Andrea Weir's Blog

I’ve never understood the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Well, what I don’t understand is the concept. It suggests grief is a process that has a beginning, a middle and an end, and at any point along the way you can actually stop and get your bearings. That you can look at the grief road map and say, “Well, I’ve passed through Denial and Anger, so I should be coming up on Bargaining.”

Then I’ll hit Depression, and once I get to Acceptance, which is only a bit farther, I’ll be home free.

Of course, it’s possible to get stuck in any of those towns — you might hit bad weather in Denial that forces you to hold up for a while.

Or maybe the traffic signal in Anger is broken.

Or, maybe, you have smooth sailing until you reach Depression, and all of a sudden you look at the gas gauge and see you’re completely out of fuel.

But the truth is, grieving is not a journey down a long stretch of road. It’s a complicated and convoluted trek with a lot of hairpin turns and switchbacks. Grief takes you in circles.

In my travel, I’ve managed to avoid Bargaining (I guess I follow a different route), but I frequently find myself going back and forth between Depression and Acceptance. And at any given time I might find myself in Sadness or Desolation or even Hilarity.

It’s been two months since I set out, and still I run the gamut of emotions every day. Some days — or hours — I’m okay with the situation; I can accept that no one lives forever (not on this physical plane, anyway) and it was his time.

And I can even laugh.

But other times, I’m overcome with such heart-wrenching sorrow that all I can do is weep and feel the immense void that is the place where he existed.

I have no map. I have no idea how much progress I’m making on any given day, and I never know when I’ll find myself backtracking and revisiting some stage of grief I thought I’d passed through and left behind.

The truth is, there is no map. There is no paved road, no signs and no mile markers. There is only me, machete in hand, hacking my way through a jungle.

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
— Bob Marley

It’s a fact. At one time or another, all the people you care about are going to hurt you. They can’t help it. They’re human, and humans are flawed. They screw up.

But they don’t do it on purpose (not usually, anyway). Things happen.

Remember, your ______________ (fill in the blank) isn’t any more perfect than you are, and life isn’t a fairy tale — you’re not Sleeping Beauty, he’s not Prince Charming and neither of you has a Fairy Godmother.

And while you have to decide which people in your life are worth suffering for, you also have do decide which hurts are worth suffering through. Because they aren’t created equal.

Sometimes love is stronger than pain.

But sometimes love simply isn’t enough.

And it’s important to know the difference.

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for. — Bob Marley

It’s a fact. At one time or another, all the people you care about are going to hurt you. They can’t help it. They’re human, and humans are flawed. They screw up.

But they don’t do it on purpose (not usually, anyway). Things happen.

Remember, your ______________ (fill in the blank) isn’t any more perfect than you are, and life isn’t a fairy tale — you’re not Sleeping Beauty, he’s not Prince Charming and neither of you has a Fairy Godmother.

And while you have to decide which people in your life are worth suffering for, you also have do decide which hurts are worth suffering through. Because they aren’t created equal.

Sometimes love is stronger than pain.

But sometimes love simply isn’t enough.

And it’s important to know the difference.

“... and since your history of silence won’t do you any good, did you think it would? Let your words be anything but empty, why don't you tell them the truth?”

So go a few lines of Sarah Barielles anthem to speaking up. Saying what‘s on your mind. Having an opinion and expressing it. Giving credence to your own thoughts.

Because if you don‘t, who will?

That’s not something we as young girls are taught to do. We are taught, however subtly, to keep quiet, agree, acquiesce, do anything but challenge the status quo and those who know better than we do. It’s a pervasive and pernicious sensibility that informs everything about our lives.

I like to think I taught my own daughters that lesson well enough — that they have instilled in themselves the courage to agree or disagree, whichever suits them in any particular situation.

Personally, I‘m coming to that lesson a bit late, having lived too long with the idea that I need to make everyone around me happy, even if that meant silencing my own voice. Just keep quiet and go along.

But I implore you (and myself) not to keep quiet. Not to simply go along. Avoid causing unnecessary pain or anguish to any living thing, including yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Treat others as you would like to be treated, then treat yourself that same way.

And say what you want to say.

I wanted a puppy — a golden lab — a baby girl I’d name Grace. That was the plan.

Then I met Nabler and the plan went completely and perfectly awry.

I was working as a freelance writer at the time, and one of my regular assignments was a weekly feature called The Way We Live, which appeared in the real estate section of the local daily newspaper.

Every home has a story, and my job was to find the most interesting — be it design, history, location, landscape — and share it through words and pictures.

One afternoon in late spring I visited a house situated in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. It sat at the end of a long, windy road, beneath a huge canopy of trees. The house was old — it had been around for many, many years — and quaint. It had almost a cottage feel, and while the immediate landscape was neat and well-manicured, the area beyond was natural and untamed.

I pulled up to the driveway and got out of my car. I was greeted by barks and howls emanating from a passel of dogs I couldn’t see.

I rang the doorbell, introduced myself to the homeowner — Kathy — and the interview commenced. We struck an easy rapport, talking about the history of the house, its style, décor and the individual sculptures she’d commissioned specifically for the garden.

As the interview drew to a close, the dogs took up their barking again and I could tell from the tone that at least a few were pretty young. I was right. Kathy said that earlier in the year her blonde Queensland heeler and her husband’s McNab (both cattle-herding dogs) had become accidental parents of a litter of five. A couple of the puppies had found homes, but three of them — Flora, McQ and Nabler — still lived with Mom and Dad.

Kathy asked if I wanted to meet them. Of course, I said. I had mentioned that I was on the lookout for a puppy, a little golden lab. That was until I made Nabler’s acquaintance. Kathy instructed me to take a seat on the steps while she unlatched the kennel. Flora and McQ came bounding toward me, but Nabler took his time. Though he was larger than his brother, sister and both of his parents, he seemed shy and unsure of himself. All three were black and white, like their father. Nabler and Flora had the smooth coat of a McNab, and McQ's was coarse, like a heeler's

Flora approached and said hello. So did McQ. They accepted a few pats, but quickly got bored and went off to play. A minute or two later, Nabler came up to me. I reached out and let him sniff my hand and then gave him a pat. He walked back and forth behind me and then sat down so close he was practically touching me.

Kathy shook her head back and forth. “He never does that with anyone,” she said. “He must really like you.”

I laughed and continued to pat the dog. I knew she was looking for homes for Nabler and McQ, and I took her assessment with a grain of salt.

We visited for a while longer and then I headed back to my office to write the article, which was slated for the following Sunday.

But something was different. I couldn’t stop thinking about Nabler.

Days and even a couple of weeks went by and still Nabler stayed on my mind. As a puppy, he was pretty much the opposite of what I thought I wanted (black and white, not blond; male, not female; and definitely not a Grace). But something about him was right.

I went back to Kathy’s house to visit again. Nabler was not quite as enthusiastic as before, but still he sat down near me. It was almost as though he knew something was going on. (And now, of course, after years of living with his extraordinary intelligence, I know he did.)

That visit sealed the deal and I told Kathy I’d take him. But it would have to wait a few weeks because my daughter was playing summer softball and we were traveling with her to weekend tournaments. I preferred to wait until the end of the season, when that would not be an issue. (As it turned out, the season went longer than we anticipated, and Nabler simply traveled with us.)

So a few weeks later, Kathy brought him to our house — his new home. He was anxious and frightened and didn’t understand how he fit into these new surroundings, but from the moment he arrived, he and I became practically inseparable. This male herding dog, so much different from the female retriever I thought I wanted.

Whatever fate brought him to me — or me to him — knew we were supposed to be together. Nabler was not just a dog. He was not just a companion. He was, in many ways, my heart and soul. I loved him more than I’ve ever been capable of loving anyone or anything — humans included. And I have never felt loved as deeply or as devotedly or safely.

Now, fourteen and a half years later, he and I have to say goodbye — his body has reached its limit.

People offer their condolences, some speaking perfunctorally. "He was only a dog, after all," I know they are thinking even though they'd never say so outright. Others do understand the depth of the loss because they've experienced something similar themselves.

But the goodbye is only for now. An energy healer once told me Nabler and I have been together in other lifetimes and in other configurations. I know that if I don’t see him again during this go-round, I’ll meet up with him in the next.

Thank you to Aaron Freeman for this priceless gift of wisdom.


“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral.

You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand ...that your energy has not died.

You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world.

You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.

And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time.

You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around.

According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.”

The questions to ask are not “Why?” or “Why me?” but “Why this?” and "Why now?”

And then give yourself the time and space to listen — really listen — to yourself and to the people whose wisdom you trust. You always find the answer. It may not be the one you want, but is unequivocally the one you need.

A YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMiu...) has been making the rounds on Facebook, and when I first saw it I thought it was very cool demonstration of physics in action.

But as I watched it, I realized it illustrates very beautifully, the way major changes impact our lives — those that we welcome as well as those we fear.

A line of pendulums, 15 in all and each at a different length, is set in motion at the same time, in the same direction. At first the pendulums swing in unison. Very quickly, though, they begin to move at different frequencies, creating a picture of increasing chaos.

After a time, however, the pendulums come together again in a recognizable pattern until finally they move once more in unison, at the same frequency. Equilibrium is regained.

Life is a lot like that. When we face major challenges — the death of a loved one, a job loss, a boyfriend or girlfriend choosing to move on to someone else — our internal pendulums suddenly move from harmony to utter chaos.

And everything feels wrong and off-kilter and very uncomfortable. Scary, even. And we want those feelings to go away, whatever it takes.

But we must be willing to sit inside the chaos and know that it is temporary and trust that after a time it will subside and the pendulums will move in unison again.

How deeply did you love, so deeply will you grieve.

The impossible is impossible only until someone proves otherwise.