TDS The TDS grief/bereavement thread

[Motherwolf]

just a quick message from Where Wolf?'s mother. I recognize so much of what people describe here, especially the hollowed out feeling. I keep shoving a pillow against my gut. I am working with a manuscript Where Wolf? left behind, one of three. It is harrowing and hard but essential work and I will push it out into the world.

You Bluelighters meant a gret deal to him and I honour you and thank you for that. I will be back - this is part of his world and I cherish it and cherish each one of you. Sending love and sorrow

Motherwolf

 

[herbavore]

I know that what you are doing with your son's writing will be difficult to do, but how powerful. I hope there is solace in reading his words.

 

[spork]

I need to get this out. I thought about just making a blog entry, but I need more people to see this right now as I've been hurting pretty bad since I found out the news.

I found out yesterday that a friend from high school had taken his life a couple days ago. When I moved here, we reconnected and I was able to see him over the years sporadically. Every time I saw him though, it was special. He was an amazing photographer and an activist. Every conversation I've had with him, I'd somehow get more of a hold of who I am and what my beliefs are. He was an absolute inspiration and touched the lives of everyone that he came across.

I keep thinking that this is some sort of nightmare and recheck his Facebook, only to realize this happened. I don't want to believe it, it's something I'm having an extremely hard time accepting. He was so successful in everything he did and lived his life to the absolute fullest. I wish that I could go back and tell him how much he meant to me and how he changed my life, but I can't anymore. I don't know what else to say right now. My heart is breaking and tears keep flowing.

I have to keep reminding myself that life is not meant to be spent preparing to say goodbye. It's temporary and fleeting and meant to be lived and loved. It's not a preparation for something, it's the main course, and it's our responsibility to relish the joy and happiness of being with our friends and family. It's hard to remember that sometimes. Hell, I don't have all the answers, but I'd like to think I'm on the right track.

The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize???

Check out some of his photography here. He was so incredibly talented.

Rest In Peace, Phil. You might be gone now, but you'll never *ever* be forgotten.

 

[ad lib]

I'm so sorry spork.

No matter how many times we have experienced someone dying, it will never get any easier. Your friend sounds like an amazing person. People like that are very rare to come by, so when we lose them it makes it that much harder because we may never meet someone like that again. It sounds like he deeply touched your soul. Meeting that type of a person is a once in a life time experience. I've never had someone impact my life like that but hopefully one day I will find that person. He sounds like an amazing person with all of the lives he has touched- he seems deep. People like that are on a totally different level, and that's what makes them special.

Think about this: you said that he accomplished everything he wanted to and he lived his life to the fullest. That's awesome! Many people can't say the same thing for themselves, I know I'm not able to say that I have accomplished everything I want to yet. Sometimes lives struggles just get too much and people feel like they are at the end of the line with nowhere to turn. I find this especially true in people who dedicate their time to helping others. For example, I enjoy helping others because I don't want them to feel like I do- depressed. He seems like he was the same way. However, helping people all the time can get lonely because no one is there to help you (you as in the individual who helps others) when it is needed. It's nothing that you did to cause him to take his life. Why he took his life you may never know the true reason.

He lost his battle with despair, but he left behind the most important thing- his legacy and memories. You will always have the memories of him and you will always hold dear what you learned from him. Allow this to be a learning experience too. I know it is clichéd, but he would not want you to feel this way. He would certainly comfort you on why he did what he did & that you don't need to be sad. He is in a much better place- I'm not sure what your beliefs on the afterlife are, and I am not too sure what mine are either- but he is at peace. A great person such as himself will no doubt be in a peaceful place when they pass. The world we live in is a cruel place- but now he is free from that. He's okay, and he wants you to be happy and okay too

 

[herbavore]

Oh, Sporky, I am so sorry. From his quote, he sounded like he was certainly on the "right track" as he worded it. Had he suffered from depression? Why is it that the hold on life is so tenuous when we are young? Last night I talked a young man into getting to a hospital after taking 60 pills. I talked to him until the ambulance came and while I am sure that he survived this time, that's all I'm sure of. I kept saying, "it gets easier, it gets easier". I would have said the same to Phil because I truly do believe it based on my experience. But in the end, each one of decides and no one can say anything from the outside.

I wish I could just wrap my arms around you. I know that you have been under stress yourself and this kind of blow is deep and long-lasting. All I can say is that you are doing the right thing by reaching out here and I hope you are doing even more IRL. Did you have other mutual friends there? If so, that can be crucial right now. I know that Caleb's friends bonded so tightly trying to support each other through first the shock, then the grief and now, perhaps the most terrible, just the missing.

Write to him, speak out loud, and try your hardest to get good sleep. pay close attention to how you are feeling and nurture yourself. This kind of shock and grief is a traumatic experience for your body as well as your mind. Message me if you need to.

 

[spork]

Thanks guys. The kind words mean a lot. Phil was the type of person that would never have said anything or sought out help if he did suffer from depression. I'm sure he had bouts of it though. With the kind of mind that he had and the type of person he was I would honestly be surprised if he didn't have some depression in there. His grandmother did pass away just last week so that may have contributed to this. I can only imagine how his family is doing right now.

The thing that keeps popping up in my mind now is how I was always excited to go to a protest or a show or something where he may have been attending as well because I knew there was a good chance he would be there and I'd get to talk to him even if it was just a brief conversation. I know it's going to come up again. I'll feel excited that I might be able to see Phil there, but then it'll dawn on me that that won't be happening. I guess I'll handle that when the time comes. I know it won't be easy, but I know I can do it and that it *will* get easier in time.

I have touched base with a few people about it and unfortunately I'm going to miss his memorial back "home" because of school and work obligations but I'll see a lot of those people within the next month and have been reconnecting with old friends from high school on Facebook as a result of this. I know that that would make Phil happy. He lived his life striving for social justice and to bring people together. There's thoughts going around on arranging another celebration on his birthday here so I hope to be able to attend that. There's also some memorial funds coming together to help support some of the causes he helped to bring light to and a fund to help support the caring of his cat. I've been considering just offering to take the cat myself for a while, but I don't know if my own cat would tolerate that or not.

I never really realized how much I thought of him and how much of an impact he had on me until he left. I wish more than anything that I could skip school and work on Thursday to be there. I've been finding some sort of peace at looking at his photographs and have decided that since I barely use the camera I got for Christmas, I'm going make an active effort to get more into photography as sort of a tribute to him.

I'm still in shock about it now and am not really sure when it will sink in that he's gone. The world will never be the same without him in it.

 

[Seeking Where?]

Spork, the following reading was used at Where Wolf?'s funeral. I hope it will speak to you, too - it helped me by naming the depth of the loss. May your memories of Phil be a blessing.

We recognize that each of us is not so much a person as a world, or rather, the bearer, in her or his self, of a world - a unique, irreplaceable, populated world, linked by a myriad threads to other such worlds, and that if, when, someone dies who has been a part of our life, there is a rent in the universe, like a star vanishing, but that like a star vanishing, that world leaves ineradicable traces in us as a star does in space. So that we mourn, but we remember ... and we know that there will be a living trace of that person in our consciousness always.

- Rabbi Sheila Shulman

 

[herbavore]

That is so beautiful. That is probably the best description of both a life and a death that I have ever heard. This year, I will mark Caleb's passing with a sense of unreality--surely it cannot have been two years? I want to take these words to read because they are the clearest I have heard to describe the reality that I must accept. Thank you so much for sharing these and thank you to Rabbi Shulman for recording them.

 

[Sepher]

We recognize that each of us is not so much a person as a world, or rather, the bearer, in her or his self, of a world - a unique, irreplaceable, populated world, linked by a myriad threads to other such worlds, and that if, when, someone dies who has been a part of our life, there is a rent in the universe, like a star vanishing, but that like a star vanishing, that world leaves ineradicable traces in us as a star does in space. So that we mourn, but we remember ... and we know that there will be a living trace of that person in our consciousness always.

- Rabbi Sheila Shulman

Simply wonderful. Thank you posting for this deep truth Seeking Where? There is comfort to be had there, absolutely, even in the scale of the loss.

 

[stilesface]

I cannot fathom losing a child and trying to move through life with that kind of hole in the universe. We innately feel that our parents will die in our lifetime but after reading through some of these I just went to check on my napping son. He's only 5 and I watched him and was thinking that I expect him to outlive me and I don't know that any other outcome would be survivable. The fight for continued sobriety must be won because to go back would just set him up for a childhood of pain that may cause him to seek solace at the bottom of a bottle or in a puddle of meth. I know I've spent the past eleven years trying to erase the grief of losing my mom. Of my father's subsequent descent into madness. Of having to come home at 20 and raise my 14 year-old sister. Bastille Day will mark 11 years and I've never found solace or peace or acceptance of the feelings of abandonment.

I moved back to my hometown recently. It's such a small place with such a long memory. My mom's name had become sacred and unspoken. It was a rare name so there was never an occasion to hear it in a grocery store or spoken aloud. Except now that I am here, the people here remember her and speak her name. They knew her and recall her and they speak to me of her....at the post office, playground, grocery store. And I drive by my childhood home and new people live there. She died there, in the living room, early on a Sunday morning in July, eleven years ago.

I don't even know what my point is. I guess I thought I was over it....that her death had become a manageable part of my history. But no...it's still very real. The birds here make the same sounds they did throughout my childhood, the woods contain the same trees, the little shops are the same. Except I'm 30 years old now and the town no longer has my mom, dad, brother and sisters. Instead it's just me and my son here and my siblings spread across three continents. Adult orphans. It's amazing that the grief is still palpable.

 

[Sepher]

35 years since I lost my Dad Stiles and I still carry him with me everywhere even now. His memory is imprinted on so many people and places, there are reminders of him, and my loss of him everywhere just as you say. That's both a blessing and a curse at times, brings smiles and sadness. It's always there. The rawness has gone, except at some times when it re-appears from nowhere for some reason and slays me all over again for a little while spent sobbing but those times are few and far between these days. I have made my peace with it, the loss, as something that can't be changed, only accepted and lived with peaceably but it has shaped me as both child and man absolutely, son and brother, I am what I am because of it. There can be no seperation from it, or forgetting of it, it's deep inside the core of me. That's both good and bad, each of those are of equal value and equal import, but mostly good, cos a bit of my Dad lives on a little in me where I can still find him, and there's a little left there for others to find in me for themselves too, exactly as Seeking Where's post said.

 

[spork]

Spork, the following reading was used at Where Wolf?'s funeral. I hope it will speak to you, too - it helped me by naming the depth of the loss. May your memories of Phil be a blessing.

We recognize that each of us is not so much a person as a world, or rather, the bearer, in her or his self, of a world - a unique, irreplaceable, populated world, linked by a myriad threads to other such worlds, and that if, when, someone dies who has been a part of our life, there is a rent in the universe, like a star vanishing, but that like a star vanishing, that world leaves ineradicable traces in us as a star does in space. So that we mourn, but we remember ... and we know that there will be a living trace of that person in our consciousness always.

- Rabbi Sheila Shulman

I kept reading over this again and again. There is so much wisdom and truth in those words. I *do* feel that he's somehow a part of me now (I don't know how to explain it, but I can indeed feel it) and am so grateful that I got the chance to know someone with so many wonderful attributes.

I know you've been through an incredible amount of pain lately and you posting that to bring me some comfort says so much about your character and who you are. I don't know what else to say, but THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

Lots of love.

 

[stilesface]

Seeking Where? That quote is stunning. I copied it into one of my journals. Thank you.

Sepher, thank you for your candid sharing of your dad's death. I just let the grief follow its course through my body and try to be thankful that I experienced a deep and abiding love that I can still feel it so many years later. I love the idea that people would find her in me. I spoke to her childhood best friend for 2 hours today and feel centered again. My mom's best friend loving and caring for me reminds me what it felt like having a mom. Laughing, gossiping and crying. I'm sorry about your father. I'm trying to impart upon my son the leasons fathers would teach sons and I know nothing can replace the real thing.

My heart to everyone here.

 

[xstayfadedx]

It's been two years since my boyfriend/best friend died.... I can't believe today marks two years. Its still hard to believe he's gone.... only physically, but he surrounds me spiritually. I just miss his touch... everything about him. I wish there was more people in the world who would care as much as he did and have a big heart just like him. Sadly there will never be another him. I guess I have to wait until the day I see him again... I miss him so much and I love him. I always will. Oh how, I wish I could turn back the hands of time. If only he was back here in my arms... looking at me with his bright blue eyes and having the biggest smile on his face. He was taken too soon... I'm just glad I got to meet him when he was here. He made such a huge impact on my life and pulled me out of the dirt.. he saw so much in me; things that I couldn't even see in myself. I thank him for that, for everything.

 

[ela.sand]

my girlfriend died in an accident, 4 weeks ago.
slowly its starting to sink in and the numbness gives way to...?
she was the most precious, loving, magical person i know.
this was the last song we listened to together- its almost as if she knew-

i'm crying so much now

 

[Fuzzet]

35 years since I lost my Dad Stiles and I still carry him with me everywhere even now. His memory is imprinted on so many people and places, there are reminders of him, and my loss of him everywhere just as you say. That's both a blessing and a curse at times, brings smiles and sadness. It's always there. The rawness has gone, except at some times when it re-appears from nowhere for some reason and slays me all over again for a little while spent sobbing but those times are few and far between these days. I have made my peace with it, the loss, as something that can't be changed, only accepted and lived with peaceably but it has shaped me as both child and man absolutely, son and brother, I am what I am because of it. There can be no seperation from it, or forgetting of it, it's deep inside the core of me. That's both good and bad, each of those are of equal value and equal import, but mostly good, cos a bit of my Dad lives on a little in me where I can still find him, and there's a little left there for others to find in me for themselves too, exactly as Seeking Where's post said.

And I will carry part of you with me forever my darling Sepher.

God I hurt so much right now I can't even begin to describe it.

 

[Fuzzet]

Devastated - I'm Sepher's partner and have just read through some stuff that I never knew because he never told me and now hes dead and i will never get him to see that I never left him when he was spiralling, i put things in place behind the scenes to make sure he was supported, that he could build in some self reliance. he said he got that when we talked about it so I don't know why I'm the bad guy here when all ice ever done was what he wanted. He told me to move on and find someone better, that I deserved better than him. I didn't want better than him and when I tried it I went on about Seph at dinner etc... No wonder the lad went back to his ex because my heart still belonged to mine. I fell hard for a complete stranger in the space of four weeks in total emotional transference as I wanted my nelliekins to be sober and the man I always knew he was. Funny, intelligent and loving. I hate reading this that I'm uncaring... I gave him more of me than i gave to myself constantly and never grumbled. I was firm and set clear boundaries which he needed to enable him to get to a place where he was able to build a new social circle doing the left unity thing, going to yoga with the bhuddists etc. he said he got that he needed me to do that to make him see and it killed me with so much pain to do it. i cried every other day on the phone to his sister and everyday made sure theyd contacted him three to five times a day to make sure he was ok. i never left him. my heart and soul never left him and i am so upset that he thought i had. Now I'm trying to grieve and all I want to do is see his face again one more time before its too late and I'm reading he hated me. Awful. Truly awful. Heartbreaking as if it couldn't break any more right now. :'(

 

[Pretty_Diamonds]

Wow, just reading the OP brings tears to my eyes. So pathetic.

Father and baby sister, 11 died 2011. I partially hold him responsible. I can't believe he would do this even trough it was an accident. He could have saved her! The anger, resentment, etc... The pain of losing my baby sister---she was only 11! The pain of losing my ONLY sister. I remember wanting a younger sister when I was little.. The pain of dealing with my mom and trying to pick her up as she spent moths crying over pictures. That's all we have left. Pictures.

Sorry that's all I can write for now. I'm sorry for everyone's losses in here... my condolences.

 

[wondci2]

It's very hard for me to put into words my feelings but you typed everything I'm feeling xstayfadedx. I lost EternalX in March and I am just not the same person. I don't know if I ever truly will be. I have never felt this much hurt in all my 35 years on this planet. I'm trying to believe in the "time will heal" motto. Its just not working yet. The tears are frequent and the chest pain hurts. I'm broken and just trying to get through everyday.

 

[herbavore]

^ You will not be the same person, but that is not a bad thing. You loved someone enough to feel the loss of that person deeply and holding that loss, learning to carry and integrate it into your being is a long, long process. Tears are good. Let them come whenever they need to, without apology. Those tears are real. You will feel happiness again, just not now. I find that grief needs to be honored, given time and plenty of space. Attempting to control it is dangerous but so is thinking that you will be stuck in the same intensity forever. Feelings will change and shift as dramatically as weather and yet what will survive is the love. You created a world of love with another person. It is an unfathomable loss.