[HN Gopher] I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)
___________________________________________________________________
I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)
Author : tu7001
Score : 328 points
Date : 2024-05-30 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lettersofnote.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lettersofnote.com)
| sophoskiaskile wrote:
| It's beautiful :))
| sampo wrote:
| Somewhat related: http://www.rosenfels.org/Feynman
|
| After the war, Feynman got a "D" from an army psychological
| evaluation because he, among other things, told the psychiatrist
| that he occasionally talks to his late wife.
|
| "Thinks people talk about him. Thinks people stare at him.
| Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations. Talks to self. Talks to
| deceased wife."
| romwell wrote:
| Well, people sure do talk about him, he was on point there.
| That's what we're doing now!
|
| And why _wouldn 't_ he talk to himself? Clearly it would be a
| conversation with a much more interesting person than most
| people around him (and yes, I'm aware he worked on the
| Manhattan Project and the Challenger investigation).
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It's incredible that they are so out of touch they see healthy
| introspection, and love as mental illness. This reminds me of
| when I had an actual bacterial infection, couldn't get my Dr to
| prescribe antibiotics for it, so I got some on my own and they
| worked. When I pulled my medical records I saw in my chart
| something like "inappropriate off label use of prescription
| medications."
| redblacktree wrote:
| How did you pull your medical records?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I believe it's a legal right to request them. I sent them
| an official form requesting them, and they sent them to me,
| as I wanted to transfer my old records to a new doctor.
| These were old style records, nowadays most of that stuff
| will be automatically on some type of web portal.
| therobots927 wrote:
| How did you acquire the antibiotics?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| In this case I already had them- I had previously pulled a
| muscle that was causing a lot of pain, and a doctor
| inappropriately prescribed me a course of antibiotics for a
| physical injury that couldn't possibly be an infection, so
| I never took them.
|
| It really grates me that numerous times I've been
| inappropriately prescribed antibiotics- but the one time I
| had a dangerous and debilitating bacterial infection I was
| unable to obtain them.
|
| However many human safe antibiotics are legal to buy for
| animal use, and many countries sell oral antibiotics for
| human use over the counter without a prescription. Please-
| if anyone is reading this, don't use antibiotics
| inappropriately. Ideally work with a doctor,but if not make
| sure you actually need them, and you take a full course in
| the proper dose to avoid creating dangerous resistant
| strains.
| protastus wrote:
| I see two sides to this story.
|
| By his own account, Feynman thought the psychiatrist was a
| bullshitter (I can see his point), turned the interview around,
| trolled him and presented a clearly adversarial attitude.
| huskdigselv wrote:
| What a turbulence of emotions and thoughts this invokes in me; I
| envy this guys beautiful and rich love for his wife, since I
| haven't felt similar myself.
|
| Simultaneously I also really feel for him and the grief and miss
| that comes from losing someone you love; I still somewhat often
| talk to my mother who passed to remind her that I still think of
| her and out of love.
|
| These emotions are ambiguously painful and meaningful.
| nbgoodall wrote:
| "PS Please excuse my not mailing this -- but I don't know your
| new address."
|
| That hit hard.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I did not know Feynman was responsible for finding the cause of
| the Challenger explosion. That's remarkable on top of everything
| else he did.
| scrlk wrote:
| It's worth reading Feynman's _Personal Observations on
| Reliability of Shuttle_ , published as part of the Rogers
| Commission Report.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v2appf.htm
|
| > "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
| over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| It has come out more recently (2019) that Sally Ride was
| putting him on the trail. He acted the irascible dogged
| investigating scientist, and she got the astronauts' worries
| about shuttle program specifics out to the public.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| He was involved in the investigation committee, but of course
| wasn't the only one there. IIRC Neil Armstrong was also on the
| committee. I figure that part of the point of choosing them was
| to lend the committee credibility with the public. The public
| would probably trust that the findings were above board if they
| were supported by the first man on the Moon and one of the most
| prominent physicists of the time.
| kelnos wrote:
| To add to what others said, I believe his biggest contribution
| to the Challenger investigation (beyond his insight and damning
| conclusions) was that he refused to censor himself and his
| report for political or public-relations reasons. IIRC he said
| if he weren't allowed to publish his part of the report in the
| way he wanted, the commission was to remove his name from the
| report entirely, because he didn't want to be associated with a
| report that pulled punches.
| irusensei wrote:
| Having the feels over an HN post was not in my list today.
| mrweasel wrote:
| On one hand I am happy that we have things like Marcus Aurelius'
| Meditations, on the other I feel that peoples private and
| unpublished writings should be kept private. It's reasonable
| enough to let a limited number of researchers access private
| documents, but the broader public, no.
|
| This isn't a letter meant for us, it's not meant for anyone to
| read and I feel that publishing it is a little disrespectful.
| donatj wrote:
| Apres moi, le deluge.
|
| After I am dead, publish everything, correspondence, search
| history, location history, nude photos. I am dead, I cannot
| care.
| nick__m wrote:
| Correspondences usually involve at least another person so
| please wait until both side are dead before publishing
| everything.
| rpigab wrote:
| You won't care, but the living will.
|
| Funerals aren't meant for the deceased, they allow the living
| to mourn and move on. It may be irrational fears, but living
| people often fear what's gonna happen to them after they die,
| and respect for people extends after they die for most
| people. Not for everyone, but this means that some will feel
| uncomfortable about sharing private stuff. And then there's
| also superstition.
| strken wrote:
| Speaking only for myself, it has been invaluable to have
| access to the private papers of people like my great
| grandfather. It provides a real connection to a man, time,
| and place which I couldn't know in person.
|
| Perhaps publishing everything is a step too far, but things
| like semi-private diaries from a war or a voyage ---
| intended for immediate family to read, but not for
| publication --- are often okay to publish within living
| memory of the deceased. Sufficiently chaste love letters
| seem to me to be okay after a long enough time has elapsed,
| too.
| mrweasel wrote:
| If that is what you wish, then absolutely, publish
| everything. Where I question the morality is in private
| correspondence, a persons dairy and things which was
| explicitly never wanted to be published.
|
| There are movies, music and books which the creators
| specifically withheld from the world. Who are we to determine
| otherwise. Again I see no issue in researchers combing over
| half-written books, discarded sheet music or personal notes.
| I just think we should be respectful and keep things that was
| deliberately hidden from the world private. If an author
| leaves a 90% finished book and say they don't want it
| published, having family or publishers to going ahead,
| finishing it or publishing it in its half-finished state
| anyway after the death or the author doesn't sit right with
| me.
|
| That's not to say that something like Feynman letter to his
| wife isn't beautiful, it is, very much so. It was just not
| meant for us, it was meant for himself and a woman who would
| never read it.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| I think that once the author has passed, there's no harm to the
| publishing.
|
| In fact, I'd argue that it shows us true human nature,
| unfiltered and unedited. If we'd only allowed what was meant to
| be public, we'd be losing perspective as works meant to be
| public are carefully crafted for that purpose.
| jebarker wrote:
| I'm not sure where this letter was first published, but
| Feynman's daughter edited a book of many of his letters private
| and professional:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectly_Reasonable_Deviation...
|
| I found it very beneficial to read recently so I'm grateful
| that his family chose to publish.
|
| I enjoy "Letters of Note" and many of the most impactful
| letters are personal ones between private individuals.
| max-ibel wrote:
| Seconded. Letters of Note (there are various printed volumes
| as well, e.g. "Speeches of Note", "Letters of Notes: Cats",
| ...) are a very fine collection of thoughts.
|
| One of my favorites is "Why explore space":
| https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space.
| kelnos wrote:
| I agree in general, and enjoy reading things like this. But
| just because we enjoy something, it doesn't mean that it's
| right.
|
| I'm very torn on this. As I said, I also enjoy reading things
| like this. But I always get the uncomfortable feeling that
| I'm reading someone's private diary without their consent.
| Staple_Diet wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but Meditations was always written
| to be published though. It was less a private journal and more
| a write-as-you-go self help book. Marcus (Marky to his friends)
| hoped his writings would be read widely as it would spread his
| thoughts on stoicism etc.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I assume this is a joke or satire, given the 'Marky' bit?
| Meditations was absolutely not written to be published. Not
| only does he say (and imply through omission and other
| statements) some pretty damaging things about powerful people
| whose continued support he needed to rule effectively, much
| of it has very specific personal context that nobody but
| himself has ever been able to understand or interpret. A lot
| of it is referencing past events from his life that he
| doesn't explain, so is meaningless to anyone but himself. He
| talks a lot about admiring people whose names and specifics
| he never mentions, and then massively insults people like
| Herodes Atticus through omission (and negative anecdotes that
| imply him), someone who was a famous and powerful
| intellectual at the time, and a tutor that was a big part of
| his life- he had a lot to say about what he admired about his
| other tutors.
| begueradj wrote:
| Privacy and decency are weird notions for a lots of people
| nowadays who rather generate money by disclosing online
| everything private about their lives.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| This is history. The more we know, the better.
|
| If you think it's "too soon" then let's wait until his stuff
| gets dispersed hundreds of years after his death like has
| happened for every historical figure until recently. I'm sure
| 2236 historians will love it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If anyone believes people have a right to decide what
| information about them is made public, but believes they lose
| that right after death, I'd love to hear the argument for that.
|
| For me, the basis for accepting the first proposition is that
| you buy in to self-determination as a value in and of itself,
| worth respecting not just because the person is around to stop
| you from doing whatever you want to them. In other words, if
| they ever had the right to say how they wanted to be treated,
| why do they lose that right after death?
|
| As an example, if Bob one day told you that their name is now
| Alice, would you say "got, it Alice!" then go back to calling
| them Bob on the day they die? Why not? After all, what do they
| care, they're dead! To me, this sounds like a variation of the
| same argument against respecting someone's privacy after death,
| and bothers me for the same reason.
| smaudet wrote:
| I think the answer is buried somewhere in the mists
| of...time. Put another way, there is a temporal degree of
| respect for the dead, i.e. can you and for how long put the
| wishes of the dead above those of the living.
|
| Of course, for immediate death, as others have noted, there
| are plenty of "stakeholders", family members, etc. who have
| direct interest in the wishes of the dead being upheld (not
| having their communications exposed, as others have noted).
| These needs must be considered, but eventually those
| grandchildren will also themselves pass, and those stakes
| will have also vanished.
|
| Even for immediate death, the wishes of the dead can be
| invalid and ir-respected, such as in the case of a suicide
| bomber or a recently deceased captor/dictator.
|
| On the flip side, for those dead (tens of) thousands of
| years, we engage in a practice known as archeology, that I
| think you would have a hard time arguing the opposite - the
| information we glean from their table scraps is too valuable
| to worry about their death wishes, assuming they had any.
|
| In the great in-between, then, the question is, whose wishes
| matter more? Those of the deceased or those of the living.
| Usually, those of the living. And it is generally in our
| interest that we not disturb the dead too much, because at
| least we would like to live in a society that continues to
| grow, and does not need to disturb them (too much), respect
| our own wishes, etc. But ultimately, once it can be said it
| no longer harms any living, or any _future_ living, then the
| desires of the living trump the desires of the deceased.
| multjoy wrote:
| Because you are dead. You have ceased to be and your wishes
| no longer bind the living beyond the division of your assets,
| and even then that is only because of bitter legal argument
| between the survivors of an estate.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's not an absolute truth, that's just what you believe.
| I happen to believe the opposite, that a person's death
| does not cancel our obligations toward that person or that
| person's wishes.
|
| > _You have ceased to be and your wishes no longer bind the
| living beyond the division of your assets_
|
| Why are assets special? Why do you draw the line there? A
| more consistent position would be that we're free to ignore
| a decedent's last will and testament because they're dead
| and their wishes no longer matter. But if we believe in the
| importance in honoring someone's will, then I think we
| should honor any agreement or social norm that was in
| effect while they were alive.
| throw0101c wrote:
| A little longer (76 pages), but _A Grief Observed_ by C.S. Lewis
| is also worth checking out:
|
| * http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/PDFs/GriefObserved_CSL.pd...
| (Canada public domain)
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Grief_Observed
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26077627-a-grief-observe...
| dano wrote:
| This is a worthwhile read. Grief is really not as cut and dried
| as it's sometimes made out to be. As Lewis came around to
| understanding, and perhaps Feynman too, we had something
| special, something grand, and to remember is comforting.
| strenholme wrote:
| My wife died 10 years ago, so I understand that pain. Dealing
| with death is never easy. The thing I miss most about my wife is
| the depth of emotional connection; she knew everything about me
| being very deeply in love with me and everything I did really
| mattered to her. It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a
| network of friends who can give me comparable levels of
| socialization and attention; I have about two dozen very close
| friends (both male and female) across the world now and it's
| finally enough to replace the hole in my life I had which my wife
| used to fill.
|
| I can see why Feynman became sexually promiscuous afterwards,
| undoubtedly to numb the pain of losing his wife; seduction
| allowed him to have a form of that connection, albeit without the
| depth and love of what he had with his wife. While that path
| looked appealing to me, I do not regret avoiding that temptation.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I mean this seriously. Why not both? I don't see the problem
| with having multiple types of relationships with people,
| including sex. As long as everyone is on the same page
| (consensual, they know it's casual, etc.)
|
| Sorry for your loss and glad you're doing better.
| mycologos wrote:
| I don't think strenholme is saying that those casual
| relationships are morally wrong, but that they're only
| facsimiles of the connection found in a deep and long
| relationship (especially one formed when young), and that
| pursuing facsimiles maybe brings you close enough to the
| original that you keep pursuing, but not close enough to ever
| approximate the original, and if what you miss is the
| original, then this is not a path to satisfaction.
| graemep wrote:
| Interesting point, but surely the reasoning that they are
| "only facsimiles of the connection found in a deep and long
| relationship" is a major argument for regarding them as
| morally wrong?
|
| If you believe you have a moral duty to be the best person
| you can then passing up that opportunity in favour of the
| facsimiles is morally wrong.
| mycologos wrote:
| > If you believe you have a moral duty to be the best
| person you can then passing up that opportunity in favour
| of the facsimiles is morally wrong
|
| Maybe a better statement would be that casual connections
| only offer facsimiles of the _depth_ of a deep and long
| relationship, because the sheer accumulation of time and
| experiences with another person cannot be replaced
| quickly. However, you can also say that a deep and long
| relationship only offers a facsimile of the _breadth_ of
| many shorter relationships, as one person can only offer
| so many things. If you change your passionate pursuit
| every decade, finding a partner with the same one each
| time might make that pursuit more fruitful. It 's not how
| I personally feel, but "best person" is subjective like
| that.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't think this follows unless you think there is
| something particularly special about sexual relations per
| se. I'm monogamous but I don't see why people should
| avoid casual sex.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Why not both? I don't see the problem with having multiple
| types of relationships with people, including sex.
|
| May I suggest retiring to The Villages in FL? They seem to
| have the multiple partners thing worked out.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=the+villages+florida+sex&ia=.
| ..
| kgwgk wrote:
| > I can see why Feynman became sexually promiscuous afterwards,
| undoubtedly to numb the pain of losing his wife; seduction
| allowed him to have a form of that connection, albeit without
| the depth and love of what he had with his wife.
|
| He married again in 1952 and divorced in 1958 (and married
| again a couple of years later).
|
| I don't know if sexual promiscuity was part of the divorce
| complaint but apparently this fragment was in it: "He begins
| working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He
| did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the
| living room, and while lying in bed at night."
| jebarker wrote:
| After reading lots of biographical material on Feynman it
| seems like he was a very loving father and husband
| (especially to his first wife) but obviously devoted to
| physics. I would imagine it's very difficult to find the
| balance between his kind of career and family such that the
| family feels they get sufficient attention.
| nequo wrote:
| It's difficult when you want to live three lives in one
| human lifetime, and academia is one of those careers where
| that might happen to you.
| swyx wrote:
| > academia is one of those careers where that might
| happen to you
|
| why? i dont follow. is academia so special there?
| andrewjf wrote:
| I imagine it's because of the lure of pure-research and
| self-actualization and pursuing an area of study with
| almost no limitations. No idea if this is true or not,
| but this is how I idealize academia.
|
| Opposed to "industry" -- where you're under constant
| pressure to figure out why some random docker container
| pull fails or mutating web hook won't let your pod be
| deleted. It's just not fun or meaningful. It's a slog and
| the needless complexity is doing nothing but increasing.
| card_zero wrote:
| Nice to know that mere friendship (in heavy doses) can do the
| same job. I thought this should be possible, but was worried it
| might not be.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It might depend on the person. I want in-person friendships
| and 24 people sounds like more than I could reasonably give
| attention to. And I want non-platonic things
| throwaway64643 wrote:
| I always felt a sense of betrayal when someone sought a new
| partner after their spouse dies. But when I read a passage by
| Freeman Dyson about Feynman's trip to Santa Fe to meet his new
| girlfriend, my view has significantly shifted. Dyson (or
| perhaps someone else; I don't recall exactly) spoke of Feynman
| as someone who cannot stay out of a romantic relationship for
| too long. Some men just always want to love and be loved.
| tasuki wrote:
| > I always felt a sense of betrayal when someone sought a new
| partner after their spouse dies.
|
| Why?
| jhbadger wrote:
| right? I mean even the traditional marriage vows (which
| given the possibility of divorce aren't really to be taken
| literally) include the phrase "until death do us part",
| implying that you are free to find somebody else once your
| partner has died.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think remaining unmarried after a death is mostly a
| function of the amount of effort it takes to build that
| connection again. For some it may seem preferable to keep
| true to a memory.
| criddell wrote:
| If you die before your partner, do you want them to remain
| single the rest of their lives?
|
| If that were to happen to me, I definitely want my wife to
| love and be loved again.
| seanhunter wrote:
| There is an absolutely heartbreaking(to me at least) moment
| in the classics in "Sayings of the Spartan Women" when
| Leonidas is leading his men to Thermophylae to almost
| certain death at the hands of the Persians his wife asks
| him what she should do if he dies and he says "Marry a good
| man, and bear good children."
|
| I think this is amazing. He wants her to lead a happy and
| full life. I for sure would want that for my wife if I was
| to die first. I love her to bits and would want her to be
| happy.
| jll29 wrote:
| That's because true love is _unselfish_.
|
| The idea of a couple that belongs together beyond death
| might sound romantic but is ultimately too tough on the
| one left behind, especially if the loving couple are
| separated with the "leftover" still being relatively
| young.
|
| (On a side note, I'm positively excited to read a quote
| on HN that dates from about 480 before Christ. It surely
| is still relevant two and a half thousand years later.)
| jseliger wrote:
| I'm facing just this problem and would not:
| https://jakeseliger.com/2023/08/30/turning-two-lives-into-
| on...
| smeej wrote:
| I've even heard stories where the one who is dying offers
| advice to the one who will survive about which of their
| single friends would likely make the best match.
|
| And why not? Who knows the remaining spouse better than the
| departing one? Who has better insight than that? It seems
| like a deeply loving thing to do.
|
| Even though her death was sudden and there was no chance to
| prepare for it, it makes me smile to know my sister's
| widower married someone who knew and loved my sister too.
| And it's probably easier for the second spouse this way
| too, because she does have context for her husband's grief.
| She also grieves the anniversary of my sister's death,
| obviously not in the same way, but with an understanding
| that someone who didn't know my sister would struggle to
| have.
| lisper wrote:
| IMHO, it's not promiscuity that is morally questionable, its
| promiscuity without the informed consent of all parties
| involved. Feynman had affairs with married women (presumably
| without their husbands' knowledge or consent) and students,
| over whom he held power and whose consent (assuming they did
| consent) cannot have been free from coercion. (He also flat-out
| lied to women to get them to sleep with him, which is also not
| OK.)
|
| I think it's important to distinguish these situations because
| I think there are a lot of people going through a lot of
| emotional pain because they believe that any sex outside of a
| long-term monogamous relationship is morally questionable, and
| it's not. The challenge is that insuring that all parties have
| given informed consent is hard, but the emotional toll of
| throwing in the towel on this can be pretty high, so I think it
| can be an effort worth making. Certainly it's worthwhile
| telling people that it's OK to try.
| sharadov wrote:
| I am so happy that you were able to build that emotional
| connection. My dad is terminally ill and often I think about
| what I will miss most when he is no more. And I realized it
| would be the depth of emotional connection - a person who knows
| you in and out and unconditionally loves you.
|
| I try to steel myself about the coming eventuality, but all I
| know is it's going to be a deep abyss and it will take
| everything to climb out of it.
| buck746 wrote:
| I lost my mom to cancer when I was 17. She fought with it for
| 6.5 years prior. Even knowing it was coming it was
| devastating. 24 years later I still miss her, I'm sure I
| always will. It hurts knowing that I'm now older than she was
| when she passed.
|
| When it happened it was the worst emotional pain I had
| experienced, it does get better in time. Your feelings are
| valid. You don't have to feel whatever anyone else thinks you
| should feel. It feels cliche that it gets better in time, in
| my experience tho it does. I'm sorry your dad and family is
| going thru that. Oddly I found Cyberpunk 2077 to be
| therapeutic on coming to terms with that situation. In the
| game you play a character who essentially has a terminal
| disease, there are a lot of moments in the game that rang
| very true to the emotions I experienced.
|
| When your dad eventually departs, you are allowed to feel
| anything. I have been the type to laugh at a funeral
| remembering something funny the departed said or did. If you
| feel like crying that's ok too.
| sharadov wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words.
| swyx wrote:
| > It has taken me nearly 10 years to build a network of friends
| who can give me comparable levels of socialization and
| attention;
|
| building close friends as an adult is a known Hard Problem when
| everyone has their own lives. any big insights or breakthroughs
| you can share for the rest of us?
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| As someone in my first real realtionship of 5+ years[0] with
| someone I love more than I could ever have imagined, this hits
| pretty hard...
|
| I know it's a bit cliche and cringe to say, but my partner really
| did become my best friend. If I feel bad, the first thing I
| search for is being close and talking to them. We understand and
| support each other completely and do random things together, like
| described in the letter.
|
| We'll move in together in about a year, loosing them would
| probably rock me really hard and I currently can't imagine who
| I'd use as emotional support, as the person in question would be
| gone.
|
| May we happily be together for a long time <3
|
| [0] _only realized now that i 've been with them for almost all
| of my adult life (yes, not that old)._
| medstrom wrote:
| It's an almost universal feeling, "I can't imagine who I'd use
| as emotional support", but if you end things I promise that you
| will find someone again. Not a replacement, but not a knockoff
| either, just different.
| coldtea wrote:
| Some people don't find someone as good again though. Good
| spouses/friends/etc are not that replaceable.
|
| Or rather, they're replacable practically, but the new
| persons are not necessarily offering the same level of
| connection.
| medstrom wrote:
| You used an interesting view of "practical" :) Deep
| connection is not just some bonus, I think, but in fact the
| main practical thing about a relationship.
|
| So I share your concern, but even so I'm not that worried.
| The deeper a connection you've been able to forge in the
| past, the better your chances of forging another deep
| connection.
| coldtea wrote:
| This is twofold I think.
|
| If having had a deep connection happened because you are
| in general someone easily capable of deep connection, it
| would be indeed easier to connect deeply again.
|
| But if having a deep connection happened despite you not
| being such a person, but, e.g., because the person you
| lost had an equally rare disposition as you, or you lived
| through special circumstances that bonded you more
| deeply, it's probably harder to replicate this.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Need to forget this and feel trust at some point, this is the
| point of having a relationship IMO
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > I promise that you will find someone again
|
| Yeah, it's not that i fear that i'll be alone forever, i just
| believe that our connection is very special and strong as we
| came together as young adults and are now in our mid-
| twenties, so we kind of bonded and matured together through
| the pandemic, starting new jobs, getting degrees, going on
| vacations etc. we've experienced so much together that it'll
| take quite some time to get to know another person to the
| same level. And we don't even live together at the moment...
|
| In all these years i can't think of a single fight or long-
| winded argument, if you exclude angryness caused by
| dehydration or hunger during stressful situations. we've got
| different skills and personality traits which add up. we've
| got the same idea on what makes for a comfortable evening or
| weekend. etc.
|
| TL;DR - we're just a very good match. Of course there are
| aspects where we could match better, but i can only think of
| one or two small things.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| This is not cringe at all IMO. It is the best thing that
| happened to me by far as well. Having someone to care about
| each other, feeling love and especially pure trust is really
| really priceless.
|
| Hope you will be happy and together
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Yeah, not sure why i think that others could find it cringe,
| as you say it's really one of the best things which can
| happen.
|
| Thank you! Same for you, if that "best thing to happen" is
| still going on :)
| robviren wrote:
| Man, when the analytical minded come to grips with emotions it
| always hits hard for me. I love that he reflects on the
| impractically of his own thoughts and just accepts how he feels.
| This love letter hits hard
| MrDresden wrote:
| Half way through reading that, I stopped and sent my partner a
| message telling them how much I love and respect them. They have
| recently passed the 5 year survival mark after a cancer diagnosis
| and treatment, and are coming up on 3 years for their second
| different cancer diagnosis and treatment.
|
| None of us knows how much time we have ourselves or with our
| loved ones, so make the most of it in the moment.
| coldtea wrote:
| People appreciating this letter might also appreciate "A crow
| look at me" by Mount Eerie (a one-person music project), written
| by Phil just after his wife died of cancer, and dealing with it.
|
| Here's an example track: https://genius.com/Mount-eerie-real-
| death-lyrics
| moolcool wrote:
| That entire album is such a massive emotional gut-punch.
| patcon wrote:
| THANK YOU. I'm listening to this now, and deciding what is
| appropriate to share with my family <3
| exitb wrote:
| Just a note that the album represents a much more raw and
| unprocessed point of view - I wouldn't recommend it to anyone
| dealing with a recent loss.
| 1stub wrote:
| This may be the most gut-wrenching album ever created. Gets me
| every time.
| LogHouse wrote:
| > You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
|
| Beautiful. Leave this mark on someone.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| That's hard.
| patcon wrote:
| This is beautiful. And not just beautiful, but true, I think.
|
| I've been working through thoughts about my dead mother the past
| few months, in concert with a new partner in my life who also
| lost her mother. We've been working through some thoughts...
| somewhat related to an information-theoretic view of death.
| Here's an excerpt of something I wrote on the topic[1] in 2018:
|
| > [snip] So anyhow, as I'm sitting in on this session [about IETF
| multistakeholder internet governance], and I'm realizing that
| what we're really trying to figure out with internet governance
| is how to govern a complex system. So it's perhaps less internet
| governance, but rather network governance. And so what patterns
| have we seen in other systems, that deals with this challenge of
| creating space for new participants, while honouring the history
| of past participants?
|
| > And this lead to some interesting thoughts on the big pattern
| that often goes unspoken: Death.
|
| > ### DEATH IS HEGEMONIC.
|
| > It may sound funny to describe death as a pattern. We often
| talk about it like it's this fact of existence. And it might as
| well be. It's omnipresent. Pretty much every living thing we know
| of, dies. It has prevailed in all living networks, through
| countless iterations. Death is hegemonic.
|
| > But what about death might be selected for? How does it benefit
| the network? Perhaps it's best to imagine this first at the scale
| of individual personal relationships. That's simpler, and I
| believe the reasoning is portable up to larger social scales.
|
| > Imagine how we might have moved on from Newtonian physics if
| that intellectual heavy-weight Newton were still alive and
| influential within the network. One could imagine that it might
| be difficult. Newton's thinking was clever, but we also
| understand it to be misguided by today's measure. In a world
| without death, new ideas would have to grapple and contend not
| just with static ideas and information, but with the dynamic and
| increasingly stubborn minds that birthed them. (This
| [stubbornness and confidence](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c3
| ef/2811b280c069c6a99d66e4...) of age, is perhaps another selected
| pattern, with it's own subtle network rationale, but I digress.)
|
| > Instead, the mind of an organism dies, and leaves information
| scattered throughout the human network in the form of static
| reference -- in the minds of family and peers, in blog posts and
| newspaper articles, in books and distorted recollections.
|
| > So how would one describe the pattern of death? Through an
| unsentimental network lens, we could perhaps think about it as a
| data compression or noise reduction tactic of the larger evolving
| system. Or at a more human scale, we could imagine it as a
| process by which organisms go from the role of __living dynamic
| actors__ to become __static references__.
|
| > While the Newton example is on a worldly stage, there's perhaps
| another example that's more on the personal level. You can
| imagine this same dynamic playing in the relations between
| parents and children. The death of a parent, tragic as it is, is
| an opportunity for this complex character to move from __actor__
| to __reference__ in the minds of their children. This memory is
| now open to healthy reinterpretation, which perhaps gives their
| ideas and actions more meaning than when they were alive. A
| static reference of a human, whether it's a memory or a book or
| an article, becomes a bare skeleton picked clean, on which to
| hang new ideas and emotions and reflections.
|
| > After death, what remains is an abstraction -- a simplification
| of the human who once was. But this abstraction can be re-
| imagined and built upon by the folks who follow.
|
| > And maybe this is healthy. Maybe this makes for healthy
| societies, with the right balance of new imaginings and old
| wisdoms on which to hang them.
|
| I have a hard time with death. I don't think of my mother as much
| as I'd like. But in the past few weeks, I've started writing to
| her in an empty group chat that goes to no one. I've been going
| through old emails and replying to all the messages I never
| responded to, which have previously been the source of a lot of
| shame.
|
| And it's really helping me. It's like she's continuing to grow
| with me, and me with her. And not just that, but it's helping me
| override the version of her (the broken versions, the sick
| versions) that overrepresent my recollections of her in the
| months before her death.
|
| In writing and communing with her, even in her absence, my
| relationship with her in growing, and she is growing too. And
| she's more alive in my conversations with my living family. And
| I'm reflecting my daily interactions and decisions through her
| consideration. It's very strange. I feel like I've been
| reintroduced to my mother.
|
| And it's also leading me to odd thoughts. Is every departure or
| absence of the true and active physical form (not just in death)
| a chance to consider someone like this. Can I share secret
| thoughts with a new love, with an imagined version of them, since
| the flesh-and-blood version of them would be scared of my sharing
| such things with them? Can I treat the living as dead in some
| ways, to shape them in my mind just as much as I might shape them
| later in the real world? Is this what we're always doing
| implicitly, when we build models of one another an empathize and
| imagine what they might do, in the spaces between when we have
| access to them? And what might we be losing in the world when we
| never have these absences, when we are never disconnected, never
| far enough away to grow alongside the imagined version of our
| loved ones, rather than trying to grow only with the actual
| biological one?
|
| Anyhow, thanks for hearing me out on these thoughts. I will
| imagine a reader as entertained and grateful, until you choose to
| reveal yourself otherwise <3
|
| [1]: https://medium.com/@patcon/reflections-on-the-evolved-
| patter...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Richard Feynman: Physicist and bon vivant.
|
| I think that's why he's so interesting to people. He defies the
| stereotypes we have for a nerdy intellectual that suggests smart
| people don't know how to have fun or socialize or love...etc.
| dang wrote:
| Reposts are fine after a year or so but this topic had a major
| thread within the last year, so the current post counts as a dupe
| by HN's standard. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
|
| _Love after life: Richard Feynman 's letter to his departed wife
| (2017)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37914958 - Oct
| 2023 (127 comments)
|
| Earlier threads, in case of interest:
|
| _No Other Love: Letters from Richard Feynman to His Late Wife,
| Arline_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29681462 - Dec
| 2021 (44 comments)
|
| _Love After Life: Richard Feynman's Letter to His Departed Wife
| (2017)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24204678 - Aug
| 2020 (1 comment)
|
| _Richard Feynman 's Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280764 - March 2019 (12
| comments)
|
| _Feynman 's Letter to His Wife_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10375283 - Oct 2015 (60
| comments)
|
| _Richard Feynman's Love Letter to His Wife Sixteen Months After
| Her Death_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7893757 - June
| 2014 (1 comment)
|
| _Feynman: I love my wife. My wife is dead._ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4178368 - June 2012 (2
| comments)
| patcon wrote:
| REPOSTED from deleted top level comment.
|
| @dang I'm seeing that it was posted 7 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37914958
|
| I appreciate the rules, but am very disappointed. There are
| some incredibly moving comments in here. I rarely feel as
| connected to the hacker news community as when reading these
| comments. The fact that it was erased off the front page for
| some rigid application of the rules, that leaves me with a bad
| taste.
|
| For your consideration in the next cycle: pls consider valence
| of comments when determining dupes. If there is either an
| unfolding of (1) very valuable and new information, or (2) very
| sincere and vulnerable feelings, people might appreciate your
| bending the rules. thanks for considering
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've turned off the dupe marker on this one.
| solardev wrote:
| Thanks for being flexible with the rules! This is the first
| time I've seen this post, and I appreciated it.
| patcon wrote:
| you are delightful. i appreciate you, dang
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Thank you Dang. I feel this is the right time to bring this
| discussion back, as HN has recently been having a lot of
| discussions about love, death, and loss. This discussion
| really isn't only about the linked letter.
| swyx wrote:
| thank you dang. this is a special topic and deserved the
| exception
| em-bee wrote:
| i agree with this. the problem with duplicates is that they
| often lead to repeating arguments that have already been
| hashed out in the previous discussions, and nothing new is
| being learned by repeating the same discussion after a short
| time.
|
| however, this is only true if the actual content of the
| article is being discussed, and that is not the case here. we
| get discussions about loss, depression and other topics in
| that area every other month or so. and these discussions
| aren't so much about the articles themselves, but they invite
| people to share their personal stories that only relate to
| the article.
|
| if it was the same people each time just repeating their
| stories, then it would make sense to call it a duplicate, but
| instead these posts open up a space for different people to
| share and deal with their grief and their struggles, which i
| think is worthwhile to allow more frequently than duplication
| rules would permit.
| jll29 wrote:
| Dang is a fantastic moderator (thanks for your services,
| @dang!), and yet I also agree with the parent poster that
| this thread has been special.
|
| [No good rule without worthy exceptions ;-).]
| pard68 wrote:
| Not a knock on Feynman, but he did re-marry in '52, which ended
| in divorce a few years later and then married a third time in
| '60, and stayed married until his death.
| pard68 wrote:
| I sometimes think about what my life would be like if my wife
| passed away. I'm also a father, and sometimes I wonder what life
| would be like if I lost my entire family. I think I'd have a hard
| time finding purpose and would either spiral or would become
| hyper focused in my career.
|
| It is amazing. I had the same "best friend" for 20 years, from
| age 3 until 23, but almost as soon as I set eyes on my wife she
| became my best friend and became a much deeper and beloved one. I
| find that much of my motivation in life is because I want the
| best for her and our children.
| scioto wrote:
| This reminds me of John Scalzi's early SF book, Old Man's War.
| One of the MC's motivations throughout the book was the love of
| his wife. Apart from the pew-pew aspects, it's one of those
| stories that can hit you in the feels in the appropriate places.
| Won't say any more since it'd give away too much.
| acbart wrote:
| Ten days from now will mark the one year anniversary of my wife's
| death. We would have been together for 11 years last November.
| It's tough. I really understand this letter, I think. You can't
| stop loving them. Why would you want to? It hurts. I send her
| Facebook messages, although earlier today it said it couldn't
| send them. I could write a letter, but that is not how we
| communicated. I may have to think of some other form of
| "communication" soon. An email, perhaps.
| smeej wrote:
| FWIW, I still "call" my sister. I pick up the phone and dial
| it. Pop my earbuds in. Then I just hit the button to lock the
| phone instead of the one to call the number. And we talk.
|
| It's been 6.5 years since she was alive to answer the phone,
| but my heart knows her voice and what she would say. I don't
| always actually dial the actual phone these days, but we still
| catch up.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I hosted Shaun Usher, the author of Letters of Note, at Google:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg7LRg2NAfM&list=PL4ugKP-T4L...
|
| I had Googlers pick a letter out of the book and read it aloud. I
| don't think we did that one, though. There are a lot of moving
| and occasionally funny letters in that book and it'd make a great
| gift for someone.
|
| Interestingly enough, Shaun courted his wife entirely by pen-and-
| paper letters, and this was well after the Internet era.
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