Grief is a Circular Staircase

I don’t know Deepak Chopra, except that he has simultaneous fame and infamy.   I’m sure the man is a decent human being.

And I’m sure he was caught off guard with the question posed in this video here.

I hope he really didn’t mean it when he answered said question with this piece of crap:

“You must go through the grieving process … if you remember all the joy you got out of (the relationship you had with your deceased spouse) and you grieve and you heal your body at the same time, then within six months (grief) will start to dissipate, and within one year you will be back to your baseline status.  We know this from psychological studies.”

When he talks about “the grieving process”, I’m not sure what he means; furthermore, I’m not sure HE knows what he means. Either way, when he starts talking about a time frame for grief “dissipating” and regaining your “baseline status”, I STRONGLY disagree with Mr. Chopra.

There is no time frame.  And there is no exact “grief process.”  There are not scientific stages that the psychological community agrees upon (there’s a number of different models of grief work, each entirely or slightly different than the next).  Even though the psychological community is greatly indebted to Kübler-Ross, there’s a tendency in pop psychology to think that grief follows in linear lock-step with the five stages of grief.  Some even attach a timeline to this process.  And they’re wrong.

Here a poem that communicates the more “circular staircase” of grief.

The night I lost you

Someone pointed me towards

The Five Stages of Grief.

Go that way, they said,

It’s easy, like learning to climb

Stairs after the amputation.

And so I climbed.

Denial was first.

I sat down at breakfast

Carefully setting the table

For two.  I passed you the toast –

You sat there.  I passed

you the paper – you hid

behind it.

Anger seemed more familiar.

I burned the toast, snatched

The paper and read the headlines myself.

But they mentioned your departure,

And so I moved on to

Bargaining.  What could I exchange

For you?  The silence

After storms?  My typing fingers?

Before I could decide, Depression

Came puffing up, a poor relation

Its suitcase tied together

With string.  In the suitcase

Were bandages for the eyes

And bottles of sleep.  I slid

All the way down the stairs

Feeling nothing.

And all the time Hope

Flashed on and off

In defective neon.

Hope was a signpost pointing

Straight in the air.

Hope was my uncle’s middle name,

He died of it.

After a year I am still climbing,

Though my feet slip

On your stone face.

The treeline has long since disappeared;

Green is a color

I have forgotten.

But now I see what I am climbing

Towards: Acceptance

Written in capital letters,

A special headline:

Acceptance,

Its name is in lights.

I struggle on,

Waving and shouting.

Below, my whole life spreads its surf,

All the landscapes I’ve ever known

Or dreamed of.  Below

A fish jumps: the pulse

In your neck.

Acceptance.  I finally reach it.

But something is wrong.

Grief is a circular staircase.

I have lost you.