AB de Villiers retirement and the stages of grief

When AB de Villiers took that Spider-Man catch on the deep mid-wicket boundary, I was drawing blood samples from a patient of mental disorder. I watched the catch later online but in the back of my mind I knew I will still be able to see many such catches from him in the future. In fact, when I joined residency, I was counting on my luck that the World Cup would be in 2019 when I would be in 2nd year of my residency, a year relatively less hectic as compared to 1st year. Perhaps I would take a leave and watch my favourite cricketer AB and South Africa lift the World Cup at Lord’s.

Yesterday, I was preparing posters for World Schizophrenia Day when a WhatsApp notification buzzed. My close friends wanted to know whether I was okay. It was quite strange for a budding psychiatrist to be asked this question, because lately, it has been me doing all the questioning.

Add Cricket Country as a Preferred Source

It pained me to get to know that de Villiers had retired from international cricket. For a moment I stood silently and then gathered myself. I felt bereaved. I wanted it to be fake. And then I saw the video which he had posted himself.

As a student of psychiatry I have heard stories of bereavement for the last one month but could never actually gauge why and how tough it was to deal with it.

[link-to-post url=”https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/thanks-for-everything-ab-de-villiers-715168″][/link-to-post]

And then came this news and suddenly I knew what bereavement meant. According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages any normal individual goes through on suffering bereavement. They are called stages of grief. We, as students, remember it with a mnemonic, DABDA, which stands for Denial, Anger, Bargain, Depression and finally Acceptance.

Currently, as a big fan of him, I am still in a stage of Denial and it will take me some time to reach to Acceptance.

Life moves on and there will be peace but till then I just want to sit back and soak in the memories the genius offered us.

Happy retirement, ABD.

And as I write this, I realise how the acronym DABDA has ABD hidden in it.

The decision AB took was personal, so I forgive him. The joys he provided to cricket fans will, however, never be forgotten.