The father of my good friends died this morning. I’m friends with all four of his sons, having lived with two of them (one during undergrad, one during grad school), and from the moment I met him and his wife they treated me like a member of an extended family. I can’t believe it has been almost twenty years since I met the man, and now he is gone. I’m devastated for his whole family, as he was really one of the most wonderful, generous, and kind human beings you would ever meet.
Does this ever get any easier dealing with this sort of thing, because this just sucks?
Steeplejack
My condolences, Cole. Remember the good times and honor his memory.
pat
The small garage where we get our Saabs serviced had a terrible accident this week. A car fell on one of the mechanics (49 years old) and killed him. Death sucks.
Villago Delenda Est
Yes, yes it does.
A few years back, a co worker who had finally found real marital bliss had his very recent bride taken from him. He was of course devastated, and I broke down when speaking to him after the funeral. All he could say was “I know, it sucks”. Sums it all up rather well, I think.
It sucks, John. My thoughts to your friends and their family upon their loss.
Comrade Mary
I’m so sorry, John. It doesn’t get easier. I’ve seen a lot of death in my family, and while they all hurt, it especially hurt when two of the sweetest, gentlest, most patient women we ever knew, my mother and her younger sister, died hard of different cancers several years apart.
All you have is the knowledge that they loved and were loved, and that they leave wonderful memories for everyone who knew them. This doesn’t make up for losing them, but it’s all you’re going to get, I’m afraid.
LT
The fact that it actually does get a little easier is why and how it actually gets a little worse.
Sounds like it was unexpected – sorry for the rotten news. Condolences to you and your friend’s family.
Omnes Omnibus
My condolences, John.
arguingwithsignposts
No. I still weep about my great-grandmother.
freethinkingredneck
No. It never does.
PurpleGirl
Condolences to his family and to you. It never seems to get easier to lose someone you like and love. I guess what happens in time is that you learn to remember the good times and to be glad to have had the person in your life.
It’s been ten years since my college friend (Weird Twin) died and sometimes I catch myself wanting to call her on the phone and ask what she thinks of something and then it hits that she’s not there any more. (I called her my weird twin because we were born on the same day, in the same year, but she was 9 hours older. She’d often try to pull rank that I had to listen and obey her because she was older. I always told her that “9 hours didn’t count” and I’d stick my tongue out at her!)
Linda Featheringill
My condolences on your loss, John.
The pain of your grief honors the gentleman. You can’t do much for him now, but you can give your grief to his memory.
Don’t squelch your grief. Let it be. And when the pain is overwhelming, remind yourself that you are going through this for him.
Peace will come eventually.
SteveinSC
As much as I stayed angry at Christopher Hitchens, I am sorry to see him gone. Ask not for whom the bell tolls…
Liberal Sandlapper
My condolences, JC.
It has never gotten any easier for me. I still think about my grandparents and parents every fucking day.
Mary Jane
Deepest condolences to you and your friends. I wouldn’t say it gets easier, but as we and those around us age, the losses come more often. They’re still heart-wrenching but I think we gradually learn to cope with them better.
Scott P.
Well, eventually you die. I’m told it gets easier after that.
John O
No.
Condolences, John.
erlking
Nope. I moved to SF in 1989, spent a fantastic 2 years making friends. Spent a horrific dozen years burying too many of them. This year I’ve lost three near friends/acquaintances and have watched my mom and a couple of close friends struggle with various flavors of cancer.
None of the sh!t ever gets easier. It’s part of being human, I think.
Sorry for your trouble, man.
Omnes Omnibus
@Scott P.: That’s ever so helpful.
Short Bus Bully
If it does get easier watch out, you’re losing your humanity.
Comrade Luke
First old people you know die
Then, people you thought were old, but aren’t really all that much older than you die.
Then, people your age die.
Sprinkle in a few younger people and kids and
No, it doesn’t get any easier.
And it’s especially hard during the holidays.
Condolences, John.
parsimon
It doesn’t get any easier when it happens, babe, no. Not as far as I can tell. I’m about your age, and yeah, this starts to happen more often, it seems. It gets a little scary.
You know what to do for your friends, though — let them know you’re at their disposal, for anything from running errands, to making phone calls, to providing an ear for crying or wailing or, really, saying anything they want to say. If you’re not in the same town, the last bit is good.
Elie
My condolescences John.
Life passes fast. Love hard and loyally…In part I believe that heaven is how you are remebered, and he most certainly is in heaven by how you describe him..
I think of my father and grandmother and the many loved ones who gave their hearts and caring to me during my life. I miss them, but my love has never diminished. They are in what I can give them as heaven in my heart.
My best to his family and to you of his friends who care about him…
Debbie(aussie)
Am so sorry, John. I have a little saying (think it is mine) ‘loss/grief is something you get through, not over’. The pain does subside a little with time.
Another way to look at things is the ‘cycle of life’. (birth of your godson Cole)
My condolences to all.
Raven
It get’s “easier” when you understand that you have a role to play in helping those left behind cope with the loss. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like hell but it is a part of life none of us can escape.
gaz
I’m sorry JC.
That really sucks.
It doesn’t get easier.
I cry on the anniversary of the murder of 4 of my friends.
It’s not a sharp pain anymore. More like a deep ache.
But it still hurts like hell.
Best wishes to each of you. Be there for each other.
And fuck… crying a bit now actually. God I miss them.
TheOtherWA
No it doesn’t. If there comes a day when someone you care about dies and it doesn’t hurt, you’ve lost some of your humanity. That would be a tragedy.
My condolences to you and his family.
5x5
I’m very sorry for your loss. Be there for your friends and remember him.
Sometime in the future you’ll remember him (what he would have said or done) — say it out loud. Tell stories about him. Celebrate his life.
May peace be with you and yours.
Raven
@Comrade Luke: For some of us people we knew died when they, and we, were young.
Omnes Omnibus
@5×5: Best thing I have ever done when I lost a friend or loved one was to sit with other mourners and tell stories until everyone was crying and laughing at the same time. Drinks can be involved, but they don’t have to be. It can be very cathartic. Funerals and religious ceremonies are ways of celebrating a person’s life and easing the pain of those left behind. If you aren’t religious, you have to find another way.
Chuck Butcher
I’ve had people try to console me about moments like this and they trip all over themselves with it because there really are no words.
I congratulate you for opportunity to know and love a man you admired and to have been held in regard by him. I applaud him for having lived a life that leaves mourners in his wake. I wish you and his other friends and family the peace of reaching the point of being glad to have had him for as long as they did.
Condolences,
Chuck
TheOtherWA
As soon as your born, there’s a guarantee you’re going to die at some point. We don’t know when or how, but death is as natural as birth.
If you’re lucky, you know it’s coming a little in advance and there are as many people standing around a bed to see you off as there were to welcome you into the world.
Death hurts and sucks. But there it is.
Raven
@Chuck Butcher: You are right, of course, but that makes it all the more important that you say something. It doesn’t matter so much what it is you say, it matters that you care.
erlking
Alright. My comment is in moderation.
Sorry for the loss, John. No, it doesn’t get easier. Booze, friends, and music help. That’s all I know.
Chuck Butcher
@Raven:
I know that from sad sorry experience and I can’t tell you how much it helped me and mine, either.
By all means, say what you can.
Anne Laurie
Condolences, John.
The losses don’t get easier. But as you get more experience, you at least have some working idea of how badly each new death will hurt you, and how long it will take for the invisible wound to scab up to the point where you don’t flinch every time you’re reminded…
Walk cautiously for a while — sometimes our anger at the universe, after a loss like this, impels those of us with temper issues to do really stupid things in a kind of “retaliation”. But the wall remains harder than your head.
jharp
If one believes in infinity we’ll all do it again someday.
dance around in your bones
Well, having recently experienced the death of my partner whom (?) I had lived with since I was 16 and he was 19; got married in 1972 because we was pregnant; then a sudden and unexpected illness and quick death just weeks ago ….
Yeah, it fucking sucks. And it doesn’t get better, not really…but having a community like this to talk with/share your pain/whine and cry….helps a lot.
Thanks, guys…you know who you are. Grazi, mil grazi.
freethinkingredneck
alcholal helps
freethinkingredneck
alcholal helps
Chuck Butcher
@dance around in your bones:
I know and I’m sorry
DanielX
I’m truly sorry for your loss, and for that of your friends. The loss of a given person gets easier over time, but the initial loss of someone close never gets easier. You just go on…no way of making it easier or less painful, you just go on and come out the other side.
dance around in your bones
@Omnes Omnibus: Omnes, I’ve got to say that this is SO true. Best times are when we are talking about my guy and laughing our asses off and saying “he’d be telling us to lighten up and get a grip”…you gotta keep that sense of humor, and NOT wallow.
No one of importance
My condolences. It does get easier, if only because, as we age, the losses accumulate.
But it never doesn’t suck.
Citizen_X
Condolences, John.
From Morphine, whose singer/leader/songwriter Mark Sanford collapsed and died on stage in Rome at the age of 40:
Listen young people I’m 74
And I plan to live 60 or 70 more
Yeah I’ve been all around I’ve done a few things
And I spent a few nights on the floor, oh!
Did everything wrong but I never got caught
So of course I would do it all over again
I surprised many people who’d written me off
Years ago now they’re way underground
Nobody asked me but here’s my advice
To a young man or woman who’s living this life
In a world gone to hell where nobody’s safe
Do not go quietly unto your grave
Do not go quietly unto your grave
Learned a few tricks and I’ll learn a few more
And I got enough bullets to fight a small war
Nobody asked me so here’s my advice
To a young man or woman who’s living this life
In a world gone to hell where nobody’s safe
Do not go quietly unto your grave
Do not go quietly unto your grave
Do not go quietly unto your grave
Do not go quietly unto your grave
Paddy
Nope. The worst part is the little stupid things that ambush you when you’re not expecting. I wanted to bitch about something the other day, and automatically my hand went for the fon to call my mom, 6 years gone. But at some point, it will make you more aware of those you love around you now.
dance around in your bones
@Citizen_X: Yeah, my guy had that t-shirt….you know “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”.
Well, he got two out of three. Man, I loved him.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I wouldn’t say it gets better. It does get easier to deal with, though. It takes a lot of time. I recall when my grandfather died in 1993. He was 94 and I had always been close to him. An older friend, who had learned more than I had in my relatively few years (this was a year after college), put it this way when I told him: “Well, it’s a wound, but it heals.” That’s the best way to think about it to me. It’s a wound. Some wounds are worse than others. Some heal without much waiting at all. Others take a while longer and leave scars. Some are worse still, and from these you’ll always limp badly or even worse. But it’ll heal. You can’t hurry these things along, though; they take as long as they take.
gnomedad
So sorry for you and your friends.
Citizen_X
@ dance around in your bones: Condolences to you, too. Sounds like you guys had a full life together.
Sarah Proud and Tall
As others have said, it hurts because you are human and because you are a good man, Cole.
If you didn’t hurt you when other people are in pain or when they died, you’d be a Republican senator or a columnist for the New York Times.
k488
I just played the funeral for a man who’s hand I shook last Sunday. In his 80’s, but had a fall, and bleeding into his brain took him within hours. It is never easy, nor should it be. We take much too much for granted. Times like these remind us of how fleeting our lives are, and how we must keep every moment vivid. Condolences to you and yours, John Cole.
Ngillard
No, it never gets easier. You can’t get used to losing those you love.
Ron
No, it sucks. I’m headed tomorrow to a funeral for a friend of mine from college. It’s hard to imagine someone my age dying.
Trinity
Easier? No. But we get older and hopefully fully appreciative for all of the wonderful lives with which we were fortunate to share even a little time on this crazy big blue rock.
My sincere condolences to all.
dance around in your bones
@Citizen_X:
Well, ya know – we did. That’s the hardest part…figuring out how to live without him? I mean, we had been together from the time we were teenagers….nobody else knows my shorthand…I could say two words to him and he knew what I meant. That hurts, losing that. I keep having to explain my jokes, which kinda sucks.
Petorado
On a blog like this, where a person can get their daily fill of the true dickishness in this human condition that sometimes passes for our political culture, witnessing the good deeds of the gems of humanity among us is something to treasure. While we often get reminded of how bad people can be, we need to celebrate (and emulate) those that show a better way to live and treat each other. The loss is painful, but no better time than now to pick up the torch and carry that forward. The dead can still walk among us if we make it happen. Time to burnish that next gem so that others will remark at our own passing, if we’ve lived our lives in a way that earned that respect.
Sorry to hear of your loss John.
Omnes Omnibus
Sometimes music helps. Townes Van Zandt has things to say about loss and living.
DanielX
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
DanielX
For Death is a simple ting,
And he go from door to door
And he knock down some, and he cripple up some,
And he leave some here to pray.
JenJen
Oh, John, I’m so sorry. I found out yesterday that my high school German teacher, my favorite and most influential teacher, passed away and I’m just destroyed about it.
I feel for you and his lovely family, and everyone whose lives he touched. A man like the one you described doubtless had an impact on many.
Sigh. Hugs.
Dee Loralei
Sincere condolences John, you you and your friends and all who loved the man.
BigHank53
I’m sorry for your loss, John.
No, it doesn’t get easier. It just sucks differently.
techno
Yes, it DOES get easier. At least it has for me after dealing with the death of my parents.
My father’s death was such a shock because he went from his “normal” to dead in about 10 hours. My mother lasted about two years after a massive stroke felled one of the more intelligent and well-read women I have ever known. So while the circumstances were different—the lessons were remarkably similar.
1) Funerals are for the living! Whether it is drunken Irish wake or the devout prayer meetings of the most prim Protestants, the goal is the same—to help us understand the natural design genius that is mortality. We Lutherans exclaim “Lord, make me know know the measure of my days.”
2) Funerals can easily degenerate into one last excuse for conspicuous waste. I have noticed that the folks who buy the biggest tombstones probably have the most guilt about treating the deceased like dirt during his life. Everyone from the morticians to the guys selling tombstones know how to market guilt. Avoid them like the plague.
3) “Survivor’s energy” is a real thing. I am convinced it is nature’s way of making sure the living properly dispose of the dead. Suddenly, you have the energy to graciously greet people you haven’t seen in years, make strange arrangements you know nothing about, etc. Fortunately, when my parents died, folks brought so much food to the house we didn’t have to cook for a month. Good tradition, that!
4) Funerals are when people discover that religion actually has a social function. It is nice to know that there are folks who have ritualized a very important moment in life. They have appropriate music ready to go, they have tested graveside rituals, etc. And while some of these rituals may appear odd or shallow to an outsider, it is astonishing how well these things translate across cultures.
When my father (who had been a Lutheran preacher) died, my mother, who had serious opinions on religious propriety made all the decisions on music, etc. My father had probably officiated at 500 funerals over the years so we all had a pretty good idea about how he wanted to be buried. Our only innovation came when we printed the programs. We needed cover art and discovered that he had left a collection of hundreds of pictures of flowers taken close up. So we put the grandchildren to work pasting pictures to the front of 400 programs. EVERYONE just loved it—they knew he took pictures and now everyone had a souvenir.
On the other hand, when my mother died, we had her cremated and scheduled a service for later. It is probably not a good idea to give four preacher’s kids five weeks to plan a funeral, but we all got to include our favorite parts of services we had seen. It was utterly lovely—springtime in rural Minnesota. Folks stood up and told stories about my mother for over 90 minutes. We sang “Children of the Heavenly Father” in parts, in Swedish. A local bakery made coffeebread to my mother’s favorite recipe.
And while the flurry of death activity is usually limited to a pretty tight circle, it never hurts to offer to help. Sometimes survivors are overwhelmed and small gestures are especially appreciated. For example, if you write well—offer to write the obituary.
Finally, when rushing around doesn’t deaden all the existential pain and you sit alone with your thoughts about how well you have lived your own life, just remember, this might be the best part of the experience.
Kola Noscopy
All best to you, John. You and the family and friends of your lost/loved one are in my thoughts.
Violet
Very sorry for your loss, John. He sounds like a fine, fine man.
Can’t say it gets easier, but time does allow for some reflection. In the midst of trying to be there for his family, don’t forget to allow yourself to grieve. It’s your loss too.
Jay
Sorry, Mr. Cole.
Scratch Tunch.
Look at pictures of your Godson.
Cook.
Play music loudly.
It’s the little things that get us through.
Nelse
No. Never gets easier. With all instances of great loss only time heals.
Losing a loved one really doesn’t ever stop hurting. But you do come to grips with it. You learn to deal with it.
My best friend lost his mom the other day. All he has left in the world (other than friends) is his dad… and they rarely talk. His mom was also his best friend.
This holiday season, he’s really feeling the loss. He has my shoulder. That helps too.
cay
We are so lucky to LIVE! Yes, I mourn those who have died, but when you think of the odds of getting to live and experience this world, we are the fortunate few. As I tell my Biology students, “249,999,999 people don’t exist (and never will) after the average sperm emission but YOU do.” :)
wds
John ~
To paraphrase a statement about ballet – NO, it doesn’t become easy, it merely become possible. I’ve lost both my folks, grandparents, dear friends and pets. I’ve discovered that it’s a process that has to be gone through and each time it will be different. However, over time the pain does fade. And, as I told one sometime, the next person who says to me: “Snap out of it!” or “Be thankful, they’re in a better place” will have the snap of my hand across the face and a boot in their “better place”. Hang in there … Hang in there ….
DanielX
@techno: You got that right, about the funeral thing in particular. There’s a joke about salesmen that runs roughly like this: “He’s a great salesman. He makes it sound like you NEED the solid bronze handles on the casket…”
Omnes Omnibus
Oh, by the way, I want Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross” played at my funeral. I will have other song requests, of that I am sure, but, outside of that, those who survive me should handle things as they see fit.
Also too, given the people I know and with whom I am friends, I really would prefer not to be eaten.
GregB
It doesn’t get any easier and the sadly it comes more often the older you get.
The only option is to live through the pain.
Martin
2011 was one kid’s teacher, two family friends my age (early 40s – hit by car, heart attack) which resulted in the families moving away, 4 coworkers (cancer x3, suicide), father in law (broken hip), and two more family friends divorcing and moving away. My kids had most of their good friends leave. Basically all of mine are gone – in one manner or another as well.
It’s been nonstop, and just when I’d start to feel like I was recovering from one, the next would hit. I need at least one good thing to happen in 2012. 2011 has simply been horrible.
So, my condolences as well Cole. I certainly know the feeling.
dance around in your bones
I will just also say that this week alone, I have heard of one adult kid (same age as mine) who caused two deaths (drunk driving) and another who was found dead in a parking lot (most likely drugs/guns/money) so this whole month has felt like the Dead Zone or The End of Life As We Know IT or some other fucking thing like that.
Sometimes getting old sucks eggs. And I’m only 58.
James E. Powell
I don’t know that the word for it would be, but sucks doesn’t work for me. It’s far too small a word for this.
My father died a month ago after a long illness, or rather a combination of things that finally combined to bring about his end. The end itself was a relief after the agony of a long decline, a relief for him, for my mother, for the whole family. Knowing it’s coming, knowing it’s mercy, it is still death. And I know that almost everyone has gone or is going or will go through the same experience, but this is mine and my family’s particular moment in the natural order. My father, my dad, my daddy are gone. Tonight I was thinking that this will be my mother’s first Christmas without him since before Pearl Harbor. Sucks can’t begin to cover things like that.
LT
@JenJen: Boy, you just reminded me of a high school German teacher I haven’t thought about in years. One of the first teachers to treat me as an adult; invited over for dinner at his home; stayed too long in a brewery together on a visit to Germany during h.s… Good times. I think I may try to find him. Thank you!
Mike in NC
My parents married in 1949. Devout Catholics. When my dad died in 2003, mom was never quite the same, and I think she couldn’t wait to be with him in the afterlife and died in 2008. Too bad I didn’t have their faith.
Morbo
I lost my dad Saturday. Nothing about it that isn’t horrible.
rb
@gaz: Ah, Christ. I’m sorry. That must have been awful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morbo: My condolences. The very thought of losing one of my parents is almost terrifying. My thoughts are with you.
LT
@Martin: Jesus, Martin. I feel awful for you, if that’s any consolation at all. Jesus.
Here’s to something good today, right now, for you.
Ruckus
Condolences John.
Does it get easier? Not really. You may get a little used to it, depending on circumstances, but easier, not really. I don’t want to count the number of family and friends whose funerals I have been to because I have to take off my shoes and it is never easy. If it gets easier, seek professional help. It isn’t supposed to be easy. If it is it means you don’t give a damn. And that makes you less human. You will remember the person, their good and bad and at some future time talking about them will be OK. You will miss them but it won’t hurt as bad to talk about them, and that will make it better.
Quakers have a circle of friends. Anyone can get up and say whatever they want. When my sister passed away standing up in the circle was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but it was more than worth it. I learned things about her I didn’t know (mostly funny) and I got to say something funny and most of all I got to say goodbye, out loud, which I needed more than I knew.
cmorenc
@John Cole:
The inevitable conventional tragedy of the death of someone you know only gets easier with experience for the people who are professionals in regularly dealing with it – such as doctors and ministers. Even for them, some of the stinging sadness often finds seams through the insulating layers of composure they are trained to develop in order to be able to deal with the people involved in a competent and even a helpfully empathetic manner, and trickles into their psyche.
For the rest of us, it’s not just the loss of someone we familiarly knew and cared about, as they did us. What stings as much as the forever loss of that person is the tear in the continuity of our comfortable sense of reality at all the seams where that person fit into our life. So no, that never gets easier, except an extent for the professionals whose work regularly involves working around the loosened and torn seams in other people’s lives and deaths.
badpoetry
The thing I find remarkable about that kind of pain is that it really doesn’t ever dull in its intensity. You would think that time would make the feeling less scorchingly painful, but it doesn’t, and that’s surprising. What does happen, though, is that the pain starts to hit less and less often. After a long while, years in fact, I can go a long while without feeling the pain. But when it does show up again, it’s as strong as ever.
Yevgraf
John, it is never, ever easy. Offer such condolences as mean something to you and your real friends will understand.
Yevgraf
John, it is never, ever easy. Offer such condolences as mean something to you and your real friends will understand.
piratedan
does it get better? How do you deal and cope?
I wish I could say that there’s a one size fits all kind of answer… I’m finding out that we all grieve differently and that there is no one right way to feel, be it anger, sadness, ennui, despair or numbness or a carousel of all of those feelings and many more.
If that man had an impact on your life and that he helped make your life a better one, share it and let his family know that he impacted lives outside of his family. Knowing that someone had an effect on your life in a positive way is quite possibly the niftiest gift that you can ever share with someone.
rb
Condolences John.
Athenae
It sucks until it sucks a little less, but it never stops sucking.
I miss my grandma this time of year. We always had Christmas at her house. I would sell every single thing I owned for one hour with that woman again. Every single thing.
A.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Paddy: Exactly. It’s just eventually the pain isn’t as sharp,
Condolences to you John and to the family.
DanielX
As noted, pets, cooking and loud music help. I recommend Boz Scaggs m’self…
rb
@Martin: Oh! That is an awful litany. My condolences to you and to your children.
Yevgraf
Y’know, now that I’m maudlin, +8 or more, it occurs to me to mention that each of us passes our death anniversary date every year, without notice.
Live it like it means something, boys and girls.
Omnes Omnibus
@DanielX: Boz Scaggs?
virginia penley
no, it does not get easier. I have not read the other comments. you just have to realize you keep on living, and do what you can for the other ones living. I wish I could say something to make it better, but death just sucks. trust me, years into the loss, it is easier to take the loss, but yes, it sucks.
cmorenc
@Morbo:
I still remember vividly how just as I was about to go out with my young daughters trick or treating on Halloween night 1993, my wife came into the room with a composed sense of urgency, pulled me aside where my daughters wouldn’t hear, and dropped a complete bombshell on me: my father had quite unexpectedly and very suddenly died of some sort of massive cardiovascular event earlier that afternoon.
He was retired, 73yo but purportedly in decent health up to that moment. He had lunch that day with his buddies at his favorite pub and then had gone home to take a nap; he was found sitting upright in the chair beside his bed with one shoe off, the other still on. Whatever happened was so sudden that he apparently didn’t even have time to try to reach for the phone two steps away on the bedside table.
I’ll be ever grateful for the two men from the Cremation society he’d prearranged with years before to handle his body, who were there and knew exactly how to gently guide me to seeing his body laying on the gurney in the bedroom, his eyes still open, which greatly helped me to quickly process and accept what had happened, and get constructively going through the stages of grief while summoning the necessary composure to help the rest of the family manage the situation.
As well as the whole thing was handled, I could NEVER come to feeling “easy” about dealing with death of someone close, even with the excellent support I was given at the critical time. Learning to handle it well isn’t the same thing at all as it ever becoming easy to deal with.
tkogrumpy
No, it doesn’t get any better, nor should it. Our connection to each other are strong and meaningful and the loss of those connections hurts. Has to hurt. Just pondering your and other commenters losses, has put me in touch with my own and brought tears for my own losses. Living your life intensely will amplify all your feelings, the good and the bad.Drink it all in. we’re only going on this trip once.
erlking
Not to threadjack but I want this medley played at my leavetaking. Is there some music you want at yours?
Gozer
Having dealt with a lot of death I can say that it doesn’t get any easier.
You might stop crying when it happens, but the pain is still there.
Gin & Tonic
@erlking:
Yeah. Ray Charles doing “Hit the Road, Jack.”
Enough of this maudlin bullshit. People die. That’s the way it goes. Enjoy their company when they’re around.
Bill
It never gets easier. It isn’t supposed to. However, you do get used to it. Sort of. The older you get, the more often you encounter it. Eventually the ones you knew who are gone now begin to equal and then outnumber the ones who are still living. Then you begin to understand that your own number is going to come up, and you see that the time you have left is less and less. Sic transit gloria mundi, baby.
Omnes Omnibus
@erlking: As I mentioned above, Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross” is an necessity. And such Clash or Elvis Costello songs as fit must come in.
piratedan
@erlking: Be Still by Los Lobos
cullen Couch
Never “easier,” just more commonplace and grab-your-nuts terrifying.
kideni
I’m so sorry for your loss, John. He sounds like a great guy.
Tomorrow marks twenty-nine years since my dad pretty much dropped dead from a burst aneurysm. Christmas hasn’t really been the same since. I was in high school, and I grew up really quickly. The pain’s not as sharp, but it’s still there, and I think it always will be. But death is part of life. Platitudes, I know, but there it is.
erlking
@Gin & Tonic: Agreed. I still want to orchestrate my last bit of business. No offense intended.
joeyess
I lost my Dad, my cat, and my mother all in the span of 20 months.
Death comes for us all, John. And no, it never gets any easier. Living is losing. Losing is living.
It may sound trite, but that’s all I’ve got for you.
We live. We die. We love. We lose. Days fly past and nights slip by and we all have to dance to the tune.
I’m sorry for your loss, John.
j.
CaseyL
It can’t get easier, because each loss is a unique loss: the oldest dearest friend; the college friend who helped you through rough times; the sibling who shared what no one else can share with you. Each loss hits you in a different spot; each loved one you lose takes a different part of you with them.
My condolences, John; to you and to your friends.
Linnaeus
My condolences, John, and I’ll echo the other folks here when I say that it doesn’t get easier. Frankly, I’d be concerned if it did.
Gin & Tonic
@erlking: None taken. I wrote out my instructions a long time ago.
joeyess
BTW, may I recommend listening to some Little Feat?
TheOtherWA
@gaz: I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t even imagine.
Nicole
I’m sorry for your and the family’s loss- he must have been a terrific guy.
Grief is the price we pay for love. My mom died when I was ten. And I’ve been blessed with an awesome stepmother whom I adore and who worships my baby boy like he was the first baby she’d ever seen (he’s actually the seventh grandchild). But this summer I finally finished a (don’t make fun) latch hook my mother gave me when I was 7. I never liked it, and so set it aside, but as it was a bear, and blue, I figured it would be a cute doo dad for the kid. As I finished it, I remembered there was a section in the middle that my mom had done (frustrated, I imagine, that her daughter had abandoned the project). And I wept that she would never see her grandchildren. She’s been gone almost 30 years, and I don’t even think of her every day, but that’s grief- when you least expect it, it catches you. But I think it’s just reminding you that the person was someone worthy of love and that you were lucky to walk a bit of life’s path with them.
joeyess
Reading thru all the comments here, I have to say that I’m damn proud to call this my go-to blog. The reality-based thinking is just the right medicine for events like this. the comments here are real, gritty, kind, and meaningful. Drink it in, John. It’s all meant to ease your pain. When you stop to think about it, that’s really all we really can do for each other in this world.
I’ve said enough.
eemom
@joeyess:
I was trying to think of a way to say that and floundering. Thank you.
Ruckus
@James E. Powell:
My father died suffering from alzheimers. The family was a ready for his death as one can get and it still was incredibly difficult. He passed in my arms in hospice, where I had placed him 8 days before, knowing that the end was near. The wake we had later than night, toasting him with Irish whiskey helped. This was over ten years ago and the whole day is still fresh in my mind. What made this a little more OK was that we had been preparing for a long time. A friend whose mom had passed with alzheimers described the steps that his family had to go through and I was able to help my family with that knowledge.
As morbid as it sounds, I think our culture does not discuss death enough. I don’t mean religiously I mean the dying. Knowledge does make one able to handle the process better. Knowing what to expect helps with how surprisingly hard death hits you. So that even an unexpected death can be handled better.
Canuckistani Tom
Every time I’ve lost someone, it’s like a piece has been ripped away. I get this sick empty feeling, right in the middle of my chest. I think how strong emotions affect the stomach is how the ancients thought that the heart was the centre of emotion.
The edges of those wounds will scab with time, so you can think about them without pain, but the emptiness will always be there. My soul still has holes in it, for people called Grampa and Nana.
The only cure is to bring as many people into your life as you can, so that the holes make up only a very small portion.
And now that I’ve gotten completely philosophical, I’ll leave you with what is, IMNSHO, the greatest funeral of all time: Mr Graham Chapman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm2XPkqENaw
Omnes Omnibus
@Canuckistani Tom: That is fucking brilliant.
joeyess
@eemom: You? Floundering? Not a chance.
It’s hard to find the right words for times like this. Those few lines took me a good while and I still feel like it was nothing but a trifle, but thank you all the same.
I know how this feels. Hell, we all do. It’s the singular reason we search for “more” in this life. It’s in our nature to want the impermanent to be permanent. Alas, we fail every time.
Ming
I’m so sorry for your and your friends’ loss, John. It is not much, but one thing I have found helpful was to think about some quality we especially valued in the person, and resolve to carry that forward in ourselves. To bring a bit of that person with us, as best we can.
Ruckus
@Canuckistani Tom:
If you have to go, and of course we all do, that’s the way.
A song to play at my funeral? Whatever makes you feel better. I won’t be there to hear it, to like it, or worse, to complain about it.
joeyess
@Canuckistani Tom: That is brilliant. Humor can ease it all quite a bit, can it not?
Ruckus
@Ming:
…one thing I have found helpful was to think about some quality we especially valued in the person…
Quaker circles do that with a twist. You get to think that quality out loud and share it with everyone. And you get to find out qualities that you may not have known about. Some good, some not so much but still. It helps to round out the memories.
Richard S
No it doesn’t get easier – it’s a wound that won’t go away. But for what it’s worth we learn how better to let go ourselves because that’s what we try to do gracefully. Thanks for your company.
Now let’s enjoy what we have left!
Irony Abounds
Condolences to you and the deceased’s family, John. You are still young enough that you haven’t hit the age where death starts hovering all around. My wife has lost both of her parents and mine are both in the early 80s, so the clock is running out. My friends are facing the death or serious illness of their parents, so funerals are becoming the more common impetus for seeing many people rather than weddings or child births. Obviously it is part of life, but it does become a bit depressing at times.
ruemara
I am so very sorry, Cole. And no, it doesn’t get easier.
Batocchio
I think it always sucks. Condolences.
I’ve heard it put that the pain goes away with time, but the grief doesn’t, because we always miss these people in some way. You can phrase it differently, but I’ve found that general experience to be true.
Arundel
Best wishes to the family.
It’s the part of getting older that’s truly dreadful.
I’ll say a prayer. I’m quite agnostic, but I believe in the simplistic incantation of prayer, if only because it’s a verbal and artistic invocation of hope, with a long tradition. That costs me nothing. Something militant atheists regularly smear and trash to work out their own petty traumas about religion, their own boring childhoods they have to tell us about. It’s a comfort to a lot of people when death looms, I don’t know what sort of horrid villain would deny people a prayer and the hope of something meaningful. Oh wait, I do, it’s militant atheists who exult in ghoulish nihilism, because they’re certified experts in the meaning of life. They alone absolutely know the score, and actual human grief and loss and a search for the meaning of it all is for suckers.
Belief that maybe there’s more, -no, that possibility will not be entertained, The beauty of art and nature and human kindness and human greatness are just anomalies.
I really am an agnostic gay fucko with no better perspective than anyone else. But yeah, I’ll say a prayer for the dead. Maybe the Irish in me. Spirits do live with us, no one’s truly gone until the last person who knew them is. Barely to do with religion really, it’s more pagan and primal than that. I’ll say a prayer for John’s friends and their family, and their loss. Because that simple thing , sending good wishes out, I hope I get some too when loss comes to me, as it surely will. Prayer is merely a wish, and sometimes just a mere wish is all we get in this life. A slender reed indeed.
Nethead Jay
My condolances to you, Cole, and to his family. As I wrote earlier, I lost my mom to cancer last Sunday. So yeah, death sucks the big hairy one, whether it’s friends or family, expected or unexpected.
I don’t know if it gets easier but you learn to live with it. Dad died 13 years ago and before that he was 7 years in an assisted-living home after having a brain hemorrhage. It still sucks.
Mom and I always liked the saying from Tolkien, “The Road Goes Ever On”. The idea is appealing.
A.G.
My condolences to you and the family.
I don’t know if it “gets easier” but I think an equilibrium can be reached and people heal. Things get better.
Ruckus
@Irony Abounds:
This really isn’t directed at you, your post just set this in motion.
I’m 62. My first close family death was when I was 10. For 52 years I have watched almost everyone I’m related to who is older than me, and some younger die. Along with a number of friends, some of whom I actually watched die. Some like my grandmother when I was 10 I knew hardly at all. Others hurt like a laser cutting through me. Right now of my immediate family only my mother who is 93 with alzhiemers and diabetes and a sister are left. I lost a cousin who was less than 6 months old when I was 12. His mother died about 3 years later, leaving 4 kids and their dad. And on and on. Death has been a part of my life for what seems an eternity, because for me it has been.
But I carry on, because that is what we do. We grieve, we get depressed, we wonder about it all and we move on. One foot in front of the other, enjoy those around us while we can, if you have someone to laugh with all the better, for that’s what there is. It’s scary, it hurts, and it gets better for a while, till the next time. The pain doesn’t go away, one just learns to live with it better.
Always look on the bright side of life, cause the other side sucks donkey balls.
Miss Kitkas's Comrade Wayne
Folks who say “No, John, it never get’s easier” are totally full of shit.
In time we all heal.
My mom died of some random disease when I was 11 years old. The night I learned she was dead I was sure I would be fucked forever.
But I wasn’t.
It does get easier. We are creatures designed to adapt.
It’s not your own NOKs who’ve kicked it tonight. The seeming intensity of your response is nothing more than alcoholic sentimentality and self-pity.
The person whose feelings matter about this loss is not the person who is blogging about it.
Miss Kitkas's Comrade Wayne
Folks who say “No, John, it never get’s easier” are totally full of shit.
In time we all heal.
My mom died of some random disease when I was 11 years old. The night I learned she was dead I was sure I would be fucked forever.
But I wasn’t.
It does get easier. We are creatures designed to adapt.
It’s not your own NOKs who’ve kicked it tonight. The seeming intensity of your response is nothing more than alcoholic sentimentality and self-pity.
The person whose feelings matter about this loss is not the person who is blogging about it.
dance around in your bones
@joeyess: u said it so well… gawdamn i love this place.
eemom I luvs ya, too
Steeplejack
Van Morrison, “Into the Mystic.”
dance around in your bones
@Miss Kitkas’s Comrade Wayne: Speak 4 yerself ms kitka
some of us have recent and open sores. yea, they get better eventually but right now they fucking hurt.
Gawd – sorry, we all grieve in our own ways, is all I’m trying to say.
Ruckus
@Miss Kitkas’s Comrade Wayne:
As you say we adapt, and we do. That’s not the same as healing, that’s learning to live. And though I only know anyone here as a stream of electrons, they are all humans, meaning they will all experience death, usually of many people around them and their own at least once. If any of us can make that adapting easier by sharing our experiences and helping them understand the pain, then we owe it to them. That is not alcohol nor self-pity talking. That is humanity.
JenJen
@LT: Even thinking about college, Herr Foland, my high school German teacher, had the most profound impact on my life. He encouraged me to travel, to master the language, and his influence changed my life. He was a remarkable human being, that one. Rest in peace.
Hug a teacher. Hug everyone, even.
Elizabelle
So sorry, John.
Goes from sharp ache to dull loss. Over time.
You will be a lot of comfort to his family, since you knew and appreciated their dad.
Jebediah
My condolences to you and his family, Cole, and to everybody else in the thread who has suffered these losses.
not much i can add to what has already been said. offer whatever support you can to the family and accept whatever support is offered to you and don’t spend too much time second-guessing your emotions.
The man will live on in your memory. My dad died in 96 and my youngest brother in 99 and I still occasionally think I will call them about something or other (as someone else mentioned.) If you were close to him, you may find yourself “talking” to him from time to time.
It’s the price we pay, I guess, for having wonderful people in our lives.
300baud
I don’t know if it ever gets easier to deal with death. I’ve lost 4 people this year, and it has honestly been brutal. But I do know that I appreciate what I have a lot more now, and a lot of the little bullshit that used to get under my skin now feels as meaningless as I always knew it to be.
flukebucket
And so it goes…..
Elizabelle
The day began with news of Christopher Hitchens’ death and ended with John’s post on his friends’ father’s passing.
Thinking of Hitchens, and how the cancer gave him — and his family and friends — time to say their goodbyes, to celebrate their warmth and relatedness , and prepare as much as one can. That he died surrounded by a lot of love and compassion.
Watched “The Aviator” on TCM tonight; Scorsese’s biopic on Howard Hughes.
Thinking on how terrifying the onset of madness must have been, particularly to someone so enormously gifted, and to someone who was a keen observer with a scientific bent.
How the OCD and effects of injuries from the 1946 plane crash delivered Hughes a social death and isolation decades before the physical one.
Thinking too, of this week when the Iraq war formally ended, of all the soldiers and thousands upon thousands of civilians killed, long before their time. Thinking mostly of that long parade of teenage and youthful faces.
HeartlandLiberal
It never gets easier.
But there is one lesson one should learn in life, and the sooner, the better.
Life is short. And it will end. Do not waste it arguing and fighting with the ones you love. Cling to them. Love them. Tell them you love them every day. Sometimes more than once.
Ignore all the artificial social cues we are supposed to heed about showing our love for each other. In my family we do not pay any attention to father’s day, mother’s day, valentine’s day, not even Christmas for decades since all the cousins and our son hit adulthood. Every day is all of those. There are no artificial, mandated commercial expressions of love in our family. Only the daily genuine thing.
As for our parents, my wife and I are 65, she turns 66 this month, I do in February. But since my mother was the last parent to leave us eight years ago, we have referred to ourselves as orphans. Her father died when we were only 19 (we were already married then). He had married her mother when twice her mother’s age, a classic but successful May-December marriage. My father died of cancer at 62. Way to young. I was in Germany at the time, learned he had finally died. I was in a phone booth near the Neckar River in southwest Germany, thousands of miles away when I got the news while calling home to check in. In some ways that was the death that hurt the worst, to see him, a child of the depression who scrambled his way from a dirt poor farm in Alabama to a basic middle class life, the values of which included raising three boys and somehow teaching them the values of right and wrong and decency.
If there is any theme that recurs in our conversations again and again, it is that we wish our parents were still alive, because they would be proud of us. And that still matters to both of us.
Bruuuuce
Sadly, no. I’m sorry to hear about your and your friends’ loss, and wish you all, all the best.
HRA
May he have eternal rest.
My condolences to his family and to you, John.
Somehow we all find our way during this time of grief even though the process differs with each loss. Reading the comments here has shown me how much we are all alike in these difficult times of loss. It is very helpful.
What sustained me most in my personal losses was remembering and sharing the experiences with others that brought laughter rather than grief. Even if you use them only in your mind during the days when you are once again alone and they bring you a moment of mirth, they are most important in healing.
JPL
John, There is little to add besides what has been said. Yes it sucks and no the death of friends and loved ones doesn’t get easier. Many hugs to you and your friends.
harlana
Love your friends, loved ones, family, as they live, while they live, have no regrets, that is all you can do.
Carrie
My deepest condolences,
Losing someone you love sucks but you find that after a while the tears are replaced with a warm wistful smile while thinking about them.
I miss my Dad terribly but he used to say “Life’s for the living, so get on with it” and to honor his memory, I’m trying daily to get on with it.
Cermet
So very sorry for the loss.
dance around in your bones
@Elizabelle: oh elizabelle, what a lovely/sad stream of thought. gawd but here go my eyes again, all leaky and crap.
dance around in your bones
@HeartlandLiberal: Aaaaaaaand….your comment got me all weepy again, too.
I swear, my gramma used to drive me crazy with her ‘life is too short’ homilies, but the older I get the more I realize there’s a reason for some of that common sense/truism stuff….because it’s frickin’ true.
This thread has just about done me in (grandkid last night wanted to know why my eyes were so red) but so timely and helpful, too. Sometimes ’tis the season’ turns out to be full of loss and pain, and we have to learn how to navigate through it. Thanks, BJ-ers, y’all have come through for me again.
DaveinME
“Does this ever get any easier dealing with this sort of thing, because this just sucks?”
No. My condolences John.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
its incredibly difficult, and never gets easier because everyone seems to process grief differently.of course, at such a time, no one wants to step on anyone else’s process. i have been to funerals with less than 10 people in attendance, and i have been to funerals that literally had a room off to the side for the media. things like that, no one gets to choose, but the former, to me is a million times better than the latter.
all i can say is allow yourself some time to process in your own way while assisting others while they do whatever it is they need to do.
Kerry Reid
So sorry, John. Both my parents are gone now — cancer. Can’t say it gets easier. It just gets to be hard in different ways, I think.
PIGL
@Gin & Tonic: Now that is a splendid suggestion…good advice also too.
Cat Lady
It does suck John. My mom’s dying of Alzheimer’s, and I’ll be surprised if she makes it to the New Year. A dear friend just got diagnosed with myeloma. Another dear friend’s father just got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A daughter’s friend’s father just died this week, and another old friend’s mother died a month ago. Something about the year end darkness and the holidays just push the spirit over the edge.
gelfling545
Condolences to you and the family. I have found that dealing with death does not get easier. For each loss, the time will come when memory brings joy more often than sorrow but still, each new death comes as a separate shock as another piece of your own life leaves you. Since I am at an age where my own death becomes less and less of an abstraction I wonder if these accumulated losses make it easier to accept one’s own departure.
daize
Condolences, John. Death sucks, grief sucks. You don’t get over it, but you learn to live with it. Thinking of you and your friends.
master c
It may not get easier, but the grief takes on a new dimension. My father’s shocking death plunged me into sadness for years. I can say now, 6 years later that I am grateful for the experience. It gives me new perspective on the brevity and mystery of life. It helps me understand those who have endured the same pain, and those who have not.
Jerzy Russian
Tell his family how much he meant to you. Then if there are living persons who mean a lot to you, tell them while there is still time.
Ben Cisco
@Ruckus: Mrs. Cisco’s mom lingered for 11 years before Alzheimer’s and (at the end) pancreatic cancer took her. It is really a slow-motion death, and as bad as the end was, the alternative was infinitely worse.
__
As for it getting better, I don’t think it does. I think you learn to live with it, and if there is any point at all to the thing, that’s as close as I have gotten to it.
Poopyman
This thread is a virtual quilt of grief. And comfort. I hope it gets bookmarked so we can pull it out whenever we need it. Dust it off, air it out to get rid of the mothball smell, and surround ourselves again with our fellow BJers’ thoughts.
This world is spinning like a top. Every year is shorter than the last, and like lemmings we head towards that cliff that we know is up ahead somewhere. Every year we lose friends and relatives, and the count of those older than us gets smaller and smaller.
Not long ago I found out my high school sweetheart had died of breast cancer over the summer. Like most (all?) of us, we’d made grand plans, then drifted apart as we grew up. Learning she’d lived, loved, borne children, and then passed at 57 – well, there’s a flood of feelings and memories there.
So here’s to the memories all your loved ones who’ve gone before. And here’s to we who remain.
Oh, and John, by now you have the answer to your question. My answer would just be redundant.
LiberalTarian
No, it shouldn’t be easy. My sincere condolences.
I hope you get to meet with his friends and loved ones and share memories. The best (odd to call it that) funeral I ever attended was at a Friendship House where people who were moved to share could stand up and tell their stories. We were all deeply hurt by our friends’ death by accident, but the sharing helped.
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco:
As for it getting better, I don’t think it does. I think you learn to live with it, and if there is any point at all to the thing, that’s as close as I have gotten to it.
Exactly, experiencing death doesn’t make this difficult thing better or easier, it makes living through it understandable. And that helps a bit.
master c
Oh and something else you can do for the family-bring up up their father and the good things six months from now or a year from now when the funeral and such are long over. They would love that-people tend to be afraid to re-open wounds, but I find that it hurts as much that people say nothing as if he never existed.
Elizabelle
@master c:
I so agree.
It’s enough to have your loved one disappear from your daily life. A great comfort to talk about the things that made you laugh and love and appreciate that person.
wasabi gasp
Sorry, John.
The creep gets creepier. I’ll find that unsettling until I won’t. It helps to think I’m a flower.
Ash Can
Condolences to you and your friends, John, and condolences to everyone in this thread who’s suffering loss. As many here have already said, no, losing loved ones never gets easier, nor should it. And as daize says above, and as a very wise friend of the family told me years ago after my father died suddenly, you don’t get over it but you learn to live with it. Let yourself grieve, and do it on your own terms. You and your friends are in my thoughts.
beckya57
A good friend (and good man) has been going through the wringer these past few months because one of his daughters is severely depressed and has made multiple suicide attempts. The most recent one was this week and was very nearly fatal. I was talking to a mutual friend this morning about all of that, and said to her, “This situation just sucks, all of this just sucks,” and she emphatically agreed. She also commented that we need to remember how precious life really is. My condolences for your loss.
moderateindy
Interesting observation….I used to believe in the Christian version of heaven, where you would see your loved ones again. I no longer do. One would think that lacking that belief would make losing loved ones harder, when you can’t take comfort in the idea that you will be reunited. Thing is, it is no harder or more painful. I think that’s because it sucks so bad that no perspective can ease that kind of pain.
And while time certainly ameliorates the mind numbing grief, time is where the true nature of loss resides. Those times when you look at the place on the couch where your dog used to sleep, those times when when you’re at the Saturday BBQ and the guy that always initiated the game of horseshoes isn’t there to say, pick a teammate bitch so I can crush you. The time every Sunday when the phone doesn’t ring with your Mom calling. Death of a loved one sucks and it diminishes the quality of life for all connected to it, not just now, but for the rest of your life.
I wish there were words to say to change that fact, I don’t think comfort is in the words, but the act of saying something, letting people know that you give a crap that actually helps.