Not long after the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster, a video was found of the astronauts several minutes before the space shuttle’s fatal breakup during reentry. In that video, the astronauts were shown blissfully unaware of what was about to happen, being cheerful, having fun, etc. Just a few minutes later, they were all dead.
When the video was released, it was the opinion of many that this video would be comforting to the astronauts’ grieving families.
My thoughts were the opposite. It seemed to me that this sort of video - showing loved ones having fun, not knowing they were going to die very soon - would add salt to the wound and make the grief worse, not better. Seeing those loved ones having fun, cheerful, anticipating a safe landing soon - they not knowing what would soon hit them - wouldn’t this *increase *the emotional pain?
Wouldn’t showing a video of loved ones having fun in the World Trade Center shortly before the airplanes hit, make families feel worse?
Especially since the death wasn’t instantaneous, either, it wasn’t like the astronauts were killed in a blink.
I’ve no idea whether there is any consistent right and wrong answer to the question. I guess I would want to know that my loved ones were happily alive right up to the moment when they died. “It was sudden, they wouldn’t have suffered much” is a common phrase of reassurance - I think this is similar.
Same here. Mind you, I would not have wanted to watch such a video very soon after losing a loved one, but eventually it would be a bittersweet thing to see.
Yeah, the word bittersweet is exactly what I came here to say.
OTOH, lets assume some one little thing in that video, done differently would have made the difference between them living and not…yeah, that kinda video would haunt me…
Interesting, IMO, most of NASA’s more famous “disasters” are not “this stuff is just hard and stuff happens”…the are more along the lines a flawed line of thinking creeping into the decision making process and causing…well, the problem.
Another for comforting. I didn’t have video and his death wasn’t traumatic but there was firm evidence that my Dad was happily going about his life up to the moment of death and it always brought me some feeling of comfort. Add trauma (car crash, shooting, space shuttle blowing up) to the mix and I would think it would be even more so for me.
I would think it takes time. My sister’s first husband was killed in a car crash a few weeks after they married. She watched their wedding video, but kept seeing what looked like symbolic portents and ironic foreshadowing of disaster in little things he or she did and said in the video. Rather than being a comforting memorial, it upset her too much. She put it away for years.
Much later, after she married again, had kids, etc, she was able watch it again (I think she even had it transferred to DVD). She’s kept in touch with her first, brief set of inlaws so they have this as a common memory they can look back on now.
I lost my mother 14 months ago to sudden brain damage (from an infection): at first it was too hard to look at pictures or see any images of her, but if someone had taken video of her right before the infection hit her brain and she was happy and smiling and talking I would *love *to have that now.
Like others have said, though, grief is different for everyone.