I went to a funeral on Thursday and have another to go to tomorrow. Maybe it’s superstition, but I feel like one more is looming. Years ago, I remember my mom saying that they always come in threes – she was quite logical, and said it like it was fact. H thinks it’s silly and sees no pattern. He’s probably right, but I can’t shake the feeling, which is depressing and macabre.
It is silly.
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I’ve heard back things come in threes, but not deaths. I don’t think it’s true. I think we create artificial time barriers so it feels like when it rains it pours.
A good friend of mine lost her mom last week. Knock on wood, I’ve heard of no one else.
I hope no one else in your life passes. Best wishes.
So sorry for your loss. I have heard the superstition, and I don’t believe there is anything real to it.
My mom always said the same thing. The first time I remember hearing it was when Elvis and Groucho died within a couple of days of each other. I don’t remember a third, though.
My H’s oldest friend’s dad a few days ago. Again, knock wood, we know of nobody else who has died though obviously people have.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s silly, but no, deaths don’t come in threes; people simply frame it in their mind to accommodate to the superstition. It’s confirmation bias.
2 yrs ago - I had my father and his two sisters all pass away within 3 months of each other. Yes they were old - but I think the loss of someone very close affected the next one to go, and the last (my father) was hit by the both of them. Might be superstition but seems broken hearts are actually physical.
It’s superstition.
But it wouldn’t hurt to take your black suit to the cleaners after the two funerals, just in case.
I started a thread similar to this on 2/11/17. Might want to refer to that.
I do find that things in general but especially deaths come in threes for me.
It is always worrisome when a 4th happens because that means another 2.
I get that it can be a superstition. But maybe, for some of us, it is our reality.
Just as I have “parking karma”. It is a real thing --for me–as I drove up and parked
in front of the very busy restaurant tonight and nearly every time I need a parking space
it happens for me. And so do deaths come in threes for me.
Also, if a friends mother dies then two others of the same distance dies. If my sibling died then
two of my close friends siblings might be counted next.
I understand this sounds nuts but it has just happened too many times in MY life for me to
discount it. It is not true for H but is true for D.
Really? There are people on a forum about college who believe this? It is hooey. This is how we get to anti-vax and climate change denial.
@intparent brings up an important point. We know these things are hooey. Yet at some level we instinctively believe them. That tells us something significant about human nature.
@oregon101 believes he/she has parking karma. I believe I have airline cooties. Flights that I book seats on have a disturbing tendency to be delayed or cancelled.
Yet these patterns (if they’re real at all) are either coincidences or they have rational explanations. Perhaps @oregon101 is an especially observant person who remembers the patterns of parking space availability in various locations without being consciously aware of it. Perhaps I’m a lazy slug who is paying the price for taking later planes instead of getting up at 4 a.m. and taking the first flight. (There’s objective data showing that flights with earlier departure times are less likely to be delayed.)
I wonder how many bad decisions we make every day based on these feelings that are not grounded in sound evidence.
human beings are pattern making, pattern-seeking hominids. I look for patterns all the time, and sometimes ascribe meaning to them. I recognize that it’s irrational, but I enjoy doing it all the same.
If you look hard enough, you can probably find the third death that’s significant to you, but it might be something you read in the news, a neighbor’s pet, anything along those lines. Since it’s irrational, you get to create the parameters of what that third death is. Or was. Try looking back before the two deaths-there might have already been the third one that will qualify.
And often there was a fourth, but you find a way to discount it because it doesn’t fit the perceived “pattern.”
This has been studied, and the conclusions are that there is no pattern, only perception.
Like I mentioned, my aunts death affected her two elderly remaining siblings such that one died a month later. That second death compounded my father’s grief and he died the following month. This isn’t hooey - it’s physical impact of grief.
Now if you are talking 3 random strangers who only connection is You, well then maybe not.
@intparent No. This has nothing whatsoever to do with antivax or climate change denial. What an odd comparison, actually. Not every aspect of life has to be quantifiable - how closed off and boring that must be. I posed the question to consider the cosmic or religious possibilities. If you can’t consider that, fine, but don’t make the leap that anyone who considers it must be an irrational nut.
“Not every aspect of life is quantifiable” – there is NO scientific evidence for the hypothesis you have put forth. It isn’t closed off and boring to think that floating superstitious theories is a bad idea. We have enough of that going on today. I am certainly open to non-quantifiable things – art, literature, great oratory – they aren’t “quantifiable”, at least I don’t look at them through that lens. But I am going to speak up when people start floating ideas that have no scientific basis at all. Anyone who wanted to could come up with gobs of examples where bad things happen in pairs, or singularly, or in larger clusters. It isn’t logical. It belongs with astrology and tarot cards.
I’ve heard that about bad “things”. I had an exampe of three random bad things happening within the space of two days and more often just one random thing happening. Of course, it’s silly but fun to make it up like that. If bad things happen closely to one another, it’s good to know it will stop at three. I did have a case three deaths within two months if you include two dogs.
@intparent --and don’t get me started on Mercury in Retrograde!