this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation
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My wife died after being together for 25 years.
I'm guessing at some point I'll get better.
Hope you're doing as good as you can. Lost my wife of 4 years a bit over a year ago. It fucking sucks. There's no way to describe the pain of losing someone so close. It doesn't really get better with time, it just gets duller and you learn to live with it. I found it best just to surround myself with family and friends and just ride through the waves of emotion.
While I haven't lost someone as close as you have, I have lost both close friends and family over the years, and my way of coping with it is basically that I live on as best I can, to ensure that their memory is kept alive.
My dad was far from perfect, but to me he was the greatest dad ever.
Christopher and I had grown distant over the years, but to this day he's the only person I could geek out over progmetal with. He influenced me more than he ever knew.
And Lisa, on the surface we hated each other, but I still found her to be an interesting and fun person on the few occasions we got along.
.....and the list goes on. To me, lamenting the dead only feels sad for a little while. After that, it becomes memories of which I refuse to let go. Because while the world may not see them as important, I still remember them fondly decades after, and the effect they had on me.
I am by no means a wise man, so this rambling is by not meant as a solution to coping with loss that everyone should try. But it is what works for me. Maybe it will work for you too, in case you are in need of unsolicited advice from a stranger.
I wish you the best.
I feel so contradicted on how to deal with someones death, I really haven’t lost anyone super close because I am still young (and I haven’t been super close to anyone ever either) but I feel you have two options on each side of the spectrum
You either completely forget them, they never existed, and live on, delete everything you may have, pics, voice notes etc, it maybe extremely hard but maybe more beneficial in the long term?
You learn to live with the fact that they no longer exist, your sorrow may affect you less overtime and you might get busy with life and other people, but it will probably never be the same again
Now ofc these are kinda two extremes, but which side is better? I think 1st, but I don’t think I could ever bring myself personally to do it….
I don’t think the first is really possible without doing some psychological damage to yourself, unless it’s a romantic relationship (but not a marriage of 25 years).
My mom died ~20 years ago, when I was about 12. Even if I’d tried the first, there would have been a mother shaped hole in my life, which is its own kind of pain. She and my dad had been together for nearly 40 years, over two thirds of their lives- how could he forget that? How could he live with himself for doing her the disrespect of forgetting her (from his perspective, and now that I’m an adult mine also, but this might not be universal, and hey, the dead don’t get insulted)? He kept their hyphenated last name until he remarried, and now my stepmom knows funny stories about my mom, she knows her birthday and death day, and she has been welcomed by my mother’s family.
I believe that we as people are mostly formed by those around us. Even when they die, we do carry them with us- I have my mother’s handwriting, taste in tea, and laugh. My father will never be able to say grocery store, because she always called it a grok shop to be cute. Hell, she was a teacher and of her three kids, all are married to teachers and two are teachers themselves. We all eat salade niçoise on Christmas Eve because she wanted summery food while pregnant one Christmas Eve and it started an out of season tradition for us.
If you look hard at the people who loved her, you can still see a reflection of who she was (Just from the above qualities, you can get a small impression). Obviously in my opinion my mother was incredibly special, but I think that’s probably true for everyone- it’s just hard to see it when the person is still around.
Loss is painful in both cases. But the second one turns the the initial pain into something positive.
I could never go with the first method. I'd probably feel like I was betraying their memory.
Thanks
May your grief alleviate and your heart find peace, I recently lost someone as well, not very close but still kind of a reminder how fragile this life is
Thank you kind stranger
🙏