good grief

Is there such a thing?

Grief is unavoidable if you live, if you feel. We all experience loss. We grieve for what we lose. We grieve for lost futures and lost possibilities.

If grief is inevitable, surely there is some purpose to it? Surely it serves some function?

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described five steps in the grieving. The stages are:

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. The stages don't always come in this order; one doesn't always experience all five.

However, not only the research of Kubler-Ross but also my own experience tells me these are true, real stages of grief.

Is there anyway to shorten the first four phases and move to the fifth? More to the point at this moment for me, is it possible to help someone through these phases?

Amidst all the pain of grief, of sharing another's pain, the question remains: why? for what purpose?