Why do Christians grieve so when a loved one dies? Do they grieve as much as an atheist? They'll be reunited with them in paradise so why so sad?

@CopperCicada


Perfectly described.


But why not?
If you believe that what your experiencing is a temporary and ultimately minute separation, why grieve as if the separation is, as you identify, final?

@Pikachu Because it's grief. Grief is about the present. Immediacy.

People need to be understood. To connect. Communicate. Be touched. Fuck.

Where the loved one might be after death doesn't take that absence away when they die. People still have that need to be held, nuzzles, talked to, cared for.

This is why people may grieve a loved one long before they die. In the case of a catastrophic illness or accident, dementia, madness, all those things might be gone even before a loved one dies.

I grieved my late wife years before she died. She went mad and I couldn't get her help. I don't know if she could be helped.

If there's something of spiritual relevance to grief it's not believing in god or not. It's attachment. We could all be Buddhist yogis and have no attachments-- but in truth, grief is good. It's a grace. It's a suffering that gives life meaning. I suspect it has evolutionary benefit. If we were *shrug* I can get a new one when a lover or friend dies-- who would we be?

@CopperCicada

But would should you feel grief of separation the same way if you know it's temporary vs permanent?

@Pikachu "Should" is the problem here. There is no "should" to grief. There is no right or wrong. People do what they do.

You're being overly abstract and theoretical.

It's embodied experience.

You go through a part of your life with connections, psycho-physical and social needs met. You have a pattern to your experience. BOOM. It's arrested.

Philosophy and religion has nothing to do with it.

@CopperCicada


I don't see why not.

Why wouldn't thinking someone is away for now but i'll see them again different from thinking someone is separated from you forever?

@Pikachu My point is just the grief is really somatic and emotional, not conceptual. Our thoughts can console us through a lot of things. But thoughts don’t give us companionship, touch, connection and so on.

This is really shown by how people report grief. They feel sick, physically. Things like sounds, scents, sights will trigger it. The things reported as the things people miss. Touch, a presence, meaning, a purpose.

It’s really across groups in this society.

I will always see it as a value positive. A good thing, grief.

@CopperCicada

It seems to me you're describing how people react to loss while i'm wondering why people would react that way then the loss is ostensibly only temporary.

@Pikachu Knowing that loss is temporary doesn’t really do much for a person in the moment when they have very immediate psychophysical and psychosocial needs. I can spell those out again. The need to be touched, heard, seen, have a purpose, companionship, be understood. In modern society we tend to have not only our strongest but only connections in a small circle. That can just turn off with one loss for many people.

And knowing that loss is temporary really doesn’t do much for the neurobiological changes that occur with grief. There are changes to how the amygdala processes grief-triggering stimuli. There are also changes to how the dorsal amygdala communicates with different parts of the brain. And there is generally also a huge cytokine inflammatory response, which is systemic.

I sort of get where you are headed. I have only met one or two persons who were able to really transcend grief. They were Buddhists and really accomplished in not grasping at experiences. But in general, thoughts we carry around, can’t liberate us from our basic grasping and aversion.

@CopperCicada


I have to say, those are not really the reasons i've felt grief when someone dies.
Maybe other people do but that doesn't resonate for me. It's really about the fact that they're gone and i'm never again going to see them or talk to them. It's not that i can't do that right now but that i never will.

@Pikachu Well. People grieve for a lot of reasons. It’s individual. With my late wife I grieved many things long before she passed as she deteriorated psychologically and physically. I grieved a lack of connection, intimacy (not necessarily sex), our ability to enjoy things together, to have a future, to enjoy each-other, to be together with people, to talk, share.

I remember when my maternal grandfather died. My grandmother was lost because she was a housewife and waited on him hand and foot. Her identity was mixed with his, her interests mixed with his. Her was her primary social and emotional contact. But she lost her identity. A purpose for life. Kids grown, check. Husband dead, check. What’s next? That wasn’t a thing in her generation.

There is a 77 year old woman I talk with at hospice. Her husband is dying. She’s got a purpose after her husband dies. But they have a unique shared experience that is a reference for everything for her. They have a private secret world they share. It goes back to him serving in the military off book on secret combat missions. Her the military wife. Everything that orbited around that. She had no idea what he did until he was in hospice when it was declassified. Even as he dies, her life is their shared experience of this. She’s meeting with liaisons in various branches of the service preserving his story, legacy.

A friend’s husband died around the time of my late wife. She’s all fucked up. He was her everything and had cancer for the decades they were married, terminal for years on end. Her life was sacrificing everything for “them”, for “him”. It’s played out. His illness was brutal, monstrous. More so that they both fought it so hard. She’s ruined.

It’s all so different.

A friend’s mother in law just died. His wife could care less. The witch is dead. The end of a cold mother daughter relationship. She had a harder time with the dogs…

@CopperCicada

This is all heartbreaking to me.
I just wonder why it would be as heartbreaking to someone who believes that after a time of separation they will be reunited.

Although i do find more compelling the examples of folks whose personal identity is so wrapped up with their partner. That resonates for me because my partner defines my life as well.

@Pikachu It needs to be and should be heartbreaking. This is what makes us human. Evolutionary biology has given us an attachment system for survival. A variety of researchers have written about and studied this. We don’t want our spiritual beliefs to turn this off.

@CopperCicada

I agree with that sentiment.