Grief Stories - Personal Accounts:

Acceptance is the last stage of the grieving process, which is the stage people try to arrive at quickly.

Many people frequently try to believe that they are at this stage in order to make themselves and others feel comfortable. Loved ones tell grieving individuals that they need to accept the loss and move on with their lives.

The advice sounds wonderful, and with acceptance comes feelings of peace and contentment, but it can be difficult to fully achieve.

Is there something wrong with someone who has difficulty letting go and creating a different life than the one the individual envisioned having or had already been previously living?

The question people ask is: how do you go about forgetting the deceased person and move ahead with life? People feel guilty for making a different life for themselves. It is as if individuals fear that by moving on with one's life that they are forgetting the deceased loved one, or that they will hurt their loved one for moving on with with their life.

Keep in mind that forgetting and acceptance are two different terms. You never forget the deceased person, no matter how young (even if the individual was still in the womb at time of death) or how old.

You can begin the stage of acceptance despite not forgetting the person.

How do you overcome the pain and anger of a loved one's death, especially when you do not have any memories to soothe you?

The thoughts that I have been left with are ones with me trying to imagine what kind of person my stillborn son would have been if he had lived. The greatest sadness of having a stillborn baby is never having the opportunity to hug and kiss the baby, and losing the opportunity of getting to know what type of person the baby would become.

Parents look forward to welcoming their child into the world, but when the baby dies, the excitement is suddenly changed into devastation and pain. Parents travel from feelings of excitement to shock in a matter of seconds. With numerous positive feelings becoming negative ones within moments, the grieving process seems to last a lifetime.

The intensity of sadness and anger does fade with time, but never seems to disappear completely.

Maybe one never fully achieves acceptance, but continues on a journey to work towards finally feeling at peace. There are so many different facets to acceptance. Therefore, it becomes a situational application as when dealing with any emotion.

To this day, the feeling of my baby's last kick haunts me. I never knew that within me, he was strangling himself with the umbilical cord. Mothers have an instinct to protect their young, and I never had the opportunity to apply what I would have wanted to do.

The wounds are not as deep and painful due to the passage of time. It has been nine years since his death. However, I can not to this day feel full acceptance. However, everyone's definition of acceptance may be different.

Some may feel that I reached acceptance when I had more children, or when tears ceased being triggered so easily whenever I thought of him.

Acceptance for me will be the day that I no longer feel a void during the times that I think about holding his lifeless body. I doubt that void will truly ever disappear, and have become more comfortable with that truth. I have come to accept that it is okay to question why he was taken and wonder what he would have been like.

I have also learned not to feel guilty, because I have allowed my other children to take his place as others have suggested. I can still miss him. I can still appreciate my other children, and regret his death. I can still desire to physically hold him, but accept holding him tightly in my heart.

I have gotten closer to feeling at peace with his death. However, I can only think that I will never reach full acceptance, because of my being human.

As human beings we have the tendency, whether it is conscious or unconscious, to want a reason behind everything that occurs, particularly when we feel that the outcome should never have occurred.