To accept the reality of the loss
Even if we know that someone we love is going to die or leave us, it is still difficult to come to terms with and to believe that it’s happened. Stage One is the slow realisation that it really has happened and that the person isn’t going to come back. Many people think they see or hear loved ones and this is a very normal part of the process of coming to terms with the reality that you’ll never see that person again. This first task can sometimes go wrong and people get stuck in denial or they may try to diminish the feelings by rubbishing the importance of the person. It only becomes a real problem if the reality is denied for years or if the person grieving doesn’t move onto the next stage.

Coming to terms with the pain of grief
The pain of grief can be absolutely unbearable and people often feel that it will never end. Very often, it’s the fear of this intensity of grief that holds people in the first stage. However, if this stage of grieving isn’t undertaken, the grief can leak into other behaviours or pop up when least expected. It can manifest itself in symptoms of illness or depression. Very often, others around the bereaved will unthinkingly try to hinder this stage because seeing someone else’s pain can be very difficult and a lot of people want to avoid it at all costs, so they might try to jolly the bereaved out of their sorrow or hint that they should be getting over it by now. This could lead to the bereaved feeling guilty or thinking that they shouldn’t be feeling what they feel and they may start to suppress what they feel rather than be working through it.

Adjusting to life without the deceased
Very often, the realisation that the bereaved person is having to cope on their own if, before that, they had the support and presence of the deceased person, creeps up gradually. Relationships often define the people within them i.e. a wife may feel that she is only her real self as a wife or a son may feel that he has no sense of who he is as a man when his father dies. This adjustment has to happen but it may throw the person into feeling like a helpless child again and that society doesn’t recognise or respect them without the cloak of their previous role. It can be very scary if you’ve always been loved and protected to suddenly feel that you’re on your own and that whatever decisions that are made in future belong to you alone. It can also be a positive experience, of course.

Emotionally relocating the deceased and moving forward
The final stage or task of grieving is when the deceased person becomes part of the bereaved person’s past life and is given an appropriate place within the emotional life of the bereaved but not one where they are interfering with the person moving on. Unless this is achieved, mourners would not feel they could move on with their lives in case they forget the person that they have lost. Wives or husbands might feel they are betraying the previous spouse if they meet someone else and fall in love with them and children might feel that they couldn’t move on to become adults without being guided and supported by their parent.