My sister died nine years ago and I still wake up at least twice a week thinking crap, I need to called her back today!
Death is indeed an amputation. I’m happy to keep my disbelief and skip the Costco muffin inspired algorithm (spot on I bet). I’m glad to find your writing and wish you well.
"Liking" this post feels a bit sick, like trauma porn, but your writing was heart-wrenching. I've never experienced a loss of this magnitude, but your symptoms seem exactly ad expected. How *do* you go on when you've been completely altered?
Thank you so much for writing this beautiful piece. It has moved me to tears as if I am in your shoes and feeling the tiniest sliver of what you are feeling. I am working on my own relationship with death and grief and your words are encouraging and inspiring. 💗 wishing you the best!
Wow I can’t believe I just came across this. I’m so sorry for your loss. I resonate with everything, down to the name…. My partner, Jake, passed away; 10 days from now will mark year 3. My grief became full-fledged 6 months into his passing. I totally understand but I cannot imagine bearing the loss with a child. I am so sorry. I’ve written about my experience as well, the non linearity of grief - it’s like walking up an escalator that’s going down, everyone looking at you strangely. I love (for lack of a better word…) how you compared it to a phantom limb - a part of you dies, we are never the same but in this hell pit, it’s so beautiful that the harder the grief , the stronger the love. Sending you lots of love.
This piece is so accurate, I think grief is cultural, in my culture (North Africa) the grief period is long (40 days) and we have celebrations to remind us about those who passed. I lost my little brother 6 months ago at the same age and for the same cancer and I can echo your beautify testimony. I think it’s not the end, the body is gone but not the soul. You have been in contact with patients that might had a NDE.
As for me, I didn’t share this with my co-workers because people are affairs of dying not because they are not comfortable with sadness. Maybe we don’t need to end the grief, for me I am afraid to stop being sad when I think about my brother, because I don’t want to forget him.
Thanks for the comment, Sky. I’m sorry you have to hide your grief around your coworkers but grateful to you for sharing it here. I’m sorry for the loss of your little brother.
My partner died suddenly in 2019. I wrote something about it a year after (https://tessa.fyi/zachary-jacobi/a-year-without-you); I'm still sad about it. I share your feeling of being affronted by the the suggestion that I ought not to be. My favourite person died for no reason; what a natural thing to be sad about.
As Julian Barnes wrote in Levels of Life, a memoir grieving his wife, "grief is both unique and banal. So, a banal analogy..." I found Lauren Herschel's analogy quite true to my life (https://x.com/LaurenHerschel/status/946888282444460033): it's like you have a box containing a "pain" button, and a ball rattling around that box. At first, the ball is huge and it hits the button over and over and overwhelmingly. It gets easier to live because the ball shrinks over time, hitting the pain button less and less, but it hurts just as much when it does.
Wishing you space to be loving, and sad, and messy.
What a beautiful tribute you wrote. I recognize so much of Jake and I in your writing about you and Zach: the constant sharing of ideas, the way we pushed each other to finish things, the way we finished things for each other, the way he insisted on finding whatever was next, whatever new words on the page I could hand him, and the way that created an engine that I just couldn’t keep moving at the same rate without him. I’m so sorry that you’ve had the experience of losing the other half of your thoughts. It’s a terrible thing to be crippled in that way. Did you find your way to a new way of thinking? I hope so and thanks for sharing your writing
The media about grief that I've liked the most, that doesn't try to pretend death is more beautiful than it is: A Grief Observed, Levels of Life, The Year of Magical Thinking, Grief Is For People, A Crow Looked At Me, Someone Great (especially this video: https://vimeo.com/131119576) and the poem Dirge without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music
A grief observed is a winner, and I can’t help but love Joan Didion even if her title feeds into the one-year narrative that makes me nuts (although her content does not). I haven’t read “A crow looked at me” but will check it out
Thank you for this. Your write beautifully, and I’m sorry you know of such loss. One of my best friends died from cancer last July, and I’m still not over it. Even before a year had passed some “friends” talked about me to another friend, concerned I was grieving “too much.” Why is that a thing we think we can measure? Just like love, grief doesn’t have limits or a time frame. Reading this helped me feel less alone, so thank you again.
Erin I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend and it means so much to me to know my writing makes you feel less alone. It’s the best compliment I could possibly imagine. You are not alone. I’m sorry you’re in the club.
I have read this every day, multiple times a day, since you published it. Seriously. It makes more sense to me than anything else in my world. My sweetheart of a husband has also been gone a year, also from cancer, and I am back at work and raising a kid without him. The loneliness is feeling that no one understands what I’m feeling. Reading this made me feel infinitely less alone. So thank you x 1000. Without this, I would be stuck with my words and feelings, not knowing what they are and what to do with them. You’re an amazing, and brave, writer.
This sentence: "People move on with their own lives that continue at normal speed, while a large part of me is still kneeling beside Jake’s corpse, my fingers pressed against his absent pulse." It takes as long as it takes! People who don't understand that can all fuck off!
Wow, a year is a wildly short time for an expectation of “getting over” grief—aside from the fact that it must certainly always be a part of you, stored like love in the body.
Bess, thank you for sharing this. May you continue to love and grieve and move through the world in precisely the way you need to and may you find comfort in many forms.
I've been with my psychiatrist husband for fifty happy years. I'm 75 and he's 83. We make each other laugh every single day. We know we are extremely lucky. We also know that death is coming, sooner not later. We talk about it all the time. (Our son is an EM/Palliative Care doc) A long black dress and veil seems like a good plan, maybe not for my husband.
I loved that last line. It’s still love what you feel. I wish I could take away that feeling that people just moved on, and you’re expected to deal with it all alone. I hope for friends/family to surround you and sending you and Athena love from Wisconsin.
I’m glad you write, Bess.
My sister died nine years ago and I still wake up at least twice a week thinking crap, I need to called her back today!
Death is indeed an amputation. I’m happy to keep my disbelief and skip the Costco muffin inspired algorithm (spot on I bet). I’m glad to find your writing and wish you well.
"Liking" this post feels a bit sick, like trauma porn, but your writing was heart-wrenching. I've never experienced a loss of this magnitude, but your symptoms seem exactly ad expected. How *do* you go on when you've been completely altered?
9 years here, she was 36 and we have two kids (now 12 and 15). It fucking sucks, it gets better, but when it is quiet in my heart, I am still sad
Thank you so much for writing this beautiful piece. It has moved me to tears as if I am in your shoes and feeling the tiniest sliver of what you are feeling. I am working on my own relationship with death and grief and your words are encouraging and inspiring. 💗 wishing you the best!
❤️
Wow I can’t believe I just came across this. I’m so sorry for your loss. I resonate with everything, down to the name…. My partner, Jake, passed away; 10 days from now will mark year 3. My grief became full-fledged 6 months into his passing. I totally understand but I cannot imagine bearing the loss with a child. I am so sorry. I’ve written about my experience as well, the non linearity of grief - it’s like walking up an escalator that’s going down, everyone looking at you strangely. I love (for lack of a better word…) how you compared it to a phantom limb - a part of you dies, we are never the same but in this hell pit, it’s so beautiful that the harder the grief , the stronger the love. Sending you lots of love.
This piece is so accurate, I think grief is cultural, in my culture (North Africa) the grief period is long (40 days) and we have celebrations to remind us about those who passed. I lost my little brother 6 months ago at the same age and for the same cancer and I can echo your beautify testimony. I think it’s not the end, the body is gone but not the soul. You have been in contact with patients that might had a NDE.
As for me, I didn’t share this with my co-workers because people are affairs of dying not because they are not comfortable with sadness. Maybe we don’t need to end the grief, for me I am afraid to stop being sad when I think about my brother, because I don’t want to forget him.
My condolences, really sorry for your loss.
Thanks for the comment, Sky. I’m sorry you have to hide your grief around your coworkers but grateful to you for sharing it here. I’m sorry for the loss of your little brother.
My partner died suddenly in 2019. I wrote something about it a year after (https://tessa.fyi/zachary-jacobi/a-year-without-you); I'm still sad about it. I share your feeling of being affronted by the the suggestion that I ought not to be. My favourite person died for no reason; what a natural thing to be sad about.
As Julian Barnes wrote in Levels of Life, a memoir grieving his wife, "grief is both unique and banal. So, a banal analogy..." I found Lauren Herschel's analogy quite true to my life (https://x.com/LaurenHerschel/status/946888282444460033): it's like you have a box containing a "pain" button, and a ball rattling around that box. At first, the ball is huge and it hits the button over and over and overwhelmingly. It gets easier to live because the ball shrinks over time, hitting the pain button less and less, but it hurts just as much when it does.
Wishing you space to be loving, and sad, and messy.
What a beautiful tribute you wrote. I recognize so much of Jake and I in your writing about you and Zach: the constant sharing of ideas, the way we pushed each other to finish things, the way we finished things for each other, the way he insisted on finding whatever was next, whatever new words on the page I could hand him, and the way that created an engine that I just couldn’t keep moving at the same rate without him. I’m so sorry that you’ve had the experience of losing the other half of your thoughts. It’s a terrible thing to be crippled in that way. Did you find your way to a new way of thinking? I hope so and thanks for sharing your writing
The media about grief that I've liked the most, that doesn't try to pretend death is more beautiful than it is: A Grief Observed, Levels of Life, The Year of Magical Thinking, Grief Is For People, A Crow Looked At Me, Someone Great (especially this video: https://vimeo.com/131119576) and the poem Dirge without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music
A grief observed is a winner, and I can’t help but love Joan Didion even if her title feeds into the one-year narrative that makes me nuts (although her content does not). I haven’t read “A crow looked at me” but will check it out
It’s an album by an artist who goes by the name Mount Erie. Really beautiful and devastating. He also lost his wife to cancer with a young child.
I have never read a description of grief that articulates so well what I feel but have no talent to put into words. Thanks.
Thank you for this. Your write beautifully, and I’m sorry you know of such loss. One of my best friends died from cancer last July, and I’m still not over it. Even before a year had passed some “friends” talked about me to another friend, concerned I was grieving “too much.” Why is that a thing we think we can measure? Just like love, grief doesn’t have limits or a time frame. Reading this helped me feel less alone, so thank you again.
Erin I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend and it means so much to me to know my writing makes you feel less alone. It’s the best compliment I could possibly imagine. You are not alone. I’m sorry you’re in the club.
I have read this every day, multiple times a day, since you published it. Seriously. It makes more sense to me than anything else in my world. My sweetheart of a husband has also been gone a year, also from cancer, and I am back at work and raising a kid without him. The loneliness is feeling that no one understands what I’m feeling. Reading this made me feel infinitely less alone. So thank you x 1000. Without this, I would be stuck with my words and feelings, not knowing what they are and what to do with them. You’re an amazing, and brave, writer.
My hug to you - I remember those times.
This sentence: "People move on with their own lives that continue at normal speed, while a large part of me is still kneeling beside Jake’s corpse, my fingers pressed against his absent pulse." It takes as long as it takes! People who don't understand that can all fuck off!
Wow, a year is a wildly short time for an expectation of “getting over” grief—aside from the fact that it must certainly always be a part of you, stored like love in the body.
Bess, thank you for sharing this. May you continue to love and grieve and move through the world in precisely the way you need to and may you find comfort in many forms.
I've been with my psychiatrist husband for fifty happy years. I'm 75 and he's 83. We make each other laugh every single day. We know we are extremely lucky. We also know that death is coming, sooner not later. We talk about it all the time. (Our son is an EM/Palliative Care doc) A long black dress and veil seems like a good plan, maybe not for my husband.
My best to you and your little Athena.
I loved that last line. It’s still love what you feel. I wish I could take away that feeling that people just moved on, and you’re expected to deal with it all alone. I hope for friends/family to surround you and sending you and Athena love from Wisconsin.