The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
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Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#42I lost my wife to cancer last year; she was 46. She was my best friend, lover, my son’s mom and one of the greatest people whom I’ve ever known. Q It is a surreal experience. For me it started as shock. I did not eat a meal for almost two months. Lots of people were around and I kept busy doing random things. Then people go away and the random tasks are done, and it’s quiet and strange. I chose to move forward, focus…
Sorry to hear. I lost my dad over a decade ago which I was close too, and a couple of years later broke up with my SO which I'd been with for well over a decade at that point. While nowhere close to your experience, that weird emptyness sounded very familiar. Coming home from work, eating dinner alone and then just "ok, now what?". Suddenly the days seemed to have so many more hours to fill. And that feeling when you…
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Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#43The hardest part of grief for me is the guilt and the anxiety. Yeah for keeping the catholic guilt but not believing so not getting the benefit of 'universal love and forgiveness' and afterlife aspects.
I went down a rabbit hole when my mom died of theories of time not being linear just so I could take comfort in all those shared moments still happening, indefinitely.
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#44I lost my wife to cancer last year; she was 46. She was my best friend, lover, my son’s mom and one of the greatest people whom I’ve ever known. Q It is a surreal experience. For me it started as shock. I did not eat a meal for almost two months. Lots of people were around and I kept busy doing random things. Then people go away and the random tasks are done, and it’s quiet and strange. I chose to move forward, focus…
I'm sorry you had to live through that. I wish we could stop cancer. I sometimes feel we're so close, then other times so far away.
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#45I’ve been lost to grief for the last several months - when I realised, finally, irrevocably, that my wife was never going to recover from the mental straitjacket she is now in. That the woman I married fifteen years ago no longer exists. Backstory: She went to hospital one day in March last year, she had hyponatremia (low sodium) and they gave her saline solution roughly twice as fast as recommended - they wanted to…
I'm so sorry. It reminds me of frontotemporal dementia that the Cloudflare founder, Lee Holloway had:
https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline...
previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#46"Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go." Jamie Anderson Felix Revello de Toro - Woman, 1965
This is brilliant. And it also illuminates how it can turn into something deeply maladaptive and self-destructive when we cling too hard to something that's passed or will eventually pass, when we define ourselves too much by that which we love or are loved. It reminds me of all the times when I was young where I thought I was deeply in love, but really I was just in love with the feeling of being loved and accepted.…
If it was mal adaptive, it wouldn’t exist.
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#47I lost my wife to cancer last year; she was 46. She was my best friend, lover, my son’s mom and one of the greatest people whom I’ve ever known. Q It is a surreal experience. For me it started as shock. I did not eat a meal for almost two months. Lots of people were around and I kept busy doing random things. Then people go away and the random tasks are done, and it’s quiet and strange. I chose to move forward, focus…
I'm sorry you had to live through that. I wish we could stop cancer. I sometimes feel we're so close, then other times so far away.
Thank you.
Her take on it was that she had hope and a chance with metastatic melanoma because she was standing on the shoulders of those before her. Basically, she had a 60/40 chance of 5 year survival. 10 years ago, it was zero.
Now, there’s a variety of new treatments in trial that will make the chances for future patients much better… there’s a customized Moderna vaccine and other immunotherapies on the horizon.
It’s cruel and it sucks but there was hope.
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#48I’ve been lost to grief for the last several months - when I realised, finally, irrevocably, that my wife was never going to recover from the mental straitjacket she is now in. That the woman I married fifteen years ago no longer exists. Backstory: She went to hospital one day in March last year, she had hyponatremia (low sodium) and they gave her saline solution roughly twice as fast as recommended - they wanted to…
I'm deeply sorry for what happened to your wife, and what you, your son and family have been through. And thank you for sharing your story; I see you, and wish you have the strength to continue moving forward, and supporting your loved ones.
I'm a random stranger on the internet, and don't want to suggest hope for recovery, but I just finished reading a book (Brain Energy, [1]) that presents a very convincing theory that may explain the cause for most/all mental disorders, and its link to metabolism and mitochondrial dysfunction. There has been many studies in this area for decades, but the way he connected the dots and presented the unifying theory felt like a breakthrough.
It probably doesn't apply to the trauma your wife went through, but it doesn't hurt to check if some of the techniques can improve a bit her quality of life. There's so much unknown about how the brain works, and its shocking to realize that most of current treatments for mental disorders by our so-called "medical experts" are, at best, trial-and-error.
Unrelated, but another book that comes to mind is Solve for Happy [2], by Mo Gowdat. I know it's difficult to talk about happiness given what you're going through, but Mo's story of grief and choice may help you find some comfort as you decide how to move forward.
[1] Brain Energy, by Dr. Christopher M. Palmer MD - https://brainenergy.com/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/advancing-psychiatry...
[2] Solve for Happy, by Mo Gawdat - https://www.mogawdat.com/solve-for-happy
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#49On the subject of Grief (and in general Emotions), a study of the works of the Roman Stoics, Cicero and Seneca (and earlier Epictetus) are a must.
In particular; see Cicero and the Emotions : Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 by Margaret Graver. - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo364132...
A good review here - https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2002/2002.09.15/
Re: The Strangeness of Grief (2019)
#50"Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go." Jamie Anderson Felix Revello de Toro - Woman, 1965
Beautiful and very True. And the worst thing is you really cannot share it with anyone, it is just too personal. There is also a real danger that this can seek outlet via anger against close folks/circumstances/world in general. It has been a little over a year and half since i lost my Mother(i spent the last decade living with/taking care of her) and the grief is still there. I cannot show it (because i am a "Man"),…
Addendum to my comment above:
I forgot to mention a very important book on the subject of Grief from the great Cicero which is rectified here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40472916