Older, Not Old

The Five Stages of Grief: Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance.

DABDA!  I like how we try to fit everything into an acronym.  Or maybe that's just me that does that.  I'm assuming the web page I accessed probably has more extensive information on DABDA but who cares, really?  Who came up with this crap is what I want to know.

1. Denial – The first reaction is denial.  In this stage, individuals believe the diagnosis is somehow mistaken, and cling to a false, preferable reality.
2. Anger – When the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue, they become frustrated, especially at proximate individuals.  Certain psychological responses of a person undergoing this phase would be: "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"; "Why would this happen?".
3. Bargaining – The third stage involves the hope that the individual can avoid a cause of grief.  Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made in exchange for a reformed lifestyle.  People facing less serious trauma can bargain or seek compromise.  For instance: "I'd give anything to have him back." Or: "If only he'd come back to life, I'd promise to be a better person!"
4. Depression – "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die soon, so what's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?" During the fourth stage, the individual despairs at the recognition of their mortality.  In this state, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors, and spend much of the time mournful and sullen.
5. Acceptance – "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it; I may as well prepare for it."
   In this last stage, individuals embrace mortality or inevitable future, or that of a loved one, or other tragic event.  People dying may precede the survivors in this state, which typically comes with a calm, retrospective view for the individual, and a stable condition of emotions.

OK, there we go.  It seems to me that this is mostly about how an individual deals with personal grief and not the misfortune of others which shoots to shit the entire premise of this post.  This inconvenience will not stop me or slow me down or cause me to pause and reflect but rather to plow ahead, full speed which is . . . after all . . . the best speed.

I was in a technical training with a man from Austria who was trying to help me understand a piece of electronics which I had absolutely zero chance of ever understanding when we veered into a discussion about how to stay awake when one felt sleepy while driving.  This is the only thing I recall from that training.  You may speculate on how many units of this electronic device I successfully sold.

"I just go faster," he said, matter of factly.

Yeah.  What else is there?  The fear of the dangers of high speed driving kept me awake many, many times.

Anyway, I have clearly moved out of the heavy and depressive fog that clouded my vision after my father died.  And my mother and my sponsor.  And I began to struggle in earnest as the dark pall of mortality began descending ever closer to the person I care the most about in the world.  I see where I had the depression part and I feel like I'm in the accepting part, but where the hell were the denial, anger, and bargaining parts?  I must have blown right through those parts.  I must have been traveling at full acceleration to get to the depression part which is . . . after all . . . the most painful part and consequently the part that I enjoy most.

The good thing is that I have found some balance in the fierce battle between getting old versus you're not that old.  There is some validity in both.  I had veered too sharply into the "I'm Old" state.  I'm glad to be out of that state.  I'm also glad to have some perspective in the getting older part.  A couple of times on those trails from hell in Kauai I thought: "I'm a little too old to be doing this."

And I was right.