Lost one of my boys a little over a year ago. Still get crippled with grief from time to time - maybe every other day now instead of multiple times a day. It gets easier, but never easy. In the process of getting a ring with some of his ashes built into them and I think that’ll be pretty special to get to bring him everywhere I go.
Not looking for condolences, just wanted to put this perspective out there in a sea of folks who seemed to have bad relationships with their parents. To those: I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.
Thank you for sharing your experience. As someone who doesn’t have kids to begin with I can’t even begin to imagine
Sending love your way <3
Thank you for sharing. My coworker just lost her daughter to suicide and she has been understandably inconsolable. She’s had an outpouring of sympathy, but I wanted to give her something more than just words from a childless adult who could never possibly relate to what she is going through. I will suggest the ring made with some ashes. I think that will help bring her some comfort.
My dad was a drunk and made sure I learned every racist term in the book before I was 12. I’m sure he’d be devastated if I managed to kill myself, without ever realizing how much he contributed to the desire in the first place.
My life has only gotten better since he died. Rest in piss old man, I’m glad you’re dead.
Edits: also, single moms rule — I’d fight a T-Rex for my mom. I’d lose, but god damnit I’d try.
I’d be willing to help you train to fight the T-Rex. You don’t have to lose.
My parents are crazy too but they’re drug free, which has always confused me. The problem is their personality, not an addiction. But I have thought about how they’d react - my mom would play the victim and my dad would play pickleball/tennis. That’s just what they’ve always done. I look forward to the day they die. When all of my grandparents died my parents became slightly more tolerable. I imagine my baseline will also rise….
As an old and retired paramedic myself, there are definitely parts of me, as a human being, that will never grow back. And I worked in a rural area where you work on neighbors, family, and friends mostly. It was never easy to explain to the family that might be present that not me or god could fix what was wrong. I also did a few suicides over the years. Never easy and they leave a mark that won’t grow back by morning.
The worst thing about any of it, was meeting a family member in a cafe or store in our small town. And they would invariably come up to me and give me a hug and tell me how grateful they were that I was there for them. Despite the fact I couldn’t do shit for the dead person beyond calling dispatch and telling them to send law enforcement to come and do their paperwork and secure the scene until the funeral home got there to haul the body away.
I think often just being there makes a big difference, even if there’s nothing that can be done.
I’m sorry, that sounds so hard. Handling logistics in a traumatic situation is such a hugely important task. Definitely don’t sell yourself short. Even is you didn’t do anything you’re “holding space”
It ruined that scene in the The Princess Bride for me.
Do you hear that, Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when Rugen slaughtered my father.
I’ve heard it to varying degrees, but the worst was the kid that shot themself by accident because dad got drunk and left his handgun out. Mom made it to the hospital and was obviously distraught … then she saw the body.
The noise she made is indescribable. An overcrowded, chaotic Emergency Department full of hardened nurses and doctors dropped into 5 seconds of complete silence and inactivity. Even other patients screaming in pain stopped.
It triggers some primal response in your brain you didn’t know exists until you hear it. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. The sound a mother makes she she sees her dead child is inarguably the worst sound in the world.
Yeah, only once have I heard the whole ER seemingly go silent. It was when we brought in a young trauma victim, (car accident). The pandemonium of a 6 people working all at once, the voices calm but tense and a bit louder, and the er Doc standing in the corner watching and directing the action. We worked the code for maybe 5 or 6 minutes before the Doctor called it. Everything just stopped. People froze from what they were doing. And the whole ER was dead silent for what seemed like hours, but was only a few seconds before everything came back to real time.
Only twice have I had to hear the agony of a mother. Once when I did a drowning. We were searching for the husband/father. I found him in about 6 feet of water. (my big toe went into his mouth-- a feeling I will never forget). My partner and I got him shallow water along the shore. And I did the math and estimated he’d been down 25 to 45 minutes. So we agreed to call it. So I started walking to the house, all soaking wet, to deliver the news. I can still hear her wail right now as I told her and her young son that daddy was never coming home again.
The other time was when we were paged out to a 4-wheeler accident. And an 11-year-old boy somehow drove too close to a drainage ditch and rolled in about 20 feet down. I went down with a rope and found him pinned under the 4-wheeler face down in about 3 or 4 inches of water. He had been dead long enough to be beyond anybodies help. I climbed back up the ditch and explained to the mother her 11-year old son was gone. To this day I pray to whatever gods there are that he was dead before he drowned pinned face down under that 4-wheeler.
The worst part of ALL of those moments was when you were done and driving away from the scene, and you still had that pager on, and you needed to get your shit back in a row and fast. The next call was going to happen at some point. You needed to be ready to 100% focus on that call with no time, or too much time, to process what had happened.
I think its what i fear the most with my son. He’s a toddler, but life goes by fast and one day he’ll be grown with his own problems to solve. I just give him everything i can, from love to time to entertainment, and i wish i’ll do a good enough job for him to come seek refuge to me rather than with the tool to end his life.
I love him so much, just sharing because this anon shook me with this story.
I don’t have kids. But in pondering questions like this, I would take some solace that people have always been having children. ALWAYS. Pick the most horrific events and eras in history; there were people having kids and trying to find the most happiness they could for them and their children. The Black Death? The Bronze Age Collapse? The sacking of entire cities by Mongol hoards? People living in literal death camps in the Holocaust? There were people there having children. And when they did, they did their best to give their children as good a life as they could, same as you do now.
The best you can do is teach him the tools with which to deal with and celebrate life.
I like ABA Naturally in terms of helping you practice getting into the mindset for “I want to understand why my kid is doing this, and teach them how to navigate life.”
A large part of my younger self wanted to be a paramedic. But I quickly realized I didn’t have the emotional resilience to be one.
I remember watching Nic Cage in “Bringing out the Dead” (Excellent film by the way) and that movie putting the big ol’ nope on that plan once and for all in the early 2000’s.
My uncle was a paramedic. It really messed him up.
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A similar experience I had was when I saw my mom cry and pay respects to my grandpa for the last time as he was sent to be cremated.
I respected my grandfather but as we lived half way across the world, I wasn’t emotionally attached to him and didn’t feel very sad. But seeing my mom, usually a very silly lady and a very strong, loving grandma herself, turn into a daughter saying goodbye to her dad in tears for that split second broke my heart.
I saw my dad lose his best friend to suicide in my teens. I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation since before even that. I’m not close to my dad, I have lots of issues with the man, but I can never put him through that again, no matter what.
I’ve lost several people to suicide. The hardest was a good friend I’d known for years and who had been my roommate one summer.
That one was 25 years ago and it still hurts.
Meta comment, but I like that Lemmy can have these threads, and it’s probably mostly real.
It’s some human 4chan anon, whether they’re making it up or not.
Maybe the majority of comments here are legit.
Meanwhile, when I stumble into a Reddit thread like this (mostly when I miss old.reddit.com and get bombarded with weird engagement bait), it’s… mostly bots?
It’s either obvious, or very suspicious and likely engagement bait.
And if it’s a Tweet OP is referencing, well, that’s probably fake or bait too.
I’m sure this place will get flooded with bots, eventually, so we remake it again. The cycle continues.
So do it after Dad dies is what I’m reading.
Dad, Mom, sibs, close friends, person who’s nice to you at the bus stop, and of course the person you hate most in the world
Mom is already dead so that’s one name off the list.
Be careful keeping a list with names ticked off or crossed out, that may raise suspicion.
Especially when you only cross them off after they’re dead.
I have suffered from suicidal thoughts and depression for longer than I can remember, my life has been sad and my family keep making it worse. Honestly I don’t want to think about how much they would miss me when my own mother has told me she would consider me dead if I became non religious.
I am alive because I am simply too angry to die and I will keep living on even if the pain keeps tearing me down
My grandparents both lost children. It sounds weird to specify, but they were children from different marriages. They shared this coincidence. My grandmother had this sort of incident with the body; I think my grandfather only received the news. Both developed illnesses now suspected to be caused or worsened by stress: cancer and Alzheimer’s. They were sad people after their losses, very sad people. I do believe it slowly killed them. Just anecdotal evidence of the damage of losing a child…
Not to worry, I have no family to lose me.
I have that feeling too somedays. I just tell myself I don’t want to miss out on cool shit.
Even when I am depressed to the point that I honestly don’t believe cool shit can happen again I make a point to remind myself of it.
Take care of yourself. There is cool shit to miss out. Don’t let your brain fuck with you
Don’t do it
We’re right here, bro.
You have people here who care for you, bro
Aye, don’t send innocents to war, not their war, but fuck politic dumbasses. Let ppl gain some living salaries, nothing luxury, but something to live with, throw some respect if they do weirdo decision about themselves… don’t act like an assholes who know better how others should be. Don’t push anons to such stories, to no stories where they pick a shotguns and aim, anyone.
He who wants war, must be sent himself.
Don’t tempt me. I’d relish a chance to hurt him like that. Not worth to die for it though.
