Why are people trying to downplay how awful this is?

[laughloseya]

We got the news a couple of weeks ago that a colleague’s wife is terminally ill. Their daughter is only 23. It is so awful and I can’t stop thinking about them.

I was talking to another colleague about the situation. We are all good friends as well as colleagues and have been for many years, so know the family well. The colleague I was speaking to agreed it was awful and said she knew how they felt because she’d lost her father in her 40s. I lost my mother in my 30s and I said it wasn’t the same as being 23, and that our parents had both died suddenly, we didn’t have to endure watching it happen slowly. She immediately said ‘my uncle died slowly in my 20s, I know exactly what they’re going through’.

And then another colleague mentioned yesterday that she also knew exactly what the family was going through because her grandad had cancer in his 70s.

I just don’t understand this attitude of trying to shoehorn your own experience into this family tragedy.

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

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.

🙄

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.

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

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.

YABU

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?

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.

It is the OP who is judging whether people's grief and experiences are worse or better than others.

Exactly.

It doesn’t, unless the person is a child and still dependent.

You’re incredibly confrontational.

No. You don’t understand the definition. Grief vultures are “individuals who insert themselves into another person's tragedy to feed on attention, drama, or personal gain.” Usually, it’s attention or drama; personal gain is often a lesser motivation. They are not delighting in it consciously; they are enjoying the drama and attention of serious loss and it makes them delusional about how close they actually were to the deceased, usually.

If you’d like an example of a grief vulture, you can see my previous comment on the thread. Someone who ACTUALLY says they feel as much pain as the deceased’s whole family is a pretty clear flashing neon sign of a grief vulture. I mean, I know people who have lied about being sexually abused to get attention. Never underestimate how fucked up your fellow man (or woman) is.

My friend lost her husband. She says she never knew he had so many friends until they all tried to claim a piece of him after he died. So it’s very common in all kinds of losses.

And I don’t think it’s about grading losses. OP is saying, rightly, that if your response to someone’s loss is to immediately bring up a loss of your own, ANY LOSS, then rethink what you’re doing.

I’ve attached a list of signs, in case you’re worried about someone in particular, and here is a great blog from parents who lost a child that raises some great points about grief vultures:
thespohrsaremultiplying.com/living-with-loss/on-grief-vultures/

😮

You seem very black and white in your thinking OP, and you aren't coming across well at all.

OP - Do you understand what “empathy” and “sympathy” are?

Humans are societal creatures and we naturally try to empathize and sympathize with others.

Just because someone has “only” lost a grandparent etc. does NOT mean they can’t empathize or sympathize with the young woman you are speaking of.

My father had a horrible accident when I was 18 years old and suffered catastrophic brain damage. I didn’t feel like people were “making it all about themselves” when they offered sympathy and empathy along the “I know how you feel” lines. (My dad lived another 21 years after his accident before dying, but he was completely disabled and the brain damage was so severe that I essentially “lost” my father on the day of the accident.)

Again, just because you think they don’t know how someone else feels in an extremely specific situation does NOT mean they cannot imagine what it must be like.

You’re acting as if people are monsters and trying to only turn the spotlight on themselves rather than trying to empathize with this young woman.

@laughloseya i get what you are saying. Grief by its very nature makes it hard to compare apples and apples. Obvs you know your colleagues better but when most people try to show compassion with their own experiences it’s because that the easiest way we try to find understanding and relate to each other.

My dad has early onset dementia and my friends dad recently died who had dementia but was a lot older. I feel empathy for her and I know she does me as we have a similar shared experience in grief (my dad isn’t dead yet). However I could think well you had your dad longer than me and yes that makes me angry at the disease but not at her or her grief. My children are older than her so she had their grandad longer but the kids grief for losing grandparents is still quite comparable.

Another friend of mine dad passed away from cancer quite suddenly a couple of years ago I didn’t want to try and empathise as although my dad is still alive he doesn’t know who I am (or where he is or how to speak/eat anymore) so I didn’t want to seem insensitive in saying ‘I know how you feel’.
it was my friend who said to me ‘you must understand as as although your dad is still here in body he has left in spirit, and she was right, I am grieving in a different way, so despite both of our situations being very different we can both relate to each others feelings and how you process feelings towards the death/sadness/loss of a parent.

I personally think that is how we do try to empathise with each other and can actually be massively beneficial to have people to speak to even if they can’t understand an exact like for like situation.

i do agree that sometimes more caution to proceed in what you are saying to about to say is needed depending on the circumstances, people say things especially when grief is concerned that they often feel is helpful or useful or what they perceive to be empathetic, but may not necessarily always land. It aggravated me when I talk about my dad and they mention about their grandparent that had dementia, but I know it’s not coming from a harmful place.

Nor is ranking people's grief when they try and make a conversational attempt on a subject you said in your OP you can't stop thinking about.

You don't know them, you don't know how the young woman feels about her mother, you don't know how great or little her grief will potentially be - you're just transposing your own experience of grief onto her and imagining yourself at a younger age - and then criticising your colleagues for transposing their own feeling of grief, also not knowing anything really about this particular family.

Quite a lot of people show empathy by trying to relate it to their own experiences, the conversation also triggers memories.
You also can't rank other peoples grief and dictate where they stand in the pecking order of how awful it was for them compared to others.
I am one of the people that will always relate a story back to my own experience. You stub your toe, I will tell you a story about my worst toe stubbing.. because I want you to not feel alone in the pain, that you arent the only one, so you know life went on and look at me now I can run and I am fine. Its never malicious or one upping, I naturally do this out of empathy. Its how my brain works.

It does. Losing a parent at 23 whose mother is 50 is entirely different to losing a parent at 70 when they’re 97.

Oh well, I mist consider how I’m coming across on an anonymous forum 🙄.

A person does not need to say ‘I’ve been exactly through this’ (when they haven’t) to demonstrate empathy or sympathy. It is the opposite. It is making it about them.

Responding to someone else's loss by taking to them about your own loss, isn't ideal. We should be listening rather than talking, I'm aware.
But even though I know that, and despite having lost my husband, it's still something that I, and most people, tend to instinctively turn to. That's because it's really hard to talk with people who've just been bereaved, or are about to be. I'd like to be better at it, but the awkwardness and the worry about upsetting them is always there. So we go for the safe thing. The thing that we have experience of. Even if it's not ideal.

The alternative is to not speak to them at all, out of anxiety. Which of course is also wrong

I was 49 when my dad died which was sudden and absolutely threw me. Does that make me able to empathise with a 23yr old whose mother has cancer?? Pretty sure it does

But demonstrating empathy is exactly being able to relate to and understand a situation through shared and similar experience.

A person saying “I’ve been through this” isn’t making a situation about them.

You have a really odd and dichotomous way of describing an incredibly complex and nuanced situation.

Very confused as to why you started this thread.

Also depending on how long ago a person’s bereavement is can be very triggering.

OP, you sound very black and white in your thinking, with no nuances. Is this the same with other things in your life?