I don't have any kids, but I think about those kids in Gaza a lot. Maybe it's cause it felt like I was so helpless. I called offices. every day. The news media rejects our grief. The actual government rejects our grief and pays into the depravity. If I feel like this what does one of those parents that survived feel?
A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
31–40 of 179 posts
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#32I 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 ye…
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…
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Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#33This is deeply moving.
I have 3 kids. One is adopted, but he is no different from the others.
If anything happened to any of them, I sincerely can't imagine how I'd carry on. I know I would, but I don't know what it would look like. I can't imagine that world because I so badly don't want it.
Sometimes I force myself to imagine myself getting a terminal illness or injury, and think of how I'd handle that, how I need to live as though that could happen at any moment, and how important it is that I do that for my family. That's not so difficult. But when I come to the sort of mental simulation of my kids dying, I'm made sorely aware of how unprepared I'll be. As you can't easily prepare for their arrival, I don't think you can prepare for their departure.
Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations something like "When you kiss your child, whisper to yourself: 'Tomorrow you may be dead.'", which sounds extremely morbid, but (especially in his time) is something we unfortunately do need to consider and contemplate. Not only for ourselves, but our entire families. Someone needs to be able to guide the family through that, somehow.
I don't know how Eric met that challenge, but evidently he has (and continues to) and I admire anyone who does. That's an extremely hard path to be pushed down. To share pieces of that with other people is tremendously vulnerable and, in a sense, generous. I appreciate it.
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#34I 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 ye…
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…
> 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.
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#35Last year during summers, I lost one of the pillars of my life to Cancer, my grandfather. The loss felt as extreme disturbance, sharp pain and regret about not being there for him, not fulfilling my responsibilities.
I spent months feeling like a reason for this loss. The last few days of his life were painful, at least that's what I remember my parents telling me. He called out my name the night before he left, asking me to help him, I got to know. He wanted the pain to go away, a man who never asked for anything his whole life was crying for help. What still hurts is the thought that his pain was so unbearable that he gave up. He gave up his trust in himself, his family and me. I felt responsible for that. This image imprinted in my memory for so long. Every time, I thought of him, this is what came up.
After months of cursing myself, I realised that he may still be alive. Not in the reality I am having these thoughts, but in some other reality. His reality where his consciousness stays. Where he observes and not necessarily me. And that's the reality he is alive in. I found solace in the realisation that people never die. If we consider all possible realities generated each moment based on the decisions made, then there'll be at least one reality where he stays alive. We extend this logic and infer that at each moment out of all the possibilities, at least in one the man stays alive.
This even though not proven, gives a sense of relief and happiness. It is similar to blind faith, but the one that makes the most sense to me. And I am happy for my grandfather, that he's living his life, whichever reality he's in.
I love you, dadaji. <3 And I miss you in this reality.
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#36I 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 ye…
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…
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...
In the present, orthodox practitioners of Abrahamic religions, in particular, may stoically overcome such profound grief by attributing it to divine will.
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#37[deleted]
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#38People say time heals all wounds but sometimes there’s simply not enough time left to heal certain wounds.
I started watching Paradise, and a grieving parent said "time just keeps taking me further away from when I was with them."
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#39[deleted]
Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)
#40This is one of those moments where, thanks to the internet, you catch a glimpse of another persons world. It gives some perspective.
I'm worried this will come across as cavalier and non-serious, but your comment reminded me a lot of ... yes, a comedy skit: Bo Burnham's White Woman's Instagram , in which he ostensibly makes fun of clichéd social media content, only to completely whip you about by briefly interrupting the cheese with the character's heartfelt post about living with her mother's death, perhaps the reason she needs the escapism of he…
The entire Inside special is so deeply moving AND hilarious.
Welcome to the Internet is more applicable now than ever
That Funny Feeling is like a millennial version of We Didn't Start the Fire (and I have to be careful when I listen to it, because "that funny feeling" is difficult to cope with some times)
All Eyes on Me shook me to the core when I first heard it