That sounds interesting doesn't it? How does accepting death actually make you relive it, moment by moment, detail by detail? Well I'll tell you because it happened to me.

When I was 17, my mother died suddenly. It was a normal summer day in August, I was about to go into my senior year of high school a week later. My mother told me the night before that she loved me and went to bed. Everything was fine in my eyes. Until she was taken by ambulance to the hospital on that normal summer day. My father was at the hospital with her; I didn't go because I hate hospitals and my mom was going to be okay and she would be home in a few hours. She didn't come home, though.

I remember my father walking into the living room three hours after she was taken away by ambulance. "Where's mom?" I said. He breaks down and my heart immediately explodes. "She's gone." It felt like a building collapsed on top of me, my chest was heavy, tears automatically fell, I even think I blacked out. I remember screaming, not believing my father, he had to have been lying. I remember walking into the bathroom, I was pacing back and forth, still screaming. I don't even know why I went in there. I remember there being darkness and the feeling of my best friend's arms around my waist to stop me from falling, my knees were bent and I felt weak. I forgot he was there, witnessing this moment. I remember the friends and family coming into my house, I remember the cries, the hugs. I remember sitting in my driveway playing patty cake for no reason.

After losing her, I didn't have my faith anymore. I didn't understand why my beautiful, wonderful mother had to be taken away from me and my family. I numbed the pain a lot by consuming alcohol and drugs. My father and I never talked much; he was struggling with his demons, too. I remember being so mad at him one day, his drinking got worse and it made me so angry. He was supposed to give me support! He's supposed to raise his daughter and we're supposed to get through this together! I realize, now, as a 26-year-old woman that I didn't give him a chance to be the one to lean on me. I was too busy being selfish and being mad at him for numbing his pain with substances when I was doing the same thing. What kind of daughter was I?

I stopped drinking as much and started to write. I wrote until my fingers hurt. For eight years, that got me through it. Now, I was still grieving, I had my moments where I would be driving in my car and just start crying. I would get extremely angry on Mother's Day, which I still do. If my anxiety and depression weren't under control, I would probably drive my car into the Hallmark card section. My grieving was perfectly normal.

Something happened to me this March 2016. My boyfriend and I were getting ready to go to work, I was sitting on the end of the bed, when suddenly it felt like something was stabbing me in the stomach. I started to hyperventilate as soon as this one thought popped into my head, "I haven't thought about my mother." I'm not talking about that day, I'm talking about months. It hit me, a punch in the gut, I wasn't constantly thinking about my mother. I crumbled, I felt weak, I cried the same way I did the day she died. My boyfriend was terrified for me, hell, I was scared. I was doing amazing and wonderful things with my life, I was moving on. That was what caused my mental breakdown, I was moved on. I accepted her being gone. That destroyed me, it made me emotionally and physically sick that I honestly thought I needed to be locked up in a padded cell for a week.

I relived every moment of the day she died when I realized I accepted her being gone. That fantasy or delusion of her walking through the door like she never died was gone. I always thought acceptance was the final chapter, where it's a relief, where it's something magical. No, it's not. It's not like that scene in "A Walk to Remember" where Shane West is smiling into the wind thinking about his dead girlfriend and how well he's doing. I felt like I was betraying my mother by finally moving on because I realized she was really gone. I mean, I know her soul is around me, and she will always be with me but after nine years I accepted it and had a breakdown. This is the message I'm trying to get across, grief works in magical ways. The "five stages of grief" don't go in order, you don't experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance only once. It comes in waves, out of nowhere, out of order, and you show different emotions. I experienced accepting the death of my mother by having a mental breakdown. And to be honest, I feel more alive because of that.