AIBU to not grasp some kinds of grief?

[lizzieoak]

I'm curious about what upsets people when famous people die? As an example, I was a massive fan of Amy Winehouse & I was sad when she died. Primarily thought "oh, how sad for her poor family" & a little bit thought (& still think) "how sad for people who loved her writing & voice that it's all ended so soon."

But, horrible monster that I am, I didn't cry, as I didn't know her personally and, sadly, it was hardly a huge surprise. Ditto the death of our treasured Mr Cohen. He was 82.

On the non-famous end, while I was sad when my dad died when I was in my 20's, I thought "well, today I'm sad, but in a year I bet days will pass when I don't even think of dad". A friend of mine had a parent die around the same age and he spends the whole month, every year, 30 years later, being Quite Upset. Slight difference in the manner of our parent's deaths as my dad had been sick on & off since I was a kid whereas my friend's mum died of cancer within a year of getting ill.

I totally grasp that a loss of a child could destroy a person. It's out of the natural order of things. And the loss of a spouse - I can see how that could be pretty devastating.

But I worry a bit that I feel sad but not grief-stricken about the loss of people I love (older adult family members thus far) & people whose work I've admired.

Is it just that I'm a cold fish in this regard? Can anyone upended by the death of an elderly person, or Princess Diana, explain to me ... well, just what it is they're upset about?

Hard to convey tone online sometimes, but I'm not being sarkie, I really don't grasp this (though am otherwise emotionally normal).

Anecdotally, my male friends seem more thrown by the death of elderly rellies, whereas women seem more emotional than men are by the death of famous people. Not necessarily true across society, but in my circle I've noticed this.

Well, it wasn't mean that way slender. What can I say, tone can get lost in writing and perhaps death is too stressful to some people for them to read what is meant as a light-hearted comment. I certainly would not intend to make you feel uncomfortable with how you respond to anniversaries etc.

I'm not British, perhaps something is getting lost in translation as it were. Slight cultural differences and all that.

My family has had an unusual number of deaths to process recently and the differences in the grieving process have been marked.

After one bereavement, I walked through my older sister's apartment to see photographs of our deceased relative everywhere. I assumed she wasn't 'over' it but didn't judge it. That sister lived far away from the relative who died, while I lived close by. My younger sister condemned all the photographs as 'mawkish and sentimental'. I found it sad that she had to dismiss something because she didn't feel like she had to do it - but realised much later that she couldn't bear to see the pictures and had found it very difficult to have to go in there. Her way of grieving was to pretend it wasn't happening and it was quite effective - she actually was fine most of the time, at least at the start.

Then we had another bereavement and this time the relative in question lived near my older sister and far away from me. This time, I found myself obsessively putting up framed photographs and buying fresh flowers to put beside them. On both occasions, my younger sister outwardly seemed to care very little about the people who had died. I thought she could have pretended a bit out of respect TBH and wondered if she had loved them as deeply. But I also knew that we all grieve differently and there is simply no way to evaluate what someone else is feeling.

When those of us who had cried a lot at the beginning were just starting to feel better, my younger sister found herself flattened. She had only just realised what it meant to be without those people in her life. She was genuinely in a state of collapse for about a month - and was then fine again.

Meanwhile I am the only person who finds our grandmother's dirge-like wailing incredibly irritating.

If I started judging it or trying to understand why everyone wasn't like me, I would never, ever stop.

This thread has been really fascinating and very helpful. Thanks everyone who has contributed. It gives me a new perspective on handling death, (I'm in the very weepy camp and tend to have a good cry then try and move on). My favourite advise has always been to allow grief to flow through you and not to try to block it. That way you have the chance to work through it and hopefully let go in tine

I think that (as well as cultural differences to the way we are programmed or encouraged to express grief and deal with it) on a more personal level it can really depend on whether you are introvert or extrovert (in the truest sense of the words, which is not always what people perceive them to be) and whether you are a person who internalises or externalises your feelings and is able to take control of them.

I don't think a person is BU not to understand how others can grieve more deeply, or for those they've not personally known, but it would be BU for them to then discount others' grieving simply because it doesn't ken with their own.

Everyone is different. Everyone is impacted differently. Just respect the differences.

I have a friend who has been posting on facebook and talking a lot in person this week about her dead father and how low she always is at this time of year because she misses him so much. He's been dead for years. I can't pretend I don't find that a little strange. Not strange that she misses him, I get that, but that missing him has the power to properly lay her low for the same couple of weeks each year.

Surely if you are still grieving to the point where it might make you feel really wobbly sometimes then that is still relatively raw grief that hasn't ever yet gone away? It doesn't just put itself to bed for 50 weeks then suddenly pop up again around the anniversary of someone's death and floor you for a couple of weeks, does it? Surely that level of raw grief could hit you at any time of the year, and yet it doesn't seem to for her or for many, or at least they don't choose to externalise it. So I wonder why they then choose to externalise or express it now rather than organically as/when it happens. It's like they've given themselves permission to grieve again by appointment, if that makes sense.

It's almost as if someone chooses to get that grief out of the wardrobe and 'wear' it for a couple of weeks and then put it away again, like a coat that only comes out in the snow, does its job then gets shelved for another year.

Maybe that is how some people cope. I can't pretend to understand it though. To me it seems a little self indulgent and a little too planned. 'This is the anniversary of XXX's death so I will plan or anticipate being depressed for a couple of weeks and tell everyone about it.'

But then I think others perceive me as as hard as nails. I am not, I just don't go in for much externalising of that sort of thing. Or about anything very personal, really. Maybe I will be the person who gets an ulcer from keeping it all in and eventually drops dead through internalised stress at 65, whereas she's still be wailing publicly and healthily about missing her dad every November when she's 95. I dunno.

Surely if you are still grieving to the point where it might make you feel really wobbly sometimes then that is still relatively raw grief that hasn't ever yet gone away? It doesn't just put itself to bed for 50 weeks then suddenly pop up again around the anniversary of someone's death and floor you for a couple of weeks, does it?

Why doesn't it?

People are different, you might not understand it but it doesn't mean her grief around that time isn't real and it's planned. It's pretty common for people to feel a lot more grief around the anniversary for many many years.

I know this time of year I think more about what my children went through when they lost their dad. None of us are in raw stages of grief anymore but this time of year is more difficult. It brings back the memories, people getting excited for Xmas makes me remember that they were waiting for their dad to die. Many dates around this time makes me grieve... I know that on xxx date it was 3 years ago that xxx happened. Perfectly normal and I imagine we will feel the same forever.

It doesn't just put itself to bed for 50 weeks then suddenly pop up again around the anniversary of someone's death
That's exactly what it can do. Both my parents died over Christmas, my mum on a day very much like today, weather wise. The run up to Christmas doesn't floor me but it always reminds me of them and how much I miss them.

Anniversaries are very powerful though. My mum died 17 years ago and it was in the November that we were told her illness was terminal. No I don't go around crying and putting stuff on FB but I am aware and think about it and remember how I felt when I had the phone call even all these years on. She actually died on Mother's Day which is very poignant.

U2 that must be so hard for your family

It doesn't just put itself to bed for 50 weeks then suddenly pop up again around the anniversary of someone's death

Have you experienced deep grief? It can do this. I don't know why either.

IMO our bodies are very programmed to notice the weather and seasons when we are under stress. When the same time of year comes around again, the connections are triggered. Also, for people grieving, the anniversary mark is a 'taking stock' moment to evaluate how well you're managing to survive without the person, what it would be like to still have them and even to check that you aren't forgetting them. Grief is a mixture of holding on tightly to memories and letting go enough to function. Both are necessarily. The holding on seems to happen naturally for some people around anniversaries.

You shouldn't really judge it if you don't understand it.

necessary not necessarily

Totally agree slender I get quite melancholic about things around this time and wish that my mum were still alive, her birthday was also in November - I find it odd that some people don't see how relevant anniversaries are. I wouldn't wail to the world about it though.

private grief for someone you know is up to the person grieving and you need to do whatever you need to do in order to get through it.

however, I don't get hysterical grief for celebrities or people you've never met. make a donation/light a candle/sign a book/leave flowers, fine, that's a nice thing to do. but some people get far far to into it, and that's just being a grief junkie imo. for example, I remember seeing someone on the news sobbing about princess Diana and saying that she wanted to die too - she'd never even met her. it was a stark contrast to the heartbreaking dignity of those two little figures following their mother's coffin and I thought it was self-indulgent.

I also remember reading a story in the paper about somewhere in Liverpool (boris' nickname "the self-pity city" is appropriate here) where they thought they had found the body of a baby. the road was awash with teddies and sobbing people and flowers and "in heavan wiv da angles" messages, when a policeman came to announce: "STOP GRIEVING, IT'S ONLY A CHICKEN."

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4372230.stm

grief is very complex and individual

grief is about loss and often when someone is grieving other feelings of loss are felt (this can be grief for someone else, loss of relationships, how they feel about their life, friendships, childhood, loss of bridges every being mended)

so trying to deal with your grief and all the other feelings (anger, resentment, guilt, or guilt for not feeling much,) and questioning your relationship(s) and especially as we get older considering our own mortality and the impact our loved ones will feel at our loss. Some people are able to put it aside to the outside world or even not allow themselves to feel their pain but it will be felt in some way or another and other people are totally floored by their grief

There is no right way or wrong way life isn't the same when someone we love deeply dies but we do on have a great capacity to heal, it doesn't mean the pain totally goes away but for most of us we somehow learn to adapt

some people have a very practical way of looking at death, belief in the after life can be extremely comforting but not for all as for some people their whole belief system feels unreal to them (another loss to deal with) and they feel crushed

I wish we could talk about death more in our society and accept that grief is different as we are all individual

When my mum's parents, who I was quite close to, died within six weeks of each other, I remember my sister crying her eyes out at their house, whereas for some reason I felt rather numb. I was certainly sad, and felt that I should be crying, but I don't remember doing so. I don't think my mum cried at their funerals, probably because she was preoccupied with organising everything.

For years I had a recurring dream that they hadn't actually died but instead had somehow covered up their own deaths and were still alive in their late 90s.

My friend talked about how when her father died after a short illness, she grieved immensely at first, whereas her brother seemed to bottle it up only for it to hit him several months later. She had been off work with anxiety and depression before he became ill, and his death really came on top of that.
DH said that when his parents died, he wasn't very happy about it, but he didn't really have an extended grieving process.

Stumbly - for some reason I sometimes feel more affected by animal suffering and death. I don't know if it's because there is so much human suffering in the news that I have become desentised to an extent, which sounds bad, I know.

I have never cried over a celebrity's death, although I might feel sad about it, but this is more of a factual "oh that is very sad" sort of way, rather than an emotional reaction. I also don't cry at the news, or at sad books or programmes (fiction or non-fiction); some things do make me feel sad, especially if I take the time to imagine myself in the shoes of someone else, but this doesn't lead to tears.

NavyandWhite - what a horrible thing for your friend to say.

For years I had a recurring dream that they hadn't actually died but instead had somehow covered up their own deaths and were still alive in their late 90s.

I have had this too and the feeling of hurt is awful. Would love to know why the mind conjures up this dream. Do we think the person chose to leave us on some level?

I think some people attach intensely to celebrities. It's not a real relationship but the person still means a great deal to them. Hence the sadness.

For others, I believe the hysterical mourning is a good group activity and point of social contact. Like a good old weepie movie. 'Did you see Gone with the wind? I cried buckets...' etc.

I don't really get the levels of grief over public figures either. But I am very deeply affected, long term, by the deaths of people I love. It doesn't ruin my life, but I think of them very often, and can easily be moved to wanting to cry (although I hold it back unless alone). Hardly surprising with the baby I lost, but more unusual when it's for the family friend who was close to my grandfather and I only saw twice a year!

My father didn't even cry when his own parents died. He's a loving person, but just has a kind of hyper-rational switch and moves on better than I do. He doesn' t see the point in feeling upset or sad when it's just "one of those things", and so he doesn't feel upset or sad.

I think my life would be easier if I'd inherited that level of self-control over one's emotions! But I wanted to illustrate that we feel most things, especially grief, in different ways. You don't sound at all uncaring, but neither does your grieving-for-a-month-yearly friend sound weak. Just different.

Navy

So sorry for your loss, how awful. Sincerely hope you're now surrounded by people infinitely kinder and more supportive than that horrible friend. I know we all put our foot in it sometimes, but that just showed a bizarre lack of any empathy.

Fascinating thread. I certainly detect not an ounce of judgement from OP.

I was full of hormones and breastfeeding a tiny baby at Diana's funeral, and sobbed loudly (luckily was on my own!). Normally, I would have been sad but not hysterical.

I am normally affected by the deaths of those close to me who were still young when they died.

The recent death of my father was very sad but expected and totally natural, and even a relief given his quality of life in the last months.

I must also own up to being hysterical with grief when my beloved pets (cats, dogs, horses) die. The relationship there is very close to that of mother-child, in terms of the amount of investment you have in their lives and in the role you have vis-à-vis them, protector and provider. Also, there is the question of the unconditional love they give, and the pathos of knowing that, as PP has alluded to, they have little understanding of what's going on, and in the case of PTS, they are trusting you to take care of them whereas in fact you are hastening their demise. I find that extremely painful and can howl with grief for a whole day. I still grieve years later.

i get why some people woldn t be upset or cry over famous people

but your parents? i still cry over my mum who died ten years ago at 57

it wasnt fair it never will be and i miss her still

and just to add navy your ex friend was not a friend

sorry for your loss