> A celebration of life will be held at The Verve Hotel, 1360 Worcester St. Natick, on Monday, September 29, 2025 from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. Please join my family to celebrate my life, have a glass of wine…some tasty nibbles… and don’t forget to bring your dancing shoes and your favorite story to share about me and my shenanigans! This is a great location for out-of-town guests to stay in a hotel as well.
I'm glad that this works for some people but in the west we have this extremely odd prejudice towards real grief. I'm convinced that it isn't healthy and not acknowledging that someone dying is extremely sad for them and their family doesn't allow for real healing.
I think this is true when someone dies young or unexpectedly. After a long illness though, the family has likely already done a lot of grieving, and may even be feeling something more like relief than grief.
I know my dad felt that when his father passed. I did too, but not as much as he did, because my dad was taking his dad to doctor's appointments and caring for him after surgery and generally seeing him in very vulnerable circumstances.
I just don't at all think that this is equivalent to not acknowledging that someone is dying.
Last year I was invited to a "living wake". The person was still alive and looked better than some of his friends. It was basically a party. But he had advanced brain cancer and did pass a few months later.
The idea of such an event was and still is highly strange to me.
I also attended one. I liked it, except for the odd way people spoke of him in the past-tense, as if he weren't, y'know, present. But I assume that was this particular crowd being weird. Probably the first person started it, and everyone after unconsciusly adopted the same language.
When he did pass, I was sad, but less sad, I think, than I would have been. It was an interesting experience.
You can grieve before someone finally passes. My grandma lived well into her eighties. Her final two years were not great but we did what we could to make it better for her. When she passed it felt like a good part of feeling for her hardship has already passed, together with the relief of knowing that she is no longer suffering.
Grieving is important. To do it properly be close to those who need it. Dying is a process and not a moment. Be there for those that need it and give yourself room to do it properly as well.
Yep, this isn't great. Grieving people aren't in a "let's party" mood. It comes off as tone-deaf.
This just stinks of "don't ever show real emotion" US 'tough guy-ism' as it sometimes translates via women. I remember being pressured to be either fun/funny or kind/nurturing. Actual real expression, expression of sadness, depression, etc was always something I was discouraged to do or even punished for. I remember feeling weird when I went to therapy. Like "Oh wait, I can just...talk about my real emotions?"
I had a "jokey gal" persona for a long time, so maybe this hits closer to home for me, and it was a reflection of my social anxiety and unwillingness and lack of support in life to ever be vulnerable. So when I see the "jokester" persona, I always pause because it often comes from a bad place. I could even see myself doing this when I was younger. Today, I would never because the younger woman I was no longer exists and she would have done this out of fear and suffering and denial of self, not "fun."
There's a certain immature, 'won't touch one's emotions' 'Michael Scott-ism' here that's off-putting. A sort of "Fun gal in the office" energy that betrays immaturity and even insecurity. The desire to be popular and have high-social capital extends even to death it seems.
I lost a parent a while ago. I would not have appreciated a "jokey" display at all. It was the saddest day of my life and even today I still mourn. I'll never get over it.
And a sort of productivity culture-esque, "haha we had our fun, now go back to work/school," or whatever. In reality, a lot of people need time to grieve. I wish I took off more work than the 1 day bereavement I got from work and the 1 pto day I had. I was a high-key mess for at least a couple weeks, and a low-key mess for months. I would find myself crying randomly. I would have these sudden intrusive thoughts like "What does it matter, we just die in the end." It took a while to get where I am today where I have optimism about life and where I see my parent as gone forever, and without feeling pain about it.
As for cultures that have celebratory funerals, well, this isn't one of those cultures, so its not normal to expect people to conform to that. And even in those cultures there's a different more somber ceremony attached to the celebration.
That being said, maybe this was her coping mechanism, and it got her this far. Great. That worked for her. But for the grieving people, maybe "jokey gal" persona isn't the best. shrug, its not a big deal, but this being posted here as some kind of amazing and exceptional thing isn't great either. This has problems worth mentioning. I think we all think we can just 'fix things' or 'cheat the suffering of death' by being creative or different, but the human brain remains as-is. It wants to grieve and often there's no getting out of that. Loss is painful and can't just be turned into fun by will alone. I think in most cultures this would be off-putting if not offensive. On the other hand, we have to respect how people wanted to be remembered.
That being said, the stages of grief book helped me. It validated my pain and showed me a path. I hope her friends and family find what works for them. Maybe "Michael Scott-isms" worked for her, that's fine, but it definitely is not going to work for everyone. So just a reminder, there are many ways to grief, and some will do it via comedy, but its also okay to go down a traditional route or even get into therapy over it. Its also okay to cry today and laugh tomorrow and vice-versa. Sometimes I think of my parent and just chuckle at a memory. Life can be complex this way.
She seemed fun and nice. I hope the above isn't too critical, but its more for us still living. I hope she is now resting in peace. Or, as I am a Buddhist, that her karma was found a fortunate rebirth.
> Sometimes, I close my eyes while I breastfeed my daughter and the cocktail of oxytocin and prolactin saturates my brain in a way that resurrects Jake with hallucinatory vividness. Suddenly, we’re 27 and running out of the cold Seattle rain into Belle’s Buns for coffee, and then Athena unlatches from my nipple and I’ve lost him again.
I don't really have anything to add but that this is chilling. It really makes me want to take care of myself better even though this man's death had nothing to do with that.
There really are risks. It's just not worth it during pregnancy. The pain killing effects of tylenol aren't worth the potential risks during pregnancy.
You can't look at just one risk and say it's not worth it.
Like everything else in life, you must weigh all the risks and benefits.
Untreated fever also carries real risks - neural tube defects, congenital heart defects, orofacial clefts, miscarriage.
You need to treat fever, and NSAIDS have greater risks than acetaminophen.
It's irrational to let a minuscule and unproven risk dominate the decision when the other side of the balance has more evidence of larger risks to weigh.
I didn't mean to say it should never be taken. Sometimes medicines should be taken that have risks for the baby. But it shouldn't be taken for minor headaches and aches and pains like it can be when not pregnant.
To be fair, at least in the US, doctors tend to be overly cautious when it comes to pregnancies. The bar for proven safety for treatments tends to be a bit higher than for non-pregnant people. "We haven't proven anything bad" is usually not good enough.
There are also real risks to ignoring pain and the destructive effects it has to quality of life and mental well being, all of which can have effects on the mother's and the fetus's health.
What is a pregnant person with debilitating pain such as a migraine supposed to do?
As I clarified in another comment, I was talking about avoiding it for common aches and pains. In cases of real migraines, I would be very grateful if tylenol gave any real relief. It never did for me.
Yeah my wife is also pregnant and sometimes it is really tough on her but she doesn't use any medication other than baby aspirin for blood pressure. The alternative is exercise, anti-inflammatory foods, and also realizing that it isn't just your body anymore and you can't hurt somebody else's chances for a very small amount of pain relief.
Fever during pregnancy can cause neural tube defects, congenital heart defects, orofacial clefts, miscarriage.
It's great that you care so much about the infinitesimal risks of acetaminophen. You should care 100x more about these risks that are 100x or 1000x greater.
> Yeah my wife is also pregnant and sometimes it is really tough on her but she doesn't use any medication other than baby aspirin for blood pressure. The alternative is exercise, anti-inflammatory foods, and also realizing that it isn't just your body anymore and you can't hurt somebody else's chances for a very small amount of pain relief.
It very much is still your wife's body - what other sentient entity is available for consultation?
I also am not sure if she is seeking professional medical advice - 'baby aspirin' is not a blood pressure medication, full stop. If this is based on non-medical doctor advice, please do consult a fully-qualified obstetrician.
Edit, just because this is very worrying to me, for later viewers, aspirin is an NSAID and its use should be weighed similar to that of other NSAIDs in the context of pregnancy. Consider this web page:
You may not know this, but pre-eclampsia is not a synonym for hypertension. Instead, hypertension is a manifestation of preeclampsia.
The baby aspirin is not for hypertension (it does nothing for hypertension). Its goal is to prevent changes in placental vasculature that may lead to severe pre-eclampsia in those already at risk for pre-eclampsia. One clinical sign that demonstrates risk for pre-eclampsia is high blood pressure.
> what other sentient entity is available for consultation?
Surely you don't mean what you imply there? Not being sentient or available for consultation don't justify harming a person. A mother absolutely has a moral responsibility not to cause lifelong harm to the sentient entity her baby will later become. You wouldn't say excess alcohol consumption during pregnancy is only up to the mother's decision about her own body when there are adults walking around with terrible lives because of fetal alcohol syndrome.
> You wouldn't say excess alcohol consumption during pregnancy is only up to the mother
That's absolutely the case, though, isn't it? I wasn't aware of any laws that bar pregnant women from buying or consuming alcohol. So it's totally up to them.
>You wouldn't say excess alcohol consumption during pregnancy is only up to the mother's decision about her own body when there are adults walking around with terrible lives because of fetal alcohol syndrome.
I would - because the alternative means we are locking up current human beings to act as incubators for potential, future humans
Wow, that's a pretty extreme view. They're locking themselves up voluntarily and also locking their baby up. The baby is helpless but not the mother. If she didn't want to and somehow still recklessly got pregnant, she could always get an abortion which may be just a pill from the pharmacy once she missed a period, or more involved if slower. It's a deliberate choice to be responsible for somebody else's life.
Yep, my wife didn’t take Tylenol during pregnancy due to actual studied risks to the child. If she had a headache she just bore the pain. RFK is a loony and I don’t know about the link to autism but Tylenol should not be taken by the mother during pregnancy.
>While the study does not show that acetaminophen directly causes neurodevelopmental disorders,
_magic statement_.
Because tylenol is often used to treat a symptom like inflammation, that is where the problem could really lie and needs more studying. Inflammation in the human body causes tons of damage.
Shit, you know why measles is serious in adults? Sure pretty every adult can shrug it off, BUT. It causes mass inflammation in the human body, and because of that, it can and does make men sterile because inflammation kills the testes ability to produce sperm.
If it is just a tool then a tape recorder company should be liable as well. It doesn't do any sort of notice or make it obvious that someone is being recorded.
If the tape recorder were to automatically start recording whenever a meeting started and silently add itself to physical rooms unexpectedly... you might have a point.
The tape recorder manufacturer also doesn’t claim the right to permanently own anything it’s users record, with or without permission.
> The fence isn't there. It never was. It's just the memory of some childhood rejection, some social rule someone made up, some fear that caring more makes you matter less.
Chesterton's Fence would say that maybe there is a reason and you should tread carefully. Sometimes a relationship died because it should have. Maybe you feel uncomfortable messaging someone because they have given nonverbals that they don't like your company.
Yeah. I went to my high school reunion. It was a nice evening, but ultimately, I remembered why I was an outcast back then. Recently I reached out to a few old friends. I spent an hour talking to one via phone, and at the end I was like... I don't want this. I set up a meeting with another guy and the moment he walked in I knew this was going to be a very long and very boring evening. Yet another dude called me and invited to visit him and god christ I was happy when it was over because I couldn't get him to smile even once.
Dead friendships should stay dead, unless they naturally come back to life because of other circumstances.
That's true, but absent psychological manipulation or something truly devious and nefarious, a short text message is low risk, and is unlikely to open up a painful can of worms.
And I don't think the point of that statement was that you should be contacting anyone and everyone, just because they entered your mind. It's not saying you should get in touch to say hello to that abusive ex just because you thought about them. But firing off a quick text to someone you found interesting but lost touch with is pretty much always going to be harmless.
This can sometimes be the case, but barring something tangibly dangerous or concerning, talking is cheap and communication is hard. If someone really is a problem, I'd rather know and consciously decide to not associate with them than I would risk losing a potential great relationship because I was nervous about something I couldn't quantify.
Chesterton's Fence applies to institutional/societal structures with unknown origins, not personal relationships where the history is known to you. The principle encourages understanding before removal, not perpetual inaction when reasons are already clear.
I dont like chesterton's fence. I think we should revalidate these structures. In a low risk situation of course, but still prod at them a little. Its very dangerous to lose intitutional memory because of a dogma of never questioning things
To be fair, in the analogy Chesterton wasn't saying we shouldn't question things but rather that we should understand why things are the way they are before assuming that we can change them for the better, and a lot of tragedy in the world comes from people who think we can just tear everything down and make it better without consequences.
Especially for those who believe in an afterlife, why would you fight while siting on the edge of a mass grave (a hopeless situation) when you think you have something better waiting for you?
I'm glad that this works for some people but in the west we have this extremely odd prejudice towards real grief. I'm convinced that it isn't healthy and not acknowledging that someone dying is extremely sad for them and their family doesn't allow for real healing.
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