Before my father passed away, I viewed grief as simple as having strep throat. When having strep throat, I remember having specific symptoms like a scratchy throat, and a sudden pain when I swallowed. As a child, I remember running to my mom and saying, “Mom, my throat is sore!” she would pull the flashlight out of the junk drawer. I remember opening my mouth and her shining the light on my throat. I remember her crinkled-up face as she said, “Rebecca, I think you need to go to the doctor. You have white spots on your tonsils.” I remember going to the doctor, a wooden stick jabbed into my throat, a test being run, and the result being positive. I remember leaving the clinic, getting a prescription, and returning to school in a few days.

 

When my dad passed away, I remember looking for a simple prescription. I wanted to run to my mom and ask for help. I thought that understanding my emotions would be just as easy as going online and looking up common symptoms of grief. I wish grief were this simple, but grief isn’t, and it really pains me to say I don’t think my grieving process will ever be.

 

Within the first couple of days of my father’s passing, weird ideas, theories, and thoughts were running through my head. I could not stop thinking: Are the emotions I am feeling normal? Am I normal? What is normal for someone who is grieving? I remember my grandmother’s voice running through my head after both of her parents died. She told me that she found the five stages of grief very comforting as she learned how to navigate her life without both of her parents. I remember lying in bed within a week of my father's death and looking up online 'what are the five stages of grief?' A multitude of different responses came pouring in, essentially all saying the same idea: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. 

 

Staring at the Healthline article about the five stages, I wondered, what the hell are these? Denial and depression made a little bit of sense. However, what haunted me the most were anger and bargaining. When will I be able to get angry at my dad for dying? My dad didn’t want to die. My dad didn't want to leave me. How could I ever be mad at my dad for something he had no control over? He wanted to be here with my mom, my brother, and me. He wanted to live. He wanted to play golf, he wanted to see me graduate, he wanted to continue to create a beautiful life with my mom, and he wanted to see my brother start a family. However, was I actually wrong the entire time, and am I supposed to be angry at the world? Who should I be mad at?

 

I remember thinking, what does bargaining mean? My father is gone, and there is nothing I can do to bring him back. My father died peacefully in his sleep. He was just taking an afternoon nap. There is nothing I could have done! Please don’t pressure me to stay up all night wondering, what if we just came home a little bit earlier? Could we have saved him?

​

Rather than hoping to be angry at my dad for dying or hoping to bargain with someone to bring my dad back, I felt a strong sense of confusion. When my father first passed away, I could barely do anything at all because my mind was in shock. I couldn't make sense out of the situation. Sometimes, that would make me feel sad, angry, anxious, happy, and so many other feelings. Picking a random string of five words, will not be able to consolidate all of the feelings I have been having after my father passed away, so confusion is where I find comfort. 

​

Those intrusive thoughts made me quickly realize I intensely disliked the five stages of grief. To be honest, I hated them; nonetheless, I wanted to understand where they came from and why they became so widely adopted. In The Grieving Brain, the author, Mary-Frances O’Connor, dives deeper into the underlying advancements in understanding grief. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross developed the five stages of grief in her novel On Death and Dying in 1969 (O’Connor, 54). Kübler-Ross grew up in Zurich, and in her youth, she volunteered at WWII refugee camps. Her perspective on death left a prolific mark on her, and when she became a psychiatrist in the United States, she began to study individuals who were terminally ill. 

 

At the time, her discoveries were a giant leap for the psychological community to understand the bereavement process for those who are terminally ill; however, it was not accurate to describe the stages for people who are grieving over time. While Kübler-Ross was correct in how she was able to communicate the commonalities between patients who are terminally ill. Not all grieving people go through all or any stages, especially not in a specific order. The five stages of grief are not a proven method to understand the process of loss and bereavement. 

 

The model acquired widespread awareness as it touched the minds and hearts of many individuals during its acquisition. Due to Kübler-Ross's framework reaching immense popularity, the five stages of grief are still one of the most widespread formats for people to find comfort in during times of grief. Additionally, the five-stage framework is historically part of the curriculum within entry-level psychology classes in the United States, leading to more familiarity with the processes. 

 

Over time, Kübler-Ross’s methods of grief have been continuously updated. More specifically, David Kessler added the sixth stage of grief: finding acceptance. The new additions to the stages five stages of grief have allowed the ideas from it to continue for generations. Ultimately, the framework's resources remain to be persistently recommended to those grieving and looking to understand how to handle grief. The book On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, forwarded by Maria Shriver, warns readers that the process of stages is not linear and “grief is as individual as our lives” (7). After describing the stages, Shriver discusses many feelings a person could experience, followed by real-life examples. The anecdotal elements made me feel very uneasy, and it was only more painful to uncover stories of grief by people who may or may not be real. 

 

People find comfort in telling their personal stories while grieving to help console the bereaved. Throughout my grieving process, I have seen this numerous times with people around me who are grieving and myself. For instance, close family and friends often try to console me by telling me about their personal experiences with losing a close loved one. To be completely honest, when hearing stories from people about their personal grieving process, I have very mixed emotions. At the very beginning, when most people tell me about their experiences with grief, it makes me want to scream from the top of my lungs. I felt very strongly that everyone has different experiences with grief, and telling me I will persevere can help me do nothing.

 

For me, as I grieve for my father, the only person who can help me is myself. While I can listen to the stories of family friends who are now 60 years old and how they lost their father two years ago, you can never truly understand what it feels like to lose their father at 21. I try to be sympathetic to their grieving process, and losing a parent of any age, gender, or personal background is extremely difficult. Regardless, my father was a unique person, and his death was a unique situation, just like all deaths. However, other than myself, everyone around me will not understand how it feels to lose their father right before they are about to graduate, right before they were going to start their full-time job, and right before I enter adulthood. 

 

Nonetheless, there have been moments where I am hit with the wicked understanding that I am not the only person who lost their father throughout their undergraduate careers. I have learned that everyone’s grieving experiences are different, but over time, I have realized there can be some similarities between me and others. The shoe doesn’t fit perfectly, but it feels snug enough for me to find a sense of relatability with those who have also lost their fathers in their younger years. My understanding of grief has evolved, and in special situations, I can find serenity in speaking with others as I grieve.

 

I felt this when I called my friend the first day I came back onto campus after my father passed away. The friend I called lost her father during her freshman year of undergrad. When I called her, I told her a week after my father’s funeral, and when I spoke to her, it finally felt like someone understood. Everything she was saying resonated with me in some capacity. Especially when she reflected on what it was like to be at her father’s funeral, this is when everything came into hyperfocus. 

 

She told me that being at the funeral felt like being a hostess. You were required to stand at the front of the room and greet people. Thank them for coming and saying, ‘Please, allow me to bring you to my father now so you can show your respects.’ Ask the attendees how they are doing and make small talk with dozens and dozens of people, sometimes even strangers. When she said these words, I felt an immense amount of clarity, like a fog had been lifted. Now, someone understood how difficult that day was for my family and I. I could describe without judgment the absurdity of the traditions during a typical funeral of a Western civilization. All of us, me, my friend, my family, and my friend’s family, went through the horror of putting a father to rest, yet we both had to do it to show respect to our fathers and the people around us who cared for them. 

 

Kübbler-Ross pioneered grief research and used personal anecdotes to describe the stages, and updates have been made on her initial discoveries. Nonetheless, I believe her five stages still have a strong sense of structuring. To me, there is no structure to the processing of an immense death. I can see how the different stories of grief portrayed by Shriver and the experiences of different people can provide a sense of camaraderie or togetherness to the bereaved. Yet, my emotions are too broad to be put into one-word phrases or stories to describe how I am feeling about grief, like denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Also, I believe the five stages are not correctly promoted to the general public. People are not getting the full picture of Kübbler-Ross's research and her process of uncovering the five stages. On the other hand, moving forward with my modes of understanding grief, when applying the frameworks to my life, not every method needs to fit together perfectly, but maybe a piece of the framework will help me move forward.

​

Moving past Kübbler-Ross’s five stages of grief, great developments have come forward concerning how individuals process grief within the past couple of decades. The three methods commonly used in professional counseling are Therese Rando’s Six R’s of Mourning, the grief researcher William Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, and Stroebe and Schut’s Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement. All of the methods respond to Kübbler-Ross's five stages of grief but display a more modern perspective. 

 

Therese Rando’s Six R’s of Mourning are not stages of grief but are seen as different emotional states that a person is going through in their bereavement process. Rando believes that in the Six R’s, a person must go through each step in a specific order presented in the framework. Rando defines mourning in six states (the Six R’s) into three emotional categories. The Six R’s are recognizing the loss, reacting to the separation, recollecting and re-experiencing, relinquishing old attachments, readjusting, and reinventing. The three emotional categories are avoidance, confrontation, and accommodation. 

 

• The avoidance phase has one task, and that is to recognize the loss. Dr. Rando suggests that the bereaved must recognize the death has occurred; if that is not achieved, they will remain in this phase. 

• The confrontation phase deals with how the bereaved can express the complex set of emotions they feel. This phase has three tasks:

  • React to the Separation: We will react to our emotions and the changes created by our loss, including the loss of security, identity, traditions, and routines. These are known as secondary losses. 

  • Recollect and Re-Experience: Involves reviewing memories and experiences shared with the loved one lost. This could be visiting a place that was special to the both of you or even completing small day-to-day activities you once did together. According to Rando, this is important to how we continue our relationship with a loved one after they are gone. 

  • Relinquishing Old Attachments: This task is a long process. It involves accepting that our old life will never be the same after the loss, and we will start processing the impact the loss has on us. 

• In the accommodation phase, the bereaved begins to find meaning – from both the loss and life. 

  • Readjust: The bereaved start finding new roles in life and responsibilities. A new identity is formed, as well as a new relationship with the deceased.

  • Reinvest: This is finding a new sense of happiness in life again. A new hobby or project might form. Dr. Rando describes this task as learning to live again. 

 

The Six R’s of Mourning framework is more attainable, yet elements of the structure are difficult to comprehend. I find it fascinating that compared to her framework to Elizabeth Kübbler-Ross, acceptance, or recognizing the loss, is the first step in the process compared to Kübbler-Ross, where acceptance is the final stage of the grieving process. As someone who is grieving, this is much easier said than done, and acceptance is very subjective to how a person understands what recognizing the loss means to them. There are moments when I forget my father has passed away, and I start thinking about him as if he were still alive. I quickly realize he is gone, but there are still moments when I need reassurance. The moments when I realize that my father is no longer here with me are some of the hardest moments. Does this mean I haven’t made it through the first phase? Am I doing this right? Just because I feel like my dad is still here, does that mean I am prolonging the pain of the grieving process?

 

Rando’s Six R’s of Mourning is a rigid process. Strict instructions stated explicitly by Rando that one cannot move past one phase unless completing another is too concrete for someone who is grieving. The process of grief is too unpredictable to anticipate, and I feel like there is too much pressure when a timeline is added to the bereavement process. For instance, a person who is grieving might have to deal with their emotions in Phase 2, Task 1–the React to the Separation, and handle the feeling of loss of routine before the bereaved is really able to handle the loss of their loved one. Reading the frameworks in hopes of finding relatability is good in some elements because it can help me see grief through a different lens. However, I cannot shake the feeling that frameworks make me feel pressure to fit into a box, and compare myself in direct parallelism to phases or stages. 

 

Unlike Kübbler-Ross and Rando, Worden's strategies take a more fluid approach to understanding grief and present the frameworks as less straightforward patterns. Worden uses psychiatrist George Engel’s analogy of healing to describe how a grieving person can accomplish some of these tasks and not others – like a person might not completely heal or recover function following a wound. Worden believes that experience varies widely and is influenced by many things, such as a person’s age, gender, relationship with the deceased, culture, personality, previous experiences, coping skills, and social support.