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.

Slender I don't wish to report you, I was trying to be kind as you kept (keep) talking about a grief you have observed and I was trying to explain that observing loss is very different to experiencing it, and it is respectful to give greater credence to those who speak from direct personal experience. The last thing I want is this thread to be a bunfight, many of us are too tender for that, so please do tread with delicacy and care when you discuss grieving the death of a child. That is all I am saying.

And I would also say what that if it is possible to have a deep sense of someone else's grief as a result of spending an entire childhood in the shadow of it, to the point that I could say it defined my childhood, I've had that experience. My relative's pain and the family's pain, by proxy, would have been easier to bear if views like the ones expressed on this thread, which are borne out of a lack of understanding of what miscarriage and still birth can be like, had not been so readily expressed. There can be no ranking system in a world where pain has so many variables and it's unnecessary to look for one.

If you feel there is a lack of delicacy what, take it up in the appropriate manner. I am acutely aware of the subject matter and am capable of policing my own posts within the talk guidelines. While it is an obligation for all of us to be sensitive, it is acceptable to speak from other perspectives when the thread is not specifically for people who have had one experience. It is a thread about grief and I know enough about it to speak.

I'm sorry anyone feels the need to rank them white, but much more sorry that you have lost a child.

My own relative said to a lady who had lost an older child that she didn't pretend to think her own loss 'compared'. It wasn't what she felt exactly, but she knew it was what she was supposed to feel. The very gracious lady said, 'I don't know. I had many precious days with my child. You never got to know what colour your daughter's eyes were.' They concluded that the experiences simply weren't comparable and my relative found the conversation deeply healing because someone, and a bereaved parent at that, had acknowledged that her pain was proportionate to what she had lost. In fact, it was always valid.

I first posted on the thread to say that grief is different for every person and research has shown that the same type of life event is experienced by different people in completely different ways - a traditionally 'lesser' event can shatter some people for a very long time. It's pointless to talk about the validity of the scale of someone's else's grief; they feel what they feel.

I'm still not sure why anyone would feel the need to compare or rank their grief as worse than others when there is so much agony in the world - no one has suffered everything in every possible way, so no one is able to comment objectively. There is nothing to be gained from going after parents devastated by still birth and trying to imply they aren't 'proper' parents in the sense that they haven't really lost a child. But I think we'll go around in circles on this so it's best to leave it.

My comment was in response to a number of posters criticising women who had gone through miscarriage and implied that they had lost a child.

My comment was in response to a number of posters criticising women who had gone through miscarriage and implied that they had lost a child.

I think you have to consider the ways in which a person dies when they precede their parents. Do you really think that a miscarriage is as difficult as seeing a child through cancer, the invasive procedures and the writhing pain and explaining to them that they'll not live to become adults? Or as Navy has explained, suicide?

I had dinner with some old school friends, one who had a child with an inoperable tumour. It's literally the worst thing that could happen to you. Another one of my friends at the table said she understood her pain because she'd had a miscarriage, and I can tell you that everyone at the table wanted her to disappear.

slender I was the poster who originally brought up the issue of mc and losing a child. At no point did I criticise any mother who had experienced any of these terrible losses. I was stating, that having been through both a mc and the loss of a child, there was no comparison for me.

A friend who suffered a mc at 6 weeks told me she knew how I felt. She had not had to bury her baby. She had not returned home to a house full of her child's belongings. She had not questioned why one minute she woke in the night to feed her child and the next she woke in the night due to nightmares of finding her child's lifeless body.

Your friend very sadly had to deal with the grief of a still birth which is a separate issue entirely and I'm sure was awful for her.

I made my point because the charities and support groups I've turned to are for 'pregnancy and infant loss' and due to less than 250 babies a year (thankfully) dying how my DD did, there are very few who understand how I feel and it's hard to open up only to find the person you're opening up to is there because they lost a pregnancy in the early stages. Yes, they may feel devastated but I just can't relate to that having lost my happy, healthy, pouting, pasta loving, giggling baby girl. As PP said, it's an idea vs a real person.

it's a collective thing

I remember when princess Di died, I never liked her at all but found the whole thing very upsetting because everyone around me was upset. People were showing their vulnerability/emotions and walls were broken down, it was good in a sad emotional way, kinda, I guess everyone (in general, in society) felt some sort of collective need to come together and Di just happened to be the biggest public figure death to happen at that time when people needed it??

When my father died I didn't shed a tear. We weren't close. However nothing could be more crass than the friend who sent me a sympathy card and in it commented that I had been 'a little too calm' about it. I felt she wanted to join in a big emotional scene with me and was disappointed that I didn't behave according to her expectations.

I cried when Mufasa died but not at 9/11, 7/7, Princess Di et al,.

Now that's some weird grief.

Sabine

I had the same thing
Except it was someone very close to me who died who I was very sad about
But one friend(ish… more of an acquaintance) got funny with me because I didn't cry on her shoulder!
She wanted to be part of it and told me I wasn't dealing with it properly because I hadn't cried on front of her
I'ld cried on front of other people, but she wanted to be part of the inner circle of my grief I guess!

As PP said, it's an idea vs a real person.

In the early stages, that may be so. But even then, I wouldn't be quick to judge.

Leaping There are too many points raised in your post to respond to them all and in any case, it was not your post I was responding to but the group of comments in their entirety. I'm sorry that you didn't find more people in exactly the same boat as you at your support group - I agree it is always a relief to meet with people who have had exactly the same experience. I agree with you that there is absolutely no way that we know what anyone else has been through and my point was that this precludes ranking grief, even if it seems obvious to you that your grief must be 'greater'.

If people who have lost a child do feel that people who have gone through still births do not begin to understand their loss, I feel that is a pity and may suggest, not only that there is a need for more support services specifically targeting those who have lost a child post-birth, but also a lack of understanding of how deeply parents may sometimes be affected by still-birth. There has been a lot of talk on the thread about how lacking in empathy people are and how slow people are to say anything helpful. Apart from other parents who have lost a child after birth, one would think that parents who have gone through a still birth are the people best placed to understand what you're going through and offer sympathy and support - yet they are the very people who have been singled out on this thread as offenders because they have tried to empathise by suggesting they have some experience of losing a child - which is a natural presumption to make, because they have lost a child and none of us know how that loss has affected them, the years of childlessness or endless IVF that may have preceded it, or what it means for them, for the rest of their lives, for their marriage. If they feel they have lost a child, they're entitled to say so. If they try to use that a basis to empathise with those who have lost an older child, they are only trying to be kind. It seems a pity to meet such well-meaning attempts with judgement, criticism and diminishing of their loss, when they would probably have given all they had to know their child for a month or two, and been able to experience the joy of parenthood for that time. Many people are scared of saying the wrong thing and commit the cardinal sin of saying nothing at all for this reason. It is easy to see how that could happen when anything that might be said in a spirit of kindness and from a place of real pain, could be so judged and misconstrued.

There is no place for judgement. I doubt very much that diminishing someone else's loss will mitigate the pain of bereavement at all.

slender how nice it must be to speculate on child loss from a theoretical position.

I don't know if you are reading a different thread or being deliberately obtuse but no-one here is diminishing a still birth. That is the loss of a child.

My comments couldn't be clearer that I am referring to early mc vs loss of a child. I have experienced both and they do not compare for me. FOR ME. I've repeated that in two comments now yet you take it back to still birth which has not been commented on.

I am not looking for someone in my exact same position. I was very clear to say that by lumping all loss together it means I am being told that people know how I feel when they have not lost a child but suffered an early mc. I never would've attempted to align myself with those who had experienced child loss after my one early mc.

You, luckily, have not experienced any of these losses directly so not sure why you are the authority here or further attempting to tell those of us who have lost a child how we should be more empathetic. The people here and in RL who have lost children at all ages and in various circumstances have been the most empathetic and supportive group of people I've ever known. Because they know what it's like. Which you do not.

*I cried when Mufasa died but not at 9/11, 7/7, Princess Di et al,.

Now that's some weird grief.*

I was a mid teen when Take That split up. There was a girl in my class who took a week off due to upset of it all. When she came back to school she tearfully retold the story of how she found out about the split. Apparently her DM (who was also a massive TT fan) met her at the end of their garden path hysterical (she had found out in the morning and had left work) telling her she had terrible news.... it hit her very hard indeed.

I'm always very matter of fact about death, maybe not as much when it's someone young. It's going to happen to us all at some point. Both my DF and best friend died of cancer, and I cried more during the time before they died, seeing the mental anguish and pain they were going through, so it almost felt like relief when they eventually died. We got a tree for my DF following his death in the local crematorium, but I very rarely go and visit it because I get no feeling or sense of being closer to him when I do visit it, yet I know lots of people will spend every weekend going and sitting next to their loved ones resting places, as they get comfort from doing so.

IMO, grief is too personal to be able to compare. The grief I felt when my son died was mine and unique to me. I knew and understood that his family and friends were grieving but I couldn't 'feel' their grief any more than they could 'feel' mine.

No-one could have told me that they 'knew' how I felt because I didn't know how I felt. If someone had told me that my grief was the same as the grief they felt when their 90 year old gran had died, I think that I would have laughed in their face.

We all process grief differently, we all have different experiences of it. The problem with child loss (at any age) is that the wider community are so scared of it that they tend to say the most amazingly crass things. Losing your child alters you on such a basic level that no-one who hasn't been through it can even begin to comprehend it.

I am lucky, I have never lost a child to either a MC or a still-birth. I do understand on some level what that parent is going through but not enough to be able to 'compare' our grief.

I was lucky, my son reached adulthood before he died but he was still my baby, he was still my child. I know the colour of his eyes, I know his voice, I can hear his laughter, I also can hear his tears and fright and pain. I saw his condition chip away at my perfect, beautiful son. I saw him scared by something that was out of his control. He took his own life as a result of bipolar disorder.

My grief is different to the grief of a parent who lost their child to a different type of illness. My son chose his time of death, he 'did' it to himself. I can empathise with their grief but do not feel as though I have the right to compare. I do not understand what they are going through, just as they do not understand what I am going through.

I hate the way that any talk of grief always seems to come back to some kind of competition. Why cant we all just accept each others experiences of grief and accept that different people will feel differently about death? I don't generally understand why people grieve over famous people dying but I respect that grief.

I have absolutely no idea how a bereaved parent should feel because clearly there is no such thing.

What saddens me is that 'ranking' grief amounts to telling parents who have been bereaved in other ways (such as before birth) how they should react - e.g., 'Do not say you have lost a child because you haven't, you've only lost an idea'. Now that is distasteful. It's not tasteless or crass for a parent to attempt reach out to another parent by saying, 'I have some idea of what you're going through because I lost a child in this way...'. And yes, it was a child to them. Not an idea, or not more than an idea in the sense that one is always grieving for the future.

leaping I have told you twice now that my comments were not addressed to you alone but were about the entirety of the comments relating to miscarriage and the reason why I include still birth in this is that there is no emotional cut-off point for when a still birth ceases to be a still birth. Or would you be obtuse enough to say that someone who has lost a child at 23 weeks has 'only' had a miscarriage, yet another woman who has lost a child at 23+5 'qualifies' as having lost a child and is therefore allowed to say that she knows how you feel? Surely you could spare some sensitivity and respect for the parent who was not fortunate enough to enjoy one day with her child? With respect, you have no idea of my life circumstances or how qualified I am to hold this view.

I very much doubt that anyone has ever had an agenda to align themselves with your loss - it is not a competition and they were much more likely to be simply trying to help. What's the alternative? To say, 'I can't imagine how you feel but I would be in pieces...' - but that's wrong too.

I have no interest in telling anyone how they should feel and as such am not an authority on bereavement, any more than you are an authority on parents bereaved through miscarriage or still birth. No one - is in a position to tell others, grieving parents in any situation, how they should feel. The only thing I have taken issue with, as sensitively as I can, is with the idea that anyone is an expert on all bereavement and therefore in a position to judge that others are experiencing less pain than they are (and shouldn't therefore try to pretend that they are). I may not have shared my experiences but my own childhood was shaped by the small-minded cruelty of that outlook.

Leapling, I get what you're saying and I agree.