Loss
In the short story The Management of Grief written by Bharati Mukherjee, the central theme is tragedy and grief. The main character’s journey goes through the grieving process after she loses her husband and sons in the 1985 Air India plane crash. According to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 On Death and Dying, in bereavement we spend different lengths of time working through each step. The five steps do not have to occur in sequence. We often move through the stages prior to achieving any acceptance. The death of a loved one may inspire you to evaluate your own feeling on mortality. The five stages are more like a guide on the grieving process. They help you understand and put into perspective where you are. The stages are as follows: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Throughout the story, Shaila, the main character, appears to go though the stages of grief at different times evidenced in different ways in different situations, as the following examples will support. An example of Denial starts out in the beginning when Shaila has a houseful of people after the bomb on the plane that has taken the life of her husband and sons. She doesn’t recognize most of the women in her house- “A woman I don’t know is boiling tea the Indian way in my kitchen. There are a lot of women I don’t know in my kitchen, whispering, and moving tactfully. They open doors, rummage through the pantry, and try not to ask me where things are kept” (p.1238). Shaila commented that their presence reminded her of when her son’s were small on Mother’s Day and she and her husband were tired, so the women made them “big sloppy omelets”. She seemed to be going through the motions and to be untouched by what was happening around her. Shaila wonders if “pills alone” are keeping her subdued, as she is always in control, but not repressed like she is now. She mentions how she can hear sound, but how tense her body is and is ready to scream. Shaila hears...