Two Day Magazine

A woman gripped by grief...

I have been hearing about this particular episode on TLC’s, My Strange Addiction, for a few days now and was not going to blog about it because it seemed wrong to exploit a woman who is truly saddened and lost after the sudden death of her husband. But, the more I thought about it, I wondered, maybe there is something we can all identify with in this tragic tale of loss.

Meet Casie, a 26 year old woman who met her soulmate in 2008.

“Everything I had ever wanted in a man was right in front of me. And, it felt so great.” Casie explained to TLC.

Her mother, Linda, agreed. She said that the two-and-a-half years her daughter spent with her now-deceased husband, Shawn, were the happiest years of her life. Sadly enough, those years were cut far too short when Shawn died suddenly of an asthma attack.

Casie recalls that day as the day her “own world stopped turning...the day my life fell apart.”

As the video reveals, Casie began to deal with her husband’s death by carrying around his ashes. Shawn accompanied her to the grocery store, to the theater, and even out to dinner. She cooked his favorite foods for him at home and asked him what television show he wanted to watch in the evening while she sat alone in her home that was once theirs.

It does sound crazy, albeit, but there is something so tragic about the loss of a love so young. Casie had her whole life ahead of her with the man of her dreams. The thought of starting a family, growing old together and experiencing the ups and downs of life with a partner unlike any other were suddenly replaced with funeral arrangements and a sense of deep, haunting loss.

Everyone copes with tragedy in a different way, but then Casie’s mourning took a darker turn.

One day, while she was cleaning the box in which her husband’s ashes resided, some of the ash spilled onto her hand.

“I didn’t want to wipe them off because that’s my husband and I don’t want to wipe him away. So, I just licked it off my finger.”

As disturbing as that may sound, Casie has found herself unable to stop, having eaten a pound of his ashes since that day, with about five more pounds remaining. She has developed a strange taste for the cremains, which she explains taste like “rotten eggs, sand and sandpaper.”

Apparently, not only is this behavior unsettling and unhealthy on a mental and spiritual level, the cremains are also unsafe to ingest, as they contain chemicals that can be known to cause psychosis.

Since the video was shown, Casie has checked herself into an inpatient care facility to help herself deal with her grief in a more healthful way, and yes, has left the ashes behind.

I hope Casie realizes at some point that even though her beloved is no longer with her, he wouldn’t want her to live a life of pain and sorrow. She deserves to live a fulfilling life, and even though she may not see it now, perhaps someday she will be able to open heart again to the possibility of finding someone to share her life with once more. And, in the meantime, I hope she learns to reconnect with herself, rediscover her own passions and lead a life of joy and purpose.

What are your thoughts on this tragic, sad end to a love story? Can the loss of love make a person go mad?