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Comment by vishnugupta | Hacker News Reader

In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Theoden king expresses his grief to Gandalf, “one should not have to bury their children”. I was in college then, unmarried and didn’t appreciate the meaning of it or could appreciate his grief.

Now that I have kids of my own I can’t get myself to read the posts such as OPs. And if I end up reading it their grief stays when me for a long time. Exactly what they have written, all those years not spent, not lived, it’s just too much to handle for me.

I read somewhere that grief is unspent love. I only wish OP more courage and continued grace as the burden only gets heavier each day.

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There are so many things that hit differently with age and stage of life.

I really liked What Dreams May Come back in high school. Dante's Inferno, kind of, trip to Hell, Robin Williams, trippy paint scene.

I watched it again as a married adult with children, and barely made it through intact. That movie, based around the sudden loss of both children without a chance to say goodbye, and then the sudden loss of a spouse, and the descent into a mental hell and cage of ones own making... I missed all of that watching it in high school. I knew it was there, but it meant nothing, I'd not experienced any of that. It was a radically different movie to me, 20 years later. And I've not watched it since.

Great post here, and yea, things hit so much harder after kids. I remember seeing a photo of a man in India carrying his daughter killed by the tsunami. My daughter was about the same age and I cried for an hour in front of my computer.

> Great post here, and yea, things hit so much harder after kids ... remember seeing a photo of a man in India carrying his daughter killed by the tsunami

Also from India, a bereaved mother is barely able to speak to the loss of her 2 children, right after having spoke about 6 other deaths in her family: https://youtu.be/XLl2qAprU8w?t=312

I've seen that clip before, but after having kids, it hits like a truck. That said, children or not, there's no shortage of people who mock or deny or won't sympathise with "others" (outgroup).

Speaking of tsunami, I remember watching on TV a mother when was shown the bodies of both her husband and son. She was unable to show emotion at all. Just empty look and silence

Stories like this hit me harder after having children, too.

But they also provoke thankfulness for all I have. For a little while after I read such tragic stories, I try to enjoy the everyday life a bit more, enjoy the presence of the loved ones.

Memento mori.

I agree entirely. I have two wonderful daughters, and stories like this hit hard.

There is a fiction short-story called CHICXULUB By T. Coraghessan Boyle. It is one of the hardest hitting stories I have read as a parent. Still brings tears to my eyes. Recommended.

Thanks for the recommendation, it was a harrowing read. I'll have to re-visit this in 10-15 years when I'm no longer a young bachelor.

Here's a link for anyone else who wants to read it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/03/01/chicxulub

Archive link - http://archive.today/Ez5q6

> Grief = unspent love

God thats poignant :( Glad you said that for me to keep tho

Three months after my son was born, I made the mistake of following the news about the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes[0], especially in the Hatay region. I thought I was tough, as I had lived through the chaos and death of a disaster before, in 1999[1]. This time, I was far away in Germany, so not actually where it happened. But no.

Back then, as a teenager, I could somehow handle seeing people take their last breath on a sidewalk (don't get me wrong: It was absolutely horrible, but I could keep functioning, eat, sleep, even help people carry first aid kits). I remember being outside our building and asking my father where all those buildings went, in some of which my friends lived. He had chosen not to lie to me, and I still didn't break.

But one photo from 2023, a child's grave with a toy helicopter on top, his name written on the toy, the same name as my son, completely broke me. Two years later, I still haven't recovered from that single image.

And yet, today, we were in the emergency room because my son was struggling to breathe. I was calm and functioning. If I had seen something like this on the news or in a movie, I wouldn't have been able to keep watching.

It's strange how the mind works.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey%E2%80%93Syria_eart...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake

Sometimes it's easy to keep it together when you have to focus on something critical and hard to keep it together when you're safe and can drop your guard. Hope he's doing well.

Yes, looks like that. He's doing fine today, thanks for asking.

Herodotus, in ancient Greece, had already said: "After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons."

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