The grieving process?

I'm an instructional designer. In instructional design, we have a type of content called a process. It's defined as "A flow of events that describes how something works rather than how to do something. It usually cannot be done by one person—many persons or organizations are involved. A process can be mechanical, business, or scientific and has either stages, phases, or cycles." Hmmmmm...that sure doesn't seem to apply here. Grief is quite solitary. There isn't a flow. It doesn't move nicely from one stage to another. It seems to jump around depending on the day. For example, shock and denial are the first stages described in many books on grief. I can tell you that two years after my brother's death, I'm often so horrified by the mere thought of it that I become Scarlet O'Hara "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow." Shock and denial.

Life moves on without him now, whether I think about the consequences of his death today or not.

My truck wouldn't start the other day. I called Mark, who suspected what was wrong with it and had it towed in to be repaired. I drove Kirsten's car for about 30 minutes and then that wouldn't start either. Mark came home and fixed it. Kirsten drove to a friend's house late at night for a sleepover, but didn't call to tell us that she'd arrived like we asked. Mark got up out of bed and drove the route to the friend's house to make sure a deer didn't put her and the BMW in a ditch.

Kate ordered bed rails to change Jake's crib into a bed. She disassembled the crib and reassembled it into a bed. That's something Jim would've done. She was fully capable of doing it, and she did, but I'm sure she was wishing Jim was there to do it instead.

I sometimes complain about Mark and what he does or doesn't do, but I realize that I'm terribly blessed to have him around--to lighten my load and to watch my back. Jim isn't there to do that for Kate and that makes me really sad. I hope someday, Kate's heart heals enough to share her life with someone else if she wants. Sometimes the journey's just easier when we walk it with another person.