Loss: The labyrinth with no exit – on the hope that persists between the stages

Source: The hope that persists through all the stages

...defense mechanisms [denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance]... will replace each other or exist at times side by side. The one thing that usually persists through all these stages is hope."

(Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, *On Death and Dying* (Chapter 8), 1969)

Explanation: Five stages that aren't steps

Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, visited terminally ill patients and asked them what they were feeling. She uncovered a pattern: first, denial (“This isn’t happening to me”). Then, anger (“Why me?”). Then, bargaining (“Just one more year, I’ll do anything”). Then, depression (“What’s the point?”). And finally, sometimes, a quiet acceptance. But Kübler-Ross made it clear: this is not a linear process. A person can be in acceptance in the morning and in anger by afternoon. The stages aren’t steps you climb—they are rooms you enter and leave in no particular order. The model was meant to give a language to distress, not to serve as a roadmap to happiness.

Perspective: When the model becomes a trap

Kübler-Ross’s model became an end in itself. People say, “I’m in the anger stage,” as if it were a train stop, and any minute now the train will pull up and take them to the next station. But loss doesn’t work that way. There is no “end” to grief, no “recovery” that means returning to the way things were before. Anyone who has lost a part of themselves—a child, a parent, a love, their health—never goes back to who they used to be. They become someone else: a person who lives with the loss and manages an ongoing relationship with it.

Western culture, which constantly demands that we “move forward,” “grow,” “improve,” tries to hustle you out of grief. All kinds of terms have been invented for this need to exit grief: “post-traumatic growth,” “finding meaning,” “building resilience.” These are all lovely descriptions, but they are also a demand placed on broken people to turn themselves into a personal development project. And maybe, sometimes, we simply need to let hope seep into the air, without searching for the “next stage.” Kübler-Ross was probably right; it’s just that misapplying her framework can only do harm.

Going Deeper: Magical thinking: Living inside the labyrinth

In her 2005 book The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion chronicles the year following her husband’s sudden death. Contrary to Kübler-Ross’s model, Didion doesn’t move through stages—she is trapped in a loop of “magical thinking”: “If I behave right, if I think right, he will come back.” She knows it makes no sense, but she cannot stop. Sometimes this description feels far closer to reality than the tidy five-stage model. Loss is not a track—it is a labyrinth. And sometimes, you don’t find the way out; you simply learn to live inside the labyrinth.

Culture: Longing that never ends

Finally, we return to Chava Alberstein, in her song “Ga’agu’im” (Longing). Alberstein longs for parents who died long ago; throughout her life she continues to sing to their ears, toward the heavens, still worrying they might read negative reviews about her. She isn’t crying; she just misses them. Who hasn’t reached for the phone on a Friday to call Mom just to be a child for a moment, until remembering that she hasn’t been here for twenty years, sending her wishes for a peaceful Shabbat from heaven.