12 ms·

Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• graemep 1y ago
  There is a problem with rigid medical definitions. There is a huge difference between the author of this, a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent (as I did earlier this year). Of course it will take her far longer to recover (if at all). I would guess her grief is not "disordered" though. As she says she functions - she works, she looks after her child, she looks after herself. > We medicalize grief because we fear it. Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
  • righthand 1y ago
    In the west we’re trained to believe that if something happens there should be some sort of tangible reward on the other end, no matter how minute. Death takes and leaves nothing tangible and it’s the absence that drives us crazy. Since we’re trained this way we seek out some solution with the other trained aspect, spending money. Which in turn only temporarily numbs the grief until you deal with it. We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. So our money spending usually doesn’t direct us to a more helpful path. I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.
    • Rooster61 1y ago
      > I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered. In what way is this not western as well? Implying that western culture does not remember, contemplate, and revere those that have gone before us is a bad take.
      • mc32 1y ago
        I also think seeking mental health is more popular in the west than the east where it's even less of a thing to seek.
      • xyzelement 1y ago
        I agree with you on the western religious tradition, but I think it's less true for the secular west today. With ample exceptions of course, a stereotypical "secular" person thinks of their ancestors as racist people that lived in an irrelevant time, and doesn't feel some sort of connection to them, or an obligation to continue them. So I think the poster you're replying to is kinda correct from a today point of view.
        • watwut 1y ago
          Your made up straw man secular person is, frankly, ridiculous. Like, we all get it, conservative Christians hate the rest of us and look down on us. Duh.
        • SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
          > a typical "secular" person thinks of their ancestors as racist people that lived in an irrelevant time, I think you missed the "stereo" in front of your "typical".
          • xyzelement 1y ago
            I went ahead and added that "stereo" to my comment. I think you're right, but I also think that stereotype is grounded in reality with a lot of empirical observation. So yes, not exclusive but certainly common.
            • SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
              Well, as a secular individual whose friend group is mostly secular people, I haven't see people express such black and white opinions, but I'm guessing we move in different circles. As far as observation is concerned, we tend to see what we want to see, don't we?
    • pastage 1y ago
      I wonder how traditions around death help us to deal with it. I feel completely incapable of handling death.. I do not know how to comport myself.
      • embwbam 1y ago
        A lot! Maybe it's obvious, but I've long thought that religion's primary function is to help people process death (and other suffering). Now that life isn't constant suffering, many of us have discarded religion, but then we are blindsided by death. I was very religious for 30 years, and have a very religious family. I've been athiest for more than a decade now, and it's sad to me that to leave religion behind I had to give up all my family traditions to process death. Those traditions are still there, but I can't relate to them since they are based on a belief I no longer agree with
    • graemep 1y ago
      It used to be in the west. The Catholic Church discourages the scattering of ashes for just that reason - so that there is somewhere physical where people can be remembered. There was a tradition of memorial services. People still look after the graves of their loved ones. I also think its not a simple east-west divide. Different cultures have many different ways of dealing with death. The contemporary west does have a problem, although i doubt it is the only culture for which that is true. My family follows a mix of Christian tradition (e.g. memorial masses) and Sri Lankan (e.g. donations of food in memory of the dead).
      • righthand 1y ago
        I agree it’s not a simple divide. I was trying to paint that there are many reasons why we handle death poorly in the west and I honestly only know a raindrop about the east. I can only fathom the handling of death and the reasons why gradients across the globe in every direction.
    • AlexandrB 1y ago
      > We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. I think this idea is ~10 years out of date. If anything, we now seem pathologize every behavior and personality quirk into a mental health issue. At least on social media, it's also trendy to have a mental health issue to the point that people will claim to have ADHD because they're easily distracted by their phones. I've also lost count of the number of big "content creators" who casually mention their therapist or going to therapy. If there is a stigma, it's not found among the younger generations.
      • righthand 1y ago
        I do not agree. While there may be a flux of people who have therapists, the majority do not and that is why you hear about it on Youtube. I do agree that younger people are trying to take more care of their mental health but I do not see healthy reasons for which they are chasing that improvement. For example the “pursuit of happyness” is indoctrinated and people think they always need to be happy. At the same time I think people are self-diagnosing which I do not include as “health care” as I meant it, but rather self care or even passive-hypochondria.
      • SoftTalker 1y ago
        I think for people over 50, I guess "Gen X" and older, this is still often true. I've never considered therapy or medical help for any way that I was "feeling" and certainly have had times of grief and loss and sadness in my life. In some of those moments, when peers or friends noticed it, the gist of their advice was to “suck it up” or “get over it”. I am also introverted, procrastinate, am not very organized, and am not very good at housekeeping. My view on how I would change those things would be to just suck it up and do better, if I had to. And when it matters, that's what I do. I don't mean to say that this is the only correct way to approach life but it is how I look at things.
        • samarthr1 1y ago
          I tol am unfortunately also introverted, prone to procrastination and seem quite unable to keep my house as spotless as I would like Do you have any advice for overcoming my problem with atleast procrastination (i suspect that it is probably causing the other two issues).
  • xyzelement 1y ago
    Sorry for your loss, and thank you for your perspective. >> Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west. I never thought about it but it likely stems from loss of religion, like many other problems. If I see my life as insignificant in the chain of generations - as a conduit between ancestors and descendants - and believe in the soul at least as a metaphor - then personal death or that of others is sad, but is in the context of a deeply meaningful existence. On the other hand, if I am closer to atheistic hedonism/nihilism - there's nothing else but me and my thoughts and experiences, then my existence or non-existence takes on a very heavy weight - and we project that onto others.
    • lotsofpulp 1y ago
      All the atheistic/agnostic people I know believe they are insignificant in the grand scheme of nature, not just in the chain of generations of people. If anything, I find religious people are the ones who believe humans are special.
      • xyzelement 1y ago
        I think you're right on the word level but I think there's a difference about what significance and insignificance means to these groups. As a religious person, I see my life as insignificant compared to Gd, and compared to the chain of generations, but what I do with my life is extremely significant. As in, whether I bring children into this world and raise them well, is massively significant. So maybe the way to say it is - religious people see themselves as insignificant in the context of much greater significance. The other view of insignificance is that nothing is significant - including myself. I don't subscribe to that.
        • resize2996 1y ago
          Equating these things with a "Belief in god" belies a narrow view of spirituality.
        • krapp 1y ago
          Do you really believe atheists are incapable of recognizing the significance of children or of caring about them?
  • minitoar 1y ago
    I think it’s medicalized because often this set of symptoms is associated with inability to function and it can be treated medically with eg therapy.
  • moron4hire 1y ago
    > We medicalize grief because we fear it. I think that's backwards. I think the problem is that we, the general populace, fear medicalization. The medicalization of grief specifically or other emotional issues generally is unrelated. These sorts of diagnosis criteria are created for a reason. I highly doubt psychiatric medical practitioners are developing them to pack people up into bins so that they can be marginalized. They create these criteria to be able to have a shared language to speak about issues and try to develop treatment regimens. And it's not their fault that the lay population takes it out of context and screams, "NO NO NO! I'M NOT BROKEN!" It's that reaction that is the problem. That reaction that, "someone who fits this criteria is by-definition broken", with "and broken people are irredemable" followed closely behind. It belies a belief that they feel this way about other people, too. The truth is, everyone deals with issues that would fit some criteria in the DSM-5. It's just part of the human condition. Some people are able to manage these issues on their own and some people are not, and that doesn't make them broken anymore than the fact that some people can dunk a basketball and some cannot. But, if you're 5'9" and had a job to put a ball in a basket 10 feet off the ground, wouldn't you want to focus on learning to shoot rather than try techniques you've observed 6'9" people use with ease?
  • XorNot 1y ago
    > Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west. Someone always rocks up to say this in these threads, and then never actually offers any suggestions of what they think an alternative should look like. It's in the same vein as people who complain no one ever talks about serious subjects, and I'm just wondering why they think I want to get into discussing the meaning of life in the workplace cafeteria. Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? A celebration of death? Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations? Why focus on the inevitable rather then actually living?
    • pizzathyme 1y ago
      An alternative would be: + Yes, allowing people to have a celebration goodbye party before they go + Allowing for medically assisted dying on a person's own terms + More open conversations about: directives, how people would like to be treated when they near death, wills, inheritances, funerals. These are all taboo topics + A natural part of life
    • overfeed 1y ago
      > Someone always rocks up to say this in these threads, and then never actually offers any suggestions of what they think an alternative should look like. It's a broad observation about culture - there's no "alternative" to a well-established culture, no single forum comment will change society. > Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? ... Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations? I think you're on to something here; there's an inherent conflict between ruthless individualism that tells people they can do anything they put their mind to, and the stark, limiting reality of mortality. That's a bummer, so don't think or talk about it, or it'll mess with your grindset. Collectivist cultures already embraces the idea that one's life is more than just about the individual, so grief and talking about death are far less radioactive. Religions that embrace ancestral spirits being presence offer comfort in continuity; her husband isn't really gone, and he may even watch ober their daughter, and even help her in math exams. In that light, dying is less of a big deal - more of a transition really - compared to oblivion, which is super heavy. I'm not saying these are better
  • pizzathyme 1y ago
    I'm so sorry for your loss. I agree with what you say about "disordered", the language is hostile. In a less morbid area, I feel the same way about ADHD - "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder". For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this. In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?
    • enobrev 1y ago
      I think there's something of a pendulum here, and I agree it's swayed too far to over-diagnosing ourselves. But I also think of my father who passed a couple years ago. We didn't have much of a relationship. He had friends, but never close ones. He was weirdly mean or weirdly seclusive or weirdly awkward at times - and also incredibly intelligent and occasionally gracious and hilarious. After he passed, I wondered if he might have been somewhere on the spectrum - but his peculiarities were simply ignored. A poor boy, in a poor urban neighborhood, with a dead father, being raised by an immigrant mother and immigrant siblings doesn't get diagnosed with much of anything - if they see doctors at all. And hey, he had a near photographic memory, and did great in school, so what's there to worry about? It's always been "how he was", and that's probably ok, but I do wonder if he would have had a better or somehow different life if he knew more about _why_ he was the way he was.
    • KittenInABox 1y ago
      In my understanding ADHD is one of the few conditions that is extremely well studied and consistently appears to be a certain % of the population regardless of nationality with very strongly correlated negative outcomes with their suite of symptoms. I'm talking addition, obesity, and a shortened lifespan directly related to their ADHD. This seems like a disorder to me. If someone has attention difficulties and can function fine they obviously don't have a disorder vs someone who has attention difficulties and as a result becomes addicted to cocaine.
      • fleshmonad 1y ago
        Function in what context? I have been diagnosed with ADHD at age seven. I have had many checkups and am currently medicated. I can tell you that I wouldn't need to if I didn't have to work a menial wageslave job. Interestingly I can focus perfectly fine when doing interesting stuff without medication and it has always been this way. What you are saying is that there is some proper definition of disorder, which would sensibly be defined relative to some "normal" human baseline. Tell me you know one "normal" human, why you see this person as "normal" and how it would be useful to use this as a reference for the big spectrum of human personality and mental fitness. I can tell you from experience that I didn't need medication when I wasn't forced to attend 12 useless meetings a week, use inefficient and stupid software and one would just let me get my shit done. I have quite a few friends who have had very similar experiences, and the idea of ADHD is just used to pathologize and medicate someone so he can work and be a "positive contributor" to whoever above them. Add here the necessary disclaimer that my experience is not universal and there may be people gravely suffering from it, etc. I do too, even with medication, but at least I can generate some bucks for management.
  • LeafItAlone 1y ago
    >a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent This isn’t really your point, but this person lost their husband at 40. By some definitions, that is middle aged. In the general view of things, not young. That doesn’t really change much, but I was thinking of a mid-twenties before I realized who it was.
    • anonymars 1y ago
      Don't take this the wrong way, but what point are you trying to make? What was your goal here?
  • Balgair 1y ago
    > There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west. It's because we have a dearth of true elders right now. Not in age, but in temperament and learning. I got interested in story telling during COVID and managed to find a great author (K.M. Weiland) that went in deep on the archetypes of story. Her hook was essentially: "What happens after the Hero's Journey/happily ever after?" And then she got real deep on her idea of the 6 phases of life. Her work is properly about how to write a plot, but man does it apply more broadly. The pertinent one here is the 'Crone' stage of life [0]. You're no longer the 'King' of your little fief, you had to give up the power and make way for the next generation. But now what? The journey of the Crone is essentially learning that Death is a part of Life, that Death is not Evil, Death is a Friend. K.M. Weiland admits that less and less people ever make it through the stages as you go along. But, I think right now in the West, we have a lot of boomers that never really progressed past the Hero stage, let alone the Queen or King stages. There should be more Crone and Mage people around, but the boomers were retarded in their development. Just look at RBG, Feinstein and Pelosi (to name but a few), grappling on to power like the Tyrants or Sorceresses (strong shadow archetypes of the Queen and King) and never letting go, to the classical harm of the kingdom/hearth that such stories tell. Facing Death is hard, very hard. But is something that we all must do. Realizing that Death is not Evil, but a part of life, and one to be welcomed at times, that is something that very few of us can do. [0] https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/archetypal-character-arcs-pt-6-the-crone-arc/ https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/archetypal-chara...
    • incr_me 1y ago
      I've always been averse to this sort of Jungian schema (it's a Freudian baggage I have -- Mourning and Melancholia has much value on the present topic!), but more and more I'm seeing how much wisdom was lost in the historic disavowal of myth and archetypal thought. Since having a child, my wife and I have been repeatedly stunned at how incapable our own parents are. I don't mean a mere absence of help with babysitting (although they suck at this, too), I mean they just have no idea how to deal with us or our kid as living beings. They shrink at the first sign of difficulty. They want absolutely no relationship with death. We've had to find new elders elsewhere; they really aren't easy to find but they do exists.
  • kruffalon 1y ago
    What a great article! > Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west. This is one of my favourite topics. I had forgotten to bring "cowardice" to the table when thinking about death (etc) I've mostly thought of it as some kind if vague unspecified fear, thank you for injecting this word and concept into my jumble of thoughts. I've been using "dignity" to try and make my thoughts more clear, but cowardice clearly has a place at the table too. When thinking about suicide I have thought of that way to die as potentially needing bravery (as in being able to do something you fear). The topic of death is dear to me me not only for personal reasons but I also think this relates to quite a few aspects of our societies and not only the obvious ones like how (if we can afford it) seem to overtreat people medically rather than give them proper palliative care and their close ones time and space to be there at this grand moment in life, that death ultimately is :) It feels weird to use words like: bravery, cowardice, dignity and fear, they feel like from another era, possibly only a fictional era of knights, damsels and dragons. And somehow I sense that that feeling of weirdness somehow is connected to the medicalisation of "everything" and also our longer work hours and expected increased efficiency. As if we hide and disallow the big important things in life only then will we agree to work the way we do. But then in the other hand we can cure a lot of disease and I can type this on a tiny screen keyboard and post this to the internet, so... I don't know, I only know that there is something wrong with death.
• latexr 1y ago
  Even before finishing the first paragraph, it all sounded familiar to me. Then I looked at the author’s name and remembered, this is the same person who wrote “The Year I Didn’t Survive”. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020983 949 points | 7 months ago | 266 comments
  • smusamashah 1y ago
    Reminded of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41157974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41157974 1209 who was her husband
• dncornholio 1y ago
  I experienced a long period of grief as well. I think the grief stayed because I wasn't totally happy with myself.. Then I decided it's time for change and I moved house and changed jobs. That helped me. I'm still sad sometimes, but I have much more to look forward to now.
• squigz 1y ago
  Reading Jake's[0] and Bess' posts during his illness was both highly enlightening and also very depressing. The news of his death hurt me more than I expected. I simply cannot imagine the pain Bess has felt. I wish I was half as articulate as they are and could say something that might provide even a modicum of comfort to her or others struggling with their grief. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jseliger https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jseliger
• jgbuddy 1y ago
  Damn this is so sad
• bparsons 1y ago
  There is a practical utility in medicalizing otherwise normal behaviors. Particularly in the US, you need a medical diagnosis in order to take time off work, receive disability benefits or access mental health supports through insurance.
• cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
• Nursie 1y ago
  I lost someone, a good friend and lover, when I was young. 27 years ago now. Grief still occasionally hits me. Not so often these days, it’s a long time in the past, but after some reminders of that time of life on social media a couple of years ago, I felt the unfairness of it all like a knife twisting in my gut again. All of which is to say I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a spouse who you had a life and a child and plans with, and I don’t believe that everyone grieves the same, or that it should just be over when someone tells you that’s ‘normal’ or expected of you. And also, as said in the blog post, if you’re functioning, if your grief isn’t actually stopping you from living your life, then who is to say it is disordered?
• igleria 1y ago
  > Sometimes, I’ll go ahead and dial Jake’s phone number in case the laws of entropy have changed, and he picks up I should not cry at work but damn, I want to.
  • ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    The worst part of 5 years and 2 months mourning my baby brother was the day that the dream got me. I dreamt about him a lot but I'm a shit screenwriter so the dreams were always cliched garbage with obvious meaning. Stuff like "We're standing on a bridge that I can't cross, and he says he needs to cross it but I'm trying to convince him not to". The kind of stuff you write for a high school creative writing class that you don't need to pass in order to graduate. But one got me goooooooooood. It was one of those hyper-realistic dudes, I was driving with my wife to a restaurant that I used to go to as a kid, we were picking up takeout to bring back home. As I was loading it into the car I heard his voice behind me say "Aren't you forgetting something?" I turned around and it was him, and everything else about the situation felt so normal and boring that of course he would be there because he was always there every time we did this. But my brain knew that we had been spending the last few years more or less constantly thinking about the fact that he was gone. It almost always results in me realizing that I'm dreaming, but just this one time it went the other way and my brain said "Oh joy, there must have been some sort of years-long misunderstanding and he's actually been here and fine the entire time!" Then I woke up. Cruelest thing I've ever done to myself, but it's a bit comforting to realize that it's in the realm of normality.
    • GreaterThanSign 1y ago
      The quote "Grief is love with no where to go" has always been fully embodied in my dreams. Since my Dad died I have dreams where he would appear and I would jubilantly (and sometimes angrily) greet him with "Where have you been?! I've been looking everywhere for you!". And it is true, I look for him everywhere. Waking up from those is so painful but I am grateful I still get to see and hug him once in a while.
  • marssaxman 1y ago
    I felt that one, too. It took a couple of years after a good friend of mine died before I stopped texting him on occasion.
• aeturnum 1y ago
  > We medicalize grief because we fear it. I think this is just incorrect. You are not obligated to seek treatment for most medical problems[1]. The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in and when people enter a situation where they may need external help. One of the diagnostic criteria, which this article mentions, is that your grief is disrupting your life - but despite what this article claims they have misunderstood that criteria. Of course grief changes your routines and life. That change only becomes "disruptive" if you feel the change has somehow gone too far or you are struggling to undo it. This writer is doing neither and therefor does not meet the diagnostic criteria for disordered grief. They are grieving normally and the medical literate supports that understanding. There are of course medical professionals who use diagnostic criteria as cudgels. Trying to force people to become patients in order to enforce their idea of what someone "should" want. This is a problem but it is a problem that the official diagnostic guidelines try to avoid. For those who are interested in this kind of problem with our medical system might look into the professional philosophy of doctors (generally arrayed around identifying and curing disease) and nursing (generally arrayed around making the patient comfortable as possible). I tend to think the nursing model is the more useful and sensible of the two - even though, of course, if one wants to cure a disease a doctor is helpful. [1] There are very few diseases, such as tuberculosis, where you can be forced to treat the disease.
  • Aurornis 1y ago
    > The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in The problem is that medical diagnoses and therapy speak have spilled over into common language where they’re so diluted that they’re not accurate any more. For many there is no line drawn anywhere because they are self-diagnosing based on flawed understandings as soon as any feeling or symptom arrives. This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”. This is only a subset of people, but it’s a rapidly growing percentage of younger people I work with. When someone falls into this mindset it only grows: The same people using these terms usually accumulate a lot of different self-diagnoses to cover every element of common human experience: They will claim ADHD, social anxiety, often some variation of Autism despite showing none of the signs, PTSD due to a previous relationship/boss/professor they didn’t get along with, and insomnia or delayed sleep phase syndrome. Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves. I’ve been offered helpful links to TikTok ADHD influencers to help me understand them, because that’s where they think the best information comes from. 20-something engineers confidently tell me they know more than their doctors about ADHD and how to treat it (usually after their doctor refuses to increase their dose of Adderall again or denies them some other controlled substance they think they need like ketamine or perpetual daily Xanax). There’s also a growing culture of casual drug abuse and misuse that gets justified as self-medication, but that’s a topic for another post.
• sudosteph 1y ago
  Having experienced a few hard losses this year (My dad to ALS, and my cat suddenly a week after my dad), the thing that has surprised me the most is how they show up in my dreams. In some dreams, I'm like "I thought you were dead? What am I going to do with all these death certificates now?", in others we're just hanging out at the pool. I never dreamed about my dad before he died. But in these dreams he's just there, and healthier looking than I had seen him in years. My cat shows up too, and many times I remember petting her in her bed, not realizing it was a dream, only to wake up surprised she wasn't still there next to me. In my waking life I fully know they're gone, but at least part of my brain really doesn't want to accept it's true.
  • fatnoah 1y ago
    I'm sorry for your losses. My dad died of cancer when I was 26, and I had very frequent dreams where it felt like he was real and present, though never speaking or interacting directly with me. The grief persisted for years. Nearly 25 years later, my mom passed away this summer, and it's been a totally different experience. The grief was just as intense as when my dad passed, but contained to a few weeks. Our bodies and brains are complicated.
• tedggh 1y ago
  I have been through two very painful deaths, first by brother then my father and both had very similar transitions from shock to acceptance to grief and finally to the new normal. Both cases took years to heal. I stopped dreaming about my brother after about 10 years of his death. It has been 5 years since my dad passed and I still have very vivid dreams that upset me very much, but they are much less common now than say two years ago and I know at some point, like the dreams about my brother, they will stop. Everything succumbs to time, including grief.
• deleted 1y ago
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• throwaway392405 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure my dad has chronic grief. My mom passed away from cancer when I was 11. I didn't know how unusual their marriage was until I saw others' marriages. It became particularly clear when I started dating and got married myself. They never fought at all. There was zero conflict. It wasn't that they just "hid it from the kids"—there was simply nothing to fight about. They were truly each other's very best friend, and intensely so. My dad tried dating again a few years after her death, but I think he soon realized there was no way anyone could capture the kind of companionship he had with my mom. Some people are able to love more than one partner over the course of their life; I think he decided he could not. He's a very private person, but I know he constantly thinks about her every day, and I suspect he's pushing off retirement because he doesn't want to be at home without her. They would have just hit their 40th anniversary if she were still alive.
  • pbrum 1y ago
    I found your comment very moving. Thank you for sharing that remarkable portrait of your father
• pleasecloselid 1y ago
  She has very clearly articulated what we have lost as a culture as we attempt to eliminate any discomfort or inconvenience in our lives because of death. This book really changed my perspective: https://orphanwisdom.com/die-wise/ https://orphanwisdom.com/die-wise/ Dying is a skill, both for the person doing it and the people around them.
  • lm28469 1y ago
    I find some comfort in Seneca's letter myself, simple words that takes days to digest: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_93 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
    • pleasecloselid 1y ago
      Thank you for sharing.
• glitchc 1y ago
  > There’s no modern cultural framework for dealing with death. Indeed. We used to have religion to help us deal with it. In our modern world driven by science, death is just the absence of life. Since all (physical, chemical) reactions have ceased, science has nothing more to say about it. In trying to deal with the ills of organized religion, we may have also disposed of its benefits. Very sorry for your loss.
  • Agraillo 1y ago
    > science has nothing more to say about it Science has also given us time machine surrogates - photos and videos. I understand this doesn’t work for everyone and can sometimes make things harder, but for me, seeing our common past brings back the smile to my face.
• deleted 1y ago
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• donatj 1y ago
  One of my best friends died 12 years ago in our late 20s. I know he is dead, and yet a couple times a month I think, "Oh, I haven't talked to him in a while, I should text him!" before my logical brain kicks in and lets me know the deal. There is a dumb part of me that wants to believe, "Oh, he probably faked his death to get out of debt." He was such a schemer, if anyone would, he would. It was an open casket funeral. I know he is dead. It's not a disorder. I just have mental pathways built that lead to a person who was integral to my life for many years, a person who does not exist on this plane anymore. I want him back in my life. Death is just difficult. He was a genuine source of both encouragement and constructive criticism the likes I have had not had before or since. I miss you, Meka.
  • drivingmenuts 1y ago
    My best friend of 25 years died 4 years ago and I still think of him at least once a week, wishing I could talk to him. It was almost a year before I could even talk about him without completely breaking down. I never once thought: "oh, this is a medical issue". It was just me having the same problems processing my grief that American men have because we're not raised to talk stuff out. Once I did start talking about it, it got easier and easier to deal with. I still miss that guy, though.
    • randycupertino 1y ago
      I still randomly gmail my dear beloved best friend who died of melanoma 18 years ago. It goes into the ether. I hope gmail doesn't reassign his account to someone else for inactivity, they will get my "thinking of you, miss you, this thing happened that you would have found hilarious" emails.
      • khazhoux 1y ago
        FWIW, there's no way gmail recycles inactive email addresses. That would wreck security worldwide.
        • 1y ago
• roughly 1y ago
  I say this with respect and love to the author: it does not sound like you’re handling this just fine. I think you’re right that there’s no way to handle this just fine, and you’re right that you’ve got a very good reason for not being just fine, and it’s in fact very normal and expected for you to not be handling this just fine, but it is also the case that you’re not handling this just fine. I think we tend to react to being told there’s a diagnosis name for the thing we’re currently doing, but there are situations in which it is both absolutely normal, understandable, and expected that we behave in a way with the hallmarks of a particular pathology and also we are still behaving in that way and could probably use some support. (On a more bureaucratic note, the other reason to have an actual DSM-recognized diagnosis is because the ghouls running insurance companies won’t cover counseling without it. Giving your therapist a DSM approved name to apply to your deep, life-impacting, and completely understandable grief means they have a better shot at convincing the claims department you actually do need help right now.)
  • spyckie2 1y ago
    Not to take away from the article, in the comments she states that her world is filled with the joy of new things with her new baby. She is doing as well as one can be for how much she loved Jake and how much she misses him. The author is extremely talented at isolating certain feelings and making you feel them with her. I wouldn't use this article as a diagnosis of anything but her writing talent.
    • roughly 1y ago
      > She is doing as well as one can be for how much she loved Jake and how much she misses him. Again, my point is that that statement is absolutely true and also does not preclude the notion that additional professional help may be warranted. I went on Prozac earlier this year after a conversation with my doctor that went, roughly: “I think you’ve got anxiety” “well yeah, look at the fucking world!” “…right.” Just because there’s a good reason for what you’re going through doesn’t mean you’re not going through it. Put another way, if the author had been shot a year ago and was saying things like “most days I’m fine, but some days I literally cannot walk or feel my left arm,” the notion that they should be talking to professionals would not be controversial, even though their symptoms are absolutely utterly explicable given what they’ve been through.
• deleted 1y ago
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• 47282847 1y ago
  In my grief training, it was made pretty clear that typical grieving of a loss takes 3 to 5 years to somehow find to a new normal and start living again, and lasts forever, with phases of varying intensity. It is important to allow all the phases and encourage emotional release so it doesn’t get stuck and somatized. Stuck, unprocessed grief can kill you. It is common for the first full year to be more in numbness and survival than in strong emotions. The psyche does not want to accept the loss so it pretends it is not real. Anniversaries and such serve as a slow and painful reminder that the person is in fact not there and will never return. Swinging between emotional denial and waves of anger and intense pain over many years is totally normal, and should be encouraged and supported. Go with your friends into the intensity of their pain. Ask about their loss. Sit with it. Don’t say stuff like “it will pass“. They will love you for it.
• huflungdung 1y ago
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• KurSix 1y ago
  The way the author captures grief (not as a pathology, but as a form of learning, unlearning, and continuing to love) is so raw and honest it almost feels invasive to read. The line "grief is a terrible kind of learning" hit me like a freight train. There's such a deep humanity here, and also a quiet indictment of our culture's need to classify, contain, and "resolve" grief like it's a software bug. We talk a lot about resilience, but rarely about the kind that means simply keeping going while carrying a pain that doesn't lessen, only changes shape.
  • squigz 1y ago
    Both Bess and Jake's writing is all very much like this. "Almost feels invasive" is certainly how it felt reading their posts during Jake's illness.
• testdelacc1 1y ago
  The depth of grief the author feels drove me to tears. I think I’d feel like this if I lost my spouse. But I worry wouldn’t be able to express my feelings as well as she has here, so people wouldn’t know how much she meant to me. What a silly thing to worry about.
• dgfitz 1y ago
  Off the front page within minutes, how odd.
  • khazhoux 1y ago
    Happens all the time. FWIW, it's back on front for now.
• catigula 1y ago
  >There’s no modern cultural framework for dealing with death Correct, secularism can't deal with death, it doesn't work.
  • weregiraffe 1y ago
    Sure, only an imaginary friend can deal with death. /s
    • catigula 1y ago
      It's is immensely epistemically arrogant to so confidently opine on this topic when every single day you experience consciousness, which is impossible to explain at all using Physics and likely simply impossible to ever explain within that framework (Edward Witten, the greatest living Physicist, shares this belief).
      • squigz 1y ago
        It's also extraordinarily arrogant - and rude - to state that atheists cannot deal with death. Certainly they face it with far more bravery than, say, someone who believes people don't actually die but instead go to a magical place in the sky.
        • catigula 1y ago
          1. You've made the mistake of assuming I'm religious. I am not. This is my lived experience. 2. I think that, largely, materialism is a system that isn't merely arrogant (which it clearly is, as outlined above), but also unfulfilling. You can simply ignore the concept of death but if you choose to really wrestle/engage with it in a materialist framework you will see yourself staring into an abyssal, terrifying maw. I think most atheists don't engage with this concept because it's difficult to do so, just as many religious people believe in religion because it's convenient to do so. It's a fairly even cut. I've already stated I'm not religious, which I'm not. I share the scientific view that human behavior is explicable so far as we can tell via mechanical/biological mechanisms, behaviors such as altruism not being explained because they are objectively good, but only being explained as preferences we've evolved because they were conducive to our genetic survival. But, let me propose something from a scientific/rational point of view to you, a brief experiment sort of in this vein. Paraphrasing, Jesus said something like "if you do not believe me, believe the works". I know this may seem a massive imposition, or horrific undertaking, or you may not be able to engage with it meaningfully, but, if you are able to humor me, I'd propose this: Take all of the core precepts of what most religions might propose as being 'good' - there is variance but that's alright, humans disagree in every domain on everything - and apply them to your life. Nip lies in the bud. Road-rage, rage at people on the internet? Let it go. Forgive those people and treat them well. Give people the benefit of the doubt, even people you hate. You won't be perfect, but don't let that discourage you. I'm encouraging this experiment because I believe you will "believe the works" and see that there is an element of the human experience that is genuinely transcendant and you can do these things not merely because they are nice or convenient and may be easy to do in the moment, but because they are hard to do, require constant correction and should be done as you are compelled to treat the gift of your own existence with care. I suspect we are compelled to behave transcendently for our own good though my only proof is lived experience that merely behaving as if this is true is immensely fulfilling. Quite the coincidence.
• toomuchtodo 1y ago
  I came across this when I was going through the death of a parent. It helped me process and manage grief, I hope it helps others, and feel it is relevant to share in this thread. "Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents. I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see. As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive. In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life. Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out. Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks." Source: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://np.reddit.com/r/Assistance/comments/hax0t/my_friend_just_died_i_dont_know_what_to_do/c1u0rx2/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://np.reddit.com/r/Assist... | https://archive.today/CkLxT https://archive.today/CkLxT
• legacynl 1y ago
  I'd just like to clear up a misconception that people seem to have about mental healthcare. Getting a diagnosis isn't related to the 'severity' of the thing you're experiencing. But rather how you're dealing with it, and if it requires professional help to work through. Keyword being 'requires'. Even if you grief a lot, if you're dealing with it yourself you will not get a diagnosis. If grief makes you isolate yourself, stop working, start abusing alcohol or drugs, stop you from caring for you children, etc. Then there's a very real chance that this behavior could lead to more problems, making it in turn harder to regain positive mental health. In that case the person should get a diagnosis, which would then unlock treatment and therapy for them. > The American Psychiatric Association describes “disordered grief,” also known as “prolonged grief,” as a loss that occurred at least one measly year ago for adults Even though that might be true, it's an excellent example of why you can't just take the written word at face value if you're not well versed in the subject. In the mental health profession it's understood that everybody is going to be different from the norm. Only the treating psychologist can put the clients problem in the proper context to determine if a year is enough or not.
  • abandonliberty 1y ago
    I know someone who was concerned about depression, and went to get checked. The diagnosis was normal. They were having an appropriate emotional response to very challenging situations.
  • pimlottc 1y ago
    Moreover, most diagnostic terms simply describe symptoms. "Pharyngitis" sounds scary, but it just means you have a sore throat. Why does it hurt? It could be many different reasons, but the term just describes what you're feeling, not the specific reason. Having a condition doesn't necessarily even mean anything is wrong with you. "Bradycardia" means having an abnormally low heart rate, which is common in trained athletes. As long as it's not extremely low, it's not a problem.
• JohnMakin 1y ago
  These are very typical and normal thoughts when dealing with grief. The thing is, it's a misconception that it "goes away" or becomes lessened. It doesn't, and that's the honest truth, it will always be there. Over time though it becomes less unbearable, and for me anyway, 10+ years removed from it, has become such a core part of my personality I'm unsure of how or who I'd be without it. Not that I prefer it, it's just become ingrained. "Time heals all wounds" is the biggest trap I think these thoughts are driven from. The simple and difficult truth at this stage of grief is accepting that yes, things are probably always going to feel like this. Yes, when other people have moved on you won't have. Yes, it makes people uncomfortable and you're going to have to learn to navigate those situations gracefully. The hopeful message though is that you adapt to it and it becomes less distressful over time. If it doesn't, and significantly impacts your life years later, is where I think diagnoses come into play.
• protonbob 1y ago
  > Sometimes, I close my eyes while I breastfeed my daughter and the cocktail of oxytocin and prolactin saturates my brain in a way that resurrects Jake with hallucinatory vividness. Suddenly, we’re 27 and running out of the cold Seattle rain into Belle’s Buns for coffee, and then Athena unlatches from my nipple and I’ve lost him again. I don't really have anything to add but that this is chilling. It really makes me want to take care of myself better even though this man's death had nothing to do with that.
• instagib 1y ago
  “Some days I wake up at 4am, seized by the need to hold Jake’s hand, and feel anger that all I have is a plaster model of it.“ At least kids depend on her. Previous title “Oh fuck, you’re still sad”.
• qweqwe123 1y ago
  I wish someone mentioned DMT here (N,N-DMT). It's really that powerful that you can't ignore that. Look up DiMiTri ladder protocol, or even without a protocol. The thing is that DMT enthusiasts have advanced quite a bit. Now you don't need to smoke DMT to get a "breakthrough". The entire "breakthrough" moment is somewhat overhyped. But you can extract the molecule by yourself, and create your own vape, and experience the safest way known so far to overcome years of grief in weeks, sometimes days. The idea is inhaling every minute relatively small dose to keep yourself here in this world without any breakthroughs, and maintaining this control for the next 60 minutes, while healing the trauma. So in total 60 relatively easy inhales. And it works. It's definitely underestimated in HN community. PS and "breakthrough" moments might allow you to see the person and talk to them
  • Shank 1y ago
    I would argue that you’re advocating for hallucinogenic drugs in a relatively novel treatment and this seems fairly drastic even here.
• necovek 1y ago
  It seems that people forget that while medical terms do enter the vernacular, medicine also appropriates common terms and gives them specific, narrower definitions. In the former, those terms do lose some of their specificity and should be considered shorthands for "what feels like [ADHD, autism, depression...]". In other words, language is a flexible, living thing, and interpretation can obly be done in context. This is why some of these statements sound so much worse when typed out on the internet, as they are missing any and all emotional cues coming from visual and audio communication. It happens in other areas as well ("cloud" in IT or "space" in math).
• LAC-Tech 1y ago
  In Taiwan there's usually a little shrine dedicated to someone deceased, and if you miss them you talk to them there, or maybe place some flowers or offerings. I feel like this kind of ancestor worship is a pretty natural and normal way to deal with things. I'm not an expert but I believe many European religions had practices like this before we adopted Middle Eastern practices.
• jongjong 1y ago
  I sometimes get jealous of bad people. Bad people tend to surround themselves with other bad people. So when their 'close ones' die, they probably don't feel much grief... And they probably inherit more money because bad people have more money. It's like how some criminals describe feeling a sense of relief once they got caught. Some part of them is glad that they get punished. Being a bad person is a win-win in this world; you win by cheating and then if you get caught, you can at least rejoice in knowing that there is justice in the world. Being a good person is hard because everyone close to you is also good, so their death is unbearable and unjust. The only thing which sucks about being a bad person is love... Because if you're good and you fall in love with someone and they don't love you back, it's much easier to fall out of love. "Maybe they're a psychopath" or "They're too superficial" you subconsciously tell yourself... But if you're a bad person and you fall in love with someone and they don't love you back, you think to yourself "They must be a good person; they can see straight through me into my dark heart" and this sign of virtue makes you even more attracted to them. Hating you is proof that the person is sane, wholesome and perceptive... Which is very attractive to someone who is none of these things!
  • weregiraffe 1y ago
    > if you get caught, you can at least rejoice in knowing that there is justice in the world. No, it doesn't work like this.
• qgin 1y ago
  I alternate forgetting with disbelief or feeling almost indignant. "This is so unlike them! They've never just DIED before. They've always gotten through everything." But that is a thing about death. You only do it once.
• basisword 1y ago
  I’m not sure I see a problem with that definition for disordered grief. To truly experience three of those every day one year on would be debilitating. Having the person pop into your thoughts regularly, forgetting they’re gone etc sounds like normal grief (which is also horrible but not debilitating). I guess I would look at it in the way that people feel depressed and then there are people that can’t get out of bed, keep themselves clean, or go to work. Both suck. One’s a serious clinical issue if it’s not improving.
• frithsun 1y ago
  I'm all about hating on the psychiatry profession, but I believe what may be missing here is that these diagnoses are always optional. If you like your grief, you can keep your grief. But if you need help, the criteria need to be there for you, for insurance companies, employers, and such to systematically do all their accounting and such. It's a bit similar to a lot of controversies around the autism spectrum. If it's just a personality quirk and you're a functional adult then it doesn't really matter if you meet the this or that criteria. If you like your autism, you can keep your autism.