Comscore Beacon
Dealing With Loss

© Getty Images

Dealing With Loss

What Happens When Tragedy Strikes? Here's How Seven Men Dealt With Horrible Losses

“Be kind,” goes a popular quote, “for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

This phrase is often misattributed to Plato. Maybe because it is so wise, and so timeless, that we can only imagine it coming from one of history’s greatest philosophers.

These are the facts of life: You have a body, and it is getting older, and it will get sick, and eventually it will die. In the meantime, it’s up to you to figure out the difference between true and false, right and wrong, and to find some sense of peace. This is the “battle,” and if we focus on that alone, it’s enough to make not-really-Plato’s aphorism valuable. Be kind.

But there’s more. On top of the less savory aspects of the human condition, we face losses: of loved ones, of wealth and prestige, of strength and health.

Your supermarket cashier was evicted from her apartment last week. Your boss just got bad news from her doctor. Your buddy’s mom is starting to forget things, like his name. Many people, many battles, and there’s no telling who has just received the call to arms. Be kind.

The internet’s near-anonymity allows humans to spill their fears and doubts to sympathetic audiences, and to emotionally support others going through similar ordeals. Forums exist for the traumatized, the ill, the disabled, survivors of every sort.

Reddit is known for its memes, animal pictures, and inside jokes. But it is also a place where people go to share war stories from life’s frontlines. And it’s where the stories you’ll read below originated.

These are all tales of loss. But they aren’t here for voyeuristic purposes, as sadness porn. And they’re not here so people can say, “Wow, this makes my problems seem way smaller.”

Hearing about other people’s suffering — even if those people are anonymous — can help us grow. Emotional resilience comes from exercising our compassion muscles: Those unlocatable parts of the human heart that let us drop ourselves in another’s life for a little while, long enough to say, “I think I understand, kind of.”

By studying what other people go through, the way they suffer loss and cope with it, we can better prepare ourselves. From Buddha to Schopenhauer, great minds agree that suffering is inevitable. Maybe, by considering some of these stories, we can each prepare for the battles ahead.

Everybody has experienced some form of betrayal at one time or another. But not_here_or_there suffered especially badly at the hands of someone he loved.

Met a girl when I was 25, she was 22. Dated for 3 years and eventually got married. She was a very wonderful person and I couldn't ask for a better girlfriend. While we were planning a wedding, she mentioned that her ex boyfriend offered to DJ for free. They dated for 3 years(when she was 15-18) and it was a clean breakup. He was also married so I really didn't have a problem with it. I mean, free DJ service! So, we get married and go to the reception. Everyone is having a grand time. I was talking with a buddy of mine and in the corner of my eye, I see the DJ ex boyfriend staring at something. I look over and he's staring at my wife(who looked amazing)...and my wife was staring back at him. I continued to talk to my buddy but kept an eye on them. She was across the room but they smiled at each other and she started looking around the room(probably for me but I was pretty well hidden). My wife walked towards the bathroom area and the DJ asked his assistant to take over and started walking in the same direction. I started to panic inside.
He followed them, and eventually found them emerging together from the same private washroom. As he soberly notes, “I was able to get an annulment.” He hasn’t remarried.

meaningwut tells the story of a traumatizing event from his youth: the sudden loss of his mother.
When I was 16 my mom had an accident at home that lead to her death. It was around ~2am in the morning when I heard the screaming of her best friend who was in town visiting us for the weekend. I woke up immediately in a state of confusion (I actually thought I was still dreaming). I ran downstairs following the screams— and that's when I saw my mom at the bottom of our basement steps. She had slipped and fell down the stairs. I ran downstairs to her, holding her hand, yelling for 911, just in a complete state of utter helplessness. She never responded back to my cries to her to wake up.

She was in the hospital for a week in a medically induced coma on life support. It was incredibly hard for me to see her in that condition. It changed me forever. The day she passed I remember being in numb state of consciousness. I had cried for almost 7 days straight— and on the particular day I was just out of it. I couldn't really feel anything. At around noon I got a call from my Aunt telling me my mom had passed.

But while he definitely acknowledges the impact this event had on him, he uses this story to reflect on and memorialize his mother.
My mom was the most caring, hardworking, loving, compassionate, selfless person I have ever met. She was a single mother with two teenage sons. She worked 12 hour shifts at a fabric store so we could live in a good neighborhood and go to a good school. I think about her every day. I love you mom.

TL;DR: Hug your mom every day.

TomioHoshino discusses the loss of his brother, and the effect it had on his father.
My brother had gone missing for a few years, when he didn't show up for a court hearing. My brother had many personal demons in his life, from depression to paranoia to even addiction. My Dad searched far and wide for him, and I had gone on a few trips with my Dad to find my brother. The only clue my Dad ever found was in a wooded area in the north end of a city that my brother was living in. It was in there that my Dad found a spot in the woods with some of my brother's items, like clothes, shoes, a cell phone and backpacks. My brother even dug a little hole in the ground under a tree and it had some sleeping bags under it. My brother had some training in the forces so he knew what he was doing.

They found his remains not too long ago. They were found only a few meters away from where his campsite was in the woods. The cause of death was a fractured skull from a fall and there was no foul play suspected. It was a clean fracture.

We often imagine the death of a loved one, and the effect it would have on our own lives. But loss never strikes with surgical precision; it hurts many people, in many different ways, at once. For TomioHoshino, possibly the worst effect of his brother’s death was what it did to his Dad, who has been ”devastated and heartbroken ever since.”

Sickness can strike suddenly, and take something we never expected to lose. For facelesscog, it was his legs.
I was diagnosed with a rare type of testicular cancer back in the Fall of 2007 that resulted in a 2.6 pound tumor in my abdomen. On January 16th, 2008, I went in for what ended up being a twenty-two hour surgery, in which I went through fifty-five units of blood. (enough to refill me, more or less, five and a half times) When I awoke from that surgery, about a week later, I had no feeling or movement from the waist down. Over the next four weeks, I regained feeling and movement back down to my knees, which is pretty much where it stayed. I was in the ICU for three months, followed by another three months getting chemo on a different floor. Complications from that initial surgery led, just this past year, to the amputation of both legs below the knee. I am now going through physical therapy, learning how to walk on my new, prosthetic, legs.
One user asked him how he felt, knowing that he had beat “an almost certainly fatal disease.” He says:
Little bit of pride, a strong desire to help others that are going through similar situations, but most of all...I'm just tired. I've been fighting non-stop now for several years. That can take its toll.

“Money isn’t everything,” goes the cliche. But when you’re financially supporting the people you love, a sudden turn of fortune on the stock market can push you to the brink. James Altucher made millions during the early dotcom boom, then lost it all. In a Reddit AMA, he described how it felt to go from a life of quickly-won wealth to “zero”:
I was the worst idiot. Writing this now I feel like slitting my wrists and stomach. I had 2 kids. I felt like I was going to die. That zero equals death. I couldn't believe how stupid I had been. I had lost all my friends. Nobody returned calls. I would go to the ATM machine and feel my blood going through my whole body when I saw how much was left. I was going to zero and nothing could stop it. There were no jobs, there was nothing. I lost my house. One weekend when I had $0 left in my bank account I called my parents to borrow money but they said "no". "College was enough" they told me.
Altucher moved to a smaller house with his family, away from the city. He stayed locked inside for three months straight, near suicidal, until he finally realized, “I had to either die or feed my family.” Launching small business ventures and writing software in his free time, he was able gradually to regain his millions. But Altucher describes the most important work he did in order to get back on his feet:
I prayed every day. I was grateful for my daughters. I was grateful for what I had. I didn't fight reality or regret. This was my reality and I had to make the best of it.

It’s easy to take for granted the way you move through the world: how you see, smell, hear. Over the past fifteen years, manos-fate has been gradually losing his sense of vision to the genetic disease retinitis pigmentosa.
At the age of 25 doctors told me to stop driving because I was legally blind. Just a few months later I took up cane training.
He did a Reddit AMA describing his experience, including how the world looks to him now:
I have whats called tunnel vision. I'm losing it from the outside in. So if I look at your face I can't see both your eyes at the same time, I have to scan across your face. And it can be blurry. I have good days and bad days.
He knows there is nothing he can do to stop it, despite the work of his doctors.
When I first found out, I was very afraid. And since then I've had two surgeries to treat the symptoms. Those weren't fun. Until I'm total I'm resigned to it. I suspect I'll have to go through a new stages of grief process once it happens.
The diagnosis destroyed his marriage, but he was able to move on.
Three months after I found out, my wife left me. So that was a big blow at the time. But it's ancient history now (15 years ago, somehow). I'm in a good relationship with someone not scared of the visually impaired.
What will he most miss being able to see? The question is overwhelming.
I'm not sure how to answer that. It's like trying to describe how I'd miss air. My family. Art. My garden?
Still, though, manos-fate is determined to soak up as much beauty as he can, while he can.
I've been traveling as much as I can afford. Next year I'm going to Alaska for the first time.

There is a kind of loss that comes from having your faith in the order of the world fundamentally shaken. halafax describes how the abduction of his children by their unstable mother permanently rearranged his priorities.
Spent 4 or 5 days walking around my empty house wondering where my kids were. "Surprise" divorce from my ex, she wouldn't take my calls and she didn't leave a note. Her family wouldn't answer either.

It was one thing in the midst of lots of bad stuff (difficult marriage, serious money problems, horrendous divorce, 2 years of contentious custody, her going to prison, tons of lawyers and court dates), but not knowing where my kids were changed me.

I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. My ex was unstable, I really did fear the worst. I kept walking around the empty rooms looking for them.

The hell of knowing what really matters to you is never being able to think about anything else afterwards.

He says now that his life is devoted to making sure his children grow up as happily as possible, in spite of the obstacles they face.
I've spent a year and a half (since her arrest) trying get my kids through traumatic changes (bad marriage, divorce, custody issues, mom's arrest), care for them, fend off my ex-laws in court, keep my job, refurnish the house, and do a million other things.

I didn't have time to stop and think about anything that didn't need immediate attention. Which was maybe not so smart in hindsight. I was punching way (way) above my weight class (in terms of dealing with many issues at once), but doing so came at a cost. I was burning out, not sleeping much, lost a bunch of weight, and couldn't manage to care about anything that didn't involve (or benefit) my kids.

What about you? Have you experienced a loss that has changed the direction of your life, or made you stronger? Share your stories in the comment section below.
Show comments