The Five Stages of Grief: 1. DENIAL, 2. ANGER, 3. BARGAINING, 4. DEPRESSION, 5. ACCEPTANCE

Newsweek has an article in it's most recent issue about the reality of death for some people. I have said it for a long time, sometimes, death is the only way out. The author talks about finding herself in a controlling loveless marriage at the age of 27. When her husband was suddenly killed everyone expected her to crumble. What she couldn't tell them was she knew she was going to divorce him before he was killed. His death came as dare she say, a relief.

The article mentions how mental illness and addiction create a monster out of a loved one. Alzheimer's and other illness' take a loved one through hell, but it also takes the family through hell. A parent no longer recognizes a child or their spouse. Everyone is suffering.

It's not pretty and the article doesn't mention a cause for relief only heard of in whodunits by Agatha Christie. Consider a family waiting for the matriarch or patriarch to die. Maybe the person was miserable and selfish from the beginning, but they held the purse strings. Family members eventually contemplate the usefulness of the inheritance in place of the person. Joan Crawford whose earnings were substantial in her lifetime, wrote her two eldest children out of her will provoking her daughter to write an unflattering tell all book. Had she given them a comparable amount to what she gave the other two children, we may have never known "Mommy Dearest."

The article suggests there is no set way to grieve and society not allowing certain steps doesn't mean they don't exist. Every situation is unique and complicated, just like people.