Making it to the Acceptance stage at all is a major step for me. For so many weeks, I just struggled to wrap my mind around the loss itself. I knew it was over, but the whole unraveling was so bizarre and unexpected that I just couldn't accept that he was no longer a part of my life, that all of the things we had done together would now be done solo or with others. I remember the moment I reached Phase 1 of Acceptance. It was about a week ago when I suddenly realized that I really WAS done. I had lost the desire to reconcile, I was no longer "in love" with this person. Sure, I loved him, I cared, I wanted him to be happy and ok. But that's where my feelings stopped. I had finally accepted that this part of my life was over and I was ok with it. I was moving forward.
I realized that the Acceptance stage is a 2-parter when I began to reflect on other moments of grief and loss in my life. One particular circumstance involved the death of a close friend 8 years ago. That loss had a profound impact on my life. HE had had a profound impact on my life, so losing him was excruciating. It was the first major loss I had experienced in my adult life. It was also the most devastating loss of my 10 year career thus far. Kevin was my first patient ever and I spent countless hours with him; trying to save him even though he couldn't be saved; being his friend; bringing him his favorite meal of steak and potatoes from Texas Roadhouse after work hours and personally feeding him because I didn't trust anyone else to do it right; bringing Isaac to see him after work and on weekends because he loved babies; playing Bingo with him almost every afternoon and winning almost every time with our lucky number 15 since he and Isaac shared a birthday. When we lost him, it left a huge hole in my heart and intense feelings of sadness and guilt. Guilt over not being able to save him from a completely unfair disease that I never could've saved him from anyway, guilt over his medical care at the end - again, out of my control.
For years after his death - YEARS, 6 to be exact - I never made it to Phase 2. I had accepted that he was gone and had moved on in my career - who am I kidding, I had run from my career as a way of healing, left my comfort zone in long-term care to avoid another Kevin. I thought I had completed the grief process but I hadn't. I saw this quote on Pinterest, which reminded me of Kevin and ultimately made me realize that Acceptance has 2 phases.
You can accept something is gone, but until you can move past the sadness, you haven't reached the final phase of the final stage of grief. Crying doesn't necessarily mean you're stuck in the Depression stage, but it is definitely an indicator that you haven't healed. I COULD NOT talk about Kevin for years. I couldn't listen to a certain song that reminded me of him. The memory of him saddened me. These days I can think of him fondly and with happy memories. I can think about him throwing his head back and laughing, long talks about our favorite Nascar driver, feeding him breakfast every day, the sight of him holding my infant on his lap with a big grin on his face... When you have honestly healed, you are better able to look back on experiences clearly and with good memories. Sadness taints happy memories. Losing someone to death is obviously much worse than the end of a relationship, so I'm definitely not trying to compare my heartbreak over one to another. But thinking about Kevin this last week has helped me to gain perspective on the grief process. And that's how I know that I haven't yet reached Phase 2 in my current grief. I have accepted, I have not healed. I still carry sadness that taints my happy memories. Someday I hope to look back on my 3-year relationship and remember the moments that brought me joy, because there were a lot of them. I hope that Isaac can also one day look back on that part of his life and remember the 5/6 of the relationship that included camping trips and the building a winning Pinewood Derby car and skipping rocks at Texoma, instead of just remembering the 1/6 of unhappiness.
I'm getting there. Closer and closer every day. Thinking of Kevin these last few weeks has brought me unexpected comfort and clarity. Not only did it make me realize that I wasn't quite done healing, and that's ok, but it also helped me to focus on something more important. If I could get through the death of a beloved friend and come out on the other side a stronger and happier person, I could get through this.
The song that I had a hard time listening to after he died was a song by Carrie Underwood called So Small. It reminded me of him because while he was dying, I was in the process of leaving Isaac's dad and breaking apart my family. I was dealing with something that, while sad and devastating, was nothing compared to what he was dealing with. For 6 years, this song broke my heart because of the sadness and guilt I felt. But tonight as I reflected on my old friend, I listened to it again and fully appreciated the meaning behind it. Something might feel huge at the moment, unbearable even. But there are much bigger things in life than this one situation. My situation doesn't define me, it doesn't define my future. I'll get to Phase 2 when I get there, but in the meantime, I am focusing on all of the other things that make my life great.
"It's so easy to get lost inside a problem that seems so big at the time. It's like a river that's so wide, it swallows you whole. While you're sitting around thinking about what you can't change and worrying about all the wrong things, time's flying by, moving so fast. You better make it count because you can't get it back. Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just grain of sand." - Carrie Underwood
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