SYSK Selects: 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 (00:00):
Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Grief Works. It's
an episode from April of two thirt and it covers
everything you ever wanted to know about grief, like, um,
do animals grieve? Of course they do, don't be ridiculous.
And if you happen to be grieving right now, I

(00:22):
hope this episode helps, So sit back and enjoy or
whatever you might do with it. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.

(00:43):
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, it just struck me
at you know, because Charlie Brown says it, you know,
and that's where I know it from. Then I thought,
why would where did that come from? Because from one
of those things, and it's just apparently they think it's
just what's called a minced oath, like when you substitute

(01:06):
God for good gravy or good google ees or I
got you googly moogly, googly moogly. But 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 minced oath
good grief. Well, maybe good gracious came from good grace

(01:27):
and somebody's like just feeling a little buzzed on schnops
and they added gracious instead. Maybe, so minced oaths good gravy.
That's good. It's probably the funniest thing that 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

(01:50):
out from the get go that this is about grief,
human grief, Western human grief. Yeah, but that's not to
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 animal action too, So
what will you do? That was the funniest thing in

(02:10):
this episode? Uh. This story took place back in the
spring of in um Uttar Pradesh State, India, specifically in
the town of luck Now and even more specifically at
the Prince of Wales Zoo, there was a seventy two
year old elephant, female elephant named Dominie, and Domini was

(02:34):
hanging out in her little house at the Prince of
Wales Zoo when all of a sudden she got a
younger pregnant friend delivered to her um named Chumpacali. And
Chumpacali was, 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, all right, um,

(02:54):
and so she was she was taking to 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 is so sad already,
so um. She basically became a maternal figure Chumpacali. They
were best friends. Um. Chumpacali would lay around and um

(03:16):
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 as Chumpacali got closer
and closer to her due date and when finally she
did um go into labor. Champacali died during childbirth and

(03:40):
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, Dominie 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, you're killing

(04:04):
me 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
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

(04:25):
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
the face of Domini's intense grief, all her treatment failed. No,
they're buried next to one another. I had a dog

(04:48):
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
doghouse and cried when I was like seven, devastating. That's
a wonderful thing to do. That's working out your grief,

(05:10):
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,
that's I totally disagree with that. Yeah, it's just you know,
it's really two camps um. So we've talked about before. Yeah,

(05:34):
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 baby around for like three days, and
other scientists came out and said, like, you know, this
is a long gestation period they have. Singleton's having a

(05:56):
kid is a big deal. And so she's carrying this
baby around and hopes it 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, they're grieving
because they they took the baby chimp and made a

(06:17):
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 show 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, those
are the ones that back talk, or they go off

(06:40):
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 funeral practices.
I mean, it's it's interesting. I wonder why certain animals

(07:03):
do and certain, don't 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 died in the
back of the limousine and um, yeah, which I thought

(07:24):
was incredibly sweet. And then his his daughters they died
at the funeral. No, no no, 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 surprise,
it's a double header and then buried him next to
her like that that day. Well, I guess their family

(07:45):
has a good sense of humor relates. 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 being the right because psychology is still
grappling to define the process of grief. And some very

(08:10):
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 some great general guidelines and that we should
say grief is a very personal thing. Yeah, and I
myself have experienced the spectrum of grief in my life,

(08:36):
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 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

(09:00):
accident or a child dying. Unanticipated grief well, completely different, Yeah,
it is, so you So you mentioned anticipatory grief. That's
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,

(09:22):
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
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. About that, Um, it's like a serial killer.
Psychologists call that kind of grief anticipatory grief basically the

(09:45):
money grief because it's it's about is um as light
as you 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 help their their
husband or their mother through a long bout of cancer

(10:07):
that the person finally succumbed to. That's like, that's absolutely untrue.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Like there again, there's no
specific um, Like, no one can 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,

(10:29):
I meant that's from my experience. I had a friend
that fell off a building and died, and that's like
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 these stages at all. Um. But
again it varies. Someone might experience tense stages. It does.

(10:52):
But but the point is with unanticipated grief like you
couldn't have you or your friend didn't wake up that morning,
like he was gonna die, 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

(11:13):
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 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.

(11:36):
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 and poignant distress caused by bereavement,
and bereavement is the state of being deprived of something
or someone, so that could be through to death whatever.
Yeah exactly. Um, but yeah, so those are the three

(11:57):
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 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 a nineteen sixty nine when Dr Elizabeth Coogler

(12:19):
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 question and challenge. But
these are the kind of the road map to go
through grief, right, Um, Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Right.

(12:40):
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 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 news as you can get over the phone. And
I'm just not the kind of person who's like, no,

(13:01):
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 been my brother,
I might have experienced anger. You You raise a very
good point. There's different there's different Um, I guess, risk factors.

(13:22):
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 with the type of person you are. You're
a pretty resilient person. If you were 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. Yeah, So, UM,

(13:48):
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,
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 favorite. Uh. And then lastly,
you had prior experience with grief. You're throwing yourself down

(14:09):
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. Yeah, So you're gonna have the hardest 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.

(14:34):
In fact, I used to do acting exercises in college.
What took this acting class? And believe it or not,
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 myself, I if I

(15:00):
thought of your brother dying, I'm just kidding about the
other family members all right, so anger, that's the second one. Yes,
it is pretty self explained to her. Um bargaining. It
fascinates me, like the idea that that you I feel
like you're suddenly in a position to make a deal

(15:23):
with God to reverse the circumstances or bring the person
back or take away the pain. That'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.

(15:44):
That's I just find that fast. I did that when
I was young with girls. Oh yeah, well I was
heavy into church, very emotional kid and girls like you know,
it was one of those deals like God, I just please,
if you would just come back to me, I promise,
I'll do this, and i'll do that, I'll clean behind
my ears. I grew out of that pretty quick because
I realized, to make any different, that girl is either

(16:06):
coming back or she was hitting the road exactly. And
God probably 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

(16:27):
to wonder if possibly you're already depressed, and uh, if
you were already depressed, 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
this stage is that depression is a recognized mental disorder

(16:48):
and grief is not considered a mental disorder. And yet
in one of these five widely accepted stages, you go
through a period where you're you have a mental disorder. Yeah,
but it's part of a normal process. And you know,
that's basically like taking psychologists and throwing them into the

(17:08):
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 funniest thing said in this podcast. 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

(17:30):
and they said it would look like a w is that, right,
like the high points and the low points. Yeah, which
I guess some denials a high point and then 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

(17:54):
then finishing the W with a nice bit of acceptance. Yeah.
And they've, as you said that, we've sort of been
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

(18:15):
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
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
on the order of six months to three years. Yeah,
seems to be And I think that's the outliers are

(18:37):
maybe six months to three years. That's such a ridiculous
time frame. But the bolt but I mean like if
you study enough people, you can't probably create like makeup
like three months to five years, 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 aid saying things like that

(19:02):
like this is this 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 d s M five. One of the proposals,
there's a there's always been an exemption to bereavement with

(19:22):
depression like a depression UM diagnosis. If the person has
recently gone through the process of grief or is in
the process of grief, 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

(19:43):
get reimbursed. Yeah, but it medicalizes grief, it says, no,
now it's a mental disorder, well when it's not supposed
to be and it's a story slope. Yeah, you know,
a temporary disorder though you would hope. So yeah, all right,
very keen insight. Nice work, Thank you psychology today. Yeah.

(20:05):
Is that where you got it? Oh? Yeah? Okay, Um,

(20:31):
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 anytime I read something where
they're like take care of yourself and eat right next,
or some 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 and

(20:51):
abuse yourself with drugs and alcohol and don't eat and
you don't think there's all night. There's not a therapy
to pouring like half of a forty out on the
herb 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 A. Yeah, I
mean I think me and my friends got together and
got really good and plowed after we got the news

(21:13):
about my buddy. But but alcohol, My advice is to
avoid it after yes, but okay, So in addition to
avoiding drugs 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

(21:35):
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 booking. Yet, why not
throwing yourself into say making a memorial like those roadside

(21:58):
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 him, 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.

(22:19):
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 armtir 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

(22:43):
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 doing like a scrapbook, it's these great
memories and 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 that we have

(23:06):
exactly 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. Yeah, so you want the
upbeat affair? Yeah, OK, I have have a party and

(23:28):
you know, make fun 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, it's pretty
hardcore pretty much. Okay, Yeah, did they inject his corpse
with heroin? Or he's buried naked though and they lived naked?
It was. Yeah, you can do some research if you

(23:48):
feel like, Okay, Man, he died in like in a
horrible way. Didn't they find him, like murdered in an
alley naked and like never found the murderer. Now, I
think he killed himself. I thought he was murdered or o'deed.
I thought he was like stabbed a death. I don't
think so. He used to ease to threaten to kill
himself on stage. That was a big thing, was that
he's like, one day it's going to happen. I thought

(24:08):
his big thing was like pooping on stage. He did
that a lot too. Yeah, he kept that promise. Um
Man was going to show up in the grief episode.
For 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,

(24:31):
or 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,

(24:52):
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, some advice whatever. Um, that's not
necessarily the case for everybody. And they they've definitely found
that therapy is not even necessarily helpful for everybody. There's

(25:14):
a 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.

(25:37):
They what 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
six and had no significant symptoms in the initial years
after the loss, and only nine to forty percent did.

(26:01):
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 diagnose
this depression after the loss, and only about eleven um
had trouble with it, like couldn't shake it after six

(26:21):
to eighteen months, I believe, right, and ten 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 dance on their spouses grave
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. And it doesn't

(26:44):
mean you're dancing on graves and partying, but it might
just be like, all right, well, now I can go
move Tobas in Lucas like I always wanted to and
hang out with Sammy Hagar, but my wife hates the ocean. Yeah,
and now I can do that, right, And my wife
also hated Sammy hagar it. I'm gonna go hang out
with them. Yeah. They also think that men may grieve heavier,

(27:05):
even though 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, 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

(27:25):
you experience grief. Exactly what psychiatry and psychology have started
to pay a little more attention to is what's been
termed complicated grief, and that is technically, if you go,
say several months to where your life is really really interrupted.

(27:45):
You can't sleep, you can't eat, You're having trouble focusing
on anything but the death of this person, the loss
of them. Yeah, you start to seriously doubt things very
important in your life, maybe like religion even um 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

(28:08):
your life is disruptive for many months. Then basically everybody
from the Mayo Clinic to the a p A says
maybe you should go see somebody about this. Yeah, because
it can also manifests itself in aggression and UM violence,
self destructive UM physical self destruction. So it can complicated

(28:30):
is an understatement here for this kind of grief, I think, right, Um,
so there's different kinds. If you 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 the impact that they had

(28:50):
on your life, but to get out there and live
your own life. They're gonna try to reach the same
goal if you have 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

(29:12):
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 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, right and very
very close to, or um, the death of a sudden death,

(29:33):
usually from trauma, say like a murder, right or something
like that. Um, those are risk factors for complicated grief.
So I would imagine that if you if you had
a loved one who has 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

(29:55):
when you've experienced it to that degree. Trauma is the
whold front deal. They'd say, 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

(30:19):
and complicated grief 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

(30:40):
it's the loss of a human. But for people like
me and Jerry 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

(31:00):
be toughest about losing a bet is when you talk
to people who 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 lie down

(31:21):
the doghouse and cry like a six year old. Uh,
you got anything else? I ran across one thing. Um,
there was 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

(31:42):
and UM, so grief is definitely cultural and also historically
bound to like UM they found. He found that the
goal for these diarists was to keep the person alive
around him, like all the time, like they would try
to sense the person around them, or like maybe sitting

(32:03):
their favorite chair because they could tell that they were
still there in somewhere or whatever. And that under those circumstances,
he found 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

(32:25):
after that, especially if you were a widow and the
on the anniversary, you wear black too, right, I think so.
And you're 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 put done the thing
on that have we um? And it's we did, didn't we? Yeah?

(32:47):
And we got an email just as recently is today
from a woman who lost a child UM and had
cast made of the baby's hands and feet. Really, and
she said that it was something UM has very much
helped her through. Yeah. She said it was a gift
from the hospital UM to help them through their grief.

(33:07):
And the hospital said, Hey, you know, you might not
want it now, but we really encourage you to have
this done and we'll pay for it, UM, because you know,
years from now you may really be happy that you haven't.
She said, They're absolutely right. Wow, that's really great. Yeah.
What was that email in reference to death masks? Okay, yeah,
but it just happened to come in to day when
we were researching grief. That's about it. I guess. Huh,

(33:32):
that's it. That's a to Z grief. We touched on
every single thing possible. What UM. Yeah, I guess If
you want 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 ce UM Chuck,
hold on, let's let's take a message break. Huh. So, Josh,

(34:08):
you can, by the way, to jump back look into
more grief on our website, or you could go to
Google and look at pigmy coats. That 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,

(34:34):
So we're gonna this is gonna be an ongoing thing
because as usual they stack up. Well man, we have
very busy work schedule us 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,

(34:55):
yep um. For example, postcard of Rapa Nui from Ryan Confort,
thank you for that. Nice that's that's Easter Island, okay. Um.
Jacob Board sent us Yellowstone Park shirts, postcards, info cards, hats.
Oh yeah, because he works there. Yeah, that was a
pretty sweet kif and he gets a discount. Hopes he
hope he is. Um. Thanks to Shanti Diva for the

(35:17):
postcard 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 no one jestice
to officiate. I do that. Oh man, you just opened

(35:40):
the flood gate. 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
and this hollowed out and you can like put your
wallet and stuff in there if you go kayaking and
lock it up. I didn't see this. Well, because you
don't have to pick Okay, you get a trailer hitch, buddy,

(36:02):
you can will split the hitch. Okay, Well happy here. Yeah, um,
let's see. We got a Christmas card and postcards plural
from Becca Evans at uc sc alright, justin Norman, Um citius,
an Ergo desk and iPad holder and I'm actually using
the one for the laptop on my desk. It's quite
lovely and it's handmade wood and you can find that

(36:24):
debt wood bold dot com. Yeah, that's really a sight
to behold. Yeah, it's amazing. It looks like plastic, right,
but it's would Yeah. Yeah, Um, we got a Christmas
postcard from Daviny b who for some reason was dressed
as Wilfred from the TV show Wilfred. So thank you Davini.

(36:44):
Uh Lorian Leonard Sinus some yummy chocolates from Ficus 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 and busted do my
books here. Um. We got how Colin Why How We

(37:04):
Do Anything Means Everything by Darv Siedman. We got Swing
Colon to Search My Father Louis Prima by Alan Gerstell.
Uh Science Nearly Explained by Dick Maxwell and that is
on Amazon. And kindle the Vampire Combat Manual from our
buddy roger Ma who sent us the Zombie Combat Manual.

(37:26):
And I imagine pretty soon we're gonna have a werewolf
Combat Manual, I would hope. So it's Rogers Getting Lazy
and trunk List, 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 dot com. So
those are my books. Um, let's see what else. We

(37:49):
got another postcard from Rapa Nui from Emily B. That
rhymes Yeah. We got trifold wallets from trifold, try hold
from trifle wallets thanice man. Yeah, you should get paid
for this. There's a dude named lars c who kind
of went all over the place and he went to

(38:10):
Las Cobos, Las Cabos of course, Sammy Harry Gary'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 largs Aaron Cooper, thank you for your cool phone
Corps poster versions of some of your best stuff. You
should know photoshop jobs. Yes, I love these. That's not

(38:31):
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 Store Caroline Larsons in this magnetic skulls. Yeah,
those are awesome, like the Day of the Dead skulls
of her own art, I believe, I think so. Um
I've got her down too, and I have her website.
It is um. I believe Caroline Larson Art dot com.

(38:54):
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
sent us a knitted tree scarf. And this is just
a scarf that you go and you pick a tree
and you put a little scarf on it. Okay, and

(39:16):
it's pretty darn cute and it 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.
So thanks a lot for that, Corney. Uh. And that's
administrative details for this week part one. Uh. As far

(39:36):
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
school magnet. All right. Oh okay, let's see if you
want to uh tweet to us, you can join us

(39:59):
on Twitter at s y ESK podcasts. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us a good old fashioned website. Visit
to stuff you Should Know dot com for moralness and
thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff Works dot com