I don't know what's going on.  It's not PMS but I've been sad lately.   Any attempts to try to be light tend to get shot down.  I'm very upset and annoyed with one of my facebook friends.  I just want to vent.

This is someone we went to High School with and she was sadly widowed at the age of 33.  She had a one year old baby at the time.  Well over the years you could see her moving on on Facebook.  She moved.  Sold her house and started a new job.   Met a really nice guy who had a son.  They moved in together and then last Friday they eloped.  She got married on Friday the 13th.  She always jokes about how unlucky she's been in life.  They both have a sort of black humor about them.

So the other day I put up a clip of a video on her Facebook page that was just a fun song with a couple playing as a duet obviously in their own home.  I thought it was cute.

I posted  "Am I the only one who can imagine....XXXX and XXXX doing this in their house after the kids have gone to sleep."

So she posts   under it  "Ha ha  I think if  XXXXX started playing the drums in the house after the kids had gone to sleep  I'd be a widow again pretty quickly.........what?  .........to soon?  LOL"


After I picked up my jaw off the keyboard I just deleted the whole thing.   And I'm annoyed by it.  I really am.  I posted something nice and fun on your wall and you mock it with death humor about your husband's death?  It just creeped me out.  It took me aback.  But at the same time I thought,  well now this is how she's coping.  Maybe it's just her way.  But I still feel it was really out of line.

What do you all think?

I think it's just a way of coping and that she didn't mean it in a harmful matter or against her husband or anything.  I think of it when Ellen Degeneres had John McCain on her show and he said how he thought marriage was between a man and a woman but they can agree to disagree and then Ellen asked if he would walk her down the aisle.  A little bit of humor can go a long way even in the toughest times. 

Thanks everyone.   I think that's such a good point Sarah7.  It's not that she shouldn't have done it. It just took me aback.   Hopefully things will look up soon. 

I had an accident at work several years ago. And it was bad. my lower left leg was crushed by a fork lift truck. it was hanging by a muscle and an artery. people rushed to help and as I waited on the EMT's, one of the other Forklift drivers looked like he was going to hurl. I myself was busy taking my belt off so I could put it around my leg so I could slow the bleeding. As I was doing this, I smiled and said "You better be careful. you know what they say, accidents happen in 3's."

"Dont say that!" he said with a panicked expression.

I was taken to the hospital and then flown to another by helicopter. As I was being wheeled away, I thanked the aircrew for the wonderful flight and how I wished the view had been better.

When the surgeon came in after examining me, he said that he would do all he could, but there was a high risk that I would lose it. I just smiled and said " Well then, I want pictures."
When I was laying there in the hospital, a chaplain popped by to see how I was. She was really nice. And she put this little pencil topper that looked like a frog on one of my leg pins. And it stayed there until the pins came out. I named it Hopper.

I was off for 9 months. to this day I dont like talking about the actual night it happened. And as I post this I am feeling apprehensive and I'm not enjoying the trip down memory lane. But talking about the funny parts makes it bearable. Like when my leg was filling in at the back, I told my wife, "it looks like prime beef... great, now I'm hungry."
I could have very well been depressed during that time, but I wasn't. because I made fun of it.  The only time I couldn't make light of something was the day I had the pins and rods taken out of my leg.

There was a little girl on the other bed beside me who had a broken arm. Her name was Madison. She couldn't have been more than 8-10 years old. She and I got to talking about how we each got hurt. I told her about my accident and how I would be getting a cast put on like her's. She told me that her mother died in a car accident, her dad broke both of his legs and her baby brother had also been killed. Her caregiver later on told me his car seat had been ejected from the car and was laying in the middle of traffic. People just drove around the seat like a piece of debris. I felt so sad for this little girl. And so I gave Hopper to the little girl and said " This frog was given to me by God so I would feel better. I think I was meant to really give her to you so you would feel better too." And it made her smile.

I would rather find the humor in something bad than let it bring me down, because it's a hard trip back up.

Just an FYI there,

Wow what a touching story.  Thank you for sharing.  I'm reevaluating it all.  I suppose humor does help.  Your story has left me speechless for a change. 

'I hope you all are Republicans.'
Ronald Reagan to the doctors and nurses in the ER, very close to death after being shot.

Lots of people really admire that quality of being able to laugh at death and whistle past the graveyard.  Even though I was not in the RR fan club by any means, and even less of a fan of violence usurping democracy so I was very upset at the shooting I have to say that when I heard that it made me smile.  Though a lot of the Reagan politics were fake, that quality that Reagan had that made people like and admire him so much was genuine.

Indeed a critical part of the make-up of our own ages's iconic version of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, James Bond, was that cool and humorous manner in which he faced death - his own, and everybody else too.  As do the people around him.

Bond: Who would want to put a contract out on me?
M: Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors. The list is endless!

...............

"The medium is the message"
Marshall McLuhan (emphasis mine)
If your looking for piercing analysis and serious contemplation of issues of life and death, Facebook is probably the wrong place to look.  It's simply not structured that way.  It started out as "Who's hot?", and evolved into "Who's awesome? You (or I) am awesome."

After all, it's not Plato's Academy in Athens, or a lecture hall there at The Master and Fellows of the College of the Great Hall of the University of Oxford - it's Facebook.

Quote from: mixie on January 19, 2012, 11:59:09 AM
Wow what a touching story.  Thank you for sharing.  I'm reevaluating it all.  I suppose humor does help.  Your story has left me speechless for a change.

I thought it was important to tell so that you'd  understand better why some people see humor in the most tragic events. It can really change your perspective and outlook on things. I could not however, find the humor in Madison's tragedy.  In fact it was pretty hard to hold back the tears as I wrote about her. All I can do is remember that girl and hope that she and her Father are doing well.

This thread might need a trigger alert in the title.

My wife is totally disabled after a freak accident and we use humour to keep us going. Some of it can be quite sick but we cannot dwell on some things in life we have to cope.

I also work with seriously ill people with leukaemia and lymphoma. The staff have to keep telling jokes to keep going. There is absolutely no disrespect meant to our patients we love them and care for them with unbridled passion.  But if we didn't crack a joke about something silly, and usually disrespectful, we would all be swallowing guns.

I think what you posted was very nice, and she responded in a way that she has found to cope. Remember she is also thinking of what could happen to her new husband and she needs to deal with that emotion.

A close friend was in a similar position, her husband died and some years later she met a marvellous man who adored her and her son. They married, he was killed on their honeymoon falling off a horse.

Obviously she was inconsolable and the weeks following were hell for everyone concerned. One night she said to me, I knew this would happen, I would give my heart to another man and he would  die as well.

Acceptance of our fragility is difficult at the best of times.

Hugs
You are a good friend to her and she knows it.

Cindy

Quote from: Felix on January 20, 2012, 12:25:32 AM
This thread might need a trigger alert in the title.

Done

Thank you Cindy.

And mixie I didn't mean to downplay what you said, I'm just fragile and a complete wuss and I had to spend some time chewing on the gristle of this thread before coming back to it.

I'm a huge fan of telling people when they upset you. Half the time they don't mean to, and will be more than willing to change their approach to you. I personally employ a lot of gallows humor in my day-to-day life, mostly because it's the only way to not turn cold to or be crushed by difficult realities. I also personally cannot handle certain kinds of humor, and I try to be understanding until any given person is clear on how I feel.

So yeah. I joke about my daughter being Rainman or Hannibal Lecter or Ralph Wiggum, and I joke about death sometimes, and I joke about my failed career and lack of family. But practical jokes, rape references, certain racial humor, and sometimes class-divisive stuff (and other things, probably) are really off-limits with me.

Everybody's got their own boundaries, but not all of us are always good at recognizing where they are.

Mixie I hope you find ways to feel better. Being sad is hard, and being frustrated with other people is often harder.

Well not trying to top any of what has been said, but think about it...

I did my pre-SRS-op testes and was told I need a quintuple-heart-bypass, as NO surgeon would touch me for any op such like SRS. (~ 7 – 8 hrs being under)

So, I go and have it done and keep smiling, getting real well and fit again - and in the process doing my daily 1 hr walks run after a dog, fall, hit my chin pretty badly... and get subdural-haematoma (blood on the brain) big time, some 2 weeks later.

I was jolly far gone all of the sudden, had an emergency brain op, 3 DAYS before I was due for SRS in Thailand!
After the first brain op I got "water on the brain" and in no time became paralysed COMPLETELY on the whole right side, lost my speech, all articulation, ... get the idea.

Once the drain in my brain got pulled out (by accident) almost 2 pints of fluid drained and with it my paralysed condition improved drastically.

Today I'm as fit as before, or better, AND had my SRS done to boot. All this within 1 1/4 year!

Guess what, there is only one way to deal with such stuff - just laugh it off and say many, many prayers between the laughs.

Life is not supposed to do stuff like that to us --- but it does just that at times, and so don't ever loose your humour.
It gets easier (in my experience) if you close to total disaster or death.
Been there got the cap and the T-shirt.
So often smaller things seem to affect us LOTS more, why?
I don't really know.

Axélle

Quote from: Axélle-Michélle on January 20, 2012, 08:35:04 AM
Guess what, there is only one way to deal with such stuff - just laugh it off and say many, many prayers between the laughs.
Axélle

Axelle you have had your share of tough stuff.  Glad you still have a sense of humor.
............................

I have good fortune of living in a city with large support groups.  Sometimes depression hits and I want to see no one.  But I went to support groups anyway.  And you know what?  I had a good time.  Even made people laugh because I am very silly.  Sat with FTM's this week and had a blast.  They were calm and told a bunch of jokes.  I have tried to ask for one phone number each week.  Time we most need a friend is when we are down and that is when we isolate ourselves.  Many people have many worse problems than me and they are so kind to me.  It makes me feel lucky and blessed.  I actually volunteered to do activist duty this week.  Shocked whole room since I only came out few weeks ago.  But strangely my depression was gone when I was with friends.

Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance

If she has made it through the five stages why haven't you?  It was her husband who died and her life that was shattered after all?

thank you for putting "trigger" warnings.  I think it triggered me.   I have a lot of my own stresses and issues.  I think sometimes it causes me to feel like an outsider. I can be friendly and positive.   But inside I'm often very lonely.


But I think it bothered me for what Cindy James posted.  I think of it like she is whistling past the grave yard.  I also think she's someone who was hurt very badly.  And I think what bothers me is that my reaction was to snatch it down of facebook.  I felt embarrassed and like the local awkward moron.  I usually have terrible foot in the mouth disease.  So I couldn't handle the idea that I had posted something that caused her to think of a hurt.

getting choked up about thinking about that guilty feeling.


Sigh.  Thank you everyone.  I appreciate the honesty and vulnerability in this thread.

Well, you know. You've helped us so much I couldn't imagine not returning the favour Mixie*hugs*