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My dog died just over a year ago and I'll never get over it. I'm going to be old and demented thinking she is right next to me. And I semi look forward to seein

• buro9 5y ago
  I have a crude hypothesis that the difference between the old and young is the accrual of profound grief. It never fades, it compounds with the loss yet to come. We learn to live with the living ghosts and daily reminders of everyone and everything we've ever loved. Loss and grief is not the same as death, Vonnegut's "So it goes" speaks to the sheer overwhelming mass of death constantly happening. But grief and loss is deeply personal that it can feel isolating. It feels like only those who have experienced it can really understand it... But even then, it is such an individual experience that even knowing someone who lives with loss doesn't mean it's a relatable thing. It's such a hard thing that the only thing I've learned is to be kind. As we age, everyone we know is carrying loss.
  • tomcam 5y ago
    I’m old. Your concept of accrued grief is new to me, but resonates. I have memories of friends and family dying going back a half century, but the death of one of my baby chickens a year ago still has a profound effect on me. A decade ago I would have been pretty surprised by the depth of my grief. In fact when I talk or write about her death, it sounds seems faintly ridiculous. But inside it still exerts a powerful weight on my soul.
  • philwelch 5y ago
    I wonder if that explains why people who were chronologically younger still look so old in old photographs.
    • mynameishere 5y ago
      Long exposure times, untreated progressive dental issues, dowdy clothes, dowdy hair, etc.
  • smeej 5y ago
    One thing I've learned to say is that I don't know your grief, but I do know great big grief up close, and there's just a difference between people who know and people who don't. I don't even know my brother's grief, even though we lost the same sister, because I can't ever know his relationship with her from the inside. Among the most toxic phrases to use with anyone who's grieving is, "I know how you feel." No. You do not. You CANNOT. It is profoundly insulting and diminishing to claim you do. But if you do know great big grief up close, and how to make space for it to do what it needs to do by showing up, sitting awkwardly in the silence, and just. not. leaving, you can really touch someone's soul.
    • trentnix 5y ago
      > Among the most toxic phrases to use with anyone who's grieving is, "I know how you feel." No. You do not. You CANNOT. It is profoundly insulting and diminishing to claim you do. I find this perspective arrogant, rude, and counterproductive. Other people have experienced profound grief as well. They are communicating, possibly inelegantly, it’s possible to get through the grief (what better gift can someone offer than hope?) and they are making themselves available if you need support. And ultimately, they are expressing condolences and sympathy. Grief should be shared. Grief does not make you special. Confronting grief alone is a recipe for depression and madness.
      • smeej 5y ago
        Say you know grief, then. That's actually true. You know how YOU experienced grief. What you do not know and cannot possibly know is how another person is feeling, how they're experiencing their own grief. I post this for all the well-meaning people who are out there insulting and hurting people they love because they don't actually know any better. Stop saying you know how they feel. It's one of the most hurtful things you can say, and it's outright false.
        • trentnix 5y ago
          > I post this for all the well-meaning people who are out there insulting and hurting people they love because they don't actually know any better. No, you've decided to take it as an insult. You demand grace from them and give none in return. It's more a reflection on you than it is on them.
  • mgdlbp 5y ago
    Evoked memory of these passages from Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, on the compounding of this by life extension: > this culture’s structure of feeling could also be called balkanized. Gender therapy and speciation were both parts of the longevity project, and the combination of the three created a new structure of feeling that is often characterized as fractured, compartmentalized, bulkheaded, firewalled. Usually longevity itself is identified as the primary force driving this; until now, no one has had to integrate a personality in its second century (or more), and often it is experienced as an existential crisis. The super-elderly have had so many experiences, gone through so many phases, lost so many companions to death or simply time that they have grown distanced from other people. Spacers, mobile over huge distances, especially bold in trying all the augmented abilities, often live as isolatoes, in a solipsistic narrative or performance of their own (495) > She liked her work; she liked her play; she liked her art, the play that was work. So it was something else. Really the question became quite philosophical; how to be? What to care about? And how to become a little less solitary? > . . . . > Maybe nothing. There was a pruning of life by death. Parts died before the whole. When the people you loved died, part of you died. Some people by the time they went were like certain junipers she had seen, one live strip on a dead trunk. There was no way to counter that. (619–620) > “Marriage,” Swan repeated, marveling at the word. To her it was a concept from the Middle Ages, from old Earth—an idea with a strong whiff of patriarchy and property. Not meant for space, not meant for longevity. One moved through one’s life in epochs, each a stage in one’s history, lasting some few or several years, and then circumstances changed and you were in a new life, with new associates. That could not be altered, not if you were out there riding the great merry-go-round; and so to deform one’s life in the attempt to make a relation last longer than its natural term was to risk wrecking its end, such that it splintered back along its whole length and left a bitter wound and a sense that it had all been a lie, where really there should only be a passing on, in one of the little death-and-transfigurations of one’s epochs. That’s just the way it was. > At least so it seemed to her, and to many others she knew. It was the current structure of feeling in her culture and time. Spacers were free humans, free at last and human at last. So they all felt, and encouraged each other to feel, and she had always believed it, always agreed it was right. But structures of feeling were cultural, historical; they changed over time like people did; the structures themselves went through their own reincarnations. So if cultures changed over time, and an individual lived on through a change in that culture, then… didn’t the individual change too? Could they? Could she? (621–622)
  • missedthecue 5y ago
    Abraham Lincoln wrote this letter to a girl who had been struck by severe grief following the death of her father in the American Civil War. She was so overcome that she had locked herself in her room for weeks at a time. It really seems to touch on your point here. Executive Mansion, Washington, December 23, 1862. Dear Fanny It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before. Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother. Your sincere friend, A. Lincoln
• hutzlibu 5y ago
  "I'll never get over it." I certainly will not tell you, how you are supposed to handle loss - that is entirely up to you. But are you aware of the concept of self fulfilling prophecy? Meaning if you are so sure of the future, that you will never get over it, than you are cementing this future. I only know about the now, how I grief or rejoice today. It certainly feels sometimes, that this will be forever. But nothing is. It is your right to hold onto the grief, but personally I did better with not cementing my future. I did get over the loss of my brother this way, despite having a way closer relationship to him, than other people who did not deal well with it (in my eyes), by accepting the grief and the reality of it. And then life went on. The grief is not over, maybe never will be. But it is not holding me to the past.
  • watwut 5y ago
    > Meaning if you are so sure of the future, that you will never get over it, than you are cementing this future. I don't think this is true in terms of grief. Most will get over it, even if they don't believe it is possible. Some will never get over it, even when they thought it will be fine or actively tried to "got over it". People dont control whether they get over grief or not. Believing it will happen or not is not determining the outcome.
    • hutzlibu 5y ago
      "Believing it will happen or not is not determining the outcome." Words are powerful. So sure most people will get over grief, despite them saying they never will. But in my experience, those words make it harder for them.
      • watwut 5y ago
        I don't think so. Those words express how they feel right now at that moment. They put into words hopelessness they feel at that moment. Expressing it is part of process. Forcing them to lie about their real feeling at that moment won't help them overcome anything. It will only make them and anyone who is watching not to trust you with their feelings.
• drakonka 5y ago
  I'm sorry for your loss. My cats are getting older and every once in a while I get pangs of anxiety about how the heck I'll be able to handle it when they pass, whether they'll be in pain, how I can make it better, etc. I find it difficult to even imagine being able to move on from it. I also wonder about whether putting a pet to sleep is really as painless as everyone claims or if they just say that to make the owners feel better, and try to prepare for the practicalities of it to make the process as comfortable as possible for them when it comes to that.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • theck01 5y ago
    I don’t know how painless it actually is, but putting an animal to sleep is a quick and dignified death compared to what I have seen happen to most people. If I could choose I’d like to have something similar happen to me some day. You go in the span of a few minutes surrounded by the ones who love you most. Nevertheless it is still very hard to say goodbye. I hope you still have lots more time with your cats.
  • wholinator2 5y ago
    I'm no expert but I'd imagine it's similar to getting put under for surgery, the drugs are similar at least, and the most painful part of that is the needle. Once the IV is in, there's no pain, just a slow and warm dark moving over everything. I watched my mom slowly lose all faculty as she was reduced to a muttering, unintelligible, bed ridden shell. Over the course of a month she lost the ability to move all of her limbs except her left hand. She quite abruptly began having trouble finding and forming the right words and I never got to have the final conversations I wanted to, I was going to interview her about her life but one day I came back and it was already too late. She lied in that bed for weeks, stuck in the now permanent reality that she was going to die, slowly, as everything was ripped away from her one by one. The cancer took over the rest of her body. Nobody knew it was going to happen, we all thought she'd come home and be okay but she never walked again. It was distressing in a way I cannot communicate. She deserved the warm dark, and it had been far too long by the time it finally came for her. One needle prick is nothing compared to the potential suffering at the end of life afforded by our current medical advancements.
• agumonkey 5y ago
  There's a thing about bond and grief. With some persons / pets, your emotions are tangles with him/her. Unless they're here, it's as if you can't feel or share reality anymore.
• possiblydrunk 5y ago
  Same here. 15 years. It's a loss I'll never get over. It will be sadder if I do.
• mhb 5y ago
  Lydia Davis: "The Dog Hair" The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope--if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again. Davis, Lydia. Can't and Won't: Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reprint edition. 2014. https://theyalelit.tumblr.com/post/84167301273/the-dog-hair https://theyalelit.tumblr.com/post/84167301273/the-dog-hair
• deleted 5y ago
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• ericmcer 5y ago
  I have a dog too, a girlfriend and friends and family also but me and my dog are together 24/7, sleep in bed together, etc. At this point his death will be devastating, I already know it will completely wreck me. I worry people will think it silly to go to pieces over the death of a dog, but I am right there with you, it is a massive loss.
  • toomanyrichies 5y ago
    I consider myself a huge "dog person", yet I don't own one. If I'm honest with myself, the fear of losing them someday is the biggest blocker to me getting one. I feel like I already have a lot of inner turmoil, and I'm not sure that all the joy my dog would bring me would compensate for the grief I'd inevitably feel when saying goodbye. My brain tells me this is the wrong way to look at it, but I can't help it. Thus far my choice has been to live vicariously through other dog owners, i.e. visiting dog parks with my partner and playing with other peoples' dogs. I tell myself that, this way, I get to have all the upside of having a dog, with none of the downside. This feels like a complete and utter copout to me, and I have no defense against that argument except to say that I am emotionally fragile and don't have the inner fortitude it takes to let a dog into my life.