Other Loss

[BakaTheIdiot]

Loss is rough. Everybody knows this, but I guess I handle it a little differently than most. A little. Maybe I'm still processing it. I don't know. All I know is that someone in my family died, only about an hour ago, and I don't feel sad.

Maybe it's because I wasn't there. Maybe it's because I didn't really know him. All I know is that he's dead. I don't feel sad, but I do feel awful. I feel awful about how I'm handling this. My parents broke down crying, and all I did was say "I know, it sucks." Am I doing something wrong? Am I insane? Why am I so casual about this?

I shed more tears over a cat than my own family. Why is that? When my first cat, Chairman Meow, died, I felt absolutely destroyed. I couldn't even look at the event, I couldn't even watch the vets put him into an infinite sleep. I recovered, little by little, and went to school the next day, even though I really didn't want to.

Now, my relative, who only lived to be thirty, fell victim to the horror of cancer, but I feel nothing. Why can't I bring myself to feel sad? I didn't hate him. He had done nothing wrong. Yet, there he was, dead in a hospital bed. Why am I still so calm? True, I had only really spoken to him once in my entire lifetime, but I heard the stories, I knew who he was, to a degree. Still, here I am, typing a post while the oscars are going on. Here, I write to this community, instead of bawling my eyes out, not because I don't care, but because I have no tears to cry. I put the question to you, reader, why is that? Have I just fallen out of touch with my humanity, or am I just in shock. Maybe I'll never know.

-Baka

 

[Windsock]

You didn't give a shit about him? It's that simple. You only talked to him once, so you don't care.

It'd be more inhuman to bawl your eyes out about somebody you don't actually know.

 

[apolla]

I'll preface this by saying no, you're not doing anything wrong and you're not insane. It's perfectly natural, honestly, to not feel sad when you didn't really know the person. I mean you might be a little sad-- someone dying is never fun-- but you can't be distraught over it because how? What impact did they have on your life that's now gone forever?

I have dealt with alot of loss in my life. When I was seven, my father died in a motorcycle accident. As a daddy's girl, I was devastated when my mom told me my daddy wasn't coming home. I cried, of course, but then I did something pretty cool-- I went and wrote a book. Not a Harry Potter novel or anything like that, but a simple, two page cook (complete with pictures) called 'The Day My Daddy Died'. It was how I dealt with it, and my mom still has it. Granted losing my dad at such a young age had a huge impact on my life, but kids are pretty resilient. I bounced back.

When I was nineteen or so, I had a miscarriage. I was four weeks pregnant when I found out that I was having a baby, and to be honest, I was a terrible pregnant person. It was an accident, and I didn't want it. So for the next two and a half weeks, whenever my fiance would touch my belly or try to talk about it, I'd shove his hand away or change the subject. I didn't wish for the miscarriage, but at 6.5 weeks, it happened. It was the most painful thing I've ever felt in my life. Physically, anyway. And even though I felt like-- I didn't want the baby, and the baby heard me and left-- I hadn't connected with it. I cried, but not nearly as much as I felt like I should have. My fiance and I didn't last much longer after that, for multiple reasons.

And then, in 2013, I fell in love. He and I had a whirlwind romance. He was an amazing guy, ready to give the shirt off his back to anyone who needed it. Wanting to make you smile all the time. But he had a problem, and by the time found out what it was, it was too late. I loved him. He was addicted to heroin, and in the end, it killed him. I spent every night with him for a week while he lay in a hospital bed in a coma, praying that he'd come back to me. His mother and I finally decided to pull the plug, and I held him while he died. Good lord did I cry then, never had I cried so much in my life.

Last story, I promise. A few months ago, I came upon the scene of an accident on the highway. It had just happened. A man in a little sports car had hit another car, then the railing, and been ejected from his car. He lay face down on the asphalt, and he wasn't moving. I parked and got out of my car and ran to him, along with a few others. I'm a nurse, you see, and I wanted to help. So three guys and I turned him over, and I won't describe what I saw, but we did do CPR on him for a good 20 minutes before EMS showed up. I found out later on he didn't make it. I was in the middle of the highway, covered in another mans blood, doing life saving CPR-- and he didn't make it. Did I cry? Not once. Why? Because I didn't know him. For a few weeks, I thought I was abnormal. I thought I was broken.

But I'm not, and neither are you.
I hope this helps.

 

[Abendrot]

Everyone reacts to loss differently. Some express it, some don’t. It’s normal not to feel too broken up if you weren’t close to the deceased, or if you’re generally not very empathetic, or if it’s just shock. It’s nothing to feel bad about. You can’t force yourself to feel certain ways about stuff. Just allow yourself to feel however you feel, even it it’s the absence of feeling. Don’t beat yourself up. Just go with it. I’m sure your relative would’ve wanted you to go on to lead a happy life no matter what.