Grief is essential to our lives; it shapes us into someone either we’d have never expected to become or into someone, we did anticipate. When I say it’s essential to life, I mean it in a very unusual way. There is physical grief, there is a psychological one but there is a biochemical grief that traces its evidence back to the very origin of life as well as to the origin of non-life. Grief is essential to life just as much as a star going supernova. “We are all made of stardust” is an interesting phrase, merely due to how accurate it is. Stars that collapse and die, release a gust of elemental dust and immense energy through the ever-increasing dark space, most of which has ended up on our periodic table, as the blood coursing through our veins and also bridging the synapse between two axon terminals. Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and calcium- to name a few- that form the foundation of our existence, may date their origin way back to the origin of the universe itself; the time of the Big Bang. So, there is stardust in us, in our joy, in our remorse, and in our grief. Despite this, the birth of our grief may have a peculiar similarity to the death of a star. 

Grief begins with shock and denial, something like the commencement of explosion waves deep within the stellar core of a star; much like the shock waves and feelings of negation spreading through our body and soul. There’s an inability to grasp this beginning of the sense of loss, like the waves of optical outbursts beginning in the core, just before the explosion. Then comes anger, ever the mighty and quite destructive in a sense that is both physical but severely emotional, comparable to the first flash of light that emits just hours after the onset of the catastrophe in the stellar center. The outbursts are intense and glaring, often detrimental to the person directly in the field of observation. Anger gives rise to an act only fruitful in the hands of an external, colossal being, yet remains fruitless. Bargaining is dubbed as a coping mechanism; an act of desperation to bring what you have lost or to get one last moment of feeling it in your grasp before you lose it, be it momentarily or forever. When bargaining starts to take place, you demand the return of a phenomenon –an object or an individual– in place of something that also has a great impact on your life and existence. When this sense of helplessness wears out, we arrive at a stage of striking darkness, of depression. After the first light flash during the process of a stellar supernova, there is a period of withdrawal of the flash, of going away from the flash as the core has collapsed. For some time, there is nothing in the void, ironically symbolizing something like the birth of glaringly negative notions consuming our minds and souls. The emergence of these pessimistic emotions and thoughts may lead to us retreat and reach out less. There is a gaping hole left behind after a loss like a black hole left behind in infinite space. But despite all the thoughts looming around you like an ever-present and increasing ring of ice, dust, and planet debris found in the accretion disc of a black hole held up by its strong gravitational pull, you’d probably wonder if stepping out of grief and reaching the stage of acceptance will ever see light? Or you’d keep plummeting into the endless void of misery, deeper and deeper, while the time slows down for you and each second feels like a chore, and the only purpose in life seems to be filling that void? The answer to that question is equivalent to answering whether there’s anything beyond the point of singularity inside the black hole; it depends. It depends on you and how you view yourself, your surroundings, and your life. And it’ll probably never be the same for two different people. No two scientists will postulate the same theory to find an answer to the ever-increasing list of questions, but they do take inspiration from the previous theories to develop new ones. One day, you might take up the journey of someone completely unrelated to make yours better. One day, you might reach the final stage of grief- Acceptance and let go of the misery. But escaping grief is as difficult as it is for light to escape the Event Horizon. It’s an endless loop, a circumference surrounding you. Light loses its path to escape the Event Horizon because of the curved space, leading it to the same point back and never out. Grief consumes you, to the point it leads you back to where you begin. Until you break through. 

 When the star runs out of fuel and is just about to go supernova, its light starts to dim. It's flickering in the dark like a flame, just short of a small breeze to be completely blown off. The star holds onto the little fuel left inside its core before going through the phenomenon of a supernova. When we experience grief, it comes in stages that might often overlap or skip over one another, much like the different other types of supernovae. There’s no foolproof way of defining the process or ever jumping over the whole thing to reach where you are today or where you are destined to be. There’s also no way that you won’t come out even stronger and bigger and maybe better than what you used to be before the catastrophe that has occurred at the very core. Yet, there’s a difference. The process might take time for you, years even, but it won’t stop until it leaves an impact on your very existence from then on, you will only get better if you will for it to happen that way.

A black hole dies by shedding its mass and energy via the Hawking Radiation, ultimately reuniting with the dark and incomprehensible void.

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