Hey, that’s super cool and entirely valid. How you feel after a loss - whether it’s ten seconds, ten days, or ten years - after a bereavement is a bit of a lottery where there’s no winners, just differing levels of shit.
Through my work life and private life, I’ve been to more than my fair share of funerals, and they all suck to different degrees. Some are absolutely horrendous to get through if the close family have been particularly affected, some have been led by a very positive celebrant who framed the departed’s life in a great way.
The wake is always fairly positive though. If it’s someone I knew on a thinly professional level then I’ll get a coffee, share a light-hearted story about the deceased with their close family, and fuck off.
If it’s been someone I was closer with, then I’ve had a great time meeting old friends, going over long forgotten hilarious stories, getting a bit emosh realising that we won’t be sharing any more again, and getting rat-arsed into the night knowing that the funeral brought us all back together for one last hurrah.
Everyone deals with it differently though, and that’s awesome. The only caveat I’d apply to that statement is that if you find (god forbid you have to go through it again soon) that it starts to affect your day to day life, then there’s loads of resources to reach out and seek a helping hand.
Sorry. I’ve turned a ten second reply into a ten minute one there.
Sorry. I’ve turned a ten second reply into a ten minute one there.
I actually deleted paragraphs from my previous comment for the same reason lol. You start talking passionately about something, and then you just start talking until something snaps you out of the trance lol.
Generally speaking, I think my issue is with the permanence of it. Everything about life is about change over time. But something like the fact of someone not being alive is permanent.
I feel like change is so natural that someone never doing that anymore bothers me. It’s not even necessarily about the death itself, (although obviously that is a pretty big part) but more about the “set in stone” nature of their story.
For the living, everything about a person’s story could be a preamble to the important part at any time. The unpredictability of life is part of the experience. And that is so starkly contrasted in the case of dead people. Regular life has ups and downs all the time, it’s kinda like the pulse of life (literally of course as well, but in this case metaphorical). That graph flattens out when you die (still metaphorical), and it’s an eerie feeling.
I could go into a whole further rant about religion and how it can play in to this, but I’ll keep it to less than a 10 minute reply 😂.
This comment made me emotional before you even said “if it gets a bit emotional”. I can’t even think of death without getting sad.
I’ve only had one death of anyone REALLY close to me to deal with so far, but I remember how that feels extremely vividly.
Hey, that’s super cool and entirely valid. How you feel after a loss - whether it’s ten seconds, ten days, or ten years - after a bereavement is a bit of a lottery where there’s no winners, just differing levels of shit.
Through my work life and private life, I’ve been to more than my fair share of funerals, and they all suck to different degrees. Some are absolutely horrendous to get through if the close family have been particularly affected, some have been led by a very positive celebrant who framed the departed’s life in a great way.
The wake is always fairly positive though. If it’s someone I knew on a thinly professional level then I’ll get a coffee, share a light-hearted story about the deceased with their close family, and fuck off.
If it’s been someone I was closer with, then I’ve had a great time meeting old friends, going over long forgotten hilarious stories, getting a bit emosh realising that we won’t be sharing any more again, and getting rat-arsed into the night knowing that the funeral brought us all back together for one last hurrah.
Everyone deals with it differently though, and that’s awesome. The only caveat I’d apply to that statement is that if you find (god forbid you have to go through it again soon) that it starts to affect your day to day life, then there’s loads of resources to reach out and seek a helping hand.
Sorry. I’ve turned a ten second reply into a ten minute one there.
I actually deleted paragraphs from my previous comment for the same reason lol. You start talking passionately about something, and then you just start talking until something snaps you out of the trance lol.
Generally speaking, I think my issue is with the permanence of it. Everything about life is about change over time. But something like the fact of someone not being alive is permanent.
I feel like change is so natural that someone never doing that anymore bothers me. It’s not even necessarily about the death itself, (although obviously that is a pretty big part) but more about the “set in stone” nature of their story.
For the living, everything about a person’s story could be a preamble to the important part at any time. The unpredictability of life is part of the experience. And that is so starkly contrasted in the case of dead people. Regular life has ups and downs all the time, it’s kinda like the pulse of life (literally of course as well, but in this case metaphorical). That graph flattens out when you die (still metaphorical), and it’s an eerie feeling.
I could go into a whole further rant about religion and how it can play in to this, but I’ll keep it to less than a 10 minute reply 😂.