Grief (novel)
During the course of the novel, the ideas of the stages of grief are introduced. The stages are denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. The narrator, as well as other characters in the story, slowly passes through these stages in trying to deal with death.
Postponement of affect
In the affect of grief, postponement seems to be an essential component. What happens in mourning is nothing other than a gradual "working-through" of an affect which, if released in its full strength, would overwhelm the ego'. John Bowlby considered the first of the "four phases of mourning" to be a 'Phase of numbness that...may be interrupted by outbursts of extremely intense distress and/or anger'. Thus one can speak of 'a rather typical postponement of grief': '"I feel hurt about something and then automatically this kind of shields things up and then I feel like I can't really touch or feel anything very much"..."postponement"...[of] the weepiness'.