RISE, A Modern Guide for the Purpose Driven Woman Spring 2014 | Page 17

grief
as shared by Dana Eldridge

The next day I spent the entire day in bed watching movies with my
boyfriend. I don’t know if I looked at my cell phone once. We laughed
and joked around like we normally do. I would think to myself “What’s
WRONG with me? Is this denial? I’m LAUGHING and Grandma
is dead – I’m a horrible person. How can I already be over it?” I’m so
lucky to have my boyfriend, who completely played along all day, didn’t
ask me any questions, and let me be what I needed to be in that moment. Right before we went to sleep I lost it. All four walls of denial I
had built up that day suddenly came crashing down and I cried, like a
baby, for a long time.
“They” talk about these 5 stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining,
Depression, & Acceptance) like you go through each one of them, one
at a time. Sure, you may get stuck on one before moving to the next –
but they’re linear – one step at a time, right? So wrong. This is what
they don’t tell you about those stages. They are all out of order. Or,
there is no order. They shouldn’t be numbered; these steps are really
just normal feelings that come and go, they all intertwine, they’re messy.
I flew back home to be with my family and attend the funeral. Although
I really wanted to be around everyone, I was dreading it. I thought it
would make things worse, seeing everyone. I pictured it to be a big
crying mess fest. There were definitely rough moments but most of the
moments were of us cherishing each other a little more than usual. We
even had moments of laughter and fun (cue the instant GUILT! inside
my head), but we just felt closer than before.
The funeral was horrible. Absolutely gut-wrenching, but I knew it was
a necessary part of closure, or at least that it would be for me. I knew I
needed to speak, not really for anyone but myself; I had to. I couldn’t
stop staring at the coffin… how could she be in there??? It was surreal
and awful. I was mad that more people weren’t there. How could
there not be a MILLION people at Grandma’s funeral – she was such
an amazing person! The truth was that most of her closest friends had
already passed at this point. She had just spent so many years focusing