grief
grief
[greef] Show IPA
noun
1.
keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharpsorrow; painful regret.
2.
a cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow.
Idioms
3.
come to grief, to suffer disappointment, misfortune, or othertrouble; fail: Their marriage came to grief after only two years.
4.
good grief, (used as an exclamation of dismay, surprise, orrelief): Good grief, it's started to rain again!
The Five stages of grief
1. Denial and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
John, as a doctor, had known he would go threw these stages soon after he saw his friend jump of the roof of Saint Barts. The first couple of weeks after his death, he had been the one at interviews, dealing with the police, and setting up his funeral. He knew he would have hated it if Mycroft had been the one to pick out his coffin, so he put everything in order, and never once broke down.
He knew that he was going threw shock, he couldn't register the fact that his friend was gone. He was immensely grateful for it, he didn't want to break down crying in front of the reporters that continuously shouted out crueltys about his friend. Those around him seemed even more worried by this, like they would rather him be curled in on himself crying and not eating for days.
He felt empty.
There was just this pit growing within the depths of him day by day. He found himself wondering when he would finally feel something, when he would go into his grief. The people around him were obviously acting different around him, walking on eggshells is what it was called?
On the third week, on a wednesday, is when it happened.
He came back to the flat from the clinic, nothing had changed about it really, he hadn't had the time, and grabbed the mail on his way up the stairs. There was quite a lot, and he found himself not even bothering to open any of the hate mail which he had been receiving on a daily bases. He stood over the trash can, taking a quick look at the envelope before deciding it was worthless and throwing it away.
After he had gone threw half the pile he saw an official looking one, it may be a bill or something about the funeral, so he just placed it on the counter. All in all, there had only been two that he had kept. He went and made himself some tea, earl grey, a brand sher... his roommate seemed to have liked.
Grabbing the two letters in one hand his cup in the other, he went and sat in his chair. He looked at the first, bill, then the next. Then read the title.
The Will Of Sherlock Homes.
He then focused on what was at hand and placed his cup down, readying himself to look at this document. This was Sherlock's last wishes. He briefly wondered why it was sent to him instead of Mycroft, or their beloved mummy, but dismissed it as just a mistake, this had been his former address.
They had already tried to to do a reading of the will the first week after the fall, but Sherlock had written it in an ancient Arabic language, and there had been no translator present so they had to go get it translated. He was sure that he had done that just so that he could piss off his brother, and truth be told he found himself almost chuckle at his antics, almost.
He unfolded the paper, the brief thought on who was to get the skull wandering across his mind. He stared at at it, unmoving, then read it over again, and then again, until the edges of the paper were crumpled under the pressure of his fingers.
Everything had been left to him.
Books.
Equipment.
Clothes.
Furniture.
Skull.
All of it.
It was all his now.
Once this had seeped in, he carefully folded the letter once more, and placed in the coffee table next to him. He looked ahead of him, looked at his frie... Sherlock's chair, empty in front of him. That was his now too.
Thats when he entered the first step of grief.
Denial and Isolation.
He couldn't believe it. It wasn't true. Sherlock did not just leave him here. There was no way.
The next happened at the clinic.
He was well aware that everyone could see it. The lack of sleep. The eyes red from crying. He was apathetic, and isolated himself. The loneliness and despair showed quite clearly on his face, and he really didn't give a damn. Sarah had approached him asking him to take off of work for a while until he got himself together.
To be honest it didn't feel like he could ever get it together. He doubted he would ever be ready to go to work, its not like he couldn't just quit. Sherlock had left him a very large sum of money, of which would last him a long time. Not that he would ever do that, it would make feel as though he would be taking advantage of him. He really didn't even know why Sherlock even need a roommate in the first place. Most likely an experiment.
He wondered what the results were.
He had simply nodded at Sarah and started to walk away, that's when she pointed out that he was limping, and asked if he had gotten hurt. He looked down at his leg in surprisement, he hadn't even noticed when his limp had come back. Sarah then proceeded to ask if there was something she could do, maybe take a look at it, that's when he felt the rage burn up inside of him. He slammed his fist against the wall in an angry outburst, and proceed to ignore Sarah and walk away.
He entered stage two.
Anger.
How could Sherlock do this to him? WHY? Does he know what he has done? Did he know this would happen? How could he leave him like this? After all that he has done for the bastard.
He had seen many deaths, caused many deaths, lost so many friends, and he had felt grief many times, but this was different. Why was it different?
Now, John was not religious. He had nothing against those who did believe in God, but he couldn't find himself to believe in some all powerful force, not after what he had seen in the war.
But after he had spilt his tea, because his hand was back to shaking, he had thrown the cup against the wall, shattering it. After that he found himself curled up on the couch crying, begging god, goddess, deity, anyone, for Sherlock back.
He entered Stage 3
Bargaining.
Stage 4 came soon after.
Depression.
The sinking feeling inside of him.
Crushing, but at the same time expanding darkness.
Lacking.
He felt like he was lacking a major piece of his life.
And he knew what it was.
And knew he would never get it back.
So there really was no point at all was there any more?
He would sit in his chair for hours, holding a cup of tea, never drinking it, letting it go cold, as he stared out the window. He didn't bother cleaning, the dishes piled in the sink, food was rotting in the fridge along with some of the old experiments, the trash was piled high, and the only reason why the flat wasn't a reeking mess was because , was dutifully doing as much as she could. She hadn't once complained, pushed him to move forward, to get over it. Which he supposed he was grateful for but couldn't bother himself to care about it, or spend the energy thanking her.
He slept, a lot.
He was sure that Sherlock would have had some sarcastic remarks about his behavior, but couldn't bring himself to care. He was in his nightgown, in which he had been wearing for a week now, wondering about the flat mindlessly. He stood in front of the bookcase, eyes wandering over the title, and brought the cup up to his lips. Cold, but he drank it anyways, it would have taken too much energy to go make another one. His eyes then caught on to one of the books on the lower self.
It was a dark blue, very worn out as if it had been used countless amount of times, he had never noticed it before. He supposed he didn't notice a lot of things. He bent over and dragged it out of its place, he didn't know why he had been drawn towards it. He looked it over, the title had almost been unable to read because of the worn of it, but he could make out that it said: Anatomy.
It was a simple, plain book, not a special edition or anything. His interest peaked, he set down his tea, then proceeded to open it. It was published almost 20 years ago, so a lot of the things in here may be outdated by now. So why keep it? On the back of the cover in the left top corner it read: The property of Sherlock Homes.
Why would Sherlock have kept something so outdated, it didn't make sense? He then flipped past the title of contents to the first page. There was notes written all over it. He briefly flipped through the whole book to find the entire thing was completely covered in them. He went back to the first page, the handwriting was in cursive, but not as elegant as Sherlocks hand writing is now...was. So this was his when he was a kid? Now that he looked closer, there was some written notes that were in messier than others, so he had written in it at different ages.
Then it hit him. Sherlock had kept this because it had been his as a boy, maybe even had been what had gotten him into his profession in the first place.
He kept it because of sentiment.
He felt the edge of his mouth come up. The bloody git had gone on and on about how worthless sentiment was, when here, right below Johns nose, was this. This would have been what would have made the best blackmail material he could have ever used against him. The hypocrite. He would have gotten more that a few good laughs teasing Sherlock about this.
The smile widening, he found himself plop back down on his chair, and started to read the book in his hands. He couldn't stop. It wasn't the words printed on the page that entertained him, it was the notes that most likely would have been as long as the book if added up all together. He found himself laughing constantly, Sherlock had still been Sherlock even when he was a child, and his sarcastic remarks littered the pages.
He found he was done all to soon, and made his way back to the bookcase. He ended up spending the rest of the evening immersed in Sherlock's books, weather they had notes on them or not. It seem that Sherlock cared very much about his books and only kept them if they were useful. He wanted to get into the mind of Sherlock Homes, learn more about him, and how his mind worked.
Sherlock spent his life working for what he had, and John knew that even though he never showed it, never said it, Sherlock cared for other people, on some scale. He wanted to stop crime, he would never had committed a murder just to preoccupy himself.
He knew Sherlock was real.
And he knew that he had to clear his name, had to make Sherlocks life mean something, he could not let him be disgraced.
He would finish Sherlocks work.
Their work.
Thats when he entered stage 5.
Acceptance.