The 497 Stages of Grief

Okay, so they tell you there are only seven, and that might technically be true, but what they don't tell you is that your journey through those stages isn't linear. You don't just journey through them and come out on the other side after finishing stage seven. No. Those stages of grief are more like a damn staircase. You might climb a couple of the steps only to twist your ankle and fall back down to the bottom again. Then you might think to yourself 'Fine! I'll just jump over a few.' and do that only to trip and find yourself down on another familiar step again. 

It sucks. 

When Sebastian was first diagnosed I remember one of the doctors telling us, in the gentle, understanding voices that everyone was using, that we should expect to experience grief. That it was perfectly normal. That we should not only expect it but we should allow ourselves to feel it. I remember thinking to myself  'Grief? He's not dying.' Of course, I wasn't happy about the diagnosis, but we were in a children's hospital. I was fully aware that only a couple of floors above us there were terminal children who would never leave these walls. To think of grieving my type 1 child's diagnosis when there were parents going through the unimaginable felt so selfish to me. What did I have to grieve? We had answers, and we had a way to treat him. We were going to be fine.

But that's not how this works. There were things to grieve, and those seven stages didn't care if I thought I should be grieving. They were going to make sure that I did, and that I visited every stage as many times as they thought I needed to. 

We're only a couple of weeks into this new normal, but I think I've gone through each stage a few times at this point. I don't know how long this will last. I'm not sure if I'm coping well or horribly, but I know that this blog is supposed to be my outlet, so I'm going to write about them. Whenever they hit, and however they make me feel, I'm going to fight those battles here. I'm going to drag my way up these steps, and when I fall I'm going to drag myself up again. Eventually I will get to the top and I won't fall down again, and maybe my sharing here, my showing that this is normal. will help someone else as they start the journey up this deceptively small staircase known as grief. 

Fuck you, grief, and fuck you, diabetes. (Perhaps I'm visiting with Anger at the moment.)