Is it possible to find joy/happiness after the death of a person very close to you, for example, a spouse, child, parent, etc.? I would imagine a person may feel content at times, but not really experience any happiness. I have not yet experienced the death of a person very close to me, but it will happen, unless I predecease them. Thanks for any information on anyone who has experienced a loss.
My experience is that there is no a single thread of individual joy and/or happiness. We are complex beings and just as there are many ways to be happy and feel joy there are also many ways to be sad and feel miserable.
My older brother died a violent death in 1992 war in Bosnia while I was in college and my anguish was fluctuating between flying high on the rumors that he might be alive to the hard reality of the confirmed news of many people simply murdered.
It took me years to accept that not having him in my life is like not having an arm or a leg. The way he was entangled in my life, for the simple fact that he was the most influential person for me growing up and forming into a person I just couldn’t escape the daily reminder of him not being around.
For years, I used to see other people who could be his age and looked somewhat similar, I would even befriend people in my professional field that would be his age only to realize that a void of such nature will always be a void and nothing can fill it – the nothingness of it all was sometimes unbearable.
Early on, to take away thinking about it I’d spend every waking moment reading or studying and eventually certain topics generated interest that made me think about it rather than my loss.
Eventually I moved to Canada and that created a totally new context which greatly helped with dealing with it.
Eventually I met a nice girl, got married and have children whose every moment brings great joy and happiness.
Since you are not in mourning now, and have not lost a loved one, I can safely say “You can recover from the loss of a loved one.” In fact most people do. It doesn’t mean they’re not sad when they think of the dead, but they recover and regain their happiness. In fact, I propose that the people who don’t recover are a tiny minority of humanity.
A. Almost everyone loses someone they love (a parent at least)
B. If the people who lose someone they love don’t get over it, why is there laughter? Why are there shows about the love people feel for one another. Poems about romance? Novels where the good guys win?
This only happens because most people move on with their lives, recover from the loss of a loved one, and find happiness again.
If no one got over the death of a loved one, think of the world that would exist. Everyone except the very youngest children, would be in perpetual mourning. Television and drama would have no happy endings, because no one would want a happy ending. “Why,” people would think, “can there be happiness, I’ve lost someone I’ve loved.” And that doesn’t happen.
Most people recover and gain an equilibrium between sadness at the loss of a loved one and the fact that life is here to be lived.
There are rare people who mourn for the rest of their lives and never feel a moment of happiness again. It’s incredibly hard to ease someone with that condition into getting help, but that’s what they need. I won’t say people shouldn’t be sad at the loss of someone they love, but mourning and lack of happiness years later is bad for the living. It also doesn’t do any good for the dead.
Of course it’s possible. My father died when I was 12. In some ways this never gets better, but of course it stops being the crisis it was at first. I have all kinds of happiness and joy. I laugh a lot. We’re big inside – there’s room for dead loved ones, and laughter too.
It’s certainly possible. My grandmother and my aunt each lost a husband, and then went on to remarry and be very happy in a second marriage, and then lost that second husband, and both of them seemed from everything I could tell to still find joy in their lives. You could tell that my grandmother was thrilled to have guys at the senior center fighting over who would take her to the New Year’s Dance (or at least that was the story that she enjoyed telling), even after the death of two husbands.
One of the absolutely most joyful women I ever knew had one of the most tragic stories. She had lost two sons as young adults, and her husband had also died, and then she went completely blind. Yet she had a genuine love of life, and especially of new experiences. She spent time at a camp for blind seniors, and rode a horse for the first time, and was so thrilled and proud of herself that it make me smile to think of it.
That’s not to say that everyone reacts the same way. I knew one very sad, depressed woman who had lost a young child about 40 years earlier. She had clearly never recovered emotionally, and while there were one or two things that could make her smile, I don’t think she ever did experience true joy.
I lost my mother in 2008 and my father in 2011. Both of them before their times and from complicated health conditions. I do not feel the same as I did before all that. I had never experienced death of a loved one prior to that (except my dog, and that was hard enough). I think going thru that process changed me, but the rest of my world kept going on and expectations kept going as they always have, both at work and at home. I think I want(ed) a break from everything, to reflect and mourn, and I never got that, so the process of mourning and healing has dragged on. I would not say I am still sad about those events during the crises, but they have affected and changed me. I wonder if it ever ends.
I was recently reading about the author Joyce Carol Oates. She married when she was 23 years old and she and her husband were together for 47 years until his death. Oates could do nothing for months after his death and was considering suicide. But she eventually recovered enough to begin to work and socialize again. She even eventually met somebody new and married for a second time.
That’s the way it works. You’ll be devastated when a loved one dies and you’ll never forget the loss but eventually the rest of your life resumes and you go on.
I would say that if you’re not having at least moments of happiness within a month of a loved one dying, you need to see a doctor about that. Within a year or two, your life should have pretty much returned to a new normal that includes happiness on a regular basis.
Now, everyone will feel moments - maybe even whole days - of sadness and loss about the death for decades to come and those moments are normal, but anyone who feels like the death of a loved one is continually dominating their feelings after a long period of time is probably suffering from depression and not just going through the grieving process.
(For the record, my mother passed away when I was 14, which puts it more than 20 years ago at this point. What I describe fit my brothers and father as well as myself.)
My father died when I as 12. I clearly remember thinking ‘my life is over’ and then I pretty much shut down. Well, life went on, I exerienced joy later on in life so I guess there was something alive in me.
I’ve not experienced that, but from the three examples I know of, I’m not sure parents ever really recover from the death of their children.
Barring that, yes, of course. Otherwise, as pointed out by another poster, nobody would be happy, since the wide majority of people have lost loved ones.
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This is probably better suited to IMHO, where in addition to factual information, opinions and advice can also be given.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Certainly a person can and does recover. It’s very difficult at first, but that person never truly leaves you. Especially with a parent. The person you are today came from the guidance and instruction given to you by Mom/Dad. That person lives through you.
My father has been dead for almost five years, and I’ve probably thought about him every day. But life goes on. Things change, and you change. There becomes a “new normal” where you are happy, sad, angry, excited, or hopeful just like you were before. Grieving is a process and a natural part of life. Just because someone else’s time on earth is over doesn’t mean that yours is.
Such a thing puts your own mortality in perspective and helps you deal with it and understand it. You realize that we are all in this ride together and that there are important things for us to do. Don’t waste days, and realize that work, some friends, and some stupid activities are merely hobbies; the important things are those close to you. When those things that you are to do in life are done, you’ll know that those strong people you miss have gone the same way…and you might actually find that many of the posters on this board are wrong and you see your loved one again.
My father died in 2003 and then, more devastatingly, my first husband died in 2009. I will never forget either of them, but there was still joy, even within days of each of their deaths. There was despair and wonder and sadness and laughter. The mixture was just very different for a while. Slowly, the joy and wonder overtook the sadness, and now I’m back to where I was before.
The streak of sadness I have is deeper than it was before, but no wider.