Livre d'Or

I think you are right to point out that dichotomy, I wasn't consciously positing that but I think it is there. My feeling is that a lot of what I'm experiencing as anger is at other people's suffering, not my own. I do have a moral problem (irrational though that may be) with the fact of Banks having this horrible cancer which will soon kill him. I suspect that may explain why I'm particularly bad at dealing with suicide; I really find it unbearable that anyone's life should be so bad that ceasing existence is preferable.

Grief is much more about my own loss; I don't count Banks as a personal friend myself, but lots of people I'm close to do, so my immediately relevant feeling is empathy for them. But like any death, this reminds me that many, (perhaps most depending how long I live) of the people I care about will also die, and then I'll be bereaved, I'll have to go on living without their positive presence in my life. I don't know what acceptance of that would even look like; perhaps some kind of non-attachment, maybe? Or simply feeling whatever sense of loss I feel but not having any desire to change the reality that makes me feel like that?