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As the bereaved person works through the grievance process, we wonder how long it will take. We want to wake up, who am I kidding, we’d even love to sleep through the night. We would like to wake up and discover that we had been in a dream, a kind of nightmare. But it won’t happen.
Depression is a real stage of grief. It is a loss of our spirit. We lose the determination to take the next step. There are periods of time when we simply cannot move another muscle. Nothing in our life is “normal” and we are looking for that lifestyle, that security that we have known. I called my battle with depression my “pity party” that none of the guests attended.
When we fail to deal with the feelings and emotions that go up and down within us, when we are always “filling them in” instead of speaking our piece, we give depression a foothold. Depression is not a new problem, and it is not unique. But it’s real.
Depression can set in before the bereaved person realizes that the loved one is failing. Generally speaking, I am not prone to depression. I am quite an optimistic and positive person. But during the complaint process, the depression seemed to engulf me in what I called waves, or even like a wet black blanket. I mean, the depression would weigh heavily on me for a period of time and then it would go away, only to come back again and again.
If you were honest with me, you would think this stage of depression lasted for years. That sounds a bit much, I’m sure. Yet as I reflect on my life during that time, I see the sheets of depression holding me back for a long, long time. Eventually the times without depression got longer and longer until one day I looked around and realized that life was good again.