Head Trauma

I just found out that my mom’s brother (aka my uncle) was in a pretty bad accident last night. From what I was able to gather he was riding a bike, got too close to the top of a retaining wall, fell off and crushed his skull. He is currently in an ICU in a coma. The docs said there are three things that could likely happen. Best case scenario is he wakes up and has to spent the rest of his life in an assisted living center. The other two scenarios are he wakes up and is basically a vegetable or he won’t wake up.

This post isn’t really about his head trauma, though. It is about mine. When my wife called and told me the news I basically didn’t react. I said “Damn, that sucks,” and sent IMs to two of my friends to talk it over with them, but I didn’t have an urge to cry or anything close to it. I really didn’t even need to talk about it, I just sent the messages because it was something to talk about. If I were walking down the street with a frined and he stepped in some gum, I would basically react the same way I did to this news.

For all of you amateur (or professional) pyshiatrists reading this you are probably thinking, “Jack Deus must be in the first stage of the Kubler-Ross model (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance) for dealing with grief.” To this I would tell you that you are wrong. I am not in denial about the fact that my uncle might die. Nor am I angry, bargaining, or depressed by it. As far as I can tell, I didn’t experience any of the first four steps of this model, I jumped straight to acceptance.

It is the fact that I jumped straight to acceptance that bothers me more (and quite significantly more) than the news of my uncle. After my wife called I kept sitting at my desk at work thinking, “I should be crying, or at least choked-up by this.” It worries me that I don’t feel anything because of this tragedy. And it’s not the only time. Five or six years ago, my dad’s brother committed suicide and I went straight to acceptance then, also. The only time I got emotional at all about his death was when my dad was giving the eulogy and he started crying in front of everyone. I got a little misty-eyed, looked away for a few seconds and was fine.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to remember when I went from being a big baby (as I was when I was a kid) to stoic, practically emotionless robot and I can’t find one event that might have started or continued me on this path. If any shrinks out there (amateur or professional) think you might have an answer as to why I am able to skip the first four steps in the Kubler-Ross model, please send me a message because I’d really like to know. And as G.I. Joe once taught me, knowing is half the battle.