Broken heart
For most bereaved individuals, the journey through grief will ultimately culminate in an acceptable level of adjustment to a life without their loved one. The Kübler-Ross model postulates that there are five stages of grief after the loss of a loved-one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And while it is recognized that mourners go through initial period of numbness leading to depression and finally to reorganization and recovery, most modern grief specialists recognize the variations and fluidity of grief experiences differ considerably in intensity and length among cultural groups, individually from person to person as well as depending on the amount of investment put into the relationship.
Grief (novel)
♦Mary Todd Lincoln - Throughout the novel, the narrator reads the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln and her story exerts great influence on him and his views on grief. In particular, the narrator is interested in the way Lincoln reacts to the deaths of her loved ones. After her husband died, Lincoln seemed to believe “that any attempt to be happy was beside the point, since she was only waiting to be reunited with her husband and children in the afterlife” (68). At one point the narrator states that “the letters of Mrs. Lincoln were starting to be the reference for everything [he] noticed” (68). He is fascinated with her, and her personal story is an integral part of his.