No need to dig out your psychology books today, people. This is an easy one. You’ve heard all about it in romance novels or on cheesy talk shows.

What are the five stages of grief? Please print legibly with a No. 2 pencil.

OK, so maybe you don’t remember. Maybe you never knew. No matter. We’ve all been there at one time or another. The death of a relative, the death of a pet. The end of a relationship or even just the dying throes of a team facing elimination after a season of promise.

Whenever you grieve, your anguish plays out according to a script. It may take a week or many, many years. But one way or another, you’ll hit all of the emotions like a psychic connect-the-dots game.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Yeah, we’ve all been there: There is no way this has happened. OK, it happened and I’m mad as hell. I’d give anything to keep this from happening. But there’s nothing I can do and man, am I blue. But OK. It happened. Life goes on.

Simple. Work your way through the emotional maze and find your way through to the other side.

The other night I talked with a woman who completed the five-stage course only to start all over again. She seems to be stuck in the maze and it’s little wonder. She is the sister of a homicide victim, and the killer remains at large.

“I just really hoped there would have been an arrest by now,” said Paula, the older sister of the victim. “I’ve done all the crying. Now I just wanna kick somebody’s butt.”

The victim is a young lady named Leslie Stasulis. She was found battered and bloody on a stretch of road in Sabattus in mid-September. Police believe she was beaten or thrown from a moving vehicle. Or both. Two weeks later, she was dead.

“Leslie was my buddy as well as my sister,” said Paula. “She was always so cool.”

Lose someone dear to you to disease or an accident and it’s horrible. Through the five stages you go, leaning on others who are bereaved for solace.

Lose someone to violence and you’re resigned to waiting on the judicial system for comfort. Waiting and waiting for an investigation to conclude and justice to commence. The wait can be long. What do you do while waiting for that call from a police detective, or from a district attorney who says he’s ready to prosecute?

You continue to grieve without end, and you wait.

Paula waits. The whole family waits. There is a prime suspect but no arrest has been made. First, there has to be careful analysis of forensic evidence by the medical examiner’s office. Cops need to cover all of he bases and prosecutors need to make sure their case is airtight.

“This whole matter shouldn’t just dry up,” said Paula. “We don’t want her to be forgotten.”

So, the five stages of grief play over and over, like an old 45-rpm record with a nasty scratch. As we speak, I can hear Paula rounding all the bases again. A moment ago she was seething. Now she’s sad again, thinking of all that is lost.

She talks about Leslie’s Place, a little bar her sister owned on Lisbon Street. The place still bears the victim’s name on the front of the building.

“She had just bought it,” Paula said. “She was so proud of it. She was a housewife and a mother all her life. This was the first time she achieved something as an individual.”

A mother. That’s right. Leslie had five kids, ages 7 to 25. They are waiting too, for the wheels of justice to spin or to at least begin spinning. And no one yet has been called forth to answer to any charge of any kind.

“This didn’t affect just us – the sisters and brothers and uncles and cousins,” Paula said. “This affected all those kids.”

Makes you wonder what the person responsible is going through. Is there remorse and self-loathing? Or more denial and panic and the unflagging capacity for self-preservation?

Since no confession has been heard, it’s a safe assumption that the killer is lingering long in the latter three: the three stages of survival for the guilty but unpunished.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.

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