Everybody’s familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What I’ve found with my recent experience is sometimes you have to go through it more than once. Between getting the initial news and the formal declaration, I worked through them pretty quickly, in part because I had to so I could try to help support the rest of the family. Once it was all over and I was back home, I’ve gotten to work through them all over again, well most of them anyway.

What was done was done and the doctors were already doing everything they could, so there was nothing to bargain for and no one to bargain with. For the religious relatives who were there, they could bargain. The benefit I can understand their prayers to have provided is that while I knew I was completely powerless in the situation and unable to do anything, they at least had something they could do that they hoped would help.

The stage that has by far been the biggest and most powerful for me has been the anger. My nephew’s death was avoidable and it was caused by his own stupidity and self destructive behavior. I am furious with him for the pain he caused us.

Ethically, I’ve gone with a model where the imperative is to do no harm. Whatever you do to yourself, as long as you know the risks, is fine. Under my old way of thinking about it, like two weeks ago, things like substance abuse and suicide (note: my nephew did not intentionally kill himself), aren’t a big deal assuming you don’t have people who rely on you for their own survival. That’s changed.

I would now include emotional trauma in the “do no harm” imperative. So if your self-destructive actions do or reasonably could cause your loved ones profound emotional harm, then you need to knock it off. No one should have to go through the pain my family is.