Dear Jack,
Someone told me that I am in the “Bargaining Stage” of grief after the loss of my boy. What does that mean?
There are five stages of grief and Bargaining is the third one (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance).
Early on in life you developed a mind of your own and you learned what to do to get what you wanted. It’s natural. If you ever negotiated a business deal, then you know how to bargain. “If I give you this, you give me that. I’ll do this for you if you do this for me”. When you really want something, you will pay whatever the cost is to have it.
In this case, you want your pet back. Or at the very least you want to be free from the pain of grief. “I’ll do this (fill in the blank) if you can just remove the pain,” you say. But there are no bargains. You can’t get your boy back the way he was. There is no changing what has happened. You can’t bring him back to Earth on demand. Not for any price. It’s still natural to try to strike a bargain but all you can do is keep pushing through.
One’s mind can keep one quite preoccupied because when people are unhappy, they typically would rather be thinking about something than simply being at the mercy of idle thoughts. This thinking can become a problem because everyone can come up with much better answers and solutions if they could just stop thinking so much about it. We are waiting in the empty spaces to guide you.
I know I’ve said this before but I cannot say it enough times. Matters of life or death are in the hands of Fate and set in the Timetables of Destiny. Your heart knows this. Your head still fights it. It still thinks you are to blame. Hang in there. Your heart will be stronger than your head once you reach a level of acceptance and then your heart will lead you the rest of the way.
Love, Jack
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