Why are people trying to downplay how awful this is?

I really don’t understand why you are comparing or grading grief at all. I’ve lost most people in my family

• Grandma suddenly with no warning when I was 15
• Mum suddenly with no warning when I was 21
• Dad slowly from heart disease which caused organ failure when I was 28
• Grandad slowly when I was 36
• other grandma was I was 42 after a long illness
• …………

All of them were painful, all of them were different, all of them I responded differently to. None of them were comparable to each other or to anyone else’s grief.

Out of curiosity, what do grief vultures look like? Who here has been one? I've read through most posts and I saw only people talking about their own sad experiences or arguing with OP.

A grief vulture is someone who feeds vicariously off the tragedy of others, and does NOT feel sorry but rather delights in it in some way for some reason?

YABU

I actually think it’d be worse for someone to die suddenly, yes it was awful seeing my loved ones go slowly but it helped in getting used to the idea.

Yes, I think you've hit the nail on the head there.

Because OP realises that if you are over about 10-14, your response to someone grieving or contemplating grieving should not be to say what you've experienced or whether it is worse or better than someone else's.

But "spared" does read as though you think that's better. Whereas many people would be/are devastated if their parents die without having the chance to say goodbye. Your colleague's dd might say "at least I was spared the uncertainty and guilt of never getting to say goodbye to my mum and had the chance to make final memories with her and tell her how much I loved her, as well as prepare myself for her death."

I agree it's odd for anyone to ever say they know "exactly" what someone else is going through, in any circumstance, but you are being quite hypocritical - judging them for their insensitive comments about their experience of death, and for assuming they know more than the people it happened to, while doing exactly the same.

How is lashing out at strangers helping the situation, @laughloseya? Do you just want to be right?

Wow. Nothing else to respond to OP, but I just thought it was incredibly interesting how easily you can clock who on this thread is:

1. fucking sick of it (me and OP?)
2. still being kind about other people centering everything on themselves, and believe it’s an attempt at empathy
3. Are just grief vultures themselves.

Pretty much every commenter on the thread falls in one of those three categories. And for those of you in 2 (a lot of you), I get it, that you want to give people the benefit of the doubt. When you run into an absolute, honest-to-God grief vulture, I think maybe it changes your thinking? It did for me.

Absolutely. This is an awful thread. Such a sad subject matter, yet the OP seems to be using it to put people down and insist that
only her opinion is the right one. Talk about downplaying others’ grief. I think if it was a genuine concern she would be taking on board other people’s feelings and thoughts, especially where they are sharing their own experiences.

You are the one, who when posters disclose multiple tragedies in their life, responds solely with "but it's not the same" rather than a human and compassionate "I'm so sorry, that must have been dreadful for you"

I think it's time you stepped back from your thread. It's not doing you, or posters who've experienced such tragedy, any good.

Exactly.

In my opinion you've taken your colleagues comment too literally OP.

Ah, so we've moved onto the "Anyone who disagrees with me is a dick" portion of the evening.

Looks like we've all been wasting our time folks, OP is a plonker.

What an absoutley horrible response to someone who has shared their experience. I do not think this OP is for real.

Like I said, it's you who sounds confrontational towards those who don't agree with you. You're the one calling people dicks and making accusations.

I don't think you can say it's better or worse depending on which family member dies or what age you were when they died.

For example, I lost my Grandma when I was 16. It was a slow, drawn out illness which slowly took her over two years.
I was extremely close to her, and it was the worst grief I've ever had to date.
I lost my Mum in my early 30s very suddenly with no warning. However, we had a fraught relationship and, although I still grieved, it was nowhere near as much as I had grieved for my Grandma.

However, my friend recently lost a parent very suddenly in the same way I lost my Mum. She's beside herself and really not coping at all with her loss.
You can have very similar losses at very similar ages and feel completely differently, yet two people can also have very different losses at different ages and grieve just as badly.

You do realise everyone on earth is different?

You do realise everyone on earth has different relationships with their loved ones? Different circumstances. Families are complex and complicated.

Grief has never, and will never be ranked on age or closeless.

No death is more or less important than the other.

No death is more or less easy.

You’ve got to be a very dense person to even attempt to rank people’s grief on which is “worse”.

You stated it as fact, I was just pointing out that it was an opinion, not a fact.

"it doesn’t matter. We’re all just walking each other home."

Yes.

I'm sorry for your losses.

Why is anyone who disagrees with you trying to criticise,be angry or insulting? You are the one criticising , coming across as being angry and insulting .