Here’s something you need to know: hurting with hope still hurts. The sting of death might have been removed, but it still stings. It hurts like hell even when you know your loved one is in heaven. No, we might not sorrow as those who have no hope, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be sad.
We do a disservice anytime we try to rush people through the process of grief, as though it were spiritual to put a happy face on a horrible thing. Masking pain doesn’t heal it any faster; it actually slows it down and stunts your rehabilitation. Expecting someone to bounce back as some sort of benchmark of holiness is kind of like asking a person who has had an arm amputated if he is over it yet.
There are supposedly stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.* My experience is that these don’t come so tidily as moving from one zone to other. It’s messy and muddled. You move in and out of the stages at random. They swirl together like an ugly emotional cocktail. Like a novice surfer getting stuck in the foaming white water, when you manage to get up for a breath, out of nowhere comes a wave you didn’t see that takes you over the falls and into a washing machine of pain. Then one day you feel good—and you feel bad for feeling good.