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

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

#81

Post by ineedasername »

moneywoes wrote: post #64
ineedasername wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll note that you probably mean this in the original sense of Zeno's philosophy and not the modern use, which has more of a connotation of emotional repression. Somewhere along the way from ancient Greece "stoic" began to mistake the original's sense of not allowing yourself to be controlled by your emotions to something like not experiencing them to begin with. Though to be fair, even the original held that certain…

Any good resources for the original sense?

Little to none of his work has survived intact, so what we know is mostly through other people. IIRC, a lot comes from Seneca and Marcus Aurelius's auto biography "meditations". Searching around on Seneca, his letters on the topic have been collected in a book "Letters from a Stoic"

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

#82

Post by naveen99 »

david-gpu wrote: post #77
naveen99 wrote: post #33

do you mourn your own past self, your youth, or even yesterday ? Do you mourn the people who will live when you die, because you won’t get to know them, and they won’t get to know you ? The past and the future are not so different. While some of the past is catalogued in your memories, most of it remains unknown and unexplored, partly predictable, just like the future. enjoy the present and enjoy predicting the futur…

I may be completely missing the mark here, but I'm going to guess that you haven't experienced yet the death of a close relative (parent, sibling). No doubt you wrote this comment from a place of kindness, but the way it's worded can easily be misinterpreted as dismissive or unempathetic, which is not what you intended. Next time you come across a grieving person, it may be better to stick with a simple "Sorry for yo…

Rereading my comment does probably appear insensitive to the currently grieving. Maybe it’ll be preventative of grief for people who would have grieved in the future.

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

#83

Post by nickreese »

jbay808 wrote: post #73

This is going to sound ridiculous, but thinking about time as a 4th dimension helped me. The past never disappears from our universe, it's just the previous page of the book we're reading, and always there just a short distance away along the axis. This helped me reframe the loss from "they're gone forever" to "they're alive, in the past". It's now an inaccessible location to you, but the past exists in no less of a…

Thank you for this. This is the clearest way I’ve seen my approach to grieving spelled out.

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

#84

Post by oars »

trakter wrote: post #42

I just lost my 17 year old kid brother this year. He was the passenger in a car that got hit by a charter bus. He died on impact. I never got to say goodbye. I’ve lost grandparents and friends before, but I have never felt pain this intense before. This is also the most alone I have ever felt. Even surrounded by my huge family I felt alone in my pain. I consider myself extremely lucky, I have an incredible wife and l…

Great analogy, thank you.

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

#85

Post by ciniglio »

moneywoes wrote: post #64
ineedasername wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll note that you probably mean this in the original sense of Zeno's philosophy and not the modern use, which has more of a connotation of emotional repression. Somewhere along the way from ancient Greece "stoic" began to mistake the original's sense of not allowing yourself to be controlled by your emotions to something like not experiencing them to begin with. Though to be fair, even the original held that certain…

Any good resources for the original sense?

I recommend "A Guide to the Good Life" by William Irvine. The title is a bit off-putting, but it gives a good survey of the philosophy and history of stoicism along with good examples of applying it to modern life. After reading it, you might have a better sense of which primary sources will be most relevant to what you're looking for.

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

#86

Post by geocrasher »

SomeDudeInKy wrote: post #72
geocrasher wrote: post #41

I lost my wife in February. We knew it was coming and were able to say goodbye. It doesn't hurt any less. My wife left me an article series to read, in print, but it's also online, and it has proved helpful over and over again especially when I am in the deepest throes of agony. I hope it helps you and your wife: "Help for Those Who Grieve" https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/awake-no3-2018-nov-d... You'll benefi…

I lost my mother in April to pancreatic cancer. We knew it was coming and the waiting game was not pleasant. The worst part is, nothing can prepare you for when it does finally happen. I’m sorry for your loss.

And I am very sorry to hear of yours as well :(

I can relate so much to your comment. The waiting game... just awful. Toward the end of the ordeal, when my wife had taken her last turn for the worse, a friend called and asked how I was doing.

My response: "I feel like a prisoner who's staring at the guillotine while the executioner is on the phone ordering lunch."

I thought I'd share it not for a laugh, but you might be able to relate to the feeling.

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

#87

Post by feydaykyn »

I'm sorry for your loss.

I'm going to write about you may feel in the future, maybe it will help just a bit, just that one time, the hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

What helped me after losing my baby daughter was protecting my sleep, as sadness and depression seem to be way stronger when I'm tired. Before being able to do that, I was sinking, and today it's always a risk.

Ten years after, I 'm still amazed I can smile and be happy, and this is such a joyful discovery every time: joy has become extraordinary. I felt like I would never have a real smile on my face.

Finding a few rituals helped a lot: we bought a flower I'm tending to every other day, and there's a small tree above her grave where I go sit and talk to her.

To this day, being angry at the thoughtless sentences people say is somehow helpful, like a reprieve from the sadness. No, my others kids do not "replace" my daughter. No, the fact she was a baby do not mean she was worth less than an older child. No, repeating me to get over it will not magically work, and anyway, why should I be ok with my child death?

A beautiful discovery I made is that this situation will trigger discussions, gestures, moments that will become memorable : that one time where a remote friend said two sentences that got you through the day, that nasty grandma suddenly speaking so nicely for 5mn, that touch of sun on your skin while you were looking on the place she died, the new friends you make through communities of people suffering from the same thing, etc.

Again, I'm sorry for your loss, it's not right, it's common but it's not right. For now, just one step at a the time, going through each day. At some point, hopefully, you'll see a light in the distance.

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

#88

Post by Seb-C »

I lost my brother (33 years old) in august last year. It was a great shock because it was completely unexpected.

I could not attend to his funerals because I live on the other side of the world, and borders were closed due to the pandemic. Some people tried to help me to assist with video-conferences. It's not the same, but still helpful.

These are my humble suggestions:

- Continue to live as usual. This is hard but important that you continue to enjoy your life as much as possible. It may be hard during Covid-times, but staying at home to mourn will only make your recovery slower.

- Recognize that it's not wrong to feel right and enjoy yourself at times. You don't have to feel sad 100% of the time. Achieving to feel good and enjoy yourself anyway is a good sign that you're on the path to recovery. However you will probably feel guilty of feeling well at times, and I think it's normal.

- Talk. It's very painful and I cried so many times when talking about it, but allowing yourself to cry is the best thing you can do, it's how your body and mind copes with it. Talking to a psychologist to understand your own feelings and conflicts can also be of a great help.

- Say goodbye to him. It was weird for me to have a remote funeral and not be able to be here. Even being an atheist, going to a religious place and lighting a candle was the moment I basically said goodbye to him and started to accept the reality and move on.

Whatever the religious conflicts or disagreements may be with your family, I think it's important to recognize that the rituals we do when someone dies are for the sake of the livings more than for the deads. It's the time you can together say goodbye to him, and then move on.

In any case, don't stay alone.

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

#89

Post by rubicon33 »

geocrasher wrote: post #41

I lost my wife in February. We knew it was coming and were able to say goodbye. It doesn't hurt any less. My wife left me an article series to read, in print, but it's also online, and it has proved helpful over and over again especially when I am in the deepest throes of agony. I hope it helps you and your wife: "Help for Those Who Grieve" https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/awake-no3-2018-nov-d... You'll benefi…

Losing my wife is my greatest fear in life. It transcends the fear of losing my parents, or my siblings.

I don't understand how much it hurts you but, I can imagine. I hope you're able to find peace and happiness again.

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

#90

Post by hyencomper »

nickreese wrote: post #83
jbay808 wrote: post #73

This is going to sound ridiculous, but thinking about time as a 4th dimension helped me. The past never disappears from our universe, it's just the previous page of the book we're reading, and always there just a short distance away along the axis. This helped me reframe the loss from "they're gone forever" to "they're alive, in the past". It's now an inaccessible location to you, but the past exists in no less of a…

Thank you for this. This is the clearest way I’ve seen my approach to grieving spelled out.

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
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