Grief can drain meaning from the surrounding world while leaving inner thought intact

Evidence

While in my mind the undertaker’s office in all its detail was very vivid and clear, the town around it was fuzzy and grey, I walked through it because I had no choice. I wasn’t thinking differently, inside my mind I was unchanged, the only difference was that now I demanded more room and hence I was excluding external reality. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1524

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the numbness/‘zone’ theme and Knausgaard’s phenomenology of consciousness as in My Struggle. — connects to: Grief leaves no permanent internal traces because feelings never set — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1367; The presence of a deceased loved one can feel real during mourning. — Hamlin Garland Munseys, A Daughter of the Middle Border, 1059; Unacknowledged losses can linger until named and forgiven. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 940 (+4 more)

Related

• Grief leaves no permanent internal traces because feelings never set (similarity 0.82)
• Grief can possess a mourner’s dreams and invade waking compulsions (similarity 0.82)
• The presence of a deceased loved one can feel real during mourning. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The presence of a deceased loved one can feel real during mourning. #expands (0.55) — Hamlin Garland Munseys, A Daughter of the Middle Border, 1059