Dear friend. I lost my mother at the start of 2020. I had a chaotic and hurtful relationship with her and I have spent much time since her death writing and rewriting my pain at both our lives and her death. I wept openly in public for weeks after she died. I was overwhelmed with pain and just could not stem the tide of emotion. It felt shaming and at the same time cathartic. I still cry at times. I still get drenched in heartbreak and get the need to write it down because it feels too indulgent to ask someone to hear me, to sit with my sadness. Im happy to share with you and sit with you and hear your story. Im thinking of you. Grieve well, you are not alone. X
🤍 🕊 You are not alone 💔 Thank you for such a heartfelt remembrance of a life that meant something. Your ‘in memoriam’ video was so beautiful. I couldn’t comment at the time cause I was crying too much, it brought up so many squashed emotions….but that is what’s so powerful and helpful. It hurts to grieve but it really helps in the long run! There’s a good Scottish word ‘greetin’ that means crying/moaning but it can also mean crying in a happy grief & remembrance way! Obvs we have to be over the shock of the death but it’s such a comforting feeling when it comes. Thank you for talking about this. Your work and teachings I really find so helpful.
Richard loved a desert landscape, and Quine. The last few years were very difficult; it complicates my thoughts of his life and death. I remember him falling because he fell all the time. He became brittle and then he broke and broke and broke.
George Saunders wrote “Grief is a form of praise.” I remember this in my own grief, and when feeling the grief of others.
I heard this Saunder’s quote on a Radio Lab podcast. “The 11th. A Letter from George.” About fifteen minutes in. But the whole thing is moving and helpful.
Yes, that’s the usual cliche. Instead, I find Sander’s comment helpful in times of grief. When I’ve lost someone, the metaphor of value for money doesn’t apply.
I always thought that if someone have been trough half of what I've been trough that person deserve respect. So when peoples disrespect others, I think they haven't been trough so much as they claim. I have tree lens to make sens or to grasp anything about this world. Science, art and philosophy. I see greif and lost goes through the artistic lens because any glance with the two other seems too vivid some how. You have the one that knock you as a fist in your face, incapacitate for a wile. And you have those like a sharp blade that goes in and out living you as if nothing happened until you realise you are bleeding all over.
My mother was the embodiment of the perfect mother. Warm, loving, forgiving, always conciliatory. 15 years after her death my sisters and I still talk about her and the values she passed on to us. She was a devout catholic and I am a devout atheist. She was sure she would see Jesus in heaven. I know that as long as I live she will live on in me. I think of her every day. On her gravestone is inscribed "Darling mother, always loving, always loved."
Be thankful for the the time you had with your loved one. We can only truly grieve for those we truly loved.
I lost a boyfriend in 2011 to an overdose. I thought that would be the apex of grief and function as a kind of grief vaccine. I was wrong. Just as covid hit, my mother who had been ill with diabetes and lupus and CHF, went downhill fast. It was horrible, a decline that took two years to kill her. During that time an uncle died of covid and his wife, my aunt was crippled from it, damage to the nerves in her legs. My twin sister had a mild case of covid that a month later stopped her heart, then two months later they found clots in her brain. She has been in and out of the hospital for two years. She has long covid. My best girlfriend gets really upset when I talk about covid or health. She is no longer talking to me and said she was "sick of hearing " about my family and their health issues. My mother passed away on March 7th, 2022. I have lost everything and am completely alone. I have to still be very careful of covid because I have lupus as well. I started abusing drugs again and I believe I have "complicated grief." I pretty much just wait to die at this point. I had omicron in January and it messed my heart up.
Thank you for sharing this. A year and one month ago, my sweet little brother killed himself at 33 years old. It's been the hardest year trying to carry that pain and figure out how and what happened. And very few people, even family, have brought it up. I forget he isn't on this earth any longer. But he's also just missing now. A memory and photos only. The hole is like a black gravitational void, pulling me in. But what has deeply surprised me since then is learning all the other people who are survivors of suicide. Suddenly, everyone I meet knows someone who died this way. I thought I would be the only one. Not even at all am I alone in this grief. I am not sure this actually makes me feel any better? Or if now my eyes are open to the voids surrounding everyone and everything. We just carry them forward... silently suffering. It feels so good to let them out.
Sending you much support. When this subject comes up, I think of how people used to wear black clothing/armbands for a year. As a reminder to the rest of the community that here is a person who is experiencing a recent loss. Our lives go on shortly after a funeral or celebration of life we have attended. Yet for the immediate circle, there's not that quick bounce back. Also, there are the grievances and losses that we may not feel we are deserving to lay claim to. For a variety of reasons. When my Dad's partner died, there was the issue of where did his ashes go? His family wanted him back in Indiana. My brother said, "Well, we aren't shipping him, and then, "Liz, will you take him home?" Of course we had a ceremony for him for my dad's sake, and I made a picture collage which my dad sat and stared at as he drank his evening martinis. For a while, it aided my dad in reminiscing happier moments, but then after a while, I wondered whether or if it would be appropriate to put the collage away (we didn't). My question is, when does the grieving turn to a situation in which there is not a return to the land of the not grieving and it's just depression? I'm rambling.
Complicated grief isn't depression. Treating it with antidepressants will probably have very unpredictable and therefore dangerous results unless you also have depression. If it's just complicated grief, though, you might end up overstimulated. I do not have an answer for how to go back to the premorbid state.
who said ANYTHING about antidepressants? NOT I. Also, I see depression quite often as a symptom. And yeah, sometimes someone can fall into depression. From loneliness. From inactivity. And the best antidote is action, not a pill.
I've been waiting to set aside the time to answer this post. My father died of stage four follicular thyroid cancer when I was fifteen years old. My sisters were fourteen and eleven. It destroyed my family, personally and socioeconomically. I had just started high school in a new district and it was awkward for so many of my peers. I completely withdrew from the world. My mother would not acknowledge that she was devastated and all of us grieved alone. I had no idea my father would die. He had survived genocide, starvation, and disease. He did not believe he could die and neither did I. I remember reading "hospice" on the whiteboard at the hospital and being amused. My father was an exception to hospice in my mind.
My sisters bring up memories all the time I cannot recall whatsoever from the last few months of my father's life. My mother and father were business partners and owned multiple successful small businesses together, but now my mother works as a seamstress making less than 20k a year and we do not speak often. My father worked on his bachelor's, master's, and PhD ever since I was little and I would type up his papers and do his Powerpoints. He debated me on atheism, logic, and rhetoric.
Though I was too young to provide him a suitable intellectual partner I developed a love of intellectualism and writing. My goal in high school was to get my sisters and I into elite universities and it was the legacy I felt my dad left to me.
Now six years later no one cares anymore (did they ever care?), and it seems like I'm getting crushed. The cutthroat competitive environment at my college is eating me alive. I fail in some measure to students with financial and familial support, yet I'm assumed to have those resources. I've had harrowing experiences at the college. I want someone who loves me and someone to "save me" because it seems these obstacles are impossible alone.
I'm screaming I was just a child, someone please help me and no one can hear me. So many people who seem to be coming to help take advantage. My sisters are all I have, and they're talented and bright as well, but struggling just as much. It feels like a never ending nightmare. In my strongest moments I think I am like my father and I live my life how I want to, I say and do what I want. I'm so tired, but I have been trying so hard.
Dear Exulansic, I lost my father in 2019 and I still miss him so much. I forget that I'm grieving sometimes, it feels like I've lost the ability to feel certain emotions since I've had to put it all on the back burner and deal with the next incredibly difficult years. The only good part is that I sometimes see him in my dreams, and when I see him, he's always sitting in his chair, smiling at me, making jokes, relaxed and happy. That makes me feel like I did right by him and like he still loves me. All the best to you. You are such a good person and you deserve much better than you get.
Dear friend. I lost my mother at the start of 2020. I had a chaotic and hurtful relationship with her and I have spent much time since her death writing and rewriting my pain at both our lives and her death. I wept openly in public for weeks after she died. I was overwhelmed with pain and just could not stem the tide of emotion. It felt shaming and at the same time cathartic. I still cry at times. I still get drenched in heartbreak and get the need to write it down because it feels too indulgent to ask someone to hear me, to sit with my sadness. Im happy to share with you and sit with you and hear your story. Im thinking of you. Grieve well, you are not alone. X
🤍 🕊 You are not alone 💔 Thank you for such a heartfelt remembrance of a life that meant something. Your ‘in memoriam’ video was so beautiful. I couldn’t comment at the time cause I was crying too much, it brought up so many squashed emotions….but that is what’s so powerful and helpful. It hurts to grieve but it really helps in the long run! There’s a good Scottish word ‘greetin’ that means crying/moaning but it can also mean crying in a happy grief & remembrance way! Obvs we have to be over the shock of the death but it’s such a comforting feeling when it comes. Thank you for talking about this. Your work and teachings I really find so helpful.
Much love to you from London xx
Richard loved a desert landscape, and Quine. The last few years were very difficult; it complicates my thoughts of his life and death. I remember him falling because he fell all the time. He became brittle and then he broke and broke and broke.
For now the grief falls back inside of me.
George Saunders wrote “Grief is a form of praise.” I remember this in my own grief, and when feeling the grief of others.
I heard this Saunder’s quote on a Radio Lab podcast. “The 11th. A Letter from George.” About fifteen minutes in. But the whole thing is moving and helpful.
Grief is the price of love
The more you loved the more you pay
Yes, that’s the usual cliche. Instead, I find Sander’s comment helpful in times of grief. When I’ve lost someone, the metaphor of value for money doesn’t apply.
I always thought that if someone have been trough half of what I've been trough that person deserve respect. So when peoples disrespect others, I think they haven't been trough so much as they claim. I have tree lens to make sens or to grasp anything about this world. Science, art and philosophy. I see greif and lost goes through the artistic lens because any glance with the two other seems too vivid some how. You have the one that knock you as a fist in your face, incapacitate for a wile. And you have those like a sharp blade that goes in and out living you as if nothing happened until you realise you are bleeding all over.
My mother was the embodiment of the perfect mother. Warm, loving, forgiving, always conciliatory. 15 years after her death my sisters and I still talk about her and the values she passed on to us. She was a devout catholic and I am a devout atheist. She was sure she would see Jesus in heaven. I know that as long as I live she will live on in me. I think of her every day. On her gravestone is inscribed "Darling mother, always loving, always loved."
Be thankful for the the time you had with your loved one. We can only truly grieve for those we truly loved.
I lost a boyfriend in 2011 to an overdose. I thought that would be the apex of grief and function as a kind of grief vaccine. I was wrong. Just as covid hit, my mother who had been ill with diabetes and lupus and CHF, went downhill fast. It was horrible, a decline that took two years to kill her. During that time an uncle died of covid and his wife, my aunt was crippled from it, damage to the nerves in her legs. My twin sister had a mild case of covid that a month later stopped her heart, then two months later they found clots in her brain. She has been in and out of the hospital for two years. She has long covid. My best girlfriend gets really upset when I talk about covid or health. She is no longer talking to me and said she was "sick of hearing " about my family and their health issues. My mother passed away on March 7th, 2022. I have lost everything and am completely alone. I have to still be very careful of covid because I have lupus as well. I started abusing drugs again and I believe I have "complicated grief." I pretty much just wait to die at this point. I had omicron in January and it messed my heart up.
I know how it feels to lose a partner you love. Please accept my sincere condolences.
Thank you for sharing this. A year and one month ago, my sweet little brother killed himself at 33 years old. It's been the hardest year trying to carry that pain and figure out how and what happened. And very few people, even family, have brought it up. I forget he isn't on this earth any longer. But he's also just missing now. A memory and photos only. The hole is like a black gravitational void, pulling me in. But what has deeply surprised me since then is learning all the other people who are survivors of suicide. Suddenly, everyone I meet knows someone who died this way. I thought I would be the only one. Not even at all am I alone in this grief. I am not sure this actually makes me feel any better? Or if now my eyes are open to the voids surrounding everyone and everything. We just carry them forward... silently suffering. It feels so good to let them out.
Sending you much support. When this subject comes up, I think of how people used to wear black clothing/armbands for a year. As a reminder to the rest of the community that here is a person who is experiencing a recent loss. Our lives go on shortly after a funeral or celebration of life we have attended. Yet for the immediate circle, there's not that quick bounce back. Also, there are the grievances and losses that we may not feel we are deserving to lay claim to. For a variety of reasons. When my Dad's partner died, there was the issue of where did his ashes go? His family wanted him back in Indiana. My brother said, "Well, we aren't shipping him, and then, "Liz, will you take him home?" Of course we had a ceremony for him for my dad's sake, and I made a picture collage which my dad sat and stared at as he drank his evening martinis. For a while, it aided my dad in reminiscing happier moments, but then after a while, I wondered whether or if it would be appropriate to put the collage away (we didn't). My question is, when does the grieving turn to a situation in which there is not a return to the land of the not grieving and it's just depression? I'm rambling.
Complicated grief isn't depression. Treating it with antidepressants will probably have very unpredictable and therefore dangerous results unless you also have depression. If it's just complicated grief, though, you might end up overstimulated. I do not have an answer for how to go back to the premorbid state.
who said ANYTHING about antidepressants? NOT I. Also, I see depression quite often as a symptom. And yeah, sometimes someone can fall into depression. From loneliness. From inactivity. And the best antidote is action, not a pill.
Ic
I've been waiting to set aside the time to answer this post. My father died of stage four follicular thyroid cancer when I was fifteen years old. My sisters were fourteen and eleven. It destroyed my family, personally and socioeconomically. I had just started high school in a new district and it was awkward for so many of my peers. I completely withdrew from the world. My mother would not acknowledge that she was devastated and all of us grieved alone. I had no idea my father would die. He had survived genocide, starvation, and disease. He did not believe he could die and neither did I. I remember reading "hospice" on the whiteboard at the hospital and being amused. My father was an exception to hospice in my mind.
My sisters bring up memories all the time I cannot recall whatsoever from the last few months of my father's life. My mother and father were business partners and owned multiple successful small businesses together, but now my mother works as a seamstress making less than 20k a year and we do not speak often. My father worked on his bachelor's, master's, and PhD ever since I was little and I would type up his papers and do his Powerpoints. He debated me on atheism, logic, and rhetoric.
Though I was too young to provide him a suitable intellectual partner I developed a love of intellectualism and writing. My goal in high school was to get my sisters and I into elite universities and it was the legacy I felt my dad left to me.
Now six years later no one cares anymore (did they ever care?), and it seems like I'm getting crushed. The cutthroat competitive environment at my college is eating me alive. I fail in some measure to students with financial and familial support, yet I'm assumed to have those resources. I've had harrowing experiences at the college. I want someone who loves me and someone to "save me" because it seems these obstacles are impossible alone.
I'm screaming I was just a child, someone please help me and no one can hear me. So many people who seem to be coming to help take advantage. My sisters are all I have, and they're talented and bright as well, but struggling just as much. It feels like a never ending nightmare. In my strongest moments I think I am like my father and I live my life how I want to, I say and do what I want. I'm so tired, but I have been trying so hard.
Where to begin 💔... you are not alone.
I think people are really good at denial and at stuffing their feelings.
I've been wondering why there aren't public displays of despair- I can't believe what we are living thru -
Once I could not stop crying and I went on disability for 2 years. My mom died. I stayed home and cried. Then I felt better after a while.
Dear Exulansic, I lost my father in 2019 and I still miss him so much. I forget that I'm grieving sometimes, it feels like I've lost the ability to feel certain emotions since I've had to put it all on the back burner and deal with the next incredibly difficult years. The only good part is that I sometimes see him in my dreams, and when I see him, he's always sitting in his chair, smiling at me, making jokes, relaxed and happy. That makes me feel like I did right by him and like he still loves me. All the best to you. You are such a good person and you deserve much better than you get.