Ask HN: How to cope with the death of a dear person?

This is a beautiful post. Thanks.

There is nothing you can do for yourself, except giving yourself the time and space. There is no magic potion for it, it just takes time.

Just know there are always others who also have to cope with the same loss in their own complex ways. Some people cope by changing their memory and describe the characteristics of a person completely differently, alienating your experience. Nobody will correct them, because everybody becomes so respectful towards others. Without real notice this damages relationships in the long run. It shouldn't, but at some point you can't stand the people close to you and their sadness and twisted polished stories anymore.

There is no malice to it, we all experience things differently. Do you ever really know a person? A whole life is quite a long time and some of us only see some facet of the life of others and there are things we don't want to see.

It seems strange, but the dead really don't care about this world anymore, it is only for the living. It is not about respecting their whishes, it never was, the dead are owned by the people close to them and they even decide who that person was. It is about what they need and that is the unimportant stuff you should forget anyways.

Many great mathematicians are buried with citations, they already regretted when they were alive.

But after a few years and without the haze of pain and emotions, real human and normal stories and memories can emerge again. If you lucky, somebody is there who can acknowledge them with a smile and a mind falling back in time. That is the good stuff.

May your experiences be different.

Your time machine is between your ears, it is very powerful and can be tainted by emotions and pain, so be careful when to use it out loud.

Getting over it means simply that it wouldn't be a constant cause of sorrow or a daily life disruptor for you. "Get over it" seems just harsh in this context as if trying to rush someone, but "you will get over it" depending on the wording, while seemingly obvious advice should remind you that as time goes on the bad feelings will affect you less and less.

This in no way should mean that you should actually forget that the person existed, but more like to be "okay" with it, and accept it.

You are not getting over the person like in a break up, you are getting over the fact that they died. The "it" refers to the event and being okay with it.

I found this shortly after losing someone. For me, I was lucky, I'd had the chance to say goodbye, and they knew how I felt. Even so, this spoke to me.

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/Grief_FromAnOldGuy.jpg

Someone on reddit wrote the following heartfelt plea online:

"My friend just died. I don't know what to do. "

A lot of people responded. Then there‘s one old guy’s incredible comment that stood out from the rest that might just change the way we approach We and death:

“Alright, here goes. l'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 thatjust 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 fora 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."

A good friend of mine died unexpectedly recently. I have no experience with stuff like this, I've only had one other friend die before, and we weren't nearly as close.

It still seems pretty unreal, but, at the same time, it feels like this is the only way, and the anomalous condition is that any of us are still surviving him.

In a very short time, we will all be dead, too, and a very short time after that, everyone who ever knew us will also be dead.

It will be that way much, much longer than the few blinks of an eye in which we build little sandcastles on the crust here.

You know that big rock in the ocean out in front of the sutro baths ruins, the one covered in bird shit? That thing has been sitting there for a dozen times longer than the tall apes have been making sounds that map to concepts.

It'll be there long after, too.

Life is the temporary anomaly.

Sorry if this isn't a helpful comment, it's just some of the shit that's been going through my mind recently whenever I think about my friend. I wish I could hang out with him for ten or fifteen minutes more, or had known the last time I saw him that I would never get to see him again.

Tell people that you love them.