Homer Simpson is told that he has one day to live: Doctor Hibbert tells him that he will go through five stages:

denial “I’m not dying”,

anger “Why you little..!”,

fear “What’s after fear, what’s after fear?”

bargaining “I could make it worth your while”

and acceptance “well we all gotta go sometime”.

These are the classic “stages” of grief identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic 1969 book On Death and Dying. The book is actually about her observations of the terminally ill patients she was dealing with but the 5 stages became rapidly attached to work on those who had suffered bereavement. Dr Kübler-Ross later regretted the language of “stages” as it implied that everyone would go through all the stages in the same order – though obviously not quite so fast as Homer (“Mr Simpson your progress astounds me”). (You can watch the whole clip here)

In fact a bereavement can lead to many mixed emotions even years after the original loss: before one of the first funerals I ever took over twenty years ago a lady described her emotions as being like a rollercoaster: up one minute and down the next. I remembered this as I saw a diagram that showed the stages of grief as being what looks like an unfun rollercoaster.

Do you think some of the feelings that we are having during this lockdown are actually a form of bereavement? We’ve lost some of our freedoms, perhaps our job, our income, the simple pleasures we might have enjoyed, like going to a concert or a football match. All of those things are gone for the moment and may never be the same again. So perhaps we are all grieving and that grief comes out in denial “well I’m young and fit, it won’t be a problem even if I do get it”, anger “it’s all the fault of the government (ours or the Chinese)”  or bargaining “I wish I had their job”.

That final stage is acceptance: but acceptance doesn’t just mean shrugging our shoulders and saying “we all gotta go sometime”. It means being aware that we might be angry with other people because of our loss and maybe taking a moment to consider how we speak to people or post on social media. It means recognising that although some people may be suffering a great deal more, including the loss of loved ones, we are all going through a time of loss. We will continue to experience all those negative feelings but if we can identify where they come from hopefully we can be part of a healing process for ourselves and others.