is more about shock and disbelief. They don’t want to believe this is happening to them. For the bereaved, it’s more about pain and guilt. They want to think they could have prevented the death, and they feel guilty - not only for failing to save their loved one but for all the problems in the relationship that may have contributed to the death. Denial is the stage where the grieving survivors deny their own part in everything that may have been wrong, and blaming the dead person because they can’t deal with the pain and guilt of their own shortcomings
Anger
If you’re character is following the stages in a linear fashion, the denial will give way to anger. This is where the denial lights anger’s fire. Anger allows the terminally ill to blame someone for their current state of affairs.
It works the same for the grieving family members. Usually, the person they are angry with is the person who died and left them to deal with their death and any problems that they left in their wake. Sometimes though, family members will be angry with the surviving spouse or each other because of each person's shortcomings or because they feel that others should have done something to save the dead person or to prevent any problems that have crept up since the person died. Guilt is a part of anger as well, because we feel guilty for being angry with each other and especially for being angry with the person who died. Though at this state, the guilt is more of an undercurrent.
Bargaining works in different manners for the terminally ill as for the grieving loved ones. The terminally ill try to bargain with their Higher Power by declaring they’ll do anything if God will just make them better.
For the grieving family, it’s a bit different. Their loved one is not coming back. So instead, they ask for all their problems to be instantly solved and their life to be made whole again – or as whole as possible – and they’ll do anything to get it set straight. Alternatively, they may also ask for their own death, because they don’t feel like they can make it, and they’ll do whatever they need to do to keep make their families’ lives better in exchange.
Depression
For both the terminally ill and the grieving family, depression is the moment when your character realizes that there’s nothing they can do to change their situation. There’s nothing they can do to fix it. And no amount of bargaining, begging, pleading, or fixing will change the circumstances you’re facing. A deep sense of sadness, emptiness, and loneliness set in.
The terminally ill will make use of this stage to quietly separate themselves from their loved ones as a way of saying goodbye. In both terminal illness and grieving over a loved one, characters may realize they’ve neglected their other relationships and use this time as an excuse to reconnect with those relationships. Either way, the full magnitude of tje loss finally sets in, and your characters will feel the full weight of the loss.
Acceptance
Acceptance of one's impending death is the stage when your character is finally okay with his/her death. The character is ready for it when it comes. For the mourning, this stage may be harder to get to. Some, in fact, may never reach this stage. They simply can’t get out of the anger, denial, or depression. For me, it’s been a matter of peeling back the layers and coming to a state of acceptance, one layer at a time. It’s easier than trying to deal with everything all at once.
Dealing with all the problems at one time can be overwhelming. So your character may need to start with the things that can be fixed and dealt with up front. Then work through the other, harder and more involved problems, the parts of their grief one step at a time. Some things will get better sooner than others.
Maybe that’s why they say you should take at least one year to get through the grief process. It just takes a lot of time to deal, not only with the death, but with all the problems and fallout following the death. Step-by-step, layer-by-layer, the burdens and problems, and all the aspects of your character's life with the other person will be dealt with. Little by little, your character should start seeing an upward turn. It doesn’t happen all at once, though everyone wishes it would be just that quick. But when you stop to think how long it takes to build that relationship, your character realizes that it’s going to take awhile to get over it. As your characters start working through each layer, they will start seeing life as a new opportunity and begin looking forward to a brand new future that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
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