Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

lettersofnote.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 135 posts

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#121

Post by RoyalHenOil »

criddell wrote: post #75
throwaway64643 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt a sense of betrayal when someone sought a new partner after their spouse dies. But when I read a passage by Freeman Dyson about Feynman's trip to Santa Fe to meet his new girlfriend, my view has significantly shifted. Dyson (or perhaps someone else; I don't recall exactly) spoke of Feynman as someone who cannot stay out of a romantic relationship for too long. Some men just always want to love and be lo…

If you die before your partner, do you want them to remain single the rest of their lives? If that were to happen to me, I definitely want my wife to love and be loved again.

My partner always tells me that if something happens to me, that's it for him. He doesn't want a relationship with anyone else.

To me, that is the saddest thought in the world. My sincerest hope is that he would find someone else he loves as much as me, and that he would tell her stories about me and let me be a happy memory rather than a sad one.

My uncle's wife remarried years after my uncle died after a long illness. She married a man who, himself, had been similarly widowed. She wore a gray wedding dress to indicate that she had been married before, and they placed two beautiful photos of their late partners behind the altar where they made their vows.

It was really beautiful and inspiring to see them carry on with their lives and love again, while proudly bringing along the memories of the two people they had lost and still loved as well. When I visit them at their home, it is filled with pictures of them with each other and with their late spouses, all intermixed, and it's deeply comforting to me. Even though they never knew each other before they were widowed, they tell me that it feels like they know each other's late spouses as if they had all been good friends together.

If I were the one dying of a long illness, knowing that something like that was on my partner's future would give me a more peaceful death. I wouldn't feel like I was letting him down and ruining his life — just saying goodbye to him in this chapter of his life, while finishing up my own chapter.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#122

Post by te_chris »

m_st wrote: post #117
swyx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; building close friends as an adult is a known Hard Problem when everyone has their own lives. any big insights or breakthroughs you can share for the rest of us?

I second this. My best friends are still the childhood friends. Every time I'm getting closer with someone new it fails sooner or later because of other duties we already have in life.

Make time for people. Be open. Choose love and kindness. Accept that relationships are a journey and take effort - on both sides.

It won't always work. I've done pretty well at this tbh, but it has helped living in a city like London where soicalising is one of the main activites and easily facilitated - to an extent at least. Context is key, no doubt.

Marathon, not a sprint. Everyone's busy so gradually making yourself a mutual part of another person's life will take time.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#123

Post by Daub »

I have been down this road, but the lessons I learn are not the obvious ones. My wife died in chikdbirth, so it was a double whammy. She was in some respects my soulmate, but she was also one of the most difficult people I have ever know. Had she not doed, I absolutely know that there is zero chance that we would still be together as a family.

We need to tell those we have lost that we have loved them. We also need to thank them and apologize to them. Here is Asia it is easier to talk with the dead, for which I am grateful.

However, I eventually learned to accept that we also need to know how to tell them to fuck off and leave us alone. If we fail to learn this, then we pass on their ghosts to those who we go on to love.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#124

Post by Daub »

rpigab wrote: post #27
donatj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Après moi, le déluge. After I am dead, publish everything, correspondence, search history, location history, nude photos. I am dead, I cannot care.

You won't care, but the living will. Funerals aren't meant for the deceased, they allow the living to mourn and move on. It may be irrational fears, but living people often fear what's gonna happen to them after they die, and respect for people extends after they die for most people. Not for everyone, but this means that some will feel uncomfortable about sharing private stuff. And then there's also superstition.

Maybe the living will care, but maybe we should not care that they care.

After he died, the entire erotic oevre of the artist William Turner was destroyed by his family on grounds of taste. If they were half as profound and amazing as his landscapes, then this was an act of profound desacration.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#126

Post by space_oddity »

swyx wrote: post #101
strenholme wrote: post #10

My wife died 10 years ago, so I understand that pain. Dealing with death is never easy. The thing I miss most about my wife is the depth of emotional connection; she knew everything about me being very deeply in love with me and everything I did really mattered to her. It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; I have about two dozen…

> It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; building close friends as an adult is a known Hard Problem when everyone has their own lives. any big insights or breakthroughs you can share for the rest of us?

Balancing personal responsibilities and finding time for meaningful connections is hard for me. That's why I have so little friends...

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#127

Post by space_oddity »

sharadov wrote: post #72
strenholme wrote: post #10

My wife died 10 years ago, so I understand that pain. Dealing with death is never easy. The thing I miss most about my wife is the depth of emotional connection; she knew everything about me being very deeply in love with me and everything I did really mattered to her. It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; I have about two dozen…

I am so happy that you were able to build that emotional connection. My dad is terminally ill and often I think about what I will miss most when he is no more. And I realized it would be the depth of emotional connection - a person who knows you in and out and unconditionally loves you. I try to steel myself about the coming eventuality, but all I know is it's going to be a deep abyss and it will take everything to c…

Everything will be fine. Wishing you great strength!

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#128

Post by elteto »

swyx wrote: post #101
strenholme wrote: post #10

My wife died 10 years ago, so I understand that pain. Dealing with death is never easy. The thing I miss most about my wife is the depth of emotional connection; she knew everything about me being very deeply in love with me and everything I did really mattered to her. It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; I have about two dozen…

> It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends who can give me comparable levels of socialization and attention; building close friends as an adult is a known Hard Problem when everyone has their own lives. any big insights or breakthroughs you can share for the rest of us?

Prioritize for empathy as a quality you look for in people. I find that empathic people tend to be very, very good friends.

And lots of flexibility and forgiveness (for small things).

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#129

Post by jebarker »

andrewjf wrote: post #104
swyx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> academia is one of those careers where that might happen to you why? i dont follow. is academia so special there?

I imagine it's because of the lure of pure-research and self-actualization and pursuing an area of study with almost no limitations. No idea if this is true or not, but this is how I idealize academia. Opposed to "industry" -- where you're under constant pressure to figure out why some random docker container pull fails or mutating web hook won't let your pod be deleted. It's just not fun or meaningful. It's a slog a…

Yes, I think academics are susceptible to defining themselves by their work, truly being to devoted to their subject and it's open ended so you can spend as much time as you choose on it.

I think these things can all be true in industry though. I say this as an industry researcher myself that has struggled with work/life balance my whole career. In the more soul destroying industry jobs hopefully you can at least clock out at 5pm and pay attention to other interests, i.e. you don't have to care about work outside of work hours.

I actually think it's more to do with the person than the job though. It's about how much you value work/career achievements and recognition vs family vs hobbies. Caveat: some people genuinely have to work unreasonable amounts of hours to put food on the table for their family and that's unfortunate.

Re: I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)

#130

Post by nathan_compton »

karaterobot wrote: post #46
mrweasel wrote: post #8

On one hand I am happy that we have things like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, on the other I feel that peoples private and unpublished writings should be kept private. It's reasonable enough to let a limited number of researchers access private documents, but the broader public, no. This isn't a letter meant for us, it's not meant for anyone to read and I feel that publishing it is a little disrespectful.

If anyone believes people have a right to decide what information about them is made public, but believes they lose that right after death, I'd love to hear the argument for that. For me, the basis for accepting the first proposition is that you buy in to self-determination as a value in and of itself, worth respecting not just because the person is around to stop you from doing whatever you want to them. In other wo…

Like in all situations, I think this ultimately comes down to the circumstances and consequences. Rights are, in the end, mere principals which may help us make good decisions. At least, I've never observed a right descend from platonic space and intervene in the real world to prevent itself from being violated. If the benefits are sufficient and the consequences small enough ignoring a dead person's wishes seems like not that big of a deal to me. Its hard to see the point or benefit of misgendering a person after they have died (ceteris paribus) but sometimes a person's private writings are of large value to the rest of the world and they are, after all, dead.
Post reply on HN