How Grief Works

You can probably name the five stages of grief - from denial to acceptance - they've become pretty well known since being proposed in 1969. But later researchers are finding that grief is rarely that cut and dried, and it may not be as widely experienced as we once thought. Join Josh and Chuck as they look at the sad science of grief.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes the
Stuff you Should Know the podcast Good Grief. Yes, Good Grief.
I looked that up. Would you come up with? Well,

(00:22):
it just struck me at you know, because Charlie Brown
says it. You know, that's where I know it from.
Then I thought, why would where did that come from?
Because of from one of those things, And it's just
apparently they think it's just what's called the minst oath,
like when you substitute God for good gravy or good
googly easier, I got you googly movie googly movily. But

(00:42):
then I thought grief was weird because that's such a
specific thing. But then good gracious gracious is very specific too,
and like ill fitting. So I guess it's just a
minstath good grief. Well, maybe good gracious came from good
grace and somebody's like just feeling a little buzzed on
knops and they added gracious instead. Maybe so minced toad's

(01:06):
good gravy. That's good. It's probably the funniest thing will
happen in this show. Hopefully that wasn't even that funny. Yeah,
but this one's not supposed to be funny. It's about grief,
you know. Yeah, And um, I think we should point
out from the get go that this is about grief,
human grief, Western human grief. Yeah, but that's not to

(01:28):
say that there aren't different types of grief and that
humans are the only ones who do grieve. In fact,
I have a story for you antal Action too, So
what you do? That was the funniest thing in this episode. Uh.
This story took place back in the spring of in
um Uttar Pradesh State, India, specifically in the town of

(01:52):
luck Now and even more specifically at the Prince of
wales Zoo. There was a seventy two year old elephant
email elephant named Dominie, and Dominie was hanging out in
her little house at the Prince of wale Zoo when
all of a sudden she got a younger pregnant friend
delivered to her um named chump Paccali. And Chumpaccali was,

(02:15):
as I said, pregnant. She was actually on maternity leave
from her regular gig where she would just let tourists
ride on her back. Okay, right, um, and so she was.
She was taking the Prince of Wales zoo to to
basically just have a nice, comfortable term and then give birth.
And Domini just fell in love with chompa collie. This

(02:35):
is so sad, so um. She basically became a maternal
figure chump Ofcali. They were best friends. Um. Chumpacali would
lay around and um Domini would stroke her pregnant belly
with her trunk. They just got really really tight, which
is very normal in in um the elephant world. Um.
So you can almost imagine that Domini was growing excited

(03:00):
as Champacali got closer and closer to her due date
and when finally she did um go into labor. Champacali
died during childbirth and gave birth to a stillborn calf,
and Dominie, I guess they let her come in and like,
you know, hang around the body because elephants are known
to grieve well, even as far as elephants go, Domini's

(03:21):
stories a little. That's pretty bad. She um. She cried
over the body for a while and then went over
to her enclosure and just stood still for a week.
Right after the week um. She during this week, she
she stopped eating um. She got to the point where
her legs swelled from basically starvation and dehydration until she

(03:45):
fell over. And then she just laid there for what
turned out to be the rest of her life, where
she wept and refused to eat and refused to drink
and grieved over the death of her friend, and finally
died herself a few days later. Uh and the vets
tried to keep her alive. They um, they did what
they could, but they said in the end um, in

(04:09):
the face of Domini's intense grief, all our treatment failed. No,
they're buried next to one another. I had a dog
situation like that similar when I was a kid. One
of my dogs died and they were best buds, and
the other one just like it was never the same
and died about three months later and seemed healthy at
the time. And I went out and laid down the

(04:31):
doghouse and cried when I was like seven, devastating. That's
a wonderful thing to do. That's working out your grief,
you know. Yeah, But as far as the animals go,
it really is pretty evenly divided among scientists who say, yes,
they show all the signs of grieving and that's what
they're doing. And then others that say, no, they are
not grieving. We're putting that on them as humans. Yeah,

(04:55):
that's I totally disagree with that. Yeah, it's just you know,
it's really too camps um. So we've talked about this before. Yeah,
we've run up against this before, and I don't think
either one of us have changed our positions at all.
I think they grieve. But then you hear like this
one great ape you know, was famous recently for carrying
her little dead uh baby around for like three days,

(05:18):
and other scientists came out and said, like, you know,
this is a long gestation period they have Singleton's having
a kid is a big deal, and so she's carrying
this baby around and hopes that it will come back
to life and it's like in a comatose state, and
you know, it's a practical, adaptive, evolutionary thing that's happening.
It's not grief. And then I think you're heartless, Right, Yeah,

(05:42):
they're grieving because they they took the baby chimp and
made a purse out of it. After that, Well, but
then for animals, I don't want to get two sidetrack.
But you have to think, like when some clearly showed
signs of what looks like grief and some don't at all,
Like the chimpanzee and the same you know arena like
they eat other chimpanzees while they're still alive and screaming. Well,

(06:06):
those are the ones that back talk, or they go
off to die by themselves and there's no grieving, or
they will make like if one of them is dying,
that will like kill them. Right, But imagine, imagine you're
an outside observer of the human species. We we lose
chemical weapons on one another, and yet we still have

(06:26):
funeral practices. I mean, it's it's interesting. I wonder why
certain animals do and certain don't, though you know, it's
very interesting. Well, getting back to um humans the human
realm of grief, there was a man who recently um
was married to his wife for sixty two years and
she died and on the way to her funeral, he

(06:48):
died in the back of the limousine and um, yeah,
which I thought was incredibly sweet. And then his his
daughters they died at the funeral. Then know they they
put a sign up. They decided to just have a
double funeral, and they put a sign up at the
wake that said surprised it's a double header and then

(07:09):
buried him next to her like that that day. Well,
I guess the fai. But the point is is, yeah,
that is that that's a that's they used a sense
of humor to grief, or else they weren't going through grief.
And the point of that whole thing is is that
there's no set way that grief works, which is great
because we can say just about anything here and still

(07:31):
being the right because psychology is still grappling to define
the process of grief, and some very recent studies that
you found show that grief is not present and everyone,
and that everyone deals with it very differently, and there's
not really any specific way to handle it. There's just

(07:53):
some great general guidelines and that we should say grief
is a very personal thing. Yeah, and I might self
have experienced the spectrum of grief in my life, like
including you know, like family members passing away. Not to
be too cold, but some are you know, you super
grief for and some it's like, well, you know, they

(08:14):
were very old and they had a great life and
we saw this coming. And that's one of the things
that you know. It's one of the types of grief.
Anticipatory grief, they say, is probably easier because you're working
that stuff out over time and it's nothing like an
accident or a child dying. Unanticipated grief well, completely different. Yeah,
it is. So you say you mentioned anticipatory grief. That's

(08:38):
like if somebody's got a prolonged illness or something like that,
you have the chance to say goodbye ahead of time,
maybe deal with these emotions exactly, and then once death
actually comes, you've been prepared for this for days, weeks, months, right, Yeah,
and a lot of times something maybe there isn't any
quote unquote traditional grief going on at all because you're
just so prepared and it's just a matter of executing

(08:59):
all the things that you need to do. If you're
the person that's in charge of that kind of like
you're so prepared you blow off the funeral to go
the grocery store. Um. It's like a serial. Psychologists call
that kind of grief anticipatory grief basically the money grief,
because it's it's about is um as light as you

(09:19):
can get post grief post death, I should say, right, yes, um,
And then Again, I want to say, like there's there's
probably a listener out there who like helped their their
husband or their mother through a long bout of cancer
that the person finally succumbed to. That's like, that's absolutely untrue.

(09:40):
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Like there again, there's no
specific um, Like, no one could tell you what your
grief was. Again, it's personal. This is just these are
very broad strokes. So okay, then, like you mentioned unanticipated grief, right, yeah,
I meant that's from my experien arian's I had a
friend that fell off a building and died. That's like

(10:04):
definitely the hardest someone young an accident and uh but still,
if you want to talk about five stages, I don't.
I'm not a big believer that that's the case because
I didn't experience all the stages at all. Um. But
again it varies. Someone might experience tense stages. It does.
But but the point is with unanticipated grief, like you
couldn't have you or your friend didn't wake up that

(10:26):
morning like he was gonna die, you know, but he
still died and you have to deal with it all
of a sudden um. And then there's ambiguous grief, which
for my money, is probably the worst kind of grief.
This is the kind of grief that comes where, say,
if you have a loved one who is kidnapped and
you never hear from them again, or ever felt that
one your parents abandoned you as a child, um, or

(10:51):
just something happens is somebody and there's no real resolution
or closure or you know, it doesn't have to be
even death. It can be like your girlfriend you come
home to a note on your bed, you never hear
from her again, or a wife. I guess, yeah, because
I guess we should also say, like, grief doesn't just
have to come from death. Grief is basically the deep

(11:12):
and poignant distress caused by bereavement, and bereavement is the
state of being deprived of something or someone, so that
could be through death whatever. Yeah exactly. Um, but yeah,
so those are the three types of normal grief just
off the top of our heads. We made those up right, um.
And you mentioned the different kinds of um they're the

(11:36):
different stages of grief and you, I mean, that's just
such like a pop trope these days, but it was
actually new just as recently as the nineteen sixty nine
when Dr Elizabeth Coogler Ross came up with the five
stages of grief that you always hear about today, that
any ten year old could probably recite to you. But
I have since been kind of deconstructed and change in

(11:58):
question and challenge. But these are the kind of the
road map to go through grief, right, Um, denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
and acceptance, and denial is just basically saying this is
you're you're not true that there's still alive. Like what
you say is a lie and I don't want to
be anywhere near you because you're lying to me right

(12:20):
now about something very horrible. Yeah, I've never experienced that,
even with my friend who fell off a building. Like
that's as sudden a news as you can get over
the phone. And I'm just not the kind of person
who's like, no, that didn't happen. I was like, man,
it immediately hit me that that had happened, you know,
And I started from there, I guess. But I didn't
experience anger either. But you know, if it might have

(12:43):
been my brother, I might have experienced anger. And you
you raise a very good point. There's different, there's different, Um,
I guess risk factors. There's different elements to grief, and
some of it is personal. Some of it has to
do with how close you are to the person, sure, Um,
some of it has to do the type of person
you are. You're a pretty resilient person. If you were

(13:04):
a very sensitive, bookish type, you might have taken it
a little harder, you know what I mean. Um, you
have a very very very strong, tight support group, you do, so, Um,
I would say that that that probably helped quite a bit.
I'm sure you had a group of friends that like
helped you through that, that were probably friends with the
kid too, so you went through it as a group. Yeah,

(13:27):
going through something alone is always hard. Even if you
think you're a loner and don't want to be around anyone,
you're probably not doing yourself any favor, right. Uh. And
then lastly, you had prior experience with grief. You're throwing
yourself down in the doghouse when you were seven, so
you had that experience to draw upon and to know
you can make it through it. It does get better,
it does go away. So you're gonna have the hardest

(13:49):
normal kind of grief if you are, like you said,
a loner with no support group. If this is the
first time you've ever experienced grief, if you're the sensitive,
bookish type, and um, if you were extraordinarily close to somebody, right, Yeah, totally.
In fact, I used to do acting exercises in college.
What it took, this acting class, and believe it or not,

(14:11):
I took one acting class and I was not very
good at it, and that he used to tell us
to try and do like crying exercises and stuff. So
what do you think of my brother? Was always to
go to like imagine my brother had gotten killed or something.
I would just like boom, yeah cry if I thought
of your brother dying. I know, I'm just kidding about

(14:33):
the other family members. Alright, So anger that's the second one. Yes,
it is pretty self explainatory. Um. Bargaining. It fascinates me,
like the idea that that you I feel like you're
suddenly in a position to make a deal with God

(14:54):
to reverse the circumstances or bring the person back or
take away the pain. Yeah, it's just so crazy, and
it's it's you know, like you think of somebody bargaining
with God or some higher power and they're like looking
up talking to the ceiling or the sky and that
that is one of the normal stages of grief. That's
I just find that fast. I did that when I

(15:16):
was young with girls. Oh yeah, well I was heavy
into church, very emotional kid, and girls like you know.
That was one of those deals, like God, just please,
if you would just come back to me a promise,
I'll like do this and I'll do that, but I'll
clean behind my ears. I grew out of that pretty
quick because I realized different that girls either coming back
or she was hitting the road exactly, and God probably

(15:39):
had little if anything to do with that. That's right,
he was dealing with bigger problems. Um. After that's depression.
And this one is kind of tricky. Um, if you
if you go through the stage of depression, if you do,
it's not necessarily requisite. Um, they're starting to wonder if
possibly you're already depressed, and uh, if you were already depressed,

(16:02):
that probably means you're going to maybe get stuck in
the stage for a while, or you might go through
a depressed stage and then come out of it. It's
not necessarily But the problem with the stage is that
depression is a recognized mental disorder and grief is not
considered a mental disorder, and yet in one of these

(16:24):
five widely accepted stages, you go through a period where
you're you're you have a mental disorder, but it's part
of a normal process. And you know, that's basically like
taking psychologists and throwing them into the thunder dome, you know,
greasing them up with chicken fat and handing them battle
axes and saying, like, explain that. You know, that's the

(16:45):
funniest thing said. Uh. The last one is acceptance, of course, um,
when you are finally able to move on and UM.
I found that one fairly interesting article where they they
charted this and they said it would look like a W.
Is that right, like the high points and the low points. Yeah,
which I guess um denials the high point, and then

(17:08):
it goes down to um anger. Yeah, up to bargaining.
I guess if you feel like that's getting you somewhere,
maybe it's an up. Maybe maybe UM, at the very
least it's manic. I would think, back down to depression,
and then finishing the W with a nice bit of acceptance. Yeah.
And they've as you said that, we've sort of been

(17:30):
studying this for like thirty or forty years, and there
was always that five stages thing, but recently they're looking
more into it, and they've done some studies with widowers
and widows, and they found that they really oscillate wildly
from day to day and it's not necessarily going to
be a w it's I felt great today and really
my spirits were up and I was even laughing. Then
the next day they were really sad. And it just

(17:50):
really is all over the map, right, But I think overall,
what they're finding is that on a long enough arc,
people emerge from it, and it seems to be somewhere
in the order of six months to three years seems
to be, and I think that's the outliers are maybe
six months to three years. That's such a ridiculous time frame,
but the bolt. But I mean, like if you study

(18:12):
enough people, you can probably create like like three months
to five years, right, you know, no totally and then
say anyone else as an outlier. Right, But that's the thing,
like you can't. That's why everybody is very wisely, um
they avoid saying things like that, like this is this

(18:32):
is like it's almost respect for the process, Like no
one wants to come out and say no, this is
how it is. Yeah, because you can't, and that's a
mean thing to do. And actually there's there's um the
grief is is in danger of being medicalized in the
DSM five one of the proposals, there's a there's always
been an exemption to bereavement with depression like a depression

(18:54):
um diagnosis if the person has recently gone through the
press of grief or is in the pressive degree. Um,
you can't diagnose them with depression. You can, but you're
not gonna get reimbursed for any meds you prescribed them. Well,
under the d s M five they're taking away this
bereavement exclusion so that doctors can get reimbursed. Yeah, but

(19:16):
it medicalizes grief, it says, no, now it's a mental disorder,
well when it's not supposed to be, and it's a
slip slope. Yeah, you know, a temporary disorder though you
would hope. So all right, very keen insight, nice work,
Thank you psychology today. Is that where you got it? Yeah? Okay, Um,

(19:38):
so should we talk a little bit about dealing with it?
I guess yes, Um, you know these are it's it's
good advice, but it's also any time I read something
where they're like, take care of yourself and eat right
next or so avoid drugs and alcohol. Yeah, but it
is very much true. You know that it only is
going to make things worse if you wallow in this

(19:58):
and abuse yourself with drugs and alcohol in don't eat
and you don't think there's a there's not a therapy
to pouring like half of a forty out on the
curb for someone who's gone and then drinking the other half. Yeah,
I mean sure, but don't do that every day for
like weeks and weeks starting in nine and you yeah,
I mean I think me and my friends got together
and got really good and plowed after we got the

(20:20):
news about my buddy. But but alcohol, my advice is
to avoid it after Yes, but okay, so in addition
to avoiding folks and alcohol, eating right and getting regular exercise,
just the standard stuff. What was that? Also in jet lag?
Every time it's anything, um the the there are like

(20:43):
some really good suggestions to dealing with grief. If you
find yourself overwhelmed by a profound sense of sadness, there
are things out there that you can do to make
yourself feel better. You can um write a letter to
the deceased that's said to help. Um, okay, yet why
not uh throwing yourself into stay, making a memorial like

(21:04):
those roadside memorials, or a video clip show who knows you? Actually?
You know what, when my friend added did a video
see because his family put together a website like a
memorial website, and on the I had video footage back
then of m and I did a little video for
the family. But it ended up really being like a
great thing for me. It made you feel better, absolutely. Yeah.

(21:26):
So basically putting yourself into a project there where you're
thinking about this person, I imagine this isn't an article,
this is just me doing some armchurir psychology. But um,
I imagine it forces you to remember good things about
the person. And so during this time when you're possibly
a little more emotionally fragile than usual, you are being

(21:50):
reminded of positive memories, positive things as well. You know,
so you're maybe that's why that would help, but it
definitely doesn't help, you know for sure, because when you're
going through and do in like a scrapbook, it's these
great memories in these pictures and it's not you know,
you are remembering the good stuff and that like the life,
which is I think how everyone wants to be remembered.
You know, it's like these great lives we have exactly

(22:14):
you know, you want to be remembered as alive. Yeah,
I mean, I'm one of those people that always wants
my funeral to be you know, a little bit more
of an upbeat affair, as much as it can be.
You know, where some people like, no, man, I want
people really sad, right, yeah, I want to be mourned
for days. It's not me. So you want the upbeat affair? Yeah, okay,
I have have a party and you know, make fun

(22:36):
of me, but not like G. G Allen's funeral. I
have to research that one. I can only imagine what
it was like. Yeah, pretty hardcore pretty much. Okay, yeah.
Did they inject his corpse with heroin or he's bury
naked though and they it was Yeah, you can do
some research if you feel like, Okay, man, he died

(22:57):
like in a horrible way. Didn't they find him, like
murder in an alley, naked and like never found the murderer.
Now I think he killed himself. I thought he was murdered.
I thought he was like stabbed a death. I don't
think so. He used to use to threaten to kill
himself on stage. That was a big thing, was that
he's like, one day it's gonna happen. I thought his
big thing was like pooping on stage. He did that

(23:18):
a lot too. He kept that promise um Man was
going to show up in the grief episode. Another thing
you can do to UM, I guess kind of helped
through the grief process is to throw yourself into a
project that you think the deceased might appreciate. Yeah, or

(23:38):
some organization they might have been affiliated with, Right, That's
what I meant. Yeah, Yeah, like if you lose someone
to cancer, or maybe get involved with the Common Foundation
or one of the other groups or apparently Mad Mothers
Against Drunk Driving was founded in memory of a deceased
person absolutely killed by a drunk driver. One would imagine, UM,

(23:59):
there's just a lot of stuff out there that you
can do yourself. A lot of people pretty much immediately
go to therapy, at least initially to get a little help,
to get some insights and advice whatever. Um that's not
necessarily the case for everybody, and they've definitely found that
therapy is not even necessarily helpful for everybody. There's a

(24:21):
lot of people out there who probably wonder if they're
dead inside because they don't grieve like supposedly everyone else does.
But study after study is finding that actually, people who
go through significant grief um is a fairly small portion
of people who experience a loss. Yeah, didn't we have
a study in here? Yeah? Right here? Um. They what

(24:45):
they do generally is they track groups of widows and
widowers for a period of time and just have them,
you know, remark about how they're feeling on a day
to day basis. And uh, this one was for up
to five years, I think, and between twenty had no
significant symptoms in the initial years after the loss, and

(25:05):
only nine to forty one percent did. And there's a
big variability there, but they said it's partially from how
the symptoms were measured. And in another study they found
that about experience what you could diagnosis depression after the loss,
and only about eleven um had trouble with it, like

(25:27):
couldn't shake it after six to eight months, I believe, right,
And ten percent of people who lost a spouse felt relief.
These were people that had reported being unhappy in their marriage,
So there's that those are the ones that danced on
their spouses gave. I guess so, And I don't necessarily
think it's that cold, but there there could be some
mild relief if you weren't genuinely weren't happy in your marriage.

(25:50):
And it doesn't mean you're dancing on graves and partying,
but it might just be like, all right, well, now
I can go move to us like that always wanted
to and hang out with Sammy Hagar. Yeah, and now
I can do that, right, And my wife also hated
Sammy Hagar, but I'm gonna go hang out with him. Yeah.
They also think that men may grieve heavier, even though

(26:12):
it's at long believe that women do. Um. But I
think a study like that is sort of silly. It's
so variable, like from person to person. I don't know, right,
But we say all this to point out that if
you don't experience what other people would recognize as grief,
there's something wrong with you anymore than there is if
you experience grief. Exactly. What psychiatry and psychology have started

(26:38):
to pay a little more attention to is what's been
termed complicated grief, And then is technically, if you go,
say several months to where your life is really really interrupted.
You can't sleep, you can't eat, You're having trouble focusing
on anything but the death of this person, the loss

(26:59):
of them, that you start to seriously doubt things very
important in your life, maybe like religion, even have lost
a child, like there can't be a god, that kind
of stuff, right, Or conversely, if you can't even mention
the person's name or hear the person's name. Basically, if
your life is disrupted for many months, then basically everybody

(27:20):
from the Mayo Clinic to the a p A. Says
maybe you should go see somebody about this, Yeah, because
it can also manifest itself and aggression and um violence,
self destructive um physical self destruction. So it can complicated,
as is an understatement here for this kind of grief,
I think, right, Um, so there's different kinds. If you

(27:43):
go see a counselor with what's considered normal grief, they're
probably going to help you let go of the person
while still honoring their memory and recognizing them and yeah,
and the impact that they had on your life. But
to get out there and live your in life, they're
gonna try to reach the same goal if you have

(28:04):
complicated grief, but they're going to do it a different way,
and they're probably going to encourage you to really form
an even greater bond with the person now that they're deceased,
that you can nurture and hold onto and carry around
with you. That makes sense to me. Yeah, and this
kind in this case, it's not like you can't tell
a parent who has lost a child, like and you

(28:24):
know you need to work through this and get over it, right.
And that's actually one of the risk factors for complicated grief.
Grief is the death of a child, the death of
somebody that you are possibly co dependent on very very
close to, or um the death of a sudden death,
usually from trauma, say like a murder or something like that. Um,

(28:45):
those are risk factors for complicated grief. So I would
imagine that if you if you had a loved one
who is murdered, you probably are already getting some sort
of professional attention, and if you're not, maybe you should. Well. Yeah,
And that's what we're basically talking about, was the difference
between grief and trauma, and when you've experienced it to
that degree, trauma is a whole different deal. They'd say,

(29:08):
it feels unreal and it's can be terrifying. The terror
is the most common emotion. Um. It's common if you
have dreams about a deceased loved one, But if you're
having traumatizing dreams about yourself being endangered, then you've you've
crossed the line from grief into trauma and complicated grief

(29:28):
heavy stuff. It is very heavy. Losing a pet is
for some people a very very very big deal um,
and other people, well, people that aren't into pets at
all don't get it. And then some people that do
have pets are just more equipped to deal with the
loss of a pet and not like it's the loss
of a human. But for people like me and Jerry

(29:51):
over there, I know that losing a pet, you know,
is like equivalent to losing, you know, a family member,
and the grieving process is about the same. I would
imagine if it's you know, that impactful. And my advice
is you should talk to other people who have similar feelings,
because one of the things that can be toughest about
losing a bet is when you talk to people who

(30:11):
don't have pets. And I don't think it's that big
of a deal to lose a bet, and that that
can make things a lot worse. Well, they say that
if you, um, if you do experience the loss of
a pet and you find that you're grieving over it,
you should go ahead with the grief. Don't feel embarrassed
or dumb for that. Go light down to the doghouse
and cry like a six year old. Uh, you got

(30:34):
anything else? I ran across one thing. Um. There's a
guy in three named Paul Rosenblatt who UM carried out
a study of I think like fifty six Victorian diaries
of people who would experienced loss. Interesting and UM, so
grief is definitely cultural and also historically bound to like

(30:57):
UM they found. He found that the goal for these
diarists was to keep the person alive around them, like
all the time, like they would try to sense the
person around them, or like maybe sitting their favorite chair
because they could tell that they were still there in
somewhere or whatever. And that under those circumstances, he found

(31:17):
that grief never really seemed to ever go away, that
it was something that they carried around for the rest
of their lives. And in fact, UM one of the
things that the victorians did was they would wear black
for a year, I believe, and then dark colors after that,
especially if you were a widow and on the anniversary
you wear black too, right, I think so. And you

(31:37):
were expected to carry around this grief for the rest
of your life. UM. And one of the things they
also did that actually still around today was bereavement photography,
which is post mortem photography. We've done the thing on that,
have we, UM, and it's we did, didn't we? And
we got an email just as recently is today from
a woman who lost a child UM and had a

(32:01):
cast made of the baby's hands and feet, and she
said that it was something that UM has very much
helped her through. Yeah. She said it was a gift
from the hospital UM to help them through their grief.
And the hospital said, you know, you might not want
it now, but we really encourage you to have this
one and we'll pay for it, UM, because you know,

(32:23):
years from now you may really be happy that you have.
And she said, they're absolutely right. Wow, that's really great.
What was that email in reference to death as Okay, yeah,
but it just happened to come in to day when
we were researching grief. That's about it. I guess, huh,
that's it. That's a to Z grief. We touched on
every single thing possible. Yeah, I guess. If you want

(32:47):
to learn more about grief, you can type that word
into the search bar how stuff works dot com. Remember
I before E except after c um, Chuck. Hold on,
let's let's take a message break. Huh. It is time
for a listener man. So Josh, you can, by the way,
to jump back look into more grief on our website,

(33:07):
or you could go to Google and look at Pigmy
coats the helps too. That's what I would say, all right,
So now not listener mail, Josh. Today we have nice Chuck,
well done. All right, So we're gonna this is gonna

(33:30):
be an ongoing thing because as usual, they stack up.
Well man, we have very busy work schedule, and we
like to say thanks to as many people as possible.
For those of you who don't know. Administrative details is
a segment that replaces listener mail, in which we read
out thank you to fans who have sent us stuff, tokens, yeah, anything,

(33:50):
yep um. For example, postcard of Rapa Nui from Ryan Confort,
thank you for that. Nice. That's that's Eastern Island. Okay. Um,
Jake Aboard sentence Yellowstone Park shirts, postcards, info cards, hats.
Oh yeah, because he works there. Yeah, that was a
free sweet kif and he gets a discount. Hepsy hope
he is. Um. Thanks to Shanty Diva for the postcard

(34:12):
of the monkey k nots. Casey Herring sent us cookies
and they were delicious. Which cookies the delicious one? Okay,
not this crappy ones. Um, we got a wedding invitation
from Rachel and John Reid. Congratulations, surprising one's astus to officiate.

(34:32):
I do that? Oh man, you just opened the um
hitch safe. Inventor Tim Freeman sent it's a hitch safe
and that is a little thing that you stick in
your trailer hitch if you have a truck pickup truck
and it's got a little key in this hollowed out
and you can like put your wallet and stuff in
there if you go kayaking and lock it up. I

(34:52):
didn't see this well because you're wanted the pickup. Okay,
did you get a trailer hitch, buddy, you can will
split the hitch happier. Um, let's see, we got a
Christmas cards and postcards plural from Becca Evans at uc
s C. Alright, justin Norman, um citisen ergo desk and
iPad holder and I'm actually using the one for the

(35:14):
laptop on my desk. It's quite lovely and it's handmade
wood and you can find that debt wood bold dot com. Yeah,
that's really a sight to behold. It's amazing. It looks
like plastic, right, but it's would Yeah. Yeah. Um we
got a Christmas postcard from Davini d who for some

(35:34):
reason was dressed as Wilfred from the TV show Wilfred.
So thank you Davini. Uh. Lorian Leonard sent us some
Yemmy chocolates from Thickets in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Yeah, it was lovely. Um.
We got a copy of the book Brushing the Teeth
of Elvis's Monkey and a nice letter from Nurse Beeth,
So thank you for that. Uh you know what, I'm
gonna go ahead and bust into my books here. Um.

(35:56):
We got how Colin Why How We Do Anything Means Everything?
By darv Siedman. We got Swing Colin That Searched My
father Louis Prima by Alan Gerstelluh Science Nearly Explained by
Dick Maxwell and that is on Amazon. And kindle the
Vampire Combat Manual from our buddy roger Ma who sent

(36:18):
us the Zombie Combat Manual. And I imagine pretty soon
we're gonna have a Wearwolf Combat Manual, I would hope.
So it's Rogers Getting Lazy and Trunkless, which is a
children's book from Sean Antoniac and Matthew Antoniac. That was sweet.
It was like a graphic novel. Yeah, and they sent
us some cool stickers from uh eight one one graphics

(36:39):
dot com. So those are my books. Um, let's see
what else. We got another postcard from Rapa Nui from
Emily B that rhymes yeah. We got trifold wallets from
Trifold try hold from Trifold wallets thanice Man. Yeah, you
should get paid for this. Is a dude named Lars

(37:01):
c who kind of went all over the place and
he went to Las Cobos Las Cabos of course, Sammy
Harry Garth's place, Seattle, Philadelphia, Calgary, Montreal, Nova, Scotia, and
he kind of took us with him and sent us
postcards along the way. So thanks a lot, large, Aaron Cooper,
thank you for your cool phone Corps poster versions of

(37:21):
some of your best stuff. You should know photoshop jobs. Yes,
you love these. That's not the first time they sent
those either, so thanks a lot erin it's a regular coop. Um,
we got a nice postogram from Michael Storer. Caroline Larson
in this magnetic skulls. Yeah, those are awesome, like a
Day of the Dead skulls of her own art. I believe,
I think so. Um. I've got her down too, and

(37:43):
I have her website. It is um, I believe Caroline
Larson Art dot com. If I come across it, I'll
correct myself if that's wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's right. Okay,
I got one more for now, and then you pick
one more good one and then we'll pick this up again.
Jennifer Dunaway send us admitted tree scarf. And this is

(38:04):
just a scarf that you go and you pick a
tree and you put a little scarf on it. Okay,
and it's pretty darn cute and that makes the city
more beautiful. Nice, So thank you Jennifer Dunaway for that. Um.
And then I got a nice handmade birthday card for me,
specifically nice from s y s k Army member Courtney Hoover.

(38:24):
So thanks a lot for that question. Uh, and that's
administrative details for this week part one. Uh, as far
as this list goes, we've got this for the next
six months. And I am right it is Caroline Larson
art c A R O L I N E l
A R S E n RT dot com. Yeah, get
a tree scarf. Yeah, that's what I say. And a

(38:46):
school magnet. All right. Oh okay, let's see. If you
want to uh tweet to us, you can join us
on Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know,
You can send us an email to off podcast at
Discovery dot com, and you can send us a good
old fashioned website. Visit to Stuff you Should Know dot

(39:09):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how Stuff Works dot com m