The Final Stage of Grief

I've been missing Curtis a lot. Michael and I watched "Ready Player One" and at the end I really wanted to show it to Curtis and Trevor. But I can't watch it with Curtis. I can't even ask him if he saw it in theaters. The part I thought he would like was climbing Mt. Everest with Batman.
Caught up in my memories of his final moments and the pain of this tragedy, I thought "this isn't how I wanted my life to go!" The gentle but firm answer was "but it's the way it is."

In our culture we're not crazy about the concept of acceptance. If you don't like your job, go back to school! If you don't like your significant other, get a new one! If you don't like how you look, change it! If you're unsatisfied with your experience, see a manager.

Everyone on Earth has something the're unsatisfied with about their life. Everyone experiences disappointment, heartbreak, and opposition. Sometimes there is no quick fix and acceptance is the only remedy. That's universal in the process of grief.

I don't feel like I experienced much of the anger stage of grief. I didn't feel angry at God. God didn't do anything wrong. He didn't take Curtis away. Curtis wasn't mine to keep here. It's still hard to let him go. I feel like I'm letting him go over and over and there's still a strand that I'm holding fast to. I love him. So much it hurts. It breaks my heart over and over to think about it. To look ahead to a life without him physically present. During the early days of our loss I kept thinking of the childhood chant of "can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, gotta go through it." That's how I feel about my grief. I can't run from it or maneuver around it. I must go through it, this soul-swallowing piercing pain. I have to accept that this is what happened in my life. It's the way my life is going. I can't fix or change the past. Oh, Curtis. We love you so much. We think about and wonder where you are, what you can see beyond the veil, who you are with.

Even thought I've touched the "final" stage of grief, acceptance, I know I'm far from being done with grieving. Acceptance doesn't end the grieving process. I'm not sure I'll ever be "done" grieving the loss of my little brother. And that's okay.