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

There are a few interpretations but I think you are mixing "getting over it" and "getting over them". Getting over the death is very different to getting over the person.

>Your loved one will always be with you, in your memories, in your life experiences. If you get a smile while thinking of the things you did together, then they are not really dead.

Exactly, this is the point you can get to when you are able to get over their death - you can remember the experiences rather than just experiencing grief.

A few weeks after my partner's mother died, we were looking at a photo album. I was surprised at some of the pictures of her -- playing at the beach, singing, serving friends at a dinner party -- happy and vital. I realized that in my memories of her from years before I was picturing her as she was in the months before she passed. Wizened, exhausted, confused. My memories of her were ugly and grotesque, and I had been avoiding them.

I spent the rest of that evening, recounting to myself, with help from my partner, my history with her mother and recovering memories of how she looked and acted over the years I had known her. How she laughed when she was tipsy, how glorious she was when she and her husband were singing a particular song to each other. How she dressed when my partner got her doctorate. How thrilled she was to welcome someone even when she could no longer recognize who she was welcoming.

I still felt her loss from my future plans and expectations, but the loss of her that I had imposed on my past was gone. Since then I've found some people distort their memories in this way and many don't. I'm glad I discovered what I had been doing and stopped it.

> Do things that make me happy because before you know it life is over.

This is really true, as I've grown older the years go by in what used to feel like months. By averages I've got maybe 25 years left and I'm realizing it will be gone before I know it.

Time passes, whether you do anything with it or not.

Pain has a transformative character, and the one you have will never go away. Your duty is to live with it, the same way your loved one did.

My grandmother was an avid gardener. Now that summer is here, I tend to it every day after job. It's in a state of desolation, with wild grass growing everywhere and empty garden beds. I weed them out and take care of the seedlings: sweating, with my muscles arching from physical work, hands being numb because of nettle burns, knees bleeding after crawling on gravel around dooryard.

I struggle and take pleasure in the labor that causes me pain, the way my grandmother did — so that she can live on in her hobby, in that pain, that very act of gardening. She *is* her garden, and *my* grandmother, after all.

  Mother to Christ, at a loss:
  - Are you my God or son?
  You’re nailed onto the cross.
  Tell me how to go on?
  How can I go, having not
  understood, grasped, derived:
  are you my son or God?
  That is, dead or alive?

  He, in turn, explained:
  - Dead or alive, this time,
  woman, it’s all the same.
  Son or God, I’m thine.

  — Joseph Brodsky, Nature Morte

The *time*-travel you are looking for isn't about being there and then. It's about persisting the pastime (the way of engaging with the materiality of *space*) of those who are long gone. About deciding what you steal from Kronos, what you leave to be devoured by him, and how far will you manage to travel with that stolen good now claimed as yours.

So, my advice: look into your father-in-law's stories and military career; write and perform acts of bravery the way he did.

https://youtu.be/O7fXfCZ4sB4?t=95

When a loved one passes, it’s going to feel like hundred foot waves are crashing down on you. With time, the waves get smaller; you’ll be reminded by a place, a memory, or a song. The waves never go away completely, but with time you will learn to navigate them.

Very sorry for your loss.