13 ms·

A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

548 points by ZeWaka 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
afavour 2y ago
There isn’t really anything to say.
hn666 2y ago
This is one of those moments where, thanks to the internet, you catch a glimpse of another persons world. It gives some perspective.
- sho_hn 2y ago
  I'm worried this will come across as cavalier and non-serious, but your comment reminded me a lot of ... yes, a comedy skit: Bo Burnham's White Woman's Instagram, in which he ostensibly makes fun of clichéd social media content, only to completely whip you about by briefly interrupting the cheese with the character's heartfelt post about living with her mother's death, perhaps the reason she needs the escapism of her online identity. And after it all you realize he told her entire life story in a series of comedy vignettes. I'm not ashamed to say I watched it in the right sort of mood and it moved me to tears (having lost a parent).
  - Trasmatta 2y ago
    The entire Inside special is so deeply moving AND hilarious. Welcome to the Internet is more applicable now than ever That Funny Feeling is like a millennial version of We Didn't Start the Fire (and I have to be careful when I listen to it, because "that funny feeling" is difficult to cope with some times) All Eyes on Me shook me to the core when I first heard it
- chrisfosterelli 2y ago
  I'm sometimes stressed about something stupid and come here out of muscle memory; just trying to fill my brain with another thing for at least a few minutes. Every now and again there's a post like this one that reminds me the thing I was trying to avoid is actually a problem someone else might be happy to trade with me. It usually makes me turn back toward my own problems with a little more gratitude.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  And this is why I hate AI so strongly (I... debated several less charitable wordings of this opening). I read, because I want to know what people think. What people thought, decades, centuries ago. Writing, and reading, are about the only mechanism we know to really get inside someone else's brain. To see how, and what, they think, in what they've chosen to communicate. I used to write more for a technical audience - I've got a blog, it's got 9 years of content, a lot of words. Lately, I've been writing more for myself, but also expecting that, at some point, I'll share some of this with other people. I've read things I wrote months back, and I'd forgotten a lot of what I put in there. It's a time machine, to see myself as I was last summer. Or, a time machine, to understand someone's thinking in the early 1900s. Or older. We have writings that are thousands of years old. The grief of loss is something that's as old as human history, and there's no shortage of older writings on the matter - Psalms has no shortage of things to say. I don't want to read "Machine, please generate me a chunk of text as would be written by someone who lost their daughter ten years ago, when they were turning six." There's no human behind it. I'm sure you'd get something that pulled the proper strings, but it would be empty. It would be hollow. Because there is no human behind it, with their own sufferings, dreams, hopes, grief. I'm sure it would be polished and bland and SEO optimized, but it wouldn't be real. But, hey, maybe someone could make a buck off generating it!
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    Just wait until AI can feel pain- you know it will happen eventually when they have physical sensors and enough compute.
  - djeastm 2y ago
    You're right. The sad thing to me is there's not going to be much of a way to tell if the text we're reading, the picture we're looking at, or the person we're talking to even IS a real person unless they're physically in front of us. It's a huge loss for interpersonal connectivity at a distance
    - foxglacier 2y ago
      I hear this a lot, but why is it a problem? For most people I encounter ephemerally online, as long as I can't tell the difference, it doesn't matter. If you were an AI, I wouldn't mind. I usually talk to such people to try to understand ideas better and if an AI could provide that, then no problem. If you want some sort of real-world interaction with them, there's a good chance that'll never happen with a real person either. I've had many online friends who I never met but I still felt like I knew them. The AI just has to be good enough never to burst the bubble. Then there's the opposite problem that we already have to deal with - real people who are effectively AI and not capable of forming a mutual relationship with you, such as narcissists, people with dementia, and celebrities. People can spend years of their lives having a relationship where the other person only really exists in their own mind. Actually it's quite normal to build an internal imaginary model of the people we know which might not actually be correct.
Thoreandan 2y ago
Context: This is remembering his daughter, Rebecca. (2008-2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_A._Meyer#:~:text=In%202014,memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_A._Meyer#:~:text=In%20201...
- ZeWaka 2y ago
  I came across the new CSS logo and thought the color looked about right (it's rebeccapurple), and ended up reading Eric's blog as a result.
  - canucker2016 2y ago
    Eric Meyer's blog post about why it should be called 'rebeccapurple' - see https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/ https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/
    - knome 2y ago
      >For almost twelve hours, she was six This is an incredibly poetic, heartbreaking statement.
      - wut-wut 2y ago
        Devastating and beautiful
      - canucker2016 2y ago
        a late tl;dr (more background for the above quote): "...A couple of weeks before she died, Rebecca informed us that she was about to be a big girl of six years old, and Becca was a baby name. Once she turned six, she wanted everyone (not just me) to call her Rebecca, not Becca."
- canucker2016 2y ago
  Eric Meyer's blog posts about his daughter Rebecca - see https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca/?order=asc https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...
lemonberry 2y ago
I was a young (19/20) bartender in the mid to late 90s. One afternoon I worked a private event. There was a couple there that had been staring at me. Eventually they came over and apologized. They said I looked like their son and that he'd be about my age that time. I forget how old he was when he passed. But I'll never forget the pain their faces. Some good friends lost their son at 10 months old. He'd be 11 this year. It changed both of them. They've done amazing things since then, but you can see the weight on their faces. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
- hinkley 2y ago
  I lost a dog at 3 and a half years almost to the day to a congenital defect, that we didn’t know about until he was already very sick. I’m a guy who will cross a street to meet someone’s dog. For over a year afterward I would cross the street to avoid walking past the same breed and color of dog. The way people avoid pitbulls. And that was just a dog. I can’t even imagine what happens when your child dies, especially if your job or social circle involves them. The author said he has a therapist, but I wonder if he’s had one the whole time or if he failed to process at the time and is now paying for letting it sink into his bones.
  - lemonberry 2y ago
    He's been writing about Rebecca and his family's journey since pretty early in her diagnosis if I remember correctly. I remember when he posted about her passing too. Grief comes in waves. Long after you think the storm has passed. We all process it differently. A 16th birthday is pretty big milestone in the states. I imagine that can be a magnifying glass for grief and pain. I know my friends feel the weight of their son's birthday and the date of his passing quite heavily. I lost my mom 16 years ago. To this day something can remind of her and it's like time stops. It's dizzying as the world around me moves on. Then I catch up again until the next wave.
  - mynameishere 2y ago
    [flagged]
conductr 2y ago
Reading this, sitting next to my 6 year old son, my ears tear up and I’m reminded to cherish every moment. Truly saddened by these kinds of stories and just how quickly it could happen to any of us.
- tomatodevice 2y ago
  Just thinking about it gives me very strong anxiety. I had to sit next to my daughter, she's sleeping and breathing.
dbtc 2y ago
Perhaps it is no consolation at all, but grief is beautiful when expressed with grace like this. Also, I really like the design of this site.
- efilife 2y ago
  I think it's terrible. I don't see a single positive thing about it. Even if shit is expressed in a graceful way, it's still shit. No grief would be beautiful
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
This is when I wish humans were not simulation machines. So much pain caused by that damn brain of ours.
bitwize 2y ago
I was just thinking today of my friend Donny Miceli, who died of childhood leukemia at the age of 7. I wondered what it would be like to be Donny's mom or dad. There would be sadness of course, and the devastating feeling that something was missing that should be there. Would there be guilt? How could they carry on, knowing that there was a high school graduation, wedding, etc. that they should have attended but weren't? I don't recall if Donny had siblings but if he did, how would they have felt growing up without him?
larsiusprime 2y ago
I know how you feel. Tomorrow is my late son's ninth birthday.
- lemonberry 2y ago
  So sorry for your loss.
- nyczomg 2y ago
  My twins just turned 10 yesterday. But they were born as part of a triplet pregnancy... Life is just brutal, and I don't know if there is any solace in it being so brutal to so many other people. But I hope you're ok.
- edelwiess 2y ago
  So sorry
quanto 2y ago
From a Japanese song Kurumi If only time could wash everything away, 時間が何もかも洗い連れ去ってくれれば a life would be truly easy 生きる事は実に容易い
lijok 2y ago
Life’s greatest, least rewarding challenge; continuing to live when a loved one cannot.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  To put that in context, when my grandparents were born, a typical family had around four children, and one in four children did not live to the age of five. It is sort of crazy to think of what it would be like to grow up in that world.
  - croissants 2y ago
    I think a modern USA 1 year old has about a 99.97% chance of making it to adulthood. That means that if a modern USA adult loses a young child, there's a decent chance they don't know anybody who has had that experience. The ancient (and even, as you point out, very slightly pre-modern) world had a lot of "infrastructure" in place to deal with this, there were rituals and ceremonies and familiar people who knew what you were going through, and most of that is gone now. It is indeed an enormous change.
    - Syonyk 2y ago
      It's not gone. It's just less common, and, at least in my experience, hidden inside churches where people are open about this sort of thing, and where, in a lot of them, miscarriages are treated as much the same thing, to be grieved over, as loss. Sometimes in private, but it's better when it's shared, because others have gone through the same thing, suffering silently. But you're right, it's far harder to go through an experience alone, and loss of a child has certainly become far, far less common than it used to be. At least, if you limit it to the born. In the US, in 2023, 1 in 3 never made it to birth.
  - blisterpeanuts 2y ago
    A few years ago I read of a pioneer woman in the Dakota region in the late 19th Century who had fifteen children, of whom 9 survived to adulthood. I can't begin to imagine the pain, and the fortitude needed to survive so much tragedy. As a parent, I can't think of anything worse than to lose one's child.
deadbabe 2y ago
People say time heals all wounds but sometimes there’s simply not enough time left to heal certain wounds.
- imchillyb 2y ago
  Time cannot heal. Time is a tumbler, our feelings the rocks within. Feelings begin as jagged, cutting, things. Time smooths and polishes the the edges, highlights unseen aspects. Time gives us perspective and distance. No wound is ever fully healed. There remain scars and imperfections small pieces of us that never return to 'normal' again. Time is distance. How many miles the train will travel from the station. Distance grants perspective and removes immediacy. Time can't heal though. Time doesn't exist. We made it up in order to make more sense of our universe. There is only now.
- neogodless 2y ago
  I started watching Paradise, and a grieving parent said "time just keeps taking me further away from when I was with them."
  - deadbabe 2y ago
    I would just tell them it’s also taking them closer to when they’ll be reunited.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
enobrev 2y ago
I have such a deep appreciation for Eric sharing his grief and journey through it. I only know who Eric is because of his amazing contributions to nerdy things I've thought about and appreciated for more than half my life. But his writing about of his journey with his daughter had changed me long before I was a father. And now that I am, I can barely make it through reading this. Outside of the long term affects his family has had on my life, he reminds me that we used to write publicly, sometimes anonymously, for one another outside of social enclaves and directly affect one another without expectations of a like or subscribe or whatever makes the thing go brrrr.
jedimastert 2y ago
Well this was an unexpectedly and horrendously heartbreaking story to find.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
The government should provide a fund for people who have experienced child loss so they never have to work again.
- citizenpaul 2y ago
  Oh you sweet innocent summer child. Never change you glorious sunray.
- dzink 2y ago
  That would create a horrible perverse incentive to kill children for money.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Or fake their death, and lavish attention (and cash) on them until a couple of decades later the government notices they exist, it would be an interesting demographic.
- kolanos 2y ago
  Work might be the only distraction they have.
rsoto2 2y ago
I don't have any kids, but I think about those kids in Gaza a lot. Maybe it's cause it felt like I was so helpless. I called offices. every day. The news media rejects our grief. The actual government rejects our grief and pays into the depravity. If I feel like this what does one of those parents that survived feel?
steve_adams_86 2y ago
This is deeply moving. I have 3 kids. One is adopted, but he is no different from the others. If anything happened to any of them, I sincerely can't imagine how I'd carry on. I know I would, but I don't know what it would look like. I can't imagine that world because I so badly don't want it. Sometimes I force myself to imagine myself getting a terminal illness or injury, and think of how I'd handle that, how I need to live as though that could happen at any moment, and how important it is that I do that for my family. That's not so difficult. But when I come to the sort of mental simulation of my kids dying, I'm made sorely aware of how unprepared I'll be. As you can't easily prepare for their arrival, I don't think you can prepare for their departure. Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations something like "When you kiss your child, whisper to yourself: 'Tomorrow you may be dead.'", which sounds extremely morbid, but (especially in his time) is something we unfortunately do need to consider and contemplate. Not only for ourselves, but our entire families. Someone needs to be able to guide the family through that, somehow. I don't know how Eric met that challenge, but evidently he has (and continues to) and I admire anyone who does. That's an extremely hard path to be pushed down. To share pieces of that with other people is tremendously vulnerable and, in a sense, generous. I appreciate it.
- efilife 2y ago
  If one is adopted but no different why even mention it?
  - steve_adams_86 2y ago
    I think because despite not knowing him for the first 5 years of his life, he has come to be so integral to my life and I find it profound and important. Without adding that context it does seem arbitrary and strange to mention. My relationship with him is very meaningful in that regard, so I suppose it occurred to me to mention it. Even without that bond normally formed in those early years, I'd be absolutely devastated if something happened to him.
no-exist 2y ago
Last year during summers, I lost one of the pillars of my life to Cancer, my grandfather. The loss felt as extreme disturbance, sharp pain and regret about not being there for him, not fulfilling my responsibilities. I spent months feeling like a reason for this loss. The last few days of his life were painful, at least that's what I remember my parents telling me. He called out my name the night before he left, asking me to help him, I got to know. He wanted the pain to go away, a man who never asked for anything his whole life was crying for help. What still hurts is the thought that his pain was so unbearable that he gave up. He gave up his trust in himself, his family and me. I felt responsible for that. This image imprinted in my memory for so long. Every time, I thought of him, this is what came up. After months of cursing myself, I realised that he may still be alive. Not in the reality I am having these thoughts, but in some other reality. His reality where his consciousness stays. Where he observes and not necessarily me. And that's the reality he is alive in. I found solace in the realisation that people never die. If we consider all possible realities generated each moment based on the decisions made, then there'll be at least one reality where he stays alive. We extend this logic and infer that at each moment out of all the possibilities, at least in one the man stays alive. This even though not proven, gives a sense of relief and happiness. It is similar to blind faith, but the one that makes the most sense to me. And I am happy for my grandfather, that he's living his life, whichever reality he's in. I love you, dadaji. <3 And I miss you in this reality.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
blueplanet200 2y ago
Not much on Hacker News has made me cry...
- wut-wut 2y ago
  Facts
Trasmatta 2y ago
Sometimes I think that if there is a hell, we're probably in it. The amount of suffering people can experience on Earth is unfathomable sometimes. I remember the most painful moments of my life, and thinking that it's absurd that the human brain can experience this level of suffering. It doesn't make sense. If we're lucky, we can get tiny drops of joy in life, but the depths of suffering feel bottomless.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  There is joy to be found. There can be peace, in this life, even walking through the worst of times. It's found in Jesus, and the life-on-life community known as the Church. We've invented ways to turn down the volume knob on emotions. Anti-depressants, from what I've heard, achieve this (SSRIs?). My understanding, from people who've been on them, is that it turns everything into a muted greyscale. Nothing is very bad, nothing is very good, meh. But what is the human experience except the dynamic range of emotion, rightly felt? We have a perpetual recentering, and without sorrow, without grief, there can be no true joy, because they are in the contrast. Endless joy would just become normal.
  - Trasmatta 2y ago
    > It's found in Jesus, and the life-on-life community known as the Church. Do you realize how incredibly dismissive it is for people to talk about the pain they feel, and to have someone respond "nah, you just haven't found Jesus yet"? I was raised in a deeply religious household. I found no peace in Jesus. I'm happy that Christianity works for you, but this is not globally applicable advice. It's also an example of spiritual bypassing.
    - Syonyk 2y ago
      You're free to share a more general answer, should you have one. And I'm free to share the answer I've found, even as I'm working through the challenges of life. I've no idea what "spiritual bypassing" even means.
      - 2y ago
lemming 2y ago
I remember reading Eric's writing about Rebecca's illness and death at the time, and even though it was before my own daughter's birth I remember it being one of the saddest things I could remember reading. His writing is so eloquent that he really communicated the sadness and helplessness, while still managing to move on with his life. My deepest condolences.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
The longer you carry the dead with you, the longer they cannot rest. Let them go. They would not want to see you suffer in their name.
- mainecoder 2y ago
  easier said than done!
29athrowaway 2y ago
This blog is not for everyone. It is a journey into the mind of a man experiencing grief for the loss of his daughter. I wish that this man can find peace. In the end, the mortality rate of everyone alive is 100% and the best we have is celebrating being alive while it lasts.
alejohausner 2y ago
This reminds me of Victor Hugo’s famous poem, “Demain, des l’aube,” about visiting his daughter.
adamcblodgett 2y ago
A long time ago I saw Eric do a presentation at An Event Apart in Seattle on something like Designing for People in Crisis. He used his trip with his daughter Rebecca to the emergency room as the example of why it's crucial to have a section of your hospital webpage for people in crisis that is very easy to read and very easy to use in case of shock, trauma and emergency. Things like phone numbers and emergency room drop directions/maps. I was familiar with Eric's work at the time, but the vulnerability he showed in using his own tragedy as an example of why websites should be, essentially, accessible for people in various states of trauma and crisis was incredibly moving and made the case for accessible design in a personal, powerful way.
- cyrillite 2y ago
  This would be a really good read if anything like it exists somewhere. Do you have notes, more to say, a direct link to relevant work, anything?
  - adamcblodgett 2y ago
    My notes are long gone, but it looks like Eric took some here: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2016/01/25/designing-for-crisis-design-for-real-life/ https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2016/01/25/designing-for-... And it appears that this is the talk itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyZq6v3vZqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyZq6v3vZqo
    - canucker2016 2y ago
      It's amazing how dated the talk seems even though it's only 10 years old. The talk references an insurance website that requires a Java applet for uploading a file. Last time I neede It also praises Hipmunk for its ease of use. SAP bought hipmunk and shutdown the website in 2020. see https://www.concur.com/en-us/concur-hipmunk-faq https://www.concur.com/en-us/concur-hipmunk-faq update: reddit had a couple of suggestions for alternatives - https://www.reddit.com/r/Flights/comments/13uqmba/website_with_ui_like_hipmunk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Flights/comments/13uqmba/website_wi... Not sure if there's a comparable or better flight-booking site these days. The CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) website looks more modern/cleaned up. The Design For Real Life book is available to read for free on the web - see https://dfrlbook.com/ https://dfrlbook.com/
AdieuToLogic 2y ago
Live long enough, and a few things will happen; What you thought important as a child seems laughable as an adult. What you found painful never leaves you. What you lose can shackle you to what is no more, never to be resolved, by definition moments in the past which no longer exist and are forever out of reach. A decade ago, I said that I felt the weight of all the years she would never have, and that they might crush me. Over time, I have come to realize all the things she never saw or did adds to that weight. Even though it seems like it should be the same weight. Somehow, it isn’t. I was talking about all of this with a therapist a few days ago, about the time and the losses and their accumulated weight. I said, “I don’t know how to be okay when I failed my child in the most fundamental way possible.” “You didn’t fail her,” they said gently. “I know that,” I replied. “But I don’t feel it.” A decade, it turns out, does not change that. I’m not sure now that any stretch of time ever could. As @imchillyb in this thread notes: Time is distance. How many miles the train will travel from the station. Distance grants perspective and removes immediacy. Here, this can only be true if we give ourself permission to "board the train", to free oneself from the shackles of loss, of guilt, of blame, to accept that time does not destroy the memory of where we were or who we were with.
sachinaag 2y ago
My sister passed away a year ago due to Bipolar disorder. The pain my family went through her years of sickness and after her passing has been immense. My mother talks about it often, but my father almost never does. For me, I talk to my wife about it at times, but can never bring myself to talk to my parents about it.
irjustin 2y ago
In Lord of The Rings, there's a scene - King Theoden buries his son and says to Gandalf, "No parent should have to bury their child." That stuck deeply with me and eventually I decided that if I lost my child, I'd let it consume me. I have no idea how it would destroy me, but it would - wholly. A decade would pass and I'd hardly notice. I have so many videos of my daughters and I would likely do nothing but replay them simply regretting that I didn't take more. I'd be the saddest person on earth and I think that's okay.
lbres 2y ago
Having lost a child a few hours after birth I cannot imagine the pain that comes from raising a child and having them taken away. Losing my daughter was hard enough.
jeanlou 2y ago
Thank you for sharing such a deep and hurtful part of your life. I'm sorry for your loss, I cannot imagine what it feels like.
lakomen 2y ago
[dead]
rizvanovic 2y ago
I'm lucky to have avoided loss to this level for almost thirty years. I can't even imagine what it feels like. Thank you for sharing this, I'll hug my dog and partner extra hard.
noisy_boy 2y ago
When I read these stories, I occasionally try to imagine how it would feel for any of my children to be not there. I can never get too far, just the beginnings themselves are too powerful for me. It is like cracking open the doors to a horrible world and simply peeking through the tiny gap is enough pain. Unimaginable how bad it is for those for whom it is a reality of every waking moment for the rest of their lives.
- metaltyphoon 2y ago
  I have the same feelings. When I start to wonder, I instantly have teary eyes and have to stop myself from thinking about it. I just can’t. It must be hell.
edelwiess 2y ago
We may all come from different cultures and generations but this loss hits deep in the same way for everyone. When I was a kid, I remember thinking my grandparents were very odd. They’d wake up everyday at 4 am. Grandpa would walk barefoot to the temple in their neighborhood and spend the next 2 hours singing to the deities there, gently waking each one up, washing and dressing them for the day. Grandma would send hand made goodies (food) as an offering with him. They both spoke very little through their life. Mostly smiled, never heard them say anything bad about anyone, indulge in any material pleasures. Though I got affection from them, there was also always a sense of detachment from both. As I grew up I learnt that they had lost their youngest son when he was 5 to a snake bite. They carried the burden of not protecting him for a decade while spiraling into depression and only these rituals slowly started giving them some stability back. This was a full 40-50 year time span. As a 40 year old myself I marvel at their strength to live out their lives, also during times where you couldn’t even reach out to internet for support.
memhole 2y ago
I can’t imagine losing a child. I had a friend die suddenly a few years ago. He was a really influential person growing up. You go around thinking, oh I’ll catch up later or reply another time and suddenly you can’t. I’ve lost a number of people over the years, but for some reason that friend in particular has been a difficult one to get over.
dang 2y ago
Related. Others? CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapurple` - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 - Nov 2024 (184 comments) Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 - June 2014 (25 comments) In memory of Rebecca Alison Meyer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7863890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7863890 - June 2014 (69 comments) The Truth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524028 - April 2014 (1 comment) The Choice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7013747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7013747 - Jan 2014 (1 comment)
- canucker2016 2y ago
  Based on the dates of comments to the featured blog post, the "new CSS logo featuring rebeccapurple as the background color" is a related post. CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapurple` - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 - November 2024 (184 comments)
  - dang 2y ago
    Added above. Thanks!
xdc0 2y ago
I read all entries about Rebecca last night after reading this one. It is such a visceral and devastating chronicle expressed in a beautiful way, it left me deeply moved. I wonder how he felt after writing those words. I wonder if that beautiful ability to write what he feels so that many can feel a tiny glimpse of what he felt, helps to keep moving forward, even if a little bit.
canucker2016 2y ago
Flickr Photo Album for Rebecca Alison Meyer https://www.flickr.com/photos/meyerweb/albums/72157645061445641/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/meyerweb/albums/72157645061445... warning - the comments for the last page of photos - so heartbreaking.
- canucker2016 2y ago
  Remembering Rebecca Alison Meyer - https://heightsobserver.org/read/2014/06/17/remembering-rebecca-alison-meyer https://heightsobserver.org/read/2014/06/17/remembering-rebe...
  - canucker2016 2y ago
    One of Rebecca's godparents has a blog with related posts in the 2014-2015 timeframe. see https://zoethe.livejournal.com/ https://zoethe.livejournal.com/
shriek 2y ago
It never occurred to me to lookup the creator of the tool[1] that I used to use so often. It's so easy to overlook that there are actually humans with their own story (tragic or not) behind the tools that we use. I should learn to appreciate people behind the code more. And, I'm so sorry what you had to and are going through, Mr. Meyer. [1]. https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/ https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/
shocking63 2y ago
I lost my son, my firstborn, Nathan, over 30 years ago. He contracted encephalitis when he was 2 1/2 weeks old, and died when he was 2 1/2 months old. That was an experience I would not wish on the worst person in the world. That feeling of helplessness, and the overwhelming desire to swap places, so he would no longer suffer. My then-wife & I went on to have another child, who is one of my best friends.
cambaceres 2y ago
I have a daughter who is now five years old. Until recently, I would have certainly killed myself if she had died. Without hesitation, I would have run to the nearest bridge and jumped. Continuing without her, bearing the constant grief, would have been completely pointless. I felt this way even after my twins, her siblings, were born. My feelings for them during their first 18 months or so were nothing compared to those for her. I knew that losing one of them would devastate me, but at least I would still have had my oldest daughter, and that's what really mattered deep down. It's only recently, in the past six months or so, that I feel it would somehow be possible to live on even if something happened to my eldest. The reason for this is certainly that I finally love the little ones just as much as her. I don't know if the author had other children besides the daughter he lost. If not, then I wonder where he found the strength or even reason to move on.
- canucker2016 2y ago
  He has an older daughter and a younger son (in relation to Rebecca, before she passed). He mentions in one of the blog posts after Rebecca's death that he and his partner try to be there, in the moment, for their two kids, though it may be difficult emotionally/mentally - like when his son entered kindergarten at the same school as Rebecca had done just a few years earlier.
dreamcompiler 2y ago
Related: The “Hidden” Purple Memorial in Your Web Browser https://medium.com/@valgaze/the-hidden-purple-memorial-in-your-web-browser-7d84813bb416 https://medium.com/@valgaze/the-hidden-purple-memorial-in-yo...
charles_f 2y ago
Once in a while I contemplate my own, and my children's mortality. On these occasions I tend to be more present with them, be more patient, and express my love. It is heartbreaking to realize that you're one person breaking too late, one virus, one genetic lottery bad luck away from tragedy. That's also essential to remember that we're sitting on a very unstable equilibrium. The default state of things is broken and dead, and, at the risk of sounding cliché, every minute of "normal" life is something to be grateful for. We're not exposed to death enough, and people sharing their experiences this way are helping us remember it's still there, in a way that helps empathize and understand. So, thanks.

548 points by ZeWaka 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

afavour 2y ago

There isn’t really anything to say.

hn666 2y ago

This is one of those moments where, thanks to the internet, you catch a glimpse of another persons world. It gives some perspective.

sho_hn 2y ago
I'm worried this will come across as cavalier and non-serious, but your comment reminded me a lot of ... yes, a comedy skit: Bo Burnham's White Woman's Instagram, in which he ostensibly makes fun of clichéd social media content, only to completely whip you about by briefly interrupting the cheese with the character's heartfelt post about living with her mother's death, perhaps the reason she needs the escapism of her online identity. And after it all you realize he told her entire life story in a series of comedy vignettes. I'm not ashamed to say I watched it in the right sort of mood and it moved me to tears (having lost a parent).
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  The entire Inside special is so deeply moving AND hilarious. Welcome to the Internet is more applicable now than ever That Funny Feeling is like a millennial version of We Didn't Start the Fire (and I have to be careful when I listen to it, because "that funny feeling" is difficult to cope with some times) All Eyes on Me shook me to the core when I first heard it
chrisfosterelli 2y ago
I'm sometimes stressed about something stupid and come here out of muscle memory; just trying to fill my brain with another thing for at least a few minutes. Every now and again there's a post like this one that reminds me the thing I was trying to avoid is actually a problem someone else might be happy to trade with me. It usually makes me turn back toward my own problems with a little more gratitude.
Syonyk 2y ago
And this is why I hate AI so strongly (I... debated several less charitable wordings of this opening). I read, because I want to know what people think. What people thought, decades, centuries ago. Writing, and reading, are about the only mechanism we know to really get inside someone else's brain. To see how, and what, they think, in what they've chosen to communicate. I used to write more for a technical audience - I've got a blog, it's got 9 years of content, a lot of words. Lately, I've been writing more for myself, but also expecting that, at some point, I'll share some of this with other people. I've read things I wrote months back, and I'd forgotten a lot of what I put in there. It's a time machine, to see myself as I was last summer. Or, a time machine, to understand someone's thinking in the early 1900s. Or older. We have writings that are thousands of years old. The grief of loss is something that's as old as human history, and there's no shortage of older writings on the matter - Psalms has no shortage of things to say. I don't want to read "Machine, please generate me a chunk of text as would be written by someone who lost their daughter ten years ago, when they were turning six." There's no human behind it. I'm sure you'd get something that pulled the proper strings, but it would be empty. It would be hollow. Because there is no human behind it, with their own sufferings, dreams, hopes, grief. I'm sure it would be polished and bland and SEO optimized, but it wouldn't be real. But, hey, maybe someone could make a buck off generating it!
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Just wait until AI can feel pain- you know it will happen eventually when they have physical sensors and enough compute.
- djeastm 2y ago
  You're right. The sad thing to me is there's not going to be much of a way to tell if the text we're reading, the picture we're looking at, or the person we're talking to even IS a real person unless they're physically in front of us. It's a huge loss for interpersonal connectivity at a distance
  - foxglacier 2y ago
    I hear this a lot, but why is it a problem? For most people I encounter ephemerally online, as long as I can't tell the difference, it doesn't matter. If you were an AI, I wouldn't mind. I usually talk to such people to try to understand ideas better and if an AI could provide that, then no problem. If you want some sort of real-world interaction with them, there's a good chance that'll never happen with a real person either. I've had many online friends who I never met but I still felt like I knew them. The AI just has to be good enough never to burst the bubble. Then there's the opposite problem that we already have to deal with - real people who are effectively AI and not capable of forming a mutual relationship with you, such as narcissists, people with dementia, and celebrities. People can spend years of their lives having a relationship where the other person only really exists in their own mind. Actually it's quite normal to build an internal imaginary model of the people we know which might not actually be correct.

Thoreandan 2y ago

Context: This is remembering his daughter, Rebecca. (2008-2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_A._Meyer#:~:text=In%202014,memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_A._Meyer#:~:text=In%20201...

ZeWaka 2y ago
I came across the new CSS logo and thought the color looked about right (it's rebeccapurple), and ended up reading Eric's blog as a result.
- canucker2016 2y ago
  Eric Meyer's blog post about why it should be called 'rebeccapurple' - see https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/ https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/19/rebeccapurple/
  - knome 2y ago
    >For almost twelve hours, she was six This is an incredibly poetic, heartbreaking statement.
    - wut-wut 2y ago
      Devastating and beautiful
    - canucker2016 2y ago
      a late tl;dr (more background for the above quote): "...A couple of weeks before she died, Rebecca informed us that she was about to be a big girl of six years old, and Becca was a baby name. Once she turned six, she wanted everyone (not just me) to call her Rebecca, not Becca."
canucker2016 2y ago
Eric Meyer's blog posts about his daughter Rebecca - see https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca/?order=asc https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...

lemonberry 2y ago

I was a young (19/20) bartender in the mid to late 90s. One afternoon I worked a private event. There was a couple there that had been staring at me. Eventually they came over and apologized. They said I looked like their son and that he'd be about my age that time. I forget how old he was when he passed. But I'll never forget the pain their faces. Some good friends lost their son at 10 months old. He'd be 11 this year. It changed both of them. They've done amazing things since then, but you can see the weight on their faces. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.

hinkley 2y ago
I lost a dog at 3 and a half years almost to the day to a congenital defect, that we didn’t know about until he was already very sick. I’m a guy who will cross a street to meet someone’s dog. For over a year afterward I would cross the street to avoid walking past the same breed and color of dog. The way people avoid pitbulls. And that was just a dog. I can’t even imagine what happens when your child dies, especially if your job or social circle involves them. The author said he has a therapist, but I wonder if he’s had one the whole time or if he failed to process at the time and is now paying for letting it sink into his bones.
- lemonberry 2y ago
  He's been writing about Rebecca and his family's journey since pretty early in her diagnosis if I remember correctly. I remember when he posted about her passing too. Grief comes in waves. Long after you think the storm has passed. We all process it differently. A 16th birthday is pretty big milestone in the states. I imagine that can be a magnifying glass for grief and pain. I know my friends feel the weight of their son's birthday and the date of his passing quite heavily. I lost my mom 16 years ago. To this day something can remind of her and it's like time stops. It's dizzying as the world around me moves on. Then I catch up again until the next wave.
- mynameishere 2y ago
  [flagged]

conductr 2y ago

Reading this, sitting next to my 6 year old son, my ears tear up and I’m reminded to cherish every moment. Truly saddened by these kinds of stories and just how quickly it could happen to any of us.

tomatodevice 2y ago
Just thinking about it gives me very strong anxiety. I had to sit next to my daughter, she's sleeping and breathing.

dbtc 2y ago

Perhaps it is no consolation at all, but grief is beautiful when expressed with grace like this. Also, I really like the design of this site.

efilife 2y ago
I think it's terrible. I don't see a single positive thing about it. Even if shit is expressed in a graceful way, it's still shit. No grief would be beautiful

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

This is when I wish humans were not simulation machines. So much pain caused by that damn brain of ours.

bitwize 2y ago

I was just thinking today of my friend Donny Miceli, who died of childhood leukemia at the age of 7. I wondered what it would be like to be Donny's mom or dad. There would be sadness of course, and the devastating feeling that something was missing that should be there. Would there be guilt? How could they carry on, knowing that there was a high school graduation, wedding, etc. that they should have attended but weren't? I don't recall if Donny had siblings but if he did, how would they have felt growing up without him?

larsiusprime 2y ago

I know how you feel. Tomorrow is my late son's ninth birthday.

lemonberry 2y ago
So sorry for your loss.
nyczomg 2y ago
My twins just turned 10 yesterday. But they were born as part of a triplet pregnancy... Life is just brutal, and I don't know if there is any solace in it being so brutal to so many other people. But I hope you're ok.
edelwiess 2y ago
So sorry

quanto 2y ago

From a Japanese song Kurumi If only time could wash everything away, 時間が何もかも洗い連れ去ってくれれば a life would be truly easy 生きる事は実に容易い

lijok 2y ago

Life’s greatest, least rewarding challenge; continuing to live when a loved one cannot.

rufus_foreman 2y ago
To put that in context, when my grandparents were born, a typical family had around four children, and one in four children did not live to the age of five. It is sort of crazy to think of what it would be like to grow up in that world.
- croissants 2y ago
  I think a modern USA 1 year old has about a 99.97% chance of making it to adulthood. That means that if a modern USA adult loses a young child, there's a decent chance they don't know anybody who has had that experience. The ancient (and even, as you point out, very slightly pre-modern) world had a lot of "infrastructure" in place to deal with this, there were rituals and ceremonies and familiar people who knew what you were going through, and most of that is gone now. It is indeed an enormous change.
  - Syonyk 2y ago
    It's not gone. It's just less common, and, at least in my experience, hidden inside churches where people are open about this sort of thing, and where, in a lot of them, miscarriages are treated as much the same thing, to be grieved over, as loss. Sometimes in private, but it's better when it's shared, because others have gone through the same thing, suffering silently. But you're right, it's far harder to go through an experience alone, and loss of a child has certainly become far, far less common than it used to be. At least, if you limit it to the born. In the US, in 2023, 1 in 3 never made it to birth.
- blisterpeanuts 2y ago
  A few years ago I read of a pioneer woman in the Dakota region in the late 19th Century who had fifteen children, of whom 9 survived to adulthood. I can't begin to imagine the pain, and the fortitude needed to survive so much tragedy. As a parent, I can't think of anything worse than to lose one's child.

deadbabe 2y ago

People say time heals all wounds but sometimes there’s simply not enough time left to heal certain wounds.

imchillyb 2y ago
Time cannot heal. Time is a tumbler, our feelings the rocks within. Feelings begin as jagged, cutting, things. Time smooths and polishes the the edges, highlights unseen aspects. Time gives us perspective and distance. No wound is ever fully healed. There remain scars and imperfections small pieces of us that never return to 'normal' again. Time is distance. How many miles the train will travel from the station. Distance grants perspective and removes immediacy. Time can't heal though. Time doesn't exist. We made it up in order to make more sense of our universe. There is only now.
neogodless 2y ago
I started watching Paradise, and a grieving parent said "time just keeps taking me further away from when I was with them."
- deadbabe 2y ago
  I would just tell them it’s also taking them closer to when they’ll be reunited.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

enobrev 2y ago

I have such a deep appreciation for Eric sharing his grief and journey through it. I only know who Eric is because of his amazing contributions to nerdy things I've thought about and appreciated for more than half my life. But his writing about of his journey with his daughter had changed me long before I was a father. And now that I am, I can barely make it through reading this. Outside of the long term affects his family has had on my life, he reminds me that we used to write publicly, sometimes anonymously, for one another outside of social enclaves and directly affect one another without expectations of a like or subscribe or whatever makes the thing go brrrr.

jedimastert 2y ago

Well this was an unexpectedly and horrendously heartbreaking story to find.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

The government should provide a fund for people who have experienced child loss so they never have to work again.

citizenpaul 2y ago
Oh you sweet innocent summer child. Never change you glorious sunray.
dzink 2y ago
That would create a horrible perverse incentive to kill children for money.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Or fake their death, and lavish attention (and cash) on them until a couple of decades later the government notices they exist, it would be an interesting demographic.
kolanos 2y ago
Work might be the only distraction they have.

rsoto2 2y ago

I don't have any kids, but I think about those kids in Gaza a lot. Maybe it's cause it felt like I was so helpless. I called offices. every day. The news media rejects our grief. The actual government rejects our grief and pays into the depravity. If I feel like this what does one of those parents that survived feel?

steve_adams_86 2y ago

This is deeply moving. I have 3 kids. One is adopted, but he is no different from the others. If anything happened to any of them, I sincerely can't imagine how I'd carry on. I know I would, but I don't know what it would look like. I can't imagine that world because I so badly don't want it. Sometimes I force myself to imagine myself getting a terminal illness or injury, and think of how I'd handle that, how I need to live as though that could happen at any moment, and how important it is that I do that for my family. That's not so difficult. But when I come to the sort of mental simulation of my kids dying, I'm made sorely aware of how unprepared I'll be. As you can't easily prepare for their arrival, I don't think you can prepare for their departure. Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations something like "When you kiss your child, whisper to yourself: 'Tomorrow you may be dead.'", which sounds extremely morbid, but (especially in his time) is something we unfortunately do need to consider and contemplate. Not only for ourselves, but our entire families. Someone needs to be able to guide the family through that, somehow. I don't know how Eric met that challenge, but evidently he has (and continues to) and I admire anyone who does. That's an extremely hard path to be pushed down. To share pieces of that with other people is tremendously vulnerable and, in a sense, generous. I appreciate it.

efilife 2y ago
If one is adopted but no different why even mention it?
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  I think because despite not knowing him for the first 5 years of his life, he has come to be so integral to my life and I find it profound and important. Without adding that context it does seem arbitrary and strange to mention. My relationship with him is very meaningful in that regard, so I suppose it occurred to me to mention it. Even without that bond normally formed in those early years, I'd be absolutely devastated if something happened to him.

no-exist 2y ago

Last year during summers, I lost one of the pillars of my life to Cancer, my grandfather. The loss felt as extreme disturbance, sharp pain and regret about not being there for him, not fulfilling my responsibilities. I spent months feeling like a reason for this loss. The last few days of his life were painful, at least that's what I remember my parents telling me. He called out my name the night before he left, asking me to help him, I got to know. He wanted the pain to go away, a man who never asked for anything his whole life was crying for help. What still hurts is the thought that his pain was so unbearable that he gave up. He gave up his trust in himself, his family and me. I felt responsible for that. This image imprinted in my memory for so long. Every time, I thought of him, this is what came up. After months of cursing myself, I realised that he may still be alive. Not in the reality I am having these thoughts, but in some other reality. His reality where his consciousness stays. Where he observes and not necessarily me. And that's the reality he is alive in. I found solace in the realisation that people never die. If we consider all possible realities generated each moment based on the decisions made, then there'll be at least one reality where he stays alive. We extend this logic and infer that at each moment out of all the possibilities, at least in one the man stays alive. This even though not proven, gives a sense of relief and happiness. It is similar to blind faith, but the one that makes the most sense to me. And I am happy for my grandfather, that he's living his life, whichever reality he's in. I love you, dadaji. <3 And I miss you in this reality.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

blueplanet200 2y ago

Not much on Hacker News has made me cry...

wut-wut 2y ago
Facts

Trasmatta 2y ago

Sometimes I think that if there is a hell, we're probably in it. The amount of suffering people can experience on Earth is unfathomable sometimes. I remember the most painful moments of my life, and thinking that it's absurd that the human brain can experience this level of suffering. It doesn't make sense. If we're lucky, we can get tiny drops of joy in life, but the depths of suffering feel bottomless.

Syonyk 2y ago
There is joy to be found. There can be peace, in this life, even walking through the worst of times. It's found in Jesus, and the life-on-life community known as the Church. We've invented ways to turn down the volume knob on emotions. Anti-depressants, from what I've heard, achieve this (SSRIs?). My understanding, from people who've been on them, is that it turns everything into a muted greyscale. Nothing is very bad, nothing is very good, meh. But what is the human experience except the dynamic range of emotion, rightly felt? We have a perpetual recentering, and without sorrow, without grief, there can be no true joy, because they are in the contrast. Endless joy would just become normal.
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  > It's found in Jesus, and the life-on-life community known as the Church. Do you realize how incredibly dismissive it is for people to talk about the pain they feel, and to have someone respond "nah, you just haven't found Jesus yet"? I was raised in a deeply religious household. I found no peace in Jesus. I'm happy that Christianity works for you, but this is not globally applicable advice. It's also an example of spiritual bypassing.
  - Syonyk 2y ago
    You're free to share a more general answer, should you have one. And I'm free to share the answer I've found, even as I'm working through the challenges of life. I've no idea what "spiritual bypassing" even means.
    - 2y ago

lemming 2y ago

I remember reading Eric's writing about Rebecca's illness and death at the time, and even though it was before my own daughter's birth I remember it being one of the saddest things I could remember reading. His writing is so eloquent that he really communicated the sadness and helplessness, while still managing to move on with his life. My deepest condolences.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

The longer you carry the dead with you, the longer they cannot rest. Let them go. They would not want to see you suffer in their name.

mainecoder 2y ago
easier said than done!

29athrowaway 2y ago

This blog is not for everyone. It is a journey into the mind of a man experiencing grief for the loss of his daughter. I wish that this man can find peace. In the end, the mortality rate of everyone alive is 100% and the best we have is celebrating being alive while it lasts.

alejohausner 2y ago

This reminds me of Victor Hugo’s famous poem, “Demain, des l’aube,” about visiting his daughter.

adamcblodgett 2y ago

A long time ago I saw Eric do a presentation at An Event Apart in Seattle on something like Designing for People in Crisis. He used his trip with his daughter Rebecca to the emergency room as the example of why it's crucial to have a section of your hospital webpage for people in crisis that is very easy to read and very easy to use in case of shock, trauma and emergency. Things like phone numbers and emergency room drop directions/maps. I was familiar with Eric's work at the time, but the vulnerability he showed in using his own tragedy as an example of why websites should be, essentially, accessible for people in various states of trauma and crisis was incredibly moving and made the case for accessible design in a personal, powerful way.

cyrillite 2y ago
This would be a really good read if anything like it exists somewhere. Do you have notes, more to say, a direct link to relevant work, anything?
- adamcblodgett 2y ago
  My notes are long gone, but it looks like Eric took some here: https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2016/01/25/designing-for-crisis-design-for-real-life/ https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2016/01/25/designing-for-... And it appears that this is the talk itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyZq6v3vZqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyZq6v3vZqo
  - canucker2016 2y ago
    It's amazing how dated the talk seems even though it's only 10 years old. The talk references an insurance website that requires a Java applet for uploading a file. Last time I neede It also praises Hipmunk for its ease of use. SAP bought hipmunk and shutdown the website in 2020. see https://www.concur.com/en-us/concur-hipmunk-faq https://www.concur.com/en-us/concur-hipmunk-faq update: reddit had a couple of suggestions for alternatives - https://www.reddit.com/r/Flights/comments/13uqmba/website_with_ui_like_hipmunk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Flights/comments/13uqmba/website_wi... Not sure if there's a comparable or better flight-booking site these days. The CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) website looks more modern/cleaned up. The Design For Real Life book is available to read for free on the web - see https://dfrlbook.com/ https://dfrlbook.com/

AdieuToLogic 2y ago

Live long enough, and a few things will happen; What you thought important as a child seems laughable as an adult. What you found painful never leaves you. What you lose can shackle you to what is no more, never to be resolved, by definition moments in the past which no longer exist and are forever out of reach. A decade ago, I said that I felt the weight of all the years she would never have, and that they might crush me. Over time, I have come to realize all the things she never saw or did adds to that weight. Even though it seems like it should be the same weight. Somehow, it isn’t. I was talking about all of this with a therapist a few days ago, about the time and the losses and their accumulated weight. I said, “I don’t know how to be okay when I failed my child in the most fundamental way possible.” “You didn’t fail her,” they said gently. “I know that,” I replied. “But I don’t feel it.” A decade, it turns out, does not change that. I’m not sure now that any stretch of time ever could. As @imchillyb in this thread notes: Time is distance. How many miles the train will travel from the station. Distance grants perspective and removes immediacy. Here, this can only be true if we give ourself permission to "board the train", to free oneself from the shackles of loss, of guilt, of blame, to accept that time does not destroy the memory of where we were or who we were with.

sachinaag 2y ago

My sister passed away a year ago due to Bipolar disorder. The pain my family went through her years of sickness and after her passing has been immense. My mother talks about it often, but my father almost never does. For me, I talk to my wife about it at times, but can never bring myself to talk to my parents about it.

irjustin 2y ago

In Lord of The Rings, there's a scene - King Theoden buries his son and says to Gandalf, "No parent should have to bury their child." That stuck deeply with me and eventually I decided that if I lost my child, I'd let it consume me. I have no idea how it would destroy me, but it would - wholly. A decade would pass and I'd hardly notice. I have so many videos of my daughters and I would likely do nothing but replay them simply regretting that I didn't take more. I'd be the saddest person on earth and I think that's okay.

lbres 2y ago

Having lost a child a few hours after birth I cannot imagine the pain that comes from raising a child and having them taken away. Losing my daughter was hard enough.

jeanlou 2y ago

Thank you for sharing such a deep and hurtful part of your life. I'm sorry for your loss, I cannot imagine what it feels like.

lakomen 2y ago

[dead]

rizvanovic 2y ago

I'm lucky to have avoided loss to this level for almost thirty years. I can't even imagine what it feels like. Thank you for sharing this, I'll hug my dog and partner extra hard.

noisy_boy 2y ago

When I read these stories, I occasionally try to imagine how it would feel for any of my children to be not there. I can never get too far, just the beginnings themselves are too powerful for me. It is like cracking open the doors to a horrible world and simply peeking through the tiny gap is enough pain. Unimaginable how bad it is for those for whom it is a reality of every waking moment for the rest of their lives.

metaltyphoon 2y ago
I have the same feelings. When I start to wonder, I instantly have teary eyes and have to stop myself from thinking about it. I just can’t. It must be hell.

edelwiess 2y ago

We may all come from different cultures and generations but this loss hits deep in the same way for everyone. When I was a kid, I remember thinking my grandparents were very odd. They’d wake up everyday at 4 am. Grandpa would walk barefoot to the temple in their neighborhood and spend the next 2 hours singing to the deities there, gently waking each one up, washing and dressing them for the day. Grandma would send hand made goodies (food) as an offering with him. They both spoke very little through their life. Mostly smiled, never heard them say anything bad about anyone, indulge in any material pleasures. Though I got affection from them, there was also always a sense of detachment from both. As I grew up I learnt that they had lost their youngest son when he was 5 to a snake bite. They carried the burden of not protecting him for a decade while spiraling into depression and only these rituals slowly started giving them some stability back. This was a full 40-50 year time span. As a 40 year old myself I marvel at their strength to live out their lives, also during times where you couldn’t even reach out to internet for support.

memhole 2y ago

I can’t imagine losing a child. I had a friend die suddenly a few years ago. He was a really influential person growing up. You go around thinking, oh I’ll catch up later or reply another time and suddenly you can’t. I’ve lost a number of people over the years, but for some reason that friend in particular has been a difficult one to get over.

dang 2y ago

Related. Others? CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapurple` - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 - Nov 2024 (184 comments) Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 - June 2014 (25 comments) In memory of Rebecca Alison Meyer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7863890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7863890 - June 2014 (69 comments) The Truth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524028 - April 2014 (1 comment) The Choice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7013747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7013747 - Jan 2014 (1 comment)

canucker2016 2y ago
Based on the dates of comments to the featured blog post, the "new CSS logo featuring rebeccapurple as the background color" is a related post. CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapurple` - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42161919 - November 2024 (184 comments)
- dang 2y ago
  Added above. Thanks!

xdc0 2y ago

I read all entries about Rebecca last night after reading this one. It is such a visceral and devastating chronicle expressed in a beautiful way, it left me deeply moved. I wonder how he felt after writing those words. I wonder if that beautiful ability to write what he feels so that many can feel a tiny glimpse of what he felt, helps to keep moving forward, even if a little bit.

canucker2016 2y ago

Flickr Photo Album for Rebecca Alison Meyer https://www.flickr.com/photos/meyerweb/albums/72157645061445641/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/meyerweb/albums/72157645061445... warning - the comments for the last page of photos - so heartbreaking.

canucker2016 2y ago
Remembering Rebecca Alison Meyer - https://heightsobserver.org/read/2014/06/17/remembering-rebecca-alison-meyer https://heightsobserver.org/read/2014/06/17/remembering-rebe...
- canucker2016 2y ago
  One of Rebecca's godparents has a blog with related posts in the 2014-2015 timeframe. see https://zoethe.livejournal.com/ https://zoethe.livejournal.com/

shriek 2y ago

It never occurred to me to lookup the creator of the tool[1] that I used to use so often. It's so easy to overlook that there are actually humans with their own story (tragic or not) behind the tools that we use. I should learn to appreciate people behind the code more. And, I'm so sorry what you had to and are going through, Mr. Meyer. [1]. https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/ https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/

shocking63 2y ago

I lost my son, my firstborn, Nathan, over 30 years ago. He contracted encephalitis when he was 2 1/2 weeks old, and died when he was 2 1/2 months old. That was an experience I would not wish on the worst person in the world. That feeling of helplessness, and the overwhelming desire to swap places, so he would no longer suffer. My then-wife & I went on to have another child, who is one of my best friends.

cambaceres 2y ago

I have a daughter who is now five years old. Until recently, I would have certainly killed myself if she had died. Without hesitation, I would have run to the nearest bridge and jumped. Continuing without her, bearing the constant grief, would have been completely pointless. I felt this way even after my twins, her siblings, were born. My feelings for them during their first 18 months or so were nothing compared to those for her. I knew that losing one of them would devastate me, but at least I would still have had my oldest daughter, and that's what really mattered deep down. It's only recently, in the past six months or so, that I feel it would somehow be possible to live on even if something happened to my eldest. The reason for this is certainly that I finally love the little ones just as much as her. I don't know if the author had other children besides the daughter he lost. If not, then I wonder where he found the strength or even reason to move on.

canucker2016 2y ago
He has an older daughter and a younger son (in relation to Rebecca, before she passed). He mentions in one of the blog posts after Rebecca's death that he and his partner try to be there, in the moment, for their two kids, though it may be difficult emotionally/mentally - like when his son entered kindergarten at the same school as Rebecca had done just a few years earlier.

dreamcompiler 2y ago

Related: The “Hidden” Purple Memorial in Your Web Browser https://medium.com/@valgaze/the-hidden-purple-memorial-in-your-web-browser-7d84813bb416 https://medium.com/@valgaze/the-hidden-purple-memorial-in-yo...

charles_f 2y ago

Once in a while I contemplate my own, and my children's mortality. On these occasions I tend to be more present with them, be more patient, and express my love. It is heartbreaking to realize that you're one person breaking too late, one virus, one genetic lottery bad luck away from tragedy. That's also essential to remember that we're sitting on a very unstable equilibrium. The default state of things is broken and dead, and, at the risk of sounding cliché, every minute of "normal" life is something to be grateful for. We're not exposed to death enough, and people sharing their experiences this way are helping us remember it's still there, in a way that helps empathize and understand. So, thanks.