NOTE: This article was originally written for a LINKS publication, an organization which reaches out to girls whose parent(s) has died

            My husband's father was killed in a bus bombing in Yerushulayim when he was eleven. His family got up from shiva right before Purim and yet he does not have any memories of Purim being a sad day that year. When I asked him about that Purim, he said, “I don't know. I don't remember. I can call and ask my older brother if he remembers that Purim.”

            Grief is a funny thing. Imagine an eleven year old having no reaction about going about the first  Purim after his adored father is killed; as an adult, only commenting on the fact that he probably couldn't give mishloach manos that day.

            Yet, years later, married and with children, he sometimes expresses his grief that his father has never met our children, didn't live to see the nachas he would have had, didn't live to enjoy fifty more Purims with his family.

            There is no right way to grieve. There definitely is no wrong way either.

            Grief is how we express our sadness at a losses both big and small. I still grieve a piece of writing I mislaid, a bird that flew away, a job I lost, a friendship destroyed, a grandfather gone.

            There's this famous woman, Kuebler-Ross, who studied grief. And she found out that people go through five stages of grief right after a loved one dies, or any terrible loss happens. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Now, as you are reading this, you may think that everything applies to you, or nothing does. That's okay. More people came after Kuebler-Ross and said that not everyone goes through these stages, or not everyone goes through them in this order, or some people cycle through all these stages at different times, sometimes repeating them.

            Denial. First you are numb. Don't feel anything. Drift through some dark tunnel without sound or light. Deny that it even happened. You kind of shut down and pretend it isn't so.  It's like you are walking around with anesthesia that makes you not feel anything. The funeral and shiva can be a hazy fog. You would recognize that stage because if anyone asks you how you are doing, you say, “Fine!” You go through yom tov and you don't feel anything. You don't cry, you don't care, you can even eat and laugh. You walk on the street or enter the house and keep expecting to bump into them.

            Then wham! You get really angry.  Angry that somebody died or something bad happened to you. Sometimes you are really furious at the person that died. Like, “What was that all about, Ma? Why did you go and die on me?” or “Daddy, you really didn't fight hard enough to stay alive.” Sometimes you can be mad at Hashem. Or at your other parent who lived. Whoa, you are so angry that you snap at everyone you are living with. For the littlest thing. Everyone annoys you. Everyone is stupid and incompetent. You want to hit someone. Maybe sometimes you do. This is normal, and then that stage passes and goes into bargaining.

            Bargaining sounds like this: Please make Moshiach come today so I can see my mother again, my father again. Or, I will be the best person in the world if my father comes back. Probably you recognize this bargaining because if your parent died after an illness, you may have spent the illness making bargains with Hashem all the time.

            Depression comes after bargaining. You realize that none of your bargaining helps a thing and your parent is definitely not coming back. So you are really sad. Food has no taste, things you used to enjoy with your friends seem stupid, and you have little interest in people or things you ordinarily enjoyed. It's hard to fall asleep and it's hard to wake up and it's just hard to do anything at all. It may feel that everything takes so much effort, including talking, and doing work at school. Depression may feel like tears always just on the edge, or maybe always over the edge. You feel as if you are on one side of the world, and everyone else is on the other, like there is this glass wall dividing you from everyone else. You can see them, but can't touch them. You miss your parent like crazy. You feel crazy!

            But that stage passes too. And now there is acceptance. Accepting the death, the loss. And moving on. Food beginning to taste and smell good again, interest in going out with friends and having fun, and your concentration coming back again so you can study or read a book. Acceptance comes along with realizing that your parent is gone only physically but is present in so many ways. In the big nose he passed on to all his children, in the yom tov recipes that she taught you. You dream about your mother and have conversations late at night with your father. And it feels nice to wake up to that dream of her hugging you. You find a letter your father wrote to you when you were in camp, and you share it with your mother, with your sister. You miss him, you miss her, but you find your parent in every cranny of your life, in his values that taught you to be calm when upset, in her ability to laugh when the little kids used her lipstick to color up the mirror.

            Many of the Blumenfeld grandchildren have a space between the top two front teeth that takes five thousand dollars worth of braces to fix. But as soon as a grandchild displays this tendency, everyone is pointing it out laughingly and saying, “Look, there's Zeidy's teeth again!” and the kids that have it feel a perverse pride in having Zeidy Blumenfeld's legacy, checking out the picture that hangs in their dining room to check if their teeth match their grandfather's. Acceptance.

            With each family tree assigned in school, and the stories of Zeidy Blumenfeld's death, and his life that preceded it, there is new level of acceptance of that loss.

            My married son sits on a bus in Israel, and overhears two men repeating a joke that they once heard from Kasriel Blumenfeld, my father in law. My son leans over and says, “I am Kasriel Blumenfeld, named after my grandfather.” He is immortalized in his descendents as they bring him nachas with their deeds, with their accomplishments, with continuing on his legacy of humor. Acceptance.

            So yeah, these are the stages of grief.

            But sometimes it's not so simple. And sometimes acceptance comes, but a few months later, or even two minutes later, bam! that anger is back so strong that all the work of grieving seems to start all over again. And sometimes that denial comes up when you are walking to school and this guy passes you by and you almost yell, “Ta! There you are!” Or sometimes, one Blue Tuesday, you start bargaining again. You say, “Mother-daughter brunch is coming up and please Hashem, let Moshiach come until then!”

            And even if that happens, time has a way of lessening the pain, of allowing you to miss your parent but still function, to still enjoy life, to go and do what you need to do, what you want to do. And sometimes you are hit with the grief, with the sadness, so badly, because it is your birthday, because it is Shabbos, because it is Purim or Pesach or Shavuous and you want those blintzes your mother used to make, you want your father to bentch you the way he used to. But that's normal as those waves of grief pass and also lessen over time. Maybe it can hit you again when you stand under the chuppah, when you graduate from college, when you remember a joke. But overall, these hits are few and far between and although never again with their physical presence, your parent remains alive for you in a hundred other different ways.

            But here's the thing.

            Some people are so afraid of their anger that they bury it. And then something weird happens. Anger turned inward becomes depression. Or anxiety.

            It becomes a heavy, dark pillow that suffocates. And that's not good. Because the stages need to happen, not get stuck. So if enough time has passed and you find yourself falling into a depression that you just can't get out of or doesn't let up; or if a constant state of worry and anxiety wraps you up in a wet, cold blanket, then you gotta do something about it.

            How much time is considered enough time? Hard to say. One year is normal. Two years okay. But even within those two years, you need to see steady changes in the intensity of how you miss your parent, in how you grieve.

            Children grieve differently, although the stages are the same. So if you were a small child, an infant even when your parent died, then sometimes you may find yourself passing through the grief stages at different times of your life. Like you become a teenager and there's nobody to tell you how to get rid of the first pimple, to help you figure out those Rambans. So you grieve. And you may feel angry, or depressed, or start bargaining, but then be aware of those feelings. Be aware when anxiety or depression seems to settle over you. Recognize your grief. And take care of it!

            You can help the grieving process by talking to your siblings, reaching out to others who have had similar losses, reach out to mentors, to your surviving parent, and to friends. Create a memorial by making a scrapbook, writing a letters to or about your parent, draw, paint, give tzedakah. Do well in school, have fun with friends. And if all of these don't work, ask for help.

            Grief is a normal process but if it starts to feel abnormal, trust your gut, listen to your instinct. And get help.

            When I was newly married, we moved from Brooklyn to Eretz Yisroel to live. One of the first days we were there, my husband took me to Har Hamenuchos to his father's tzion. I remember the strange feeling of being introduced to my father-in-law, seeing his name etched onto the gravestone. He was then a stranger, as any new father-in-law would, and I felt shy in his presence. But over the next twenty seven years of our marriage, through the stories my husband tells, through the songs he sings by our Shabbos table, through the minhagim we carry in our home, and through my children who resemble their grandfather in their features and in their personalities, he has come alive so thoroughly that if I would meet him on the street, I would recognize him immediately.

            As each new grandchild is named for him, as my husband ages and resembles his father in so many ways, in the jokes passed down from generation to generation, the grief is transformed.

            And so will yours.

            Be patient.

My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online