Why is that not a societal norm?

I think there are a couple of reasons.

One is it is important to remember that while the risk is higher on that day, the risk across the whole population is still very low for having a heart attack, right? So what I mean to say is that we know from research that the most common reaction to the death of a loved one is actually resilience.

So, you know, it's this funny thing about statistics that you can, that you can see that resilience can be the most common response and also be worried about these instances of a sudden cardiac event.

So think about pregnant women.

I find this to be a useful analogy, strange as it may sound.

Pregnancy is not a disease, right? But no one would suggest that pregnancy isn't physiological.

Yeah.

Right.

But there are these rare situations where that person isn't out there anymore.

And so you have on the one hand, a belief, a knowledge they're gone.

And you have a belief that they're everlasting.

So you keep sending the text, keep picking up the phone.

And when those two things conflict, we get grief.

It's a learning curve to understand everlasting doesn't mean the same thing now.

love it.

Did you have more guilt because you're like, oh man, I can't believe I felt a solution or a type of relief when she...

It was like, you know what it was like? I forgave myself.

I forgave myself for it being a solution.

Because I realized that's also who I was at that age.

I was in my early 20s.

I didn't know any other way to respond.

And in my 40s, I started to look like her.

pray.

Yeah, for sure.

Now, if that was a death, eventually there is a second classic response that we see.

We see this in animals, we see it in infants, and this response we call despair.

And that is, "Oh no, they're gone." And even just hearing it, you can feel how physically different that is from protest, can't you? You can feel the withdrawal.

You can feel the heaviness.

What's important is that the information, oh no, they're gone, is the same in both cases.

It's our response to that information that is completely different and is completely physical, right? And so what's notable here is despair is important.

How do you think about prolonged grief, maybe connecting it to what you're talking about now, which I think is a really interesting frame for it?

The grieving process can take a toll on our bodies, too.

Our cardiovascular system is tethered to the external pacemakers that are our relationships.

When a loved one dies, that pacemaker is ripped away from us.

In the first 24 hours after the death of a loved one, we're 21 times more likely to have a heart attack than any other day of our life, which is an absolutely shocking statistic.

Eventually, as we learn day after painful day, we come to recognize that we can't expect them anymore.

This change in the brain isn't about forgetting them.

It is about overcoming our brain's belief that they will always be there, which takes a very long time to truly understand.

One way to process the loss while honoring our loved ones is through memorials or rituals to mark birthdays or other major holidays.

Mm-hmm.

... that I grew up in a big Irish Catholic family.

And we used to say, in the summers we saw our cousins for weddings, and in the winter, we saw our cousins for funerals.

And we had these wakes.

I saw numerous deceased bodies as a child of my family members while running around playing tag with my cousins.

And what that does is, it is a cultural way to say, "Grief happens.

Death happens.

Mm-hmm.