I was reading Richard Feynman's description of his young first wife's death from tuberculosis in "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" this morning (CW gave it to me to read) and thought of our discussion. They had only been married five years as opposed to people who had had a lifetime together, but as he says, this is "a quantitative difference, the psychological problem was still the same." (which gives you a feel for how he looks at things- I am really enjoying it).
He writes:
I was surprised I wasn't feeling what I thought people were supposed to feel under the circumstances... I wasn't delighted, but I didn't feel terribly upset, perhaps because we had known for a long time that it was going to happen.
It's hard to explain. If a Martian (who, we'll imagine, never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures-- these humans who live about seventy or eighty years,, knowing that death is going to come-- it would look to him like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary. Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.
He went back to Los ALamos where he was on a project and when someone asked what happened, he said, "She's dead. And how's the program going?"
He also admits that a month later, he walked by a dress shop and thought, Oh, Arlene would like that, and finally cried.
So I don't know where people store hard things, or how they deal with them, but I think it's important to recognize that each of us has his own way of coping, and there is no right or wrong; the wrong is when we judge these reactions. |
