I’d like to start off this article by noting that despite its presence in pop-culture and in some beginning psychology classes, there is a lack of empirical evidence supporting Kübler-Ross’s 5 stage model of grief. However, due to that same familiarity, I have chosen to use the Kübler-Ross grief model as a vehicle for this “Stages of Grief” series. More information about the Kübler-Ross grief model can be found here.

If you have recently lost someone you love and feel you have no one to talk to, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting the word “start” to 741-741.

In the words of Aaron Burr as portrayed in the musical Hamilton: “I am slow to anger/but I toe the line.” When my father died, a part of me died with him – and what’s left over, what’s emerged from the former shell – isn’t necessarily something I’m proud of.

It comes in spurts: most days I’m my normal self – sarcastic and teasing, quick to laugh and make jokes to ease the pain of loss, to make an otherwise unbearable situation manageable. But there are increasingly more days where no matter who I’m working with, what I’m doing, there’s a brew of irritation boiling to white-hot anger just under my skin. I’ve snapped at my husband – something I rarely do on principle, especially when he doesn’t deserve it; I’ve withdrawn from friends at work – not because I don’t want to be with them, but because my mood turns so horrid I’d rather pull away just in case I say something I’d regret.

A few days after I returned to work, I was downstairs with my co-workers waiting to lock up. It was quiet that day, so I did my pre-counts and paper organization so we’d be ready when it was time to lock the doors. Another of my co-workers was having a fairly bad day too; I cannot remember for the life of me what he said, but finally I snapped and, after placing everything down, looked him in the eyes and said, “I don’t know what side of the bed you woke up on, but obviously your wife wasn’t there.”

And I froze.

I’ve never talked to anyone like that – let alone him. As soon as the words fell out my draw dropped a little, and we stared at each other for a good few beats. He finally let out a tense laugh and gave me a high five, complimenting me on not taking shit from anyone. I laughed with him, high-fived him back, but my closing procedure went by in a daze. Guilt settled like an anvil on my heart – and honestly, I don’t remember if I ever apologized to him.

My father, too, was slow to anger. My mother always said he had the patience of a saint, rarely lost his cool or said things he regretted. Even when we screwed up – when my sister colored on the freshly-painted walls of our new house, or I got into my first accident – my dad was able to sit calm and talk us through the crisis without betraying whether he was angry or not.

I was always like my father in terms of mannerisms, so I hope I can get back to that stage soon – until then, I’ll just have to “wait for it.”