Fourteen Names

Five Stages of Grief

Denial. I never felt the need to deny my mothers death. If anything I had to deny her ever living. I went through a phase in sixth grade where I would pretend she never existed, and I told people I had two gay, divorced dads. While my real dad lived with me and my brothers, went to PTA meetings and showed up to my dance recitals, my "other" dad was fighting crime in Japan. I would bring fake postcards to school with pictures mount fuji and geishas on them, "To my daughter Lola, from her super cool spy dad" written on the back.                                                              

Anger. I've felt a lot of anger in my life. Actually, I feel like i'm always slightly angry. People constantly think i'm mad at them but most of the time i'm just thinking about something else, something that is irrelevant in the present but used to be important in the past. One thing about me is that I tend to hold a lot of grudges. I've definitely been angry at my mother but... Im not so sure I ever felt angry about her passing away.                                                                                                        

Bargaining. I've never been religious, yet I used to sit at the edge of my bed and pray for a stable family, or maybe just some closure to our lives. An end to all the messiness and for the first time in my life, some god damn comfortable silence. The house had two conditions it would swing between awfully fast. It would either be shaking with emotion, screaming and crying coming from every single corner, or it would be painfully quiet. Even when people were talking, it would still feel quiet. After my mother died the house was even more quiet, but a different kind. It was warm and friendly. It made me feel safe.

Depression. What a delight. Something most people have to deal with at some point in their lives. The first time I remember wanting to die was when I was about seven years old. After one of my mothers many relapses. She shouted about how she was going to shoot herself in the head and little Lola listening from the top of the staircase in her peppa pig pyjamas just thought: "wait, if I were to also shoot myself I would die, and therefore not have to listen to the arguing anymore." My mother's funeral might have been the least depressing day of my life.

Acceptance. if you paid any attention to my previous statements then it's quite obvious that this is the only stage I actually went through. When my dad sat us down at the dinner table and told us that mom had finally lethally overdosed on heroin, my younger brother, Parker cried. My older brother just sat there and stared into nothing out of shock. I let out a sigh of relief.