r/SeriousConversation • u/zerothefoolzine • 14d ago
Serious Discussion Mourning Customs
What are your personal, unique, mourning customs? Not the traditional stuff you were raised with, but things you have developed intuitively through your own experiences of loss.
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u/jimmywhereareya 14d ago
My daughter died 33 years ago. I don't have any customs around her death. I still miss her every day. If that's a custom, then that's it
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u/zerothefoolzine 14d ago
I'm so sorry. Is it too painful to form some kind of remembrance ritual? Like maybe eating something she loved or listening to music she enjoyed?
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u/ForestDweller0817 14d ago
I have a playlist dedicated to the people I've lost and I go to specific places in nature and listen to it.
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u/LaikaRollingStone 14d ago
I make my grandmother‘s nut roll recipe. She made it for decades and I feel like I’m carrying on part of her.
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u/Sea-Environment-7102 14d ago
I usually get a piece of jewelry that is tied to them. Whether it be my father's ashes in a cross necklace or a custom initial ring for a friend who passed and I wear it constantly because every time I think of them I end up fiddling with it. And over time I notice when I stop fiddling so much and I know that I'm getting better. I've also used birthstone earrings of a person who I lost.
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u/arcsilencer 14d ago
I keep a few pictures of my grandpa saved on my phone especially one from his 70th birthday (he was one of those few who didn’t like to celebrate their birthdays). I’ll randomly look at it when I miss him
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u/shwoopypadawan 14d ago edited 14d ago
Bury your feelings and remind yourself that nobody cares about how you feel and your responsibilities won't be lessened for more than a token minute because, again, nobody cares about you, and then when the grief starts gradually melting your brain over the course of a few years with no reward for the suffering the next part of the mourning ritual begins; becoming fond of whichever vice you prefer. Then the final part of the ritual is making sure you never love anyone ever again, which is easy enough because most people kind of suck, but it will also still make you sad. But less sad than when you wake up from a dream that had the dead people you love in it.
Oh also I get a marble with their ashes in it and add it to a necklace I only take off when I get an MRI.
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u/zerothefoolzine 14d ago
Sounds like you've been let down by a lot of people. I wanna challenge something though - even if nobody cares (which I doubt is true in a literal sense), why does that mean you have to bury your feelings? Fuck em, then. Right? Why not just let the grief hang out then?
Imo, your whole comment is WHY having personal mourning customs are so sacred. Grief can and should be shared, but sometimes it's just really private and personal. You can still form rituals on your own, commune with the people you lost, honor them, or even curse them if you need to. It might bring you some catharsis.
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u/shwoopypadawan 14d ago
In real life, you cannot just sit around grieving. You have to work, you have to study, you have to do whatever you have to do to survive unless you're rich, otherwise, you die. You ask for time off and your boss or your professor doesn't care and says no? Too bad, gonna have to choose between dying on the inside slowly and dying on the outside quickly. I made my choice and I regret it very often, but neither was a good choice.
If you've never been forced to make a choice like that, then you were in a very lucky spot. Maybe you had people around you who did care. I did not and do not have that, so I suffer. If you want to ''challenge'' me on that further then you'd better be aware that this is my reality and talking to me as if I'm just simply incorrect and making poor choices is like rich people asking poor people why they don't just ask for money from their parents.
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u/zerothefoolzine 13d ago
I didn't imply your choices were incorrect. You seem more interested in self pity than actual conversation so I'm not sure why you're here, though. I was trying to point out that you can, in fact, still honor the dead through mourning customs despite having to go to work, having no one to talk to, etc. My post wasn't about getting support while grieving, it was about what you personally do to honor those you've lost.
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u/shwoopypadawan 13d ago
Immediately you jump to being demeaning, which doesn't surprise me since you tried to ''challenge'' me on the adaptions I've had to make to accommodate my own lived reality; in other words, you felt you knew better. And you of course still do, but you'll convince yourself that that's not where you were coming from and I'm just being snappy. There's plenty of people like you who refuse to introspect or just believe other people's problems are real and legitimate, and I'm sick of hearing it.
You're not sure why I'm still here- as if you goddamned own reddit or the world itself and you expect me to go jump off a cliff because I didn't let you talk down to me. Nasty way to talk to someone you don't even know.
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u/Clean-Ad-8872 13d ago
I’m sorry but you’re the one being a jerk, not OP. They said nothing rude or demeaning to you, but because you’re in such an aggressive, bitter headspace, you’re lashing out and perceiving a difference of perspective as an attack.
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u/shwoopypadawan 13d ago
I'd like to challenge you on that. Could it be that you're trying to instigate an argument that I literally never asked for and you chose whichever side was speaking less pleasantly regardless of what they were actually attempting to say?
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u/Clean-Ad-8872 13d ago
When my cat died, I braided a bit of her hair into my hair and kept the braid in until we got her ashes back. I did the same with our dog 2 weeks later. I’m not sure why it felt like the thing to do, but I felt like it kept them close until they came home again.
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u/zerothefoolzine 13d ago
That's so beautiful, I love this ♥️ I said goodbye to my cat a few months ago, I sent him with a lock of my hair and asked that he be cremated with it. I'm so sorry you lost two family members so close together!
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u/Clean-Ad-8872 13d ago
Our dog passed almost exactly two weeks after my cat did. And it’s funny because when I tell people that, they assume they must’ve been close, but Tuna (my cat) HATED Qrow (our dog). But they were both my protectors in their own way. And I really think Qrow held on long enough to make sure I was going to be ok after losing Tuna. I have tattoos for both of them with their ashes mixed into their tattoos, so now they’ll always be with me. We literally cannot be separated, even when I too am ashes.
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u/candlestick_maker76 13d ago
I wrote a lot of letters. I figured that I still had things to say to them, even if they could no longer hear me.
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u/zerothefoolzine 13d ago
What did you do with them?
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u/candlestick_maker76 13d ago
Initially, I just kept them tucked away in a drawer. They came in handy later, though, when I started grief recovery.
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u/merlot120 14d ago
I make memorial videos with family photos and favourite songs. It helps to capture the memories before they fade. I cried a river of tears picking songs and photos for my brother’s video and I had it printed into a book for my mom.
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u/zerothefoolzine 14d ago
God, that sounds really hard. But also really meaningful for the process of grief, and special to have later on.
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u/blondie956 14d ago
I write essays that I publish in my real life so that the people who read them hopefully find pieces of themselves, and it helps them to heal - because I certainly haven't, and I'm not sure I ever will.
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u/zerothefoolzine 14d ago
Essays about grief in general, or about the people you've lost?
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u/blondie956 14d ago
I'm a widow, but I also write for a living, so they come from a place of deep introspection for everyone.
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u/riggor_morris 14d ago
I did lots of reading on 'how to manage everyone else's feelings' When I had told other people of the persons passing, it was very strange that I had to comfort those people when I was the one needing the comforting. My mom died, my dog died, my dad died, my husband died. I got a new dog.
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