Grief Acceptance: The Final Stage Is Different than You Think

I remember thinking that if our lives are like novels, a series of chapters with characters coming and going. If my life were a novel, the chapters that had my father living in them are over.

I remember thinking, naively, that perhaps, now ten years out from losing him, I had reached that final stage of grief: grief acceptance. I had accepted my new reality and was ready to move forward. 

But if that’s really true, why do I find myself on random shopping days wanting to hug strangers that physically resemble him?

Ten years ago, and it shocks me that I am writing these years in double digits, my father passed away. He was working late setting up lights in the theater of the school where he taught when the ladder he was standing on buckled and he fell. These were the last moments of my father and best friend’s life. 

That morning, after he was found in the theater, my life and that of my family and the community who loved him changed, and was never again the same. 

I remember the first Father’s Day after he passed, walking down the aisle of cards in the grocery store and finding one that made me instantly think of him. I laughed and began to put it in the cart. Then it hit me. He was gone and this was a joke, like many others now, that he and I would never get to share together. I put the card back and left the store, grocery cart still full in the card aisle. But even then, I remember thinking, this is is still new and at some point, I’ll be done with leaving full carts of groceries in stores. 

It’s been over a decade since losing him. I’m no longer crying in the middle of card isles, but I still miss him and I still find myself sifting through our relationship. I have had kids since losing him and when you have kids, I think you sift through the relationships you had with your parents a lot. What do I take in? What do I leave behind? How can I do this job without his sage advice to call on?

And the grief you feel, it never seems to fully go away. 

I read about these so-called “stages” of grief and magically there’s supposed to be this one right at the end where the hurt is gone and you have come to accept your reality. Truth is, I don’t know if any of us can fully accept the reality that this beam of light that shone so bright in our lives has been extinguished. But I have learned that acceptance is not simply accepting that they are physically gone, but understanding that that light you feel has been extinguished can be relit.

The real acceptance is that that relit light can come in many forms.

Sometimes I drive by the church I attended as a kid. I spent so many hours in those halls, I still remember the smell of the building and the way the carpet looked. I haven’t been to church in years and recently I drove by and there was a For Sale sign out front. This place where I spent so much of my youth and my youthful beliefs that would always be a part of my life, now stands empty, getting ready to transform into something else. A place where new memories are created and more people walk through the halls, but the building structure remains the same. 

We are like this church. We are built with our guardians surrounding us. If we’re lucky, we last a long time like that. We get used to the people that come and go in our hearts. We get used to being supported by them and as young children, we believe that this reality, like the walls of the building will never change. And then they do. Suddenly, for a brief moment or for a long moment, we are empty and the darkness of those hallways can be terrifying. What will become of me? Will there ever again be anyone to fill those hallways with light? After a long time, we put the For Sale sign out front. We are ready to accept a new reality for ourselves.

For me, my children bought this property. They were born and filled the empty hallways and crowded the bathrooms and there was so much noise that sometimes I had to open windows to breathe. Even though the outside of the structure hadn’t changed, or maybe it gained a few saggy eaves that weren’t there before, it was full and it was illuminated. 

And you know? Something funny happened. As my children began to grow and their true personalities began to come out, I was able to smell and feel small familiar traces of that old comfortable building. I felt it through the wonders of heredity and the familiarity of raising my children near the same things that had brought me so much happiness as a child. Just like all of the things from that old building I saved from the rummage sale. It was then that I realized that the illumination that I had felt was that light I had thought was extinguished.

I began to see that the grief acceptance was happening, the true final step of grief, understanding that my father lives on in his legacy with my children and me.

Grief is a process. There are moments and days that I wish I could still smell those old musty odors of that building. There was comfort in them and strength. But this building is getting stronger for my children. They are redecorating it as my siblings and I did to my father. 

Those of you with empty buildings holding dark hallways, be patient. Love yourself. Give yourself the time you need to be ready to renovate. I can promise that if you do, the lights that you thought were gone forever will shine out of your windows and doors again.

And you will find the grief acceptance that you have longed for by recognizing the light as a rebirth of your loved one’s spirit.