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Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

bessstillman.substack.com

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Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#181

Post by khazhoux »

randycupertino wrote: post #174
drivingmenuts wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

FWIW, there's no way gmail recycles inactive email addresses. That would wreck security worldwide.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#183

Post by necovek »

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).

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#184

Post by incr_me »

Balgair wrote: post #109
graemep wrote: post #2

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 he…

> 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 the…

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.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#185

Post by imp0cat »

khazhoux wrote: post #181
randycupertino wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW, there's no way gmail recycles inactive email addresses. That would wreck security worldwide.

Sound right, as it would be an easy way to take over other accounts connected to that inbox.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#186

Post by kruffalon »

graemep wrote: post #2

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 he…

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.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#187

Post by opan »

khazhoux wrote: post #181
randycupertino wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW, there's no way gmail recycles inactive email addresses. That would wreck security worldwide.

What happens to those accounts they've been deleting for inactivity lately then?

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#188

Post by [deleted] »

khazhoux wrote: post #181
randycupertino wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW, there's no way gmail recycles inactive email addresses. That would wreck security worldwide.

[deleted]

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#189

Post by Podrod »

pizzathyme wrote: post #33
graemep wrote: post #2

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 he…

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"?

I'm autistic which is also a disorder. Like ADHD it's a neurodevelopmental disorder because from a scientific and medical POV the brain developed abnormally compared to a neurotypical person's brain.

I guess your point is why does it require a label at all but science abhors a taxonomic vacuum, everything must be classified and if so I'd rather it be a disorder than a disease or illness.

Of course this opinion is just mine, I have no idea how other autistic or adhd people see this as I don't keep up with the neurodiverse community and what words are considered good or bad.

Re: Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

#190

Post by khazhoux »

opan wrote: post #187
khazhoux wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, there's no way gmail recycles inactive email addresses. That would wreck security worldwide.

What happens to those accounts they've been deleting for inactivity lately then?

They just sit there, dead.
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