ANOTHER KIND OF GRIEF
Another kind of grief BY THE TIME we reach middle age, most of us have lived through the death of a loved one. When each loss occurs, we learn something about the process of handling death and grief as a part of life. Although I’d experienced that kind of grief before, nothing prepared me for the sorrow I experienced when my wife broke her back for the second time and had to quit work. I didn’t even recognize the torrent of emotions like grief. I knew about the grieving stages first outlined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (in her 1969 book On Death and Dying), but I didn’t think her theory applied to me as a caregiver whose spouse was still alive. Though the stages—anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are most often associated with death. I learned that Kubler-Ross applied them to any catastrophic event in a person’s life. And anyone who has ...