Grieving the Old Normal

Küble-Ross Grief Cycle

Grief is messy. I learned that when my Dad passed away last year. I always thought grief was like... you know... sadness and crying. But it's way more than that. And it's freaking messy.

Oh sure, I knew about Kübler-Ross and her five stages of grief, so nice and neat and compartmentalized:

• Denial
• Anger
• Depression
• Bargaining
• Acceptance

This cute little diagram makes it look sooo tidy.

• Denial - when I got the phone call while out of town - "No, he can't be dead!"
• Anger - at my job for taking me out of town, at the care home for not saying "We think he is dying when they phoned the day before"
• Depression - really blah feeling for weeks/months
• Bargaining - digging myself out of the hole
• Acceptance - moving on (whatever that means)

Messy Stages of Grief

 Yeah... not so much... or rather... waves and waves of grief, the cycle just repeating itself week after week... although the amplitude did lessen over time... But, I really think that this diagram is a far better representation of what happens...

It at least shows the messiness of it! I didn't make the diagram so "My Experience" is not my experience... and yet it is... All over the map. Back and forth, up and down. Some good moments, some bad moments...

All of this is just a prelude to this: the entire world is grieving right now. Grieving what we have lost. Our normal world. Whatever that looked like. So many things we have lost:

• family time
• jobs
• security
• stability
• routine
• haircuts
• massages
• stress-free grocery shopping
• trips - short and long
• camping
• going out when we want to
• dining out
• money
• Starbucks time

I put that last one in there, because every time I wake up in the morning, I am sad that I can't go to Starbucks. It was my routine every morning. I'd get up before my partner, get myself ready, trot out the door and happily spend several hours at Starbucks basking in the white noise of espresso machines and customer chatter and write. But those days are gone... for six weeks now. And I miss it.

I am trying to work from home but it can be more challenging to carve out that time. I tend to get up later now and that throws my whole schedule out of whack. I am having to make adjustments and that makes me angry... Then I get sad again. And this is just losing Starbucks time! But really... it's just the tip of the iceberg. Everyday we come face-to-face with everything that we have lost... and the horrible thing is... we don't know when... or IF... we will get it back. We have no idea what a New Normal will look like. Or if we will like it.

Several provinces are easing restrictions in the coming weeks but... people... until we have an effective vaccine... this is NOT going away anytime soon. There will be more peaks and there will be more lock-downs. Normal life is not resuming. It is gone. Like... gone... In the past. And it can't be hauled back into the future. Whatever the New Normal will look like... it's not going to be the old normal. And... we're back to grieving.

Seven Stages of Grief

All those protesters demanding an end to the lockdown... denial and anger. All those people whose mental health is tanking into anxiety and... depression. Not to mention bargaining... Not sure we're at Acceptance yet... Cause acceptance is always a tricky one. I don't want to accept what has happened! But... there's a nuance... accepting that I can't change what has happened. It is what it is. Nothing we do now can change the past. It's gone. The virus is here and we are left to handle it. One step at a time.

This all helps me to have some compassion for myself and for others. We're obviously not all at the same stages of grief... and if we're bouncing around like a pinball between sadness and anger and denial... well... there's a lot of room for misunderstanding. Sooo... one step at a time. For me, I am trying to create a new routine, one that keeps me anchored in the present, something to cling to when the world is going sideways. Something to bring with me into a future that looks really uncertain. No one knows what the future is going to look like... only that it ain't gonna look like the past. That means jobs aren't going to look the same. Or schools. Or even the economy. The not-knowing is not nice... and we generally don't handle uncertainty all that well. At least I don't....

And so... I write... and I garden and build things like fences (to keep the deer out) and new vegetable beds. Small steps in making a difference...