How do you grieve?

27 comments

1. Like most men, I bottle up my emotions and cry in private.

2. By remembering the love and happiness.

3. I don’t.

4. Silenty … other people don’t even realise it’s happening

5. Normally I put up a strong front when people are around then cry by myself in my car or something. Sometimes I’ll drink a ton of whiskey then let it out in front of others.

6. Alone in my car.

7. Shove it way down next to the pancreas

8. It’s been different each time.

   A lot of it was just trying to swallow it and work through.
   For the biggest ones like Mom or my wife, then I’d totally shut down for a bit and either just go numb or cry for hours/days.

   I had to share with others. Not necessarily therapy or talk directly about it. I did talk to my wife about how I felt losing mom. When I lost my wife, I went to therapy, but it felt like just going through motions. I also joined a support group for grieving. I just sat there and listened for weeks. Listening to other men and women that lost their spouse (and children or others), realizing they felt a lot of the things I was feeling, and hearing them give names to the things I felt so overwhelmingly that I couldn’t bear to identify them – that started to be helpful.

   But like I said, they’re all different. Friends, my dogs, my brother, Dad, GF, and others were all different experiences. Other people each have their own experiences, too.

9. All in our own way

10. Two year long mental breakdown. Vodka. Drugs. Attempted suicide.

11. Cry or exhaust myself

12. Grab a big bottle from Costco and fil that shit up

13. I don’t feel grief in the way I’ve seen others display it

    When a close close family member died at first my reaction was just total I differance

    Than I had a dream or two with them

    Than it was like “aww sucks I won’t see them again”

    Than it was like “aww they’re kinda just a memory now”

    And than it’s like “oh you shoulda met them, they were cool”

    Grief doesn’t hit me with a wash of sadness.

    If were talking about 5 stages of grief than my brain INSTANTLY fast tracks to acceptance. I don’t really know how to feel those kind of emotions, I kinda already in mind see everyone as temporary to begin with.

    I would almost say that in my head everyone is ALREADY dead, it just has happened yet.

    I believe this view on things might be why I dropped out of school and college and why it’s hard for me to plan for the future, I can’t really imagine one.

    I grew up in pretty bad neighborhoods and danger was a part of life.

    It’s kinda hard to tell a black kid to plan for a future he’s not sure he’s gonna have

    It’s kinda hard for me to care when people die when I know we all do.

    Some people hope that phone call never comes, I’m expecting it to.

14. Mindfulness, emotional intelligence, finding space to cry and express difficult emotions. Writing helped me, and talking with close friends.

15. Stare off into space and think unpleasant thoughts until my wife asks me what’s wrong. Respond, “Nothing.”

16. Forever

17. Silently, until I cannot be silent anymore.

18. I never have. At my age Ive lost so many people in my life, but just never took the time to reflect. I guess it’s a defense mechanism

19. In my experiences with it I’m a delayed reaction type. Getting the news and all through the funerals, I’m pretty much numb to it. It’s just sort of … what I have to do that day.

    Then sometime a few months to a couple years later my mind stumbles across a memory of the person and it hits hard and fast. I get a good cry in about them, then maybe a little mini existential crisis around bedtime, then back to doing the needful.

20. An interesting question, at this stage in my life, I’ve said goodbye to my Wife, a brother, a sister, my father, my mother, my grandparents died when I was young, or before I was born, so no grieving there, I’ve lost 2 dogs (family pets asides) and 4 cats. I will share something, the loss of my first dog had a greater (immediate) impact on me than my siblings or my parents, which sounds callous perhaps, but I’m sharing it to demonstrate that the impact of a loss is personal and unique and never wrong, it’s just the impact.

    Before my wife died, we talked long about the future, my daughter was just 3 ½ at that point, plotting a future course with so many unknowns was difficult, but cathartic, in time. She instructed me, counselled I believe by her nurse, to always move forwards, don’t stop, keep going, let’s face it, a young child needed that despite my overwhelm.

    I did not drip a tear at the funeral, I didn’t get up to speak though, that would have demolished me. In truth, I’d already allowed myself time and space for that prior to her actual death (she had a nasty, rare kind of cancer, the death was all but inevitable). I listened to poignant songs on my commute, cried in the car, did my day’s work, and then a repeat on the way home (wrap around care for my daughter meant my wife could enjoy her without needing to take care of her, which was impossible towards the end)

    I’ve read about my approach, the grieving started, basically on diagnosis, the imagination of the future beyond, keeping that compass set whilst being a carer and learning to be a single parent, best I could.

    On the actual day, that was tough, it was a beautiful late spring day, my daughter was with family and I returned from the hospital around 2am, didn’t sleep well and then went over to get her and break the news, the day was exceptionally hot, unseasonably so and she was playing with her cousins, so I let her do so, get her dinner and then went home, bath, ready for bed and then let her know, gently, had it worked out. She slept in my bed that night (she asked) but only that night, part of what my late wife and I discussed, however young, she needed to land that same information in her own psyche, not revert to being a baby. It worked, she’s in high school now, well adjusted I believe.

    The grieving process continues for me. We’re talking 8 years ago. The memories are now mostly positive and on occasion annoyance (remembering old arguments if you can believe that!) – my late wife impressed upon me the importance of letting our daughter know that she was a real person who (occasionally) farted, was grumpy, was funny, lovely and intolerable, not an angel in heaven (not our beliefs) but a real person who was here on this Earth and now continues in the way that life does within my daughter.

    tldr; listen to songs that make you cry, cry your heart out, remember the good times and bad, the person you’ve lost is literally always part of your brain forevermore.

    [edit] and fair to add, alcohol helped, used judiciously from time to time, GABA is the mechanism I’ve since learned, alcohol is not a solution (except for chemistry), but it is a useful way to blur

21. stare at the ceiling

22. Self isolation so nobody can hurt me

23. If it’s a person, I try to complete any unfinished projects they were working on.

    When my grandfather passed from lung cancer years ago, he had this unfinished shed he was building in his back yard. My dad and I helped eachother work through the loss by completing the shed. We cleaned up the yard, repainted the house, and did some minor fixes before we put the property up for sale.

24. By bottling it up until it bursts out. Plus I place blame on myself and make myself feel guilty even if I couldn’t do anything. I spend time trying to ignore it and then something triggers it and I go into full breakdown for about 2 hours before I can even start to think clearly.

25. I don’t

26. I get shit hammered drunk and listen to Viking metal and fight everything that moves.

27. Alone in my head, keep it inside and control it. If I had a therapist he’d say otherwise but fuck I’d rather buy a new chainsaw than go talk to some dude who likely doesn’t know where I’m coming from on a personal level.