8 ms·

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

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]
  - Santosh83 2y ago
    Don't you think he doesn't know that? Pro-tip for you: when someone mentions the pain of losing their companion, do not give them pro-tips.
    - ignoramous 2y ago
      tbf to GP, in some cultures dogs are abhorred.
  - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
    > Life pro-tip: In your day-to-day human encounters, if someone mentions the pain of losing a child, do not bring up your dead dog. Witnessing a cherished part of your life die, while you do not and can do nothing about it, is a uniquely powerless experience. Because, while you continue to live, a part of you dies. If a person can empathize with this experience in a genuine way, what matter is it their loss?
  - phito 2y ago
    How about we don't gatekeep or make a contest out of suffering, which is a subjective experience?
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    I think this scolding behaviour is really out of place. The guy is saying "a much lesser loss caused me great hurt; I sympathize with your much greater loss and the hurt you must feel". People do this all the time normally, and secondarily humans have imprecisely expressed feelings all the time and the spirit has usually undone any harm that the worst interpretation of the words could do. But at some point in the early 2010s this scolding behaviour started getting really popular. I wonder if some sociologist has traced its source. It's obviously nonsensical behaviour to me. If someone did that in front of me I'd probably be compelled to say "Dude, now is not the time for this" or something like that but I can't imagine any person in my group behaving that way.
    - lazyasciiart 2y ago
- AdieuToLogic 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. Depending on the person and/or situation, losing a dog can rival the pain of any other loss. Especially if the bond between person and dog is reinforced through daily activities. I guess what I'm saying here is loss is loss. Some losses may be painful longer than others, for sure, but the pain of losing a being you love is universal. A friend of mine described the pain of this type of loss thusly; Think of the pain like a ball bouncing around in a box, with a button at center-bottom which activates pain every time it is touched by the ball. At first, the ball is almost the same size as the box and hits the button constantly. Over time, the ball shrinks but the size of the box and the button remain the same. All that changes is how often the button is hit. HTH
  - hinkley 2y ago
    I don’t want to diminish anyone else’s experience but my neutered dog did not miss out on growing up and starting a life of his own. Pursuing a career, falling in love, having a child. At three a dog has had many of the milestones he will have in life. What I miss is the time I and my circle lost with him. Not the experiences he didn’t get to have, or the new people he might have brought into the world, and their experiences. I would have shown him more of the same life in minor variations, not things I wouldn’t even dream of doing myself.
    - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
      I did not interpret your post as diminishing anyone. The main point I wanted to share is that loss has a commonality in it always precedes pain and must be dealt with similarly. Comparing its form was never my intent nor do I hold there is any fundamental difference between them. That's just my opinion though.
  - fipar 2y ago
    > Depending on the person and/or situation, losing a dog can rival the pain of any other loss. Especially if the bond between person and dog is reinforced through daily activities. I guess what I'm saying here is loss is loss. Some losses may be painful longer than others, for sure, but the pain of losing a being you love is universal. This is beautifully illustrated by this line from Leonard Cohen's "Everybody knows": "Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died" As someone who has lost both a parent and a dog, I can relate completely to this.
- ignoramous 2y ago
  It was relatively common for parents to lose children (every second child was expected to die before 5y) but even then, with all that death around them, the tragedy remained as great as today. Back then, most did look to their God for solace, though: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1goyaco/when_child_mortality_was_very_high_how_did_people/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1goyaco/when... In the present, orthodox practitioners of Abrahamic religions, in particular, may stoically overcome such profound grief by attributing it to divine will.
  - Archelaos 2y ago
    You sound like one of the friends of Job.
    - Syonyk 2y ago
      How so? They're neither questioning God's justice, nor asserting that the loss of children must be due to sin/unrighteousness/etc.
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    That reminds me the story of Mozart's parents. Their first 3 children died less than 1 year old. I can't imagine the despair. Out of 7 children, only 2 survived infancy.
- red_admiral 2y ago
  > And that was just a dog. I forget which book I read this in, but the author in their autobiography described their "real man" father as someone who they'd only seen cry three times in his life. When his wife died, he was all stoic about it and didn't show any upset in public. But when his favorite dog died, he broke down crying. Many people who don't understand how upset one can get over a dog, have never had one. I have a photo of our first family dog and it still makes me upset if I look at it for too long.
  - nly 2y ago
    Well humans are aware of their own mortality and can talk about it with one another. Your man can find peace because he would know his wifes outlook on life and her wishes We are entirely responsible for the health and welfare of domestic dogs, like young children.
  - darkwater 2y ago
    I will be downvoted but that ("real man", no crying for the wife passing away...) tells more about subtle "machismo" and patriarchy that about how much people can care about dogs.
    - luluthefirst 2y ago
      Grief is complex and deeply personal, and is not about fitting someone else's expectations... Losing a dog hits different because their presence is so genuine and uncomplicated. They provide unconditional comfort. That connection is usually way less complicated than the ones with have with people.
      - darkwater 2y ago
        Let's add conformity to (wrong? IMO totally) social/religious rules like "you cannot divorce". Because if your spouse passes away, either young or when it was their time so to speak, and you aren't genuinely sad, well, why were you two still together? If you spent a happy life together with someone, you should be sad even if they passed away serenely, because hey, it was the person with whom you shared and lived almost everything. If instead you were still together but actually secretly hating each other, or just because "it was always like that", well, the marriage should have not lasted til that point. If it did, it was most probably due to social rules to follow no matter what and/or patriarchy. And if it was a young person, well, even more! A young loss should generate even more grief. And the "real man" part...well, I think it explains itself. I understand this can come off as simplifying too much but I believe it boils down to those reasons in the vast majority of cases. So, there can be exceptions of course but they are a minority.
- kelnos 2y ago
  We had a wonderful, affectionate, snuggly cat who also had a congenital defect. She only made it to a year and seven months old (having adopted her at around 8 weeks old). We lost her almost two and a half years ago, and I still cry over her memory once every couple weeks, and think about her multiple times a day. I don't have children, but if I ever do, I am worried that my experience with this wonderful little cat will turn me into an anxious, unhealthily-overprotective mess when it comes to any children I might have.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    When you hit college age is often when your odds of experiencing the first death in your family spikes up. Grandparent, great grandparent, oldest aunt. It happened to a number of friends of friends and acquaintances. Some people were a complete mess and others were more resilient. The pattern I noticed was the people who had lost a pet were more equipped to deal with the loss of a human. The worst hit people never even had pets. Maybe a coincidence, but I suspect not. I don’t think it hurts any less, but you know better what needs to be done to move through it instead of getting stuck. (Sorry for your loss)
    - kelnos 2y ago
      My mother died during my second year of college. My father died when I was in my 30s. My mother's parents died before I was born, and my father's had both died by the time I was 10 or so. We had cats when I was a kid, and two of them died while I was in my early/mid teens. They were "mom's cats", and at the time I didn't understand why it affected her so deeply. It made me sad, to be sure (both cats had been around my entire life up to that point), but I didn't get it. Not until I lost my own cat, anyway. In a strange way, a way that I sometimes feel bad about, losing my cat hit me harder than losing my parents. > (Sorry for your loss) Thank you!
kshahkshah 2y ago
My best friend's son died at the hands of a negligent daycare, he escaped his crib, knocked a stroller over on to himself which wasn't supposed to be there, and suffocated to death. My friend called me that night to tell me. It's been 5 years and I think about it every single day. Frankly it has turned me from a person with zero anxiety to one with a good deal. I've checked on my younger daughter's breathing every single night since then. She's 7 years old and I still can't stop myself from checking on her. My friend is one of the good-est people I know. A genuinely good person. Why him? And if him, certainly why not me?
- sho_hn 2y ago
  I've had nothing like this happen, but somehow I get this--I was spooked by anecdotes about SIDS before having kids. When we had our daughter, and she was sleeping in her crib in our room, the first couple of months I'd basically wake up when she wasn't making noise, would then in dazed half-sleep wait for her to make any noise to confirm she was still alive (or check, sometimes), and could only then fall back asleep again. This only really quieted down one year in, when the statistical risk goes down. I guess it's fairly easy to get hypersensitized to dangers like this.
- AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  > My best friend's son died ... It's been 5 years and I think about it every single day. Sometimes it helps to contemplate the nature of remote possibilities. Most times, it does not. They exist, but cannot be predicted nor controlled. Hopefully, the following help quell anxiety resulting from considering all which could happen. God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.[0] Or: Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us.[0] Or: If there's a remedy when trouble strikes, What reason is there for dejection? And if there is no help for it, What use is there in being glum?[0] HTH 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
  - 2y ago
llm_trw 2y ago
Just remember than not a century ago the average family would bury half their kids.
- yard2010 2y ago
  You never look on the same river because each time you look there's different water flowing.
- TomK32 2y ago
  and even 100 years ago was so much better than 200 years ago https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al... Let's hope the impact of RFK Jr on US health and vaccination of children won't be too big.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Yes, exactly my thought. The graveyard in my dad's hometown has a huge section just for small kids, because life in the country was tough, and that was normal.
  - arrowsmith 2y ago
    I remember once walking through a graveyard and seeing three names on a single headstone - three children, siblings who had all died on the same day. Below their names was a simple caption: "All gone". I have no idea what the story is or how those children died, but I think about that headstone all the time, especially now I have a child of my own. So much grief, pain and tragedy conveyed so succinctly. I'm clenching my gut right now just thinking about it as I type.
    - macintux 2y ago
      Tangential, and I am reluctant to share this in an important thread about loss and grief, but an occasional hobby of mine is finding an interesting headstone during my travels and researching the story. - https://opposite-lock.com/topic/28187/memorial-mysteries https://opposite-lock.com/topic/28187/memorial-mysteries - https://opposite-lock.com/topic/4273/the-milhon-brothers-subtitled-what-jj-does-when-he-s-bored https://opposite-lock.com/topic/4273/the-milhon-brothers-sub...
vishnugupta 2y ago
In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Theoden king expresses his grief to Gandalf, “one should not have to bury their children”. I was in college then, unmarried and didn’t appreciate the meaning of it or could appreciate his grief. Now that I have kids of my own I can’t get myself to read the posts such as OPs. And if I end up reading it their grief stays when me for a long time. Exactly what they have written, all those years not spent, not lived, it’s just too much to handle for me. I read somewhere that grief is unspent love. I only wish OP more courage and continued grace as the burden only gets heavier each day.
- Obscurity4340 2y ago
  > Grief = unspent love God thats poignant :( Glad you said that for me to keep tho
- Syonyk 2y ago
  There are so many things that hit differently with age and stage of life. I really liked What Dreams May Come back in high school. Dante's Inferno, kind of, trip to Hell, Robin Williams, trippy paint scene. I watched it again as a married adult with children, and barely made it through intact. That movie, based around the sudden loss of both children without a chance to say goodbye, and then the sudden loss of a spouse, and the descent into a mental hell and cage of ones own making... I missed all of that watching it in high school. I knew it was there, but it meant nothing, I'd not experienced any of that. It was a radically different movie to me, 20 years later. And I've not watched it since.
- UberFly 2y ago
  Great post here, and yea, things hit so much harder after kids. I remember seeing a photo of a man in India carrying his daughter killed by the tsunami. My daughter was about the same age and I cried for an hour in front of my computer.
  - ignoramous 2y ago
    > Great post here, and yea, things hit so much harder after kids ... remember seeing a photo of a man in India carrying his daughter killed by the tsunami Also from India, a bereaved mother is barely able to speak to the loss of her 2 children, right after having spoke about 6 other deaths in her family: https://youtu.be/XLl2qAprU8w?t=312 https://youtu.be/XLl2qAprU8w?t=312 I've seen that clip before, but after having kids, it hits like a truck. That said, children or not, there's no shortage of people who mock or deny or won't sympathise with "others" (outgroup).

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]
- Santosh83 2y ago
  Don't you think he doesn't know that? Pro-tip for you: when someone mentions the pain of losing their companion, do not give them pro-tips.
  - ignoramous 2y ago
    tbf to GP, in some cultures dogs are abhorred.
- AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  > Life pro-tip: In your day-to-day human encounters, if someone mentions the pain of losing a child, do not bring up your dead dog. Witnessing a cherished part of your life die, while you do not and can do nothing about it, is a uniquely powerless experience. Because, while you continue to live, a part of you dies. If a person can empathize with this experience in a genuine way, what matter is it their loss?
- phito 2y ago
  How about we don't gatekeep or make a contest out of suffering, which is a subjective experience?
- renewiltord 2y ago
  I think this scolding behaviour is really out of place. The guy is saying "a much lesser loss caused me great hurt; I sympathize with your much greater loss and the hurt you must feel". People do this all the time normally, and secondarily humans have imprecisely expressed feelings all the time and the spirit has usually undone any harm that the worst interpretation of the words could do. But at some point in the early 2010s this scolding behaviour started getting really popular. I wonder if some sociologist has traced its source. It's obviously nonsensical behaviour to me. If someone did that in front of me I'd probably be compelled to say "Dude, now is not the time for this" or something like that but I can't imagine any person in my group behaving that way.
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
AdieuToLogic 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. Depending on the person and/or situation, losing a dog can rival the pain of any other loss. Especially if the bond between person and dog is reinforced through daily activities. I guess what I'm saying here is loss is loss. Some losses may be painful longer than others, for sure, but the pain of losing a being you love is universal. A friend of mine described the pain of this type of loss thusly; Think of the pain like a ball bouncing around in a box, with a button at center-bottom which activates pain every time it is touched by the ball. At first, the ball is almost the same size as the box and hits the button constantly. Over time, the ball shrinks but the size of the box and the button remain the same. All that changes is how often the button is hit. HTH
- hinkley 2y ago
  I don’t want to diminish anyone else’s experience but my neutered dog did not miss out on growing up and starting a life of his own. Pursuing a career, falling in love, having a child. At three a dog has had many of the milestones he will have in life. What I miss is the time I and my circle lost with him. Not the experiences he didn’t get to have, or the new people he might have brought into the world, and their experiences. I would have shown him more of the same life in minor variations, not things I wouldn’t even dream of doing myself.
  - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
    I did not interpret your post as diminishing anyone. The main point I wanted to share is that loss has a commonality in it always precedes pain and must be dealt with similarly. Comparing its form was never my intent nor do I hold there is any fundamental difference between them. That's just my opinion though.
- fipar 2y ago
  > Depending on the person and/or situation, losing a dog can rival the pain of any other loss. Especially if the bond between person and dog is reinforced through daily activities. I guess what I'm saying here is loss is loss. Some losses may be painful longer than others, for sure, but the pain of losing a being you love is universal. This is beautifully illustrated by this line from Leonard Cohen's "Everybody knows": "Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died" As someone who has lost both a parent and a dog, I can relate completely to this.
ignoramous 2y ago
It was relatively common for parents to lose children (every second child was expected to die before 5y) but even then, with all that death around them, the tragedy remained as great as today. Back then, most did look to their God for solace, though: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1goyaco/when_child_mortality_was_very_high_how_did_people/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1goyaco/when... In the present, orthodox practitioners of Abrahamic religions, in particular, may stoically overcome such profound grief by attributing it to divine will.
- Archelaos 2y ago
  You sound like one of the friends of Job.
  - Syonyk 2y ago
    How so? They're neither questioning God's justice, nor asserting that the loss of children must be due to sin/unrighteousness/etc.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  That reminds me the story of Mozart's parents. Their first 3 children died less than 1 year old. I can't imagine the despair. Out of 7 children, only 2 survived infancy.
red_admiral 2y ago
> And that was just a dog. I forget which book I read this in, but the author in their autobiography described their "real man" father as someone who they'd only seen cry three times in his life. When his wife died, he was all stoic about it and didn't show any upset in public. But when his favorite dog died, he broke down crying. Many people who don't understand how upset one can get over a dog, have never had one. I have a photo of our first family dog and it still makes me upset if I look at it for too long.
- nly 2y ago
  Well humans are aware of their own mortality and can talk about it with one another. Your man can find peace because he would know his wifes outlook on life and her wishes We are entirely responsible for the health and welfare of domestic dogs, like young children.
- darkwater 2y ago
  I will be downvoted but that ("real man", no crying for the wife passing away...) tells more about subtle "machismo" and patriarchy that about how much people can care about dogs.
  - luluthefirst 2y ago
    Grief is complex and deeply personal, and is not about fitting someone else's expectations... Losing a dog hits different because their presence is so genuine and uncomplicated. They provide unconditional comfort. That connection is usually way less complicated than the ones with have with people.
    - darkwater 2y ago
      Let's add conformity to (wrong? IMO totally) social/religious rules like "you cannot divorce". Because if your spouse passes away, either young or when it was their time so to speak, and you aren't genuinely sad, well, why were you two still together? If you spent a happy life together with someone, you should be sad even if they passed away serenely, because hey, it was the person with whom you shared and lived almost everything. If instead you were still together but actually secretly hating each other, or just because "it was always like that", well, the marriage should have not lasted til that point. If it did, it was most probably due to social rules to follow no matter what and/or patriarchy. And if it was a young person, well, even more! A young loss should generate even more grief. And the "real man" part...well, I think it explains itself. I understand this can come off as simplifying too much but I believe it boils down to those reasons in the vast majority of cases. So, there can be exceptions of course but they are a minority.
kelnos 2y ago
We had a wonderful, affectionate, snuggly cat who also had a congenital defect. She only made it to a year and seven months old (having adopted her at around 8 weeks old). We lost her almost two and a half years ago, and I still cry over her memory once every couple weeks, and think about her multiple times a day. I don't have children, but if I ever do, I am worried that my experience with this wonderful little cat will turn me into an anxious, unhealthily-overprotective mess when it comes to any children I might have.
- hinkley 2y ago
  When you hit college age is often when your odds of experiencing the first death in your family spikes up. Grandparent, great grandparent, oldest aunt. It happened to a number of friends of friends and acquaintances. Some people were a complete mess and others were more resilient. The pattern I noticed was the people who had lost a pet were more equipped to deal with the loss of a human. The worst hit people never even had pets. Maybe a coincidence, but I suspect not. I don’t think it hurts any less, but you know better what needs to be done to move through it instead of getting stuck. (Sorry for your loss)
  - kelnos 2y ago
    My mother died during my second year of college. My father died when I was in my 30s. My mother's parents died before I was born, and my father's had both died by the time I was 10 or so. We had cats when I was a kid, and two of them died while I was in my early/mid teens. They were "mom's cats", and at the time I didn't understand why it affected her so deeply. It made me sad, to be sure (both cats had been around my entire life up to that point), but I didn't get it. Not until I lost my own cat, anyway. In a strange way, a way that I sometimes feel bad about, losing my cat hit me harder than losing my parents. > (Sorry for your loss) Thank you!

kshahkshah 2y ago

My best friend's son died at the hands of a negligent daycare, he escaped his crib, knocked a stroller over on to himself which wasn't supposed to be there, and suffocated to death. My friend called me that night to tell me. It's been 5 years and I think about it every single day. Frankly it has turned me from a person with zero anxiety to one with a good deal. I've checked on my younger daughter's breathing every single night since then. She's 7 years old and I still can't stop myself from checking on her. My friend is one of the good-est people I know. A genuinely good person. Why him? And if him, certainly why not me?

sho_hn 2y ago
I've had nothing like this happen, but somehow I get this--I was spooked by anecdotes about SIDS before having kids. When we had our daughter, and she was sleeping in her crib in our room, the first couple of months I'd basically wake up when she wasn't making noise, would then in dazed half-sleep wait for her to make any noise to confirm she was still alive (or check, sometimes), and could only then fall back asleep again. This only really quieted down one year in, when the statistical risk goes down. I guess it's fairly easy to get hypersensitized to dangers like this.
AdieuToLogic 2y ago
> My best friend's son died ... It's been 5 years and I think about it every single day. Sometimes it helps to contemplate the nature of remote possibilities. Most times, it does not. They exist, but cannot be predicted nor controlled. Hopefully, the following help quell anxiety resulting from considering all which could happen. God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.[0] Or: Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us.[0] Or: If there's a remedy when trouble strikes, What reason is there for dejection? And if there is no help for it, What use is there in being glum?[0] HTH 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
- 2y ago

llm_trw 2y ago

Just remember than not a century ago the average family would bury half their kids.

yard2010 2y ago
You never look on the same river because each time you look there's different water flowing.
TomK32 2y ago
and even 100 years ago was so much better than 200 years ago https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al... Let's hope the impact of RFK Jr on US health and vaccination of children won't be too big.
anal_reactor 2y ago
Yes, exactly my thought. The graveyard in my dad's hometown has a huge section just for small kids, because life in the country was tough, and that was normal.
- arrowsmith 2y ago
  I remember once walking through a graveyard and seeing three names on a single headstone - three children, siblings who had all died on the same day. Below their names was a simple caption: "All gone". I have no idea what the story is or how those children died, but I think about that headstone all the time, especially now I have a child of my own. So much grief, pain and tragedy conveyed so succinctly. I'm clenching my gut right now just thinking about it as I type.
  - macintux 2y ago
    Tangential, and I am reluctant to share this in an important thread about loss and grief, but an occasional hobby of mine is finding an interesting headstone during my travels and researching the story. - https://opposite-lock.com/topic/28187/memorial-mysteries https://opposite-lock.com/topic/28187/memorial-mysteries - https://opposite-lock.com/topic/4273/the-milhon-brothers-subtitled-what-jj-does-when-he-s-bored https://opposite-lock.com/topic/4273/the-milhon-brothers-sub...

vishnugupta 2y ago

In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Theoden king expresses his grief to Gandalf, “one should not have to bury their children”. I was in college then, unmarried and didn’t appreciate the meaning of it or could appreciate his grief. Now that I have kids of my own I can’t get myself to read the posts such as OPs. And if I end up reading it their grief stays when me for a long time. Exactly what they have written, all those years not spent, not lived, it’s just too much to handle for me. I read somewhere that grief is unspent love. I only wish OP more courage and continued grace as the burden only gets heavier each day.

Obscurity4340 2y ago
> Grief = unspent love God thats poignant :( Glad you said that for me to keep tho
Syonyk 2y ago
There are so many things that hit differently with age and stage of life. I really liked What Dreams May Come back in high school. Dante's Inferno, kind of, trip to Hell, Robin Williams, trippy paint scene. I watched it again as a married adult with children, and barely made it through intact. That movie, based around the sudden loss of both children without a chance to say goodbye, and then the sudden loss of a spouse, and the descent into a mental hell and cage of ones own making... I missed all of that watching it in high school. I knew it was there, but it meant nothing, I'd not experienced any of that. It was a radically different movie to me, 20 years later. And I've not watched it since.
UberFly 2y ago
Great post here, and yea, things hit so much harder after kids. I remember seeing a photo of a man in India carrying his daughter killed by the tsunami. My daughter was about the same age and I cried for an hour in front of my computer.
- ignoramous 2y ago
  > Great post here, and yea, things hit so much harder after kids ... remember seeing a photo of a man in India carrying his daughter killed by the tsunami Also from India, a bereaved mother is barely able to speak to the loss of her 2 children, right after having spoke about 6 other deaths in her family: https://youtu.be/XLl2qAprU8w?t=312 https://youtu.be/XLl2qAprU8w?t=312 I've seen that clip before, but after having kids, it hits like a truck. That said, children or not, there's no shortage of people who mock or deny or won't sympathise with "others" (outgroup).