The Hell within

The Psychology of death - six stages of grief

Shock - a feeling of numbness, disbelief, unreality ... as though looking at the death through an invisible glass pane, insulated from the feelings surrounding it.

Denial - not accepting that the death has taken place, hoping it is just a bad dream and when you wake up, everything will be 'normal'. Until this phase is passed, and the fact of death is accepted, healing cannot start.

Anger - Why did this happen? It's not fair. Associated feelings - guilt, blame, both self-blame - if I hadn't done this, he/she would still be alive. Or blaming someone else - family, doctors, God ... Anger also against the world in general - how can the world go about their business when this has happened, how dare anyone else be happy when my world has come crumbling down ...

Mourning - the longest phase, can last for years, associated with periods of depression, crying for no apparent reason, continued feeling of guilt, loneliness.

Recovery - the final phase. Some people say this never completely happens. One never completely recovers from a death of a loved one. It brings a lasting change, and the pain never completely goes away. One never forgets a loved one. But at some point we re-establish our lives and move ahead, and the pain can be subdued and hidden. It will still surface at odd moments, but it stops taking over our lives and allows us to carry on living, even allows us to find happiness again.

MJHT

Mayank - of the three affected, he is closest to recovery. Maybe because he lost only one person, his wife. Maybe because he has the happiest memories of their time together. Maybe because his feelings are not tinged with guilt, or not as much as the other two's are. He will always mourn, but he is prepared to forgive and move on. Especially as he sees the true penitence of Samrat and the hell he is living in.

Gunjan - stuck in a place between denial and anger. She doesn't want to believe that her sister is no longer there. And she is angry ... she feels Nups' death was avoidable, had Samrat listened to her. Her anger and her grief find an outlet in blame ... it is easier to blame Samrat for what happened, to think that her sister could have survived IF ... she knows that Nupur is gone, but she needs someone to blame still. She is most in need of her own counselling, because she hasn't allowed herself to accept the inevitability of Nupur's death. Or allowed herself to grieve fully. Until she forgives Samrat, she will never heal. And because she is angry, she is punishing him in the way she know will hurt him the most - by staying away from him. He killed her sister, she is killing him - slowly.

The only way I see her healing is either by letting go of her emotions completely, by breaking down which she hasn't let herself do so far and by accepting that it was Nups time to go ... Samrat was just the medium. The Hindu philosophy of death really does help at times like this.
Or ... more dramatic ... if Samrat dies, or attempts to kill himself, and she is stricken by the same guilt that he has been living with - that she caused his death as surely as she feels he caused Nupur's. If she goes through what he went through when she was hit by the bullet and knows what it would be like to lose him forever. And suffer the guilt pangs of that on her conscience forever.
At the moment, she knows he loves her, she knows also that her feelings for him are a mixture, a confused morass of love and hate. And intertwined - her own guilt, her fiance caused her sister's death. How can she love a guy who killed her sister?

But what if it had been the other way around? What if Samrat had died in that accident? Who would she have blamed? Her sister and Mayank - for making him take that drive to the airport? For urging him to drive fast? Blame and guilt won't bring Nupur back ... they will only make the lives of the rest a living death. And until Gunjan realises this, she and Samrat can never get back together.

Samrat - his feelings have been shown - nothing more to add. He is in mourning, in a self-created hell of guilt and self-blame, a hell which just deepened with the realisation of Gunjan's hate. At one stroke he lost his love, his best friend, and a girl who was both friend and family. Triple loss, no support. He can't heal till both Mayank and Gunjan forgive him - Mayank has started, but when will Gunjan?

Tough track. No easy solutions. I can see absolution for Mayank ... and the way to it for Samrat. But Gunjan?