Grief among gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, and magpies.
posted by Joe Beese on Oct 30, 2009 - 65 comments

Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 25, 2009 - 48 comments

Army reports highest rate of soldier suicides for three decades in 2008. [more inside]
posted by batmonkey on Jan 29, 2009 - 20 comments

"Then I started stripping and cleaning. I told myself it would help sell the flat. How could anyone think of buying it? But I also imagined that if I cleaned long enough and hard enough, the dull patina of dried blood that seemed to cling to every surface would finally go. I hoped that if I emptied the flat of its objects, and pared back its contents to nothing, I would uncover the place that I grew up in, before Ivor was the old man, before he was a legend. I couldn’t find that place, and I didn’t think I would find it in the boxes and among the papers either." David Goldblatt traces his murdered father's life through unpaid bills and unopened letters.
posted by marmaduke_yaverland on Jan 19, 2009 - 19 comments

Brenda is broken hearted, but not everyone thought he was a saint. Some of his closest colleagues barely knew him. Farewell, Bruce Evanick, whatever kind of person you were.
posted by msconduct on Dec 12, 2007 - 41 comments

OBITUARIES
Dunn, Nicholas Ryan. August 5, 2007.
"Yesterday my son took his own life. He did not intend to. He did something thousands of people have and are doing, using drugs. Drugs they know nothing about. Drugs recommended and provided by friends or strangers that are not chemists that know what's in them or doctors that knew how much his body could take. My son Nick has devastated us … We also all hurt for a three year old little girl named Kylie Marie who will grow up without her father … Those drugs do not discriminate by race, income, the status of you or of your family. These are those who care about you and those who you care about. Consider them, please! The pleasure is not worth the risks! Goodbye Nick, we love you, and will miss you."
posted by pardonyou? on Aug 13, 2007 - 119 comments

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
posted by geos on May 28, 2007 - 126 comments

Their task may be depressing, but the generosity of their work is inspiring and hopefully thereputic. The photographers who are working with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep provide their services on a volunteer basis to help families over come the grief of losing an infant. If you're a professional photographer interested in being involved, they're seeking volunteers.
posted by blaneyphoto on Jun 7, 2006 - 24 comments

Sad -- such a sweet-looking kid, the smile on the face of a future suicide. Sad -- "If she only knew then how things would turn out…" Sad -- "I chose to kill her." Sad -- "You could see her personality break through the coma." Life is dukkha, said the Buddha -- a Pali term that means something like "suffering" or "the incapability of satisfaction." (Or as Mick Jagger put it, "I can't get no...") Here's the tangible evidence.
posted by digaman on May 3, 2006 - 39 comments

Kindertotenlieder. In 1833-34, Frederich Rückert wrote 425 poems after two of his children died within 16 days of each other; seven decades later, Mahler set five of them to music. Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children, has been recorded by both male and female singers, in both orchestral and piano-vocal arrangements. The song cycle is a powerful meditation on grief and loss, which is somewhat surprising since we think of the 18th, 19th, and even early 20th centuries as being a time when people -- especially young children -- lived closer to death and had a different relationship with grief than we do today. Mahler, who was one of 14 children, eight of whom died in infancy and one of whom died at 12, had much personal experience to bring to the Kindertotenlieder; indeed, just three years after the song cycle's completion, his own daughter died of scarlet fever. But some musicians dismiss the idea that the music is premonitory, or indicative of Mahler's personal tragedy, and posit instead that Mahler's intent was not to showcase his own grief but capture the intensity of Rückert's first-person text. Modern works on the topic of Kindertoten range from mixed media and text to dance to film, and even to modern stage works. And there is, of course, music -- the most famous contemporary work in this tradition might just be the Grammy-award winning song inspired by real-life tragedy, Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven.
posted by mothershock on Apr 3, 2006 - 23 comments

Good journey, Joop. "Joop was our handsome goodhearted 'boerenfox' (farmer's fox terrier). For three good years, he lived with us in the small town of Paterswolde, The Netherlands. We found Joop in 2002 in an animal shelter in Zuidwolde. Joop was a canine supermodel." The Dog Log shows Joop's life in pictures and his human's in words. Joop passed away August 8, 2005 from cancer and has quite a following on Flickr.com. Being the owner of a 14-year-old dog, the display of support really touched me and the photos are beautiful.
posted by VelvetHellvis on Aug 9, 2005 - 10 comments

"Things just happen, he had decided; they happen and they happen again, and anybody who tries to make sense out of it goes out of his mind."

For this reason, Tom Rath, the hero of Sloan Wilson's 1955 novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, decides not to "make sense" of the the atrocities to which he bears witness during World War II. Instead, he accepts that war is in itself irrational, and that he must simply forget its horrors before returning to civilian life. This New Yorker article contrasts Wilson's 1950's stoicism with today's veneration of the grieving process and suggests that this change in attitude has led us to vastly underestimate our own capacity for coping with trauma. The author also draws some interesting parallels with a controversial study in which victims of childhood sexual abuse were found to be no more likely than others to suffer from mental health problems as adults. Intriguing stuff, to say the least, and as I read it, I can't help but think of Johnny Cash's "The Man Who Couldn't Cry"

(Note: Having thankfully never been subjected to war or sexual abuse myself, I am in no way attempting to demean the anguish of those who have. Rather, I'm more interested in the idea that people are stronger than they give themselves credit for, and how different upbringings affect our experience of trauma.)
posted by idontlikewords on Dec 28, 2004 - 41 comments

Tragedy! Now at half price!

I think Lewis Black was right when he suggested that the last stage of grief isn't acceptance, but exploitation.

(And here's how to contact the outfit responsible.)
posted by Vidiot on Sep 15, 2004 - 49 comments

Seven Deadly Sentiments - Psychology Today explores seven "guilt-provoking, squirm-inducing, I'm-such-a-lousy-person thoughts... At worst, they remind us that we're not quite as nice as we'd like to believe we are. And at best, they may be able to help us understand the deeper reasons behind our wicked thoughts--and forgive ourselves our own trespasses." A long, but interesting read.
posted by Irontom on Jan 12, 2004 - 10 comments

"MyLastEMial.com is a unique online service, which allows you to leave messages for those you care about – to be emailed after your death." Oh. My. God.
via - would you believe? - Yahoo's Daily Links
posted by wendell on Nov 17, 2003 - 28 comments

The terrible business of bearing bad tidings: “You never know how someone will react ... Some people will start screaming when they see you coming. They just know something is seriously wrong when a uniformed soldier comes to their door.” The military, law enforcement, and even MADD have written protocols for contacting the next of kin when someone dies. But doctors are pretty vague about how to handle the conversation, which is odd, considering that 70% of American deaths occur in hospitals.
posted by whatnot on Mar 21, 2003 - 5 comments

Chicken Soup for the soulless? Is Psychology screwing us all up? From messing up the civil rights movement , medicalizing grief, inventing faux illnesses and treating them , planting false memories , to diagnosing 25% of the United States with PTSD on October 11th, the industry/profession of psychology and its drug prescribing cousin psychiatry seem to be both the sloppiest and most ethically bankrupt scientific field. Is a diet of steady chicken soup for the soul actually toxic?
posted by srboisvert on Feb 10, 2002 - 41 comments

Ways to heal. I'm a long, long way from being OK, as are most others here in NYC, many of whom have lost far more than me. The one thing that has helped more than anything has been the people who have crawled out of the woodwork of my life. From the friends currently housing me, to a phone call from an expat friend living in China, to hearing an ex-girlfriend say "I love you," a month after it hit me that we would probably never speak again.

As a distraction, how about you? Who have you heard from that you never thought you'd see again? Old lovers? Former best friends? Long-lost cousins?
posted by Sinner on Sep 12, 2001 - 3 comments

Three months after Chris Kempa was struck and killed by a truck, the city of Livonia, Mich., has ordered his family and friends to stop memorializing him at the site (from Kempa.Com, run by his older brother Adam).
posted by rcade on Feb 25, 2001 - 22 comments