Collection Of Tragedies

Today is the anniversary of a plane crash in which about 150 people died. The protestant pastor who took care of most of the German bereaved thus had an interview with the German-Christian radio station “Domradio”. He says that especially one case in particular moved him: A lady approached him and told him that she felt desperate and pressured, because her surroundings expected her to stop grieving and found it exaggerated that one year after the disaster – especially with a jolly holiday like Easter coming soon – she was still sad and distanced. The pastor calmed her and explained to her that usually people who said things like these meant well. I mean, it is normal that the lady now feels pressured, misunderstood and put under stress, but they didn’t mean to make her feel like this. Even though they are no experts they simply thought they had to take action to coax her back into “normality”. A well-intended plan that failed due to them not having enough experience with grieving people! When you stop grieving depends on a lot of things like how he or she died, what age the person had, how attached you were to the dead one, your own personality etc. It’s just that many people don’t know that. For her relatives the protestant pastor has the piece of advice to just let her be and to accept that really living your grief for a longer period of time makes you feel better in the end.

Today is the anniversary of a plane crash in which about 150 people died. The protestant pastor who took care of most of the German bereaved thus had an interview with the German-Christian radio station “Domradio”. He says that especially one case in particular moved him: A lady approached him and told him that she felt desperate and pressured, because her surroundings expected her to stop grieving and found it exaggerated that one year after the disaster – especially with a jolly holiday like Easter coming soon – she was still sad and distanced. The pastor calmed her and explained to her that usually people who said things like these meant well. I mean, it is normal that the lady now feels pressured, misunderstood and put under stress, but they didn’t mean to make her feel like this. Even though they are no experts they simply thought they had to take action to coax her back into “normality”. A well-intended plan that failed due to them not having enough experience with grieving people! When you stop grieving depends on a lot of things like how he or she died, what age the person had, how attached you were to the dead one, your own personality etc. It’s just that many people don’t know that. For her relatives the protestant pastor has the piece of advice to just let her be and to accept that really living your grief for a longer period of time makes you feel better in the end.

According to the Roman-Catholic radio channel “Domradio” the following e-mail reached them last night:
“Maybe it’s because until some days ago I had subscribed to the newsletter of a Roman-Catholic institution that I just received the following chain e-mail whose first sender – I mean the author – I do not know:
“Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses” marks an always lethal metabolic disorder which depending on the sub-classification affects babies, infants or school-kids.
Initially this disease manifests itself through an increasing debility of sight to the point of total blindness. In addition to that patients suffer from hallucinations, epilepsy and dementia. In the end the patient loses really all of his motor and cognitive functions entirely. Since every form of “neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses” is not healable (yet) and leads to inevitable death, palliative treatment is the only treatment possible.
Despite the fearfulness of this disease it hardly receives any medial attention comparable to the one diseases like cancer, mucoviscidosis or HIV receive and in fact is rather unknown. *
Especially around Christmas it must be hard for those bereaved by these people who died at such a young age to not even get that much sympathy in their solitude – just think of all the attention for example poor children in the East of Europe, in Africa or in Latin-America receive around Christmas by the media – or to at least have someone around to have understanding of this disease.
Thus as a sign of solidarity I ask everyone reading this chain-letter – or hearing of it – to intercede loudly or mutely on December 23rd at 8PM – one day before Christmas-Eve – for those who suffer from “neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses” or who already died of it
Anyway I want the writer of this e-mail to be supported in this for taking action.
I’d appreciate that if you would maybe send this as a newsletter to everyone who subscribed to the “Domradio-Newsletter” or simply give this a brief mention in your program.
However that is just a suggestion and as I didn’t write this chain-letter myself, I don’t wish my name to be mentioned in the same text as this e-mail. At most my given name, Anna!”

• I’m not sure! Is the author also trying to imply here that if this received more attention, doctors would eventually find a cure?
  —-—-—-—-—-—
  Re-upload: “Tagesschau” says that in Nepal a horrible earthquake killed about 800 people. Many citizens of the capital Kathmandu are homeless now and refugees within their own country.
  If you want to know about an organisation that helps disadvantaged people in this country or if you even want to get involved, too, you should visit the following website: “http://www.cwsuk.org/projects_we_support/”.

>Japan now wants to repopulate Fukushima even though scientists warn it’s still too early for that and there is still a great risk of getting cancer for people who stay there permanently. Due to the impact that the Fukushima-accident still has on these surroundings, the reporter called this one of the most tragic technical failures in most recent history. (“Tagesschau last Sunday)
>”Tagesschau” says – and this comment was written on Sunday – that due to banks having been closed in Greece – due to the Greek crisis -, Greek workers now had to live for quite a while without their wages and whole enterprises had to wait very long until their deliveries could be paid. Now however the banks are re-opening. Still “Tagesschau” says that it will probably take days until things are getting back to normal again. I understand that some of them must suffer, having to live for such a long time without getting their well deserved wages, but still I find it exaggerated that the reporter called that a tragic humanitarian disaster.
>”Tagesschau” now warned it’s viewers not to count their chickens until they are hatched when it comes to talking about the East of the Ukraine. Unofficially they are still on war and right now there are signs that soon there will be “real” acts of war again. “Tragedy” must have been something like a keyword for reporters yesterday /on Sunday, because again a reporter used the word humanitarian tragedy to describe this situation.

Being someone who lost three people in the months between December and April and who tends to visit their graves frequently, I was extremely shocked when “Domradio” said that according to precise statistics the number of attacks on Jewish, Muslim and Roman-Catholic graveyards seems to increase in Germany. For months now there have been numerous cases of unknown people damaging, spraying or turning over tombstones. They even damaged these houses where parts of Roman-Catholic funerals usually take place.