I& #39;ve been thinking about grief with the pandemic and because I just listened to Marc Maron& #39;s podcast and he was talking about it.

Personally, my experience w/what I had thought was grief was to attend the services - funeral home, funeral, luncheon - and then put it behind me 1/

In fact, every time someone close to me died, I would have a point at either the funeral or the cemetery or the luncheon where I& #39;d say, "Ok, I should be done crying over this." and I& #39;d feel relief. I guess because I am an American man and I hate people seeing me cry 2/

I& #39;ll probably lose some people with this next part but the first time where that "Ok, I can move on from this" point didn& #39;t work was when my dog died unexpectedly 4 years ago. I kept thinking I had reached that point, but I kept breaking down when I tried to talk about him. 3/

After this happened a few times, it occurred to me this might be true grief and I might have to try something else.

So when I was talking about it and the tears would start to come, instead of changing the topic or ending the phone conversation, I talked through it. 4/

It felt silly to realize losing my sweet lab/golden retriever mix taught me what real grief was, but here I am, lesson learned. And that& #39;s why I am doing this thread. Because I suspect there are people who also didn& #39;t know this and are experiencing it for the first time. 5/