Is America Handling Grief the Wrong Way?

0:00What do you think are some of the shortcomings about our culture around grief here in America? Our shortcomings about grief? Yeah, I think that we just kind of, we don’t acknowledge it. Like, I really wish, like, as a culture, like, we had something like Dia de los Muertos, where you celebrate the coming back of your lost loved ones and you build shrines, even like Asian cultures, Japan, they build shrines, you remember them actively. But we don’t really do that. We have cemeteries, but if you want to be cremated, then you don’t get to go somewhere to honor your loved one. It’s just, you just do it every day, try to find something in daily life to remember them by, and sometimes that’s not enough.

0:45and it would be nice to have a day to have a moment that is dedicated to like honoring their memory specifically instead of just on a day to day get hit with that grief out of nowhere and have to cope with it where like our society I think the biggest thing like when I lost my grandfather it was just like it was a beautiful sunny day and the world Just Kept Moving Even Though My World Was Ending It Was Really Hard So I Think That Is Kind Of Where We We Come Up Short Where It Feels Very Isolating Everything Just Keeps Moving No One Stopped The Grief There’s No Time To

1:29Time To Process Yeah And There’s Just No We Just Don’t Have Anything In Our Culture To Honor The Dead Yeah Or To Dignify The Grief You Might Say Yeah That’s What I Would Say That’s, yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it. Like, I mean, I would want to be cremated. I know he wants to be cremated. I think my, like, recent, anyone that has passed recently has been cremated. So there’s nowhere to go to honor them. So you have to find that place. But then it’s like, am I, like, is it cultural appropriation? If I build a shrine or if I try to celebrate their death on, like, Halloween because that’s Dia de los Muertos. So it’s, you know, there’s just nothing to do.

2:15to do that, to have that release as a community. It’s very frustrating.