Man receives phone call from deceased father, proving that grief is like glitter
"Grief is like glitter. You never know when it's going to show up sometimes."

Man's phone call from deceased dad is lesson on grief
Grief is such a strong emotion that most people don't exit this earth having skipped the experience. When grieving the loss of a loved one in the early days, the grief can be so strong that it feels like physical pain. You may start to believe that you've cried so much that there must be something medically wrong with you for your body to still be producing tears. There's no placating cliché about grief that can make the early moments of it more tolerable.
But as people move past the active grieving stage, it contorts itself into something more tolerable that allows you to continue daily obligations before it changes again. Once years pass, grief becomes sort of like a silent passenger holding a jack-in-the-box. You find yourself having full on belly laughs again, feeling quite normal when suddenly out pops that dang clown from the depths of the box.
One man took to his TikTok account, dadchats, to share his experience with a surprise moment of grief for his father that passed away three years prior. It's the perfect depiction of the realities of grieving a profound loss.
"Last night my dead father called me on his cellphone," he starts the video. "It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm watching the Packers vs Taylor Swift game when all of a sudden my phone goes off and for the past five months if I get a call that late at night it's either about a vehicle warranty or it's about getting more printer ink."
The grieving son jokes about not having a printer before explaining how his deceased father called him. Turns out, it wasn't his father, likely much to is relief and simultaneous disappointment. The call was from his mother who never stopped paying for his father's phone unbeknownst to the man picking his heart up off of the floor after seeing "dad" pop up on his phone screen. He explains that his mother only ever calls him from her home phone so this call was sort of a jump scare of the worst kind.
@dadchats Grief still knows my number
The man got emotional talking about the deep yearning you feel when missing a parent who has passed away. He revealed that his dad dying was a fear he had since childhood due to how old his father was when he was born so he stocked up on voicemails to avoid forgetting his dad's voice. After a few more tear filled moments, the grieving son gives a bit of advice.
"If you're struggling, especially just out of the blue, that's ok, that happens. That's normal, just sit in it. Grieve with it, feel it. It doesn't go away I don't think, it certainly hasn't for me, it still feels as fresh today as it did three years ago."
Viewers of his heartfelt video flocked to the comments to leave words of encouragement and to detail their own experiences with grief. It was truly a moment of what community can look like online.
"Your[sic] absolutely right that the first thing you forget is the sound of their voice! I so badly wish I could still hear the sound of my mom's voice," one person writes.
"Hits home! I called my dad every night for years and kept picking up the phone for months only to remember he won't answer," another admits.
"Grief is like glitter. You never know when it's going to show up, sometimes," someone relates.
That commenter is right, grief is like glitter. No matter how long ago you handled glitter you'll still find little sparkly flecks of it every where you go.
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Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
in 2016, a video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best for her to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their job.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
It evoked shame and sympathy.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is. They combed through more than 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006 and counted the number of comments that violated their comment policy and were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So, what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared nine years ago.