5 ms·

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 com

by 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.
      - smeej 5y ago
        The depth of your ignorance of pain here is something I envy. I hope you never encounter the blinding pain of sudden, devastating grief, and you never have to find out just how impossible it is to try to rise above anything in that moment, to choose anything in that moment. You're not even sure your heart is going to remember how to beat because the world as you thought you understood it has just come to a screeching halt. The prospect that the next moment has the audacity to happen, and the one after that--that there's still a world at all now that this person isn't in it--doesn't even make sense. And somebody on the internet is still going to tell you they know how you feel and you shouldn't choose to take their ignorant platitudes as insensitive. It tells me everything I need to know that you still think it might be the right course to say this to someone anyway.
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

by buro9 5y ago

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.
    - smeej 5y ago
      The depth of your ignorance of pain here is something I envy. I hope you never encounter the blinding pain of sudden, devastating grief, and you never have to find out just how impossible it is to try to rise above anything in that moment, to choose anything in that moment. You're not even sure your heart is going to remember how to beat because the world as you thought you understood it has just come to a screeching halt. The prospect that the next moment has the audacity to happen, and the one after that--that there's still a world at all now that this person isn't in it--doesn't even make sense. And somebody on the internet is still going to tell you they know how you feel and you shouldn't choose to take their ignorant platitudes as insensitive. It tells me everything I need to know that you still think it might be the right course to say this to someone anyway.

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