5 Stages of Grief

Okay, I'll admit it, one of my favorite shows on TV is Grey's Anatomy, which is kind of funny because my sister who is a doctor, can't stand doctor shows on TV. Anyway, the season premiere was last night, and the topic was grief, specifically the 5 stages of grief. One of the writers on the show wrote:

I still do that sometimes. Sometimes I’ll be driving in my car and I’ll see a poster for a movie that’s about to come out and I’ll think, “Oh, I should totally see that with Dad.” And then I remember, in a split second, that he’s gone. That he died 8 and a half years ago now. Grief is funny thing. It comes and goes. Except, in my experience, it never really goes…

It struck me, because I did that just this week. I was reading the San Jose Mercury News and I saw an ad for a casino bus leaving from San Jose to some Indian casino in the Central Valley, and I totally thought in my head, I need to take mom on that bus. It was something I often thought of when she was alive and I ran across an ad like that, but something I never actually got to do with her. And then a split second later I remembered, she's gone, and I don't need to be looking at ads like that one anymore.

It's been 8 months since my mom passed away, and as Krista Vernoff says, grief comes and goes, and it's been the same for me. Although recently it's come back a lot more, and my mom's been on my mind more recently than over this past summer.