–Mods: I read the Fora descriptors. This seems to be the right place for this. If I’ve chosen poorly, please re-plant this thread in the proper field. Many thanks. –
This is hard to lay out in a linear fashion. In the last 2 months, there’s been a flurry of death in the various tribes to which I belong. We just got back from the Midwest, having attended our third funeral in 3.5 weeks.
More are coming. I mean this not in the generalized “oh gosh, we’re in our sixties so it’s ‘that time’ of the Great Circle of Life to be losing those around us”. I mean, three other people are dealing with cancer. One is directly related to the 9/11 attacks. (I was there that day and the next; that’s a separate thread right there.) One is fighting a losing battle with blood cancer and likely won’t see the end of the year.
I’m struggling to manage the wiping away of people who are part of the weave of my life. Friends. Family. Colleagues. Shared experiences. Love. Laughter. Losing a person is always hard. Losing quite a few is much harder, apparently.
Please feel free to chime in with any methods you have employed in this kind of a situation. Religious, philosophical, practical ideas. Anything. I am finding that I’m making myself more brittle. Less eager to make friends or engage as deeply. Because, well, that phone call could come right now.
I’m not desperate and clinging to SDMB, hoping someone articulates the right branch for me to grasp onto. I’m just bereft of techniques and hoping others might have some ideas.
These people have come into your life, bringing friendship and knowledge, which enriched both of you. Those memories and experiences live on in you. The best way to honor their memories is giving that opportunity to others - Where you become the person that enriches other people’s lives and brings friendship to them. It keeps the good things about them alive, and helps you remember the good things, and lessens the sharpness of their passing.
What’s the old saying? A person dies twice - Once when their body fails, and once when their name is spoken for the final time.
I don’t have any magic remedies, but I’ve been in that place. There was a short period (well it felt short) a few years ago in which I lost my wife, her father (who I was quite close to), my mother, and my only sibling. The loss of my wife was by far the most difficult. We had over 20 years of life together, shared experiences and memories that felt like they were suddenly ripped into meaningless shreds. The most helpful thing was that my son and my best friend really stepped up to support me during that time. Don’t be afraid to lean on the friends and family that you still have.
I totally understand the reluctance to engage with people whom you might lose. In the months after my wife died, it seemed impossible that I could ever cultivate a deep relationship again. When I did start dating again almost a year later, some people said I was “brave” to risk such a loss again. I didn’t and don’t consider it bravery, but I didn’t want the deaths of those close to me to close me off from those connections that I still had, or those that might develop. “Life goes on” is a platitude, and I hated hearing that sentiment in the months immediately after my wife’s death, but looking back at the healing process I went through, it is undeniable that as time went on, the pain eased and the scars healed. I still miss all four of those people very much but have reached some level of acceptance.
Well, reading over this, I’m not sure I’ve said anything helpful. I got really tired of hearing “I’m sorry for your loss” from strangers, but I’ll say it anyway.
Grieving one loss is hard enough, but multiple in a short time seems impossible. I have not been in that situation, but I have read up on grief to add another tool in my pastoral care box. There are several steps of grief that include making it real, acknowledging, naming, and experiencing emotions, and moving the deceased from a physical space to a psychological one. There isn’t an order that you have to go through (as some erroneously quote Kubler-Ross), and you will move back and forth between them. One of the recommendations of the book I read was to find someone to talk to, someone who will listen and not give advice. The other was to work through the deaths one at a time, starting with the death that seems easiest to work through.
Death doesn’t destroy us but it does change us. In my homily at my mother’s memorial service I noted that I had been born into a new life where she wasn’t present, and that it was a hard birth. In the two years since her death, my siblings and I have worked through our grief together and separately, building that new life. My mother’s death has caught up with me a few times, most recently a month or so ago, where I had an emotionally hard evening. You are not alone in your grief, and you are welcome to walk with me.
Edited: Anglican theology focuses on Jesus’ resurrection and the hope that it brings. This hope is not pie-in-the-sky Polly-Anna-ish denial of loss and grief, but hope despite death and overwhelming grief from it. I recently preached from the Gospel of John 21, where the risen Jesus shares breakfast with the disciples who had returned to their work as fishermen. Jesus says to Peter, “Feed my lambs…tend my sheep… feed my sheep.” It was a call to Peter to find the purpose of his life in what Jesus had prepared him for, to build the church. In his grief, Peter found a way forward in his life. That, I think, is where grieving leads us, to find a new purpose for the new life we’ve been born into through death.
I am currently working through a lot of strong emotions. I got a call and flew to Florida hoping to arrive before my Mom died. She had collapsed, been rushed into surgery, and it was not clear whether she would ever regain consciousness. Everybody thought I was just coming to say goodbye, speak at her memorial service and help sort through her stuff.
That was almost a month ago. Mom is currently at a rehab facility. There are various problems. But, she will live. It has been quite the emotional rollercoaster.
In general, I find the death of anybody I care for to be a reminder to reach out to all the other people I care for and tell them what they mean to me. It is also an excellent opportunity to tell anybody who doesn’t run away what a wonderful person the deceased was.
I understand the urge to stop forming new relationships. I believe it was Tolkien who said “The road goes ever ever on. It’s so easy not to try. If you never say hello, you don’t have to say goodbye.” But the only way to never lose any one you care about is to never care about any one. My father had no real friends for many years. When he died, all the mourners fit comfortably in the condo’s living room. In the less than two weeks since she has been able to have visitors, more people have to come to Mom than were at Dad’s memorial. When she dies, we will need a massive room to hold all of the people who loved her.
I think those are really your choices. You can die basically alone and be quickly forgotten- or you can spend your last days surrounded by people telling you how much they love you and have those people tell the world about you once you have died.
I know nothing about death, but trauma I know. Be mindful that some things coming up for you right now may be, in fact, a vestige of past trauma. Trauma has a way of altering our relationship with ourselves and the world. At its worst, it messes with our system of meanings. You’re in a double-bind here because you’re being re-traumatized by watching someone you care about be re-traumatized as well. Ideally you’d be working with some kind of therapist on this stuff. My best advice is, don’t shy away from looking at it. You have to look at it or it will defeat you. If you start feeling things, take some time, sit yourself down, and feel them. Write it down if it helps. But don’t look away.
And if you haven’t already, read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It’s a book about how to find meaning in the very worst of circumstances. This is not an “it could be worse” book. This is a book about what we all have in common.
I have only the usual expertise of the usual deaths but I have observed others. It seems intrinsic almost? Some just temperamentally say good bye and move along. Always looking forward. Never back. My mother in law has been like that. I love her dearly but I think her total lack of any introspection helps. Just a very pragmatic focused person. Seriously I think self aware thoughtful folk get hit harder.
But your OP hints that you already know that retreating from developing new relationships and networks is the exact wrong thing. Sure respect your compounded upon itself grief and give it space, define a period of time for it. Ritualize it. You don’t have to religious to utilize the values of the rituals surrounding grief and mourning. But also, in my extremely humble opinion, consider assigning yourself new tasks to accomplish towards developing new relationships that of course risk loss. Small steps. Not replacements. Very small steps.
But again more based on what I have observed than experienced. I imagine faced with it I’d in reality flounder a while.
I want to re-iterate this. While my Mom was in hospice shortly before her death in December, we were scrambling to put all of our carefully set plans into place, and finding all the things we missed. We had decided to bring in a live-in aid, but the advice we were given from the service (Let them sleep on your sofa bed! It will put them in a good location to hear things during the night!) was bad. So we scrambled to clear out the second bedroom of the condo, and needed to bring a spare bed I happen to have at my house.
I’ve always been the guy other people call for help when they need things. Not the guy who asks for help. But in this moment, I did - I called a friend and explained what I needed. He rented a van, went to my house, got the bed, delivered it to the condo, and helped move all the computer equipment and desk stuff to a new location. It made such a difference for me, both because it got something important done, and it reminded me that I was NOT in this alone.
The old adage of “make sure you take time for yourself” is also good. I have some friends that I meet at a bar every week. I wasn’t particularly social at times during those last weeks, but I showed up. Talked as I felt like I needed to. They listened. It kept some normality going for me.
The last piece of advice that helped me, and it came from right here on the SDMB (particularly from @LSLGuy) - recognize that you will make some mistakes dealing with everything. It’s ok.
I know how you feel. I’m at the age when people I’ve been close to for many years are moving on to whatever. There’s usually no schedule for these events and it’s worse when there is. No time to prepare for these events. One day you get the call and it’s already over, then suddenly you have to consider their life and your’s, with all the wondering what could have been different, what was left unresolved between you and they and all the others who see that the story is over, concluded with no final chapter to add. There’s always sorrow, often regrets, and that empty feeling.
Sorry , I wish I could tell you how to manage it. Like so many other things in life you’ll have to rely on your ability to cope and know that time will make it better. At least some of it will get better with time, sometimes it casts a shadow on the rest of your life. Hopefully you have friends who you can share it all with, that commonality of experience helps in the sense that misery loves company and maybe it will be easier to remember the good times.
Seriously I think self aware thoughtful folk get hit harder.