I’d Like to Propose a Few Additions to the Kübler-Ross Grief Theory
Her five stages did not encompass the totality of my own grief experience
Most of us are familiar with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her five stages of grief. As a refresher, they are as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance. As much as I admire Dr. Kübler-Ross, she left out a couple of necessary stages and short-changed us a caveat.
I was born with the five stages tacked to my heart; a second copy was always handy in my back pocket. I had a stroke at birth which impaired my right side, causing numerous surgeries and life-long havoc. The real reason I was so familiar with these grief stages was that I came into the world grieving a life that would never be mine. Though I’ve always connected to those stages, I didn’t think they should be “activated” until someone died.
When I lost the person who brought me into this world, I realized the stages were inadequate and that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross had fooled us. My mother was the sharer of, witness to, and burden-bearer of my life of grief. She was the over-worked CEO of Leslie, Inc.: my Mama, a.k.a. Elizabeth, a.k.a. Sarge.
About the time I was losing my mother to a wicked case of dementia, I was also losing my 26-year marriage. And then — poof!— both were gone. This is where I would insert the addition of two more stages to Kübler-Ross’s theory with the gentle suggestion that the stages don’t apply only to death.
The first is exhaustion. In the initial year after my mother’s death and my husband’s departure, I would fall into bed and immediately go to sleep. Normal activities simply wore me out. There is a “busyness” to grief. I cleaned out her house (a repository of cherished memories and also “happy crappy”), sold her house, sold her car, closed her bank accounts, wrote truckloads of thank you notes, and finally sold all the stuff.
After all of that, I could barely get through the day doing my normal activities. Books I had been dying to read by authors I loved wouldn’t penetrate my feeble brain. What was wrong with me? The answer: grieving. It takes energy — a lot of it.
The other neglected stage: indifference and the weird reactions it engenders. Alarm system companies wanted additional proof of death, claiming that death certificates could be faked. Really? The state of Georgia and I are in cahoots to get an 87-year-old out of a seven-year contract? Who had time for that?
Words came out of my mouth that shocked me. While selling Mama’s house and her belongings, a woman, her hair still in curlers, came up and wanted my mother’s most prized recipe book for a dollar instead of two dollars. I simply walked away from the woman in mid-question. I was in no shape to bargain with people. I had no desire to use my “nice” manners. I had run out of fake smiles and lipstick. Sarge would have been appalled.
I wanted to say to the alarm system company, to the woman looking for a deal, to the Social Security office, and to the bank, “My mama just died, my husband left, and I lost my two cats. Give me a break!”
My best friends would make harmless jokes and I would shock them by snapping, “Stop it!” My indifference morphed into something like temporary insanity, something a bit more sinister and dangerous than the magical thinking Joan Didion suggested. How else to explain this peculiar me?
My beloved brother died suddenly a year ago, and I was once again pole-vaulted into the maze of these confounding stages.
And here’s where my caveat comes in. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross suggests that acceptance of the person’s death is the final stage. I would propose a crucial caveat: We have to accept ourselves wherever we are in our individual journeys of grief.
We have to be strong enough to reject the outdated belief that grief is only triggered by death. We must also disregard those artificial timetables that are imposed on us. One year? That may work for some people, but not others. Dr. Kübler-Ross gave us a framework. We have to realize it is not an ironclad paradigm at all, but a shifting paradox.
Leslie Hooton is the author of Before Anyone Else, The Secret of Rainy Days, and After Everyone Else (releasing June 2022). She grew up in a small Alabama town and earned her B.A. and M.A. from Auburn University and her J.D. from Samford University. Leslie attended the Sewanee Writer’s Conference and studied with Alice McDermott, Jill McCorkle, and Richard Bausch. She currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina.
This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.
