Five Stages of Grief

When I “Googled” the word “grief,” I came across many sites that describe five stages of grief. The stages include: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. When comparing these five stages with Didion’s mourning for John I can see that she seems to go through at least four of the stages. Didion starts in the denial stage by not wanting to believe that John is dead. She thinks the paramedics are going to revive him and that he will be transferred to a different hospital after he is stabilized. The second stage of grief is anger. We never witness a time when Didion is angry at John for dying, or blames him for his death. The third stage of grief, bargaining, seems to be prevalent in the novel. Didion spends a lot of time trying to think of what she could have done differently to change the outcome. She analyzes the things they said and did before the incident trying to think of what she should or shouldn’t have done. The fourth stage of grief is depression. Didion spends at least a year grieving over John’s death, and she is constantly having flashbacks of the time they spent together. At one point she acknowledges that she is depressed, and sees a doctor. The final stage of grief is acceptance. At the end of the novel Didion says everything is less chaotic, but no clearer than it was the day he died. She does however say that “…there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.” This indicates that she has somewhat accepted the fact that John is dead and the memories of him will slowly become “mudgy” over time.