How to Move On After the Death of a Loved One

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Shark, so sorry to hear that your family has been yet another victim of an awful disease like cancer.  I think it's so often having our children to remain strong for that helps keep us reasonably held together. 

Not to compare losing a more elderly parent to losing a young wife, but I took care of my bedridden mother for the 15 months before she passed away.   There wasn't just caring for her, but the house and any number of others things.  As the months wore on I spent more and more time/energy just "taking care".  When my mother died I realized I was still going around "taking care" (doing her bedroom "all nice", as it had been before the hospital bed and equipment had been brought in, and finding projects that I thought were my job to do "now that she wasn't here").   One day I kind of stopped and thought, "What are you doing?  Why are you doing all these things for no real good reason?"  I realized that I had been in a kind of "high-strung, high-speed, taking-care, mode" for so long I had become kind of stuck in it.   I stopped and thought, "You don't have to be doing stuff for her now.  You're free to do your own stuff."   That "taking-care-of mode" becomes so much a part of us it takes a little time to return to "normal mode".  Then, though, I realized I didn't quite know what to do with all that "freedom".  It was as if I had to "find the regular me" again.

As you say, "carrying on" is a wiser approach than aiming to "move on".  Carrying on is the thing that eventually leads to moving on.  I think too often people worry too much (about themselves or grieving family/friends) about whether someone is moving on.    Carrying on is the thing that takes a certain kind of skill, and moving on is something that everyone eventually does without making any particular efforts.

Thanks for contributing your experience here. Someone who finds this Hub may be in the exact situation as you have been.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Elaine, so sorry to hear of the grief you've been through and thank you for your kind words.   I hope, too, that some of the words in this Hub may be of some help to your friend too.  Like most people who have put in a few decades of adult life, I've had those years when it seems like the reasons for grief just keep on coming.  I noticed that with the unfortunate, additional, experiences of dealing with it I became aware that we can't make it go away; but we can find ways to cope and "give ourselves a mental break" while we're going through it.

I think, too, that people are sometimes worried about giving themselves permission not to think about the grief for a little while.  They feel as if they will be betraying the lost loved one, or they may worry that it isn't psychologically healthy to seem to be "trying to hide from it" or "escape from it".  Those little and seemingly insignificant "mental breaks", though, really can make the difference between having a more bearable day and one that makes us feel as if we'll lose our minds.

Based on my own experience or else other things I've read/heard about grief, I think your friend is just now (after reaching that first-year anniversary) about to start the real "healing" process.

Thank you again for your kind words, and sincerest wishes that your friend find ways to get through what will most likely be increasingly less difficult days.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Brenda, sorry to know that  you're yet another who has gone through losing your mother and sister.  When my mother died a local minister came by.  He talked about grief and how there is always a part of it that stays with us, although it, of course, does "mellow".  My father has been gone for 35 years, and I'm over that.  My mother has been gone for almost 13, and I have to say I'm nowhere near as "equally over it".  It's a whole lot different (and better) now than it was at three or four years, but I'm surprised to see how bad it still can be at this late stage.  I didn't notice when it "died down" with my father but it took a good, long, time as well.  I guess what happens is that it dies down very gradually but over time it also doesn't take up as much of our thoughts.  We learn to live with it, and I'm convinced that positive experiences (even small, seemingly unimportant ones) eventually come in and push the sadness more into the background.

I remember my mother and her sisters talking about their own mother, whom they lost as young adults. Decades later they still had a certain wistfulness in their voices when they spoke about her.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

bala99, thanks for contributing.   Sorry to know that you're among what must be the millions and millions of people who feel as you do.  What may be "strangely enough" to you, I never spent a lot of time crying after losing my parents; because I was afraid that if I let myself it would never stop.  It helped to "keep on a lid on" the crying.   :)

There's never anything anyone can say to make anyone else feel better; but as a mother of grown kids myself, I can tell you that if anything were to happen to me I would not want my kids carrying their longing decades past my passing.  At the same time, I know exactly what you mean about wishing they were still here.  Once parents are gone it can seem as if every family holiday has someone missing - forever.   I think "moving on" isn't really about not wanting to have them here.  I think it's more a matter of doing what you've probably done - know they can't be here and build a life in spite of having that element of loss there.  I've always seen that "element of loss" we're left with after losing parents as the price we pay for having had parents we were close to and loved.  Not everyone is close to their parents.  Those who haven't had loving, close, parents often pay a number of different "prices".

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

sbeakr, thank you.   :)    You're right that loss and grief don't always necessarily involve a death.  Although there are, of course, those people who are just delighted once they get their divorce, many grieve the loss of a life they had hoped they'd have, the loss of hopes they had for their marriage, or any number of other things.  Then, too, there are those who would not have chosen to divorce if they had a choice, and they grieve.

In fact, I think there are a lot of things that can go on in life that mean someone ends up grieving the loss of the life they thought they'd have or the future they thought they'd have.  In a way, maybe that kind of grief can be particularly challenging because others understand grief after a death.  Others don't always understand the grief over other major losses.

Not that I have any particularly helpful advice; but I once went through a serious accident that took the life of a friend.  The one thing that got me through was to think, "This thing will not take more from me than it already has."  I was 20 years old when that happened, but those words are words that I've kept in mind any time I've ever been faced with a serious loss (even when a death wasn't involved).  I guess, at least for me, when faced with a loss other than one involving losing someone through death, I've found that it helps to see myself as a fighter, rather than a victim of a loss. People can choose to see themselves as a fighter.

Not that you haven't thought of this on your own, but it can help to read about or talk with others who understand similar situations. The odds of having someone in our immediate circle who has gone through something very similar aren't always great. We have only so many close friends and relatives. Sometimes just the right book can be far more "supportive" than even the most well intended friends and relatives.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Mark, condolences on the awful loss of your partner. I know there are different elements to each type of loss, and it can feel particularly isolating not to know anyone who has had "the exact kind of loss" we have. Still, all kinds of grief also shares some very important elements (as far as how we feel goes), so for the most part, anyone who has had lost someone beloved does, at least, know some of what we're going through when we've had a recent loss.

At less than a year after your loss you're not all that far along that road back to not feeling "broken", but, as you've noticed, some days are ok enough. The number of those days will increase over time. It's a long, slow, process; but sometimes we're also surprised to realize how "ok" we eventually discover we feel. Bless you too.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Wend', my heart goes out to you in your loss of your son. Words seem so meaningless when we hear of any parent's loss of a child. The unfortunate thing about the numbness that comes with grief (that comes with losing someone very close) is that we still live in grief, even with the "cushion" of the numbness.

If there was one thing that most took me aback about "big" grief it was, I think, the way that the one-year-anniversary seemed to mark the beginning of really starting to gradually process the loss. We usually expect to feel better after that first year (and in ways we do - sort of), and, for me, discovering that the first year of "complete" numbness would be followed by "the beginning of fresh grief" was unexpected. It can feel as if others are thinking we should moving on better at that one-year point, and we can feel as if we're almost as "Square One". What some people may not understand is that we actually have been "moving along", because if we weren't that numbness would not have begun to wear off (allowing us to begin to have those brief moments of actually feeling/processing/thinking about the loss before the numbness kicks in again).

I was also surprised to discover that it was often in the second year that I experienced "weird" dreams about the lost loved one, only later to see that my dreams seemed to "address" the issues associated with the loss in layers; with the first dreams seeming to involve simple wish that the person were here, but becoming more difficult to figure out as I moved toward the point where the strange dreams no longer came. After the loss of my mother (following a particularly complicated, difficult, and heartbreaking situation) my sister and I discovered that we were having almost parallel dreams (in terms of the "story" to the dreams). It made it so clear to me that even while we process grief in our own ways, we can also process it pretty much in the same way as others who share it in equal intensity.

I know there's nothing any of us can say to anyone else who is going through grief that will help that person feel any better; but I think, at least, if grieving people can step back a little and see the process of whatever is happening with them as the "part of the process" it is, maybe, at least, it can help to know that it is "par for the course" and will pass.

This is going to come across as making lighter of grief than I am, but my approach has always been: "If you can't make it go away, try to figure out 'the mechanics' of it." That doesn't make the grief any less painful, but at least it reassures us to realize that whatever we're doing at any given time is normal. When we're going through grief we don't feel grounded. "Figuring out the mechanics" of what's going on can help us feel just a little more grounded, and that, in itself, can make us feel just a little bit better.

Sincerest, sincerest, condolences to you. No parent should have to experience the kind of loss you have.

Thank you for sharing on here, because someone in a situation similar to yours may benefit from your first-hand description of how the pain and grief seemed to start in ernest at that one year point.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Nicole, sorry to read that you've lost both of these loved ones so recently and relatively close together. As I mentioned above, it seems to really take a full five years before we kind of get to where we feel we're more "regular". With my own experience losing both my father and mother, I'm not sure I'd say there's ever a time when we feel truly "at peace" after losing our parents. I think it's more just getting used to living with it; and with, over time, finding it "poignant", as opposed to "painful", to think about them. You've probably noticed that you're "better" now than you were after only year following your father's passing; but the "healing" process is, no doubt, slow after losing someone close.

With your step-father, it's still so recent. As Wend said above, it can be rough when you start to approach (or just pass) the first anniversary after losing someone; and you notice you still feel as if its so new.

I'm not a mental-health professional, so I can only offer what I know from my own experience (and some writer's research). I was 21 when my father died. My mother was in her 50's, but she had been widowed during WWII, when her first, young, husband was killed (they had no children). I don't know how much impact being widowed (fairly young) a second time had on her, but she would often say how she could imagine my father in one place or another around the house. Actually, I was out one day and saw a guy driving a car like my father had, and who looked like my father, I couldn't help but staring. My point is that a certain amount of "not moving on" just comes with having lost someone close. Years after I lost my mother (and was as "ok" with it as anyone gets), I found myself standing outside her house (where family still lives), looking at the lights in the window, and kind of pretending I was in the past and that she was in the kitchen, cooking, as she so often had been. Another time not all that long ago, I was near the bank where I'd so often dropped her off and waited as she did her banking errand. I kind of lingered for a while near the entrance to the bank, imagining the sound of the door opening, picturing her coming out of the bank, and imagining the sound of her heels on the concrete. I only indulged in that for a few moments, but it felt kind of good. This is the kind of thing we don't always talk about with too many people, but it's what people do after losing someone close.

Having been in a car accident in which my 20-year-old best friend was killed, I know that when there's an accident; and someone is gone suddenly; there can be an "unfinished business" feeling surrounding the loss. There's no time to imagine losing someone, the way we do when someone is sick for a while. We go from "our regular, ok, world to 'post accident' world" without warning or preparation. Something else is that we just get in a habit of something like having someone come home each evening after work, and just from the standpoint of having to adjust to that not happening, it can take a long time to get used to.

Assuming that when you say she's "still waiting for him to come" you mean she can't get out of the habit of that (rather than, for example, being mentally ill, removed from reality, and truly believing he's coming home); I think she just needs the time to get out of that "habit". What I found different between losing my father (three weeks after being hospitalized for a bad attack heart), my mother (more than a year of being bedridden), and my young girlfriend was that years after my girlfriend was "swept away" (by the accident) I would dream that she was really "out there somewhere, sick but alive and kind of ok. I know that my mind hadn't really processed the idea that she was dead, because there hadn't been the usual "emotional preparation". She was in the car next to me, driving - and then I was unconscious. When I came to, I was told she was gone. One difference, for me, between processing her death and that of my parents was that I essentially saw the process leading up to their "leaving". Getting over the grief came through the usual, natural, process of grieving. With my friend, there were no "steps toward closure". Instead, it was as if I had to "go from zero to closure" without any steps. The only thing that made closure ever happen was the passage of time. Essentially, I just got used to her not being around; even if the "standard" grief process hadn't taken place. My point is that I think there's a different kind of challenge/process that takes place when someone dies from an accident; so considering this was your mother's husband, I can only imagine she has that much more of a challenge. It's still soon for anyone in your family, but I think (based on my own experiences with grief, what I know about other people's, etc.) it's too early to think your mother would be anywhere near really moving on yet. I think it may be too much to try to hope she'll be "really happy" right now (even though that's probably what you wish for her). I think grieving people aren't interested in looking for "big happiness". Maybe, though, small, pleasant, things in life can brighten her days a little, as she gets through this passing of time following her loss. She may be the only one who knows what those small, pleasant, things are. Asking her might help give you some ideas.

One thing to keep in mind, too, is that because she feels close to you, and feels as if you share her loss, she may feel more comfortable telling you what's on her mind than she would telling someone not as close. She may feel that you understand, while someone not as close may not. I think it's important she feels you do understand her need to candidly share what she needs to share, without worrying that what she's going through isn't appropriate.

If, by any chance, she actually believes your step-father is coming home, that's a different kind of thing, needless to say. But, if she's just talking about feeling as if he's coming home, I tend to think that may just be part of the grieving/getting-used-to-a-change-in-routine process.

Here's a link to a government site that offers resources on grieving: http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpub

Also, there's a forum on a site (www.thelightbeyond.com), where people discuss loss and grieving.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Doris, I know I don't know you, but there are absolutely no words to express how sorry I am to hear that you have lost your son. I don't know if making the comparison between the kind of accident your son had and a car accident I was in that killed my friend; and I have no idea if this will at all be of any comfort to you. I was "certain" that was going to be killed when I saw the car so obviously and hopelessly headed at us at high speed. The strange thing was that I was extremely calm (which is, I guess, what can happen at such moments). I had a fraction of a second or so to think only of my two parents at home (I was 20), to think of how it would be for them to hear I was killed, and to hope (ridiculous as this sounds now) that they "wouldn't be too upset" by it. I wasn't afraid, and I wasn't sad. It just felt like "oh well, this is it - whatever." I can't make any guesses about your son's thoughts (if he had time to have any), but I do know that Nature has a way (adrenaline, maybe) of equipping us with an odd kind of thing that lets us remain calm and ok at least in some cases. Obviously, in being "certain" I was about to be killed, I was wrong. The fact that the impact only injured me but killed my friend (the driver) doesn't change the thoughts I had when it appeared so certain to me there was absolutely no way of escaping the high-speed oncoming car and no way someone in such a small car could survive. It has always been my own awareness of how I felt when I felt so certain I was about to be killed that has helped me believe that my girlfriend most likely had a similar experience/change in brain chemicals. It's with the sincerest humility and reservation that I even mention this, but - truly - I've always been amazed at having had such a calm experience under the circumstances and surprised at how little I cared about what seemed like the imminent end of my own life. All I thought, as I said, was (and in these words) "I hope they don't feel too bad." As a parent, myself, I know how unrealistic such a hope was; but I think when Nature helps us deal with such things it isn't always about being "realistic" or "reasonable".

Sincerest, sincerest, condolences. I wasn't at all sure whether I should go ahead and offer whatever "feeble" and sort-of-related experience I think I've had, or not presume to compare his situation with mine. It's just that in the more than 30 years since my accident, whenever I hear of someone being killed in accident I always think how I wish their parents could know how calm I was when I thought I was going to be killed, and how all I thought was that I hoped they'd "not feel too bad about it". Thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

kb, thank you for sharing your own experience with others here, I know three years is longer than, say, a year; but from what I've heard/learned, it really takes a full five years before people feel as if they're more like their "old selves" (even if there's always a sense of lense still there). When my father died my mother just left his stuff where it was (except for anything that was out and around, of course). She would often say, "I know I have to do something with it, but it makes me feel a little closer to him." She was, I guess, thinking that others were thinking she ought to get rid of it; but I didn't happen to think she should get rid of anything she wasn't ready to. It wasn't as if it was taking up space she couldn't afford not to use. Somewhere along the way she just selected what she would keep and packed it away, gave away things she didn't think would be reasonable to keep, and ended up with a box of stuff that was reasonable to save, and a a drawer or two in a spare chest. By the time she did it she said she was just ready to clear out the stuff that - really - didn't make sense to keep. If you were someone who socialized with people other than close friends and family before (a lot of people prefer close friends and family under the best of circumstances), chances are one day you'll just feel ready to accept some invitation or go somewhere where there'll be a different group of people. Sincerest wishes for your continued strength and return to feeling like "the old you".

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

spsos, thank you for your kind words. I'm sorry to know that you've lost your husband. I have a couple of thoughts I'd like to add here, but I need to come back later to post them. (Headed out in a few minutes.)

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

spsos, following up my earlier, quick, reply to your comment: My father died more than 30 years ago after he had a heart attack in October and lived until the end of November. Bother my mother died she spent about month in the hospital too. (She died in 1996, so it's been a long time with her too.) My sister and I have, of course, moved on a long, long, time ago. Still, she and I have both said that, not only on the anniversary day, but at the time of year when each parent was in the hospital before passing away, we kind of feel a hard-to-describe, almost imperceptible, "cloud" that, I think, has to do with the "atmosphere"/weather of that particular time of year.

A certain kind of sunny, nice, October day or a certain feel of a certain type of cold evening, may just "bring us back" for a moment; but also, it just kind of feels as if in the back of our head there's some "cloud" that lifts once the anniversary day comes and goes. Maybe, too, we just know that it's the particular time of year and that the anniversary is coming. It's not like we "wallow in sadness and gloom". It's just kind of a hint of that "cloud" that we ignore.

With any anniversary of the passing of someone close, I've always found that no matter how long it's been I just don't like the date, itself, and I'm always glad once it passes. When my mother died a minister came to the house and said exactly that about the anniversary and having things come up that bring up a poignant or sad thought; so I guess it's just a matter of people not ever being able to just go back to being as free of sad thoughts or reminders as they were before the person passed away.

What I think people who haven't lost someone very close) or maybe event people who haven't had a lot of time go by since) often don't understand is that we can have those poignant thoughts or sad reminders and still be OK. It doesn't mean we haven't moved on to where we "ought to be". It just means, as you said, we don't move on to where we may never again be. We can still be happy and build the life we decide to build; but we can't "erase our memory banks" as if the person never existed and impacted our lives; or as if we're ever going to be "completely fine" with the idea that the person isn't in our lives, or didn't get to be here and have a longer life.

The other thing is when someone has been in our lives for many years our lives are so intertwined with theirs it can sometimes be impossible to talk about something in our past without mentioning their name. Another difference from one person to another is that some deaths have more "complicating" or difficult circumstances around them or leading up to them. Others have a particular kind of impact because they're sudden or happen when someone is young.

I think we're the ones who know if we're "OK" or not when it comes to how much progress we make grieving and moving on. I think if someone feels as if s/he's having too much trouble dealing with whatever stage s/he's in it may be a natural instinct to seek help. Maybe the main problem is that people around us, who care about us, want us to be happy; and after knowing we aren't "all happy" for long enough, they start to get "in a hurry". While they, themselves, may be struggling as they know we aren't as happy as they wish we were, what they don't realize is that by suggesting we do things different they're making us feel as if we need to reassure them (when what we need is for them to just relax and know we're OK enough).

I don't know what it's like to lose a spouse (although my mother was very open about losing a young husband to WWII and then my father, after a long marriage). I do know that "moving on" is a long process; and no matter how "reasonably fine" we get to be, we're never " completely good as new" emotionally. It's the price of having people we love and who love us; but while there's that price, we're also all the richer for having had them in our lives.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

linda, sorry to read what you're going through, and there's nothing about any of it that sounds at all "silly". My sister and I were just yesterday talking about how long it takes to feel anything close to "OK" after losing parents. (She has a friend going through a recent loss.)

It hasn't even been five years for your father yet, and losing your mother so soon after is yet one more "horror" on top of losing him. Then, I'm sure, you're dealing with the heartbreak of all the sad thoughts related to sad circumstances surrounding each of their passings. It's all just a lot for one person to have to process in such a short time. I don't think you're really "stuck". I think, instead, time is passing and moving you along - but not even time has passed for you see/feel much progress.

Then, it hasn't helped that you lost your dog. It was 4 or so years ago that I lost the cat that had been my mother's and that I'd grown close to over 15 years. Never, in my life, have I ever felt so horrible about losing a pet (even when I've felt pretty horrible about losing other long-time, loved, pets). This was different. She was particularly close to me. What I figured out about losing pets (besides just missing always thinking about whether they need to eat, or just kind of talking to them during the day, is that I think, because we do know/feel there's a big difference between a pet and a person, we aren't always as completely numbed by losing them as we are when we lose a person. As a result, it can seem as if we feel every "ounce" of grief; while with a person, we're so numbed for so long the grief process is just different (even if "bigger" and longer).

When my father died (only 62) after a heart attack, I was just past 20, working, going out with the person I'd eventually marry, and generally "being 20". I felt like I had to be strong for my mother too. I guess it was easier to be "busy" and, at least after the immediate loss, keep my mind off him. With my mother, I did have to be strong for my kids; but they would be in school and working (and hadn't been living with her daily, of course) so it was different. I'd been taking care of her, living with the whole hospice thing, and it was a lot more complicated and difficult than it had been with my father.

Without going into more details than necessary here, the only thing that worked for me (right or wrong) was to try not to let myself think about her at all. I had to tell myself she would want me to do what it took to get through the grieving process. I knew how she had talked about losing her own mother, so I knew she'd understand how bad it was. There are people who would say that "wasn't facing the grief", but I don't think I would have felt any better if I'd tried to keep "facing the grief" each day, every day, for as long it would eventually take for the grief to die down and become a loss I could more "come to terms with". Time was what it took; and even if it took more than that "standard" five years to feel like I was "some place different" with regard to losing my mother; in the time since that five years I've continued to be more and more "OK" - so even after the five years, the progress still keeps moving on.

I think when it comes to losing someone we're so close to, all the "good attitude" in the world (knowing we were fortunate to have them, knowing it's "all part of life", etc.) doesn't do a whole lot to ease the grief, because grief isn't about reasoning and logic. It's just about missing the person and feeling really awful that they aren't here.

Besides trying not to let myself think too much about someone, the only other thing that would seem to help me with any "big" grief has been to think of a thing or two to tell myself that "worked" as far as making me feel just a little less bad. With my mother it was "She isn't suffering now," and "There are worse things than dying." With my father it was, "He wouldn't want me to do this," and "At least he didn't go through all kinds of surgery and suffering." (And although I've had other, big, losses of close people) With the cat I'd keep telling myself, "We're all here on the same terms, and she had a whole lot better life than a lot of other animals do." Another one I used with my parents was that they didn't have to live in a nursing home before they passed away.

Telling myself those things (using those "one-liners" every time I started to think too much) didn't make me feel all that much better; but they were some "shred" of comfort that I'd hang onto and keep myself from going too far into sadder thinking.

As I may have mentioned somewhere above, I found it was "particularly bad" at about a year, because it seemed like the numbness that had gotten me through (sort of) had started to wear off; and yet it hadn't been long enough for the loss to have become "old enough".

After my mother died I still had one aunt (her sister), some cousins, and my own siblings. There were some women (her friends, but sometimes mine) who kind of seemed to try to keep me busy by offering to go out (or in the case of my aunt. In some cases I'd be with people who shared the loss. In others, it was a matter of someone trying to help me have someone to talk to/be with in that time. All those little things did help in some small way.

I did need to try to be strong for my kids; but maybe it helped to be with people who weren't so close, too, because either I could talk about something completely new and different; or else not be the one who had to pretend "all was wonderful" with me. (It's not that I really pretended with my kids, but you know what I mean since you're a mother.)

As my sister and I said (yet again, as we often have) yesterday, it just takes time. The hard thing is that it takes longer than we wish it could, and that we can't "not live" while getting through that time. We kind of have to "live around the grief", and sometimes it can just be "so there" it's hard to ignore it.

I do think there can be a difference between looking for the small blessings, or seeing them; and really feeling a little bit of joy. There's never been a time when I haven't seen/felt the incredibly "wholeness" and peace and even "deep down happiness" at having some of the "deeper blessing" in life; but sometimes, for me, what actually helps bring a small joy is some "superficial" little thing, like bring home some fresh flowers or having coffee out in the sun with a friend. For me, "deep-down peace and wholeness" (even if I'm otherwise sad about something) is one thing; and actually being uplifted by some seemingly (or actually) minor thing is a different thing.

I don't know if any of this has been at all helpful or useful; because I know that it's soon enough after all your loss that no words are likely to be of much help.

Not that I think I could at all be of any help, but if, by any chance, you ever feel like you could use someone to "vent" to, or someone who has some idea of how hard it can still be this soon; send me an e.mail through my profile. I don't flatter myself to thinking I can be much help/support; but sometimes just having someone to touch base with (and someone you can feel free to just say what you're really thinking to, rather than "being strong for" someone else) can help just a little.

Also, there's the "Light Beyond" forum, for people dealing with grief. (http://www.thelightbeyond.com/forum/). Or, if you don't already do this, you may want to try writing something online where others in your situation may offer their own ideas, feedback, etc. The act of writing can help. Writing about stuff other than loss, on the other hand, might help get your mind of things (or at least, a little and sort of).

Do feel free to e.mail, though. If you'd just like an e.mail pal to write about how great it is that Spring is here, that's fine too. Sometimes it's just good to talk/write to someone different. (I wouldn't share any e.mails with anyone.) The thing about is loss is that we all feel, and are, in a lot of ways, alone - and yet it's something we all end up going through (more than once) at one time or

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Sonia S, I'm sorry to hear about your nephew, and that you and your family are going through this difficult thing. No matter how universal grief and loss are, anyone who's been through it hates to hear of someone else going through it.

I know that everyone processes grief differently, and that one person may have very different things going on from one loss to another; but then, too, there are some things about grief that everyone pretty much shares.

I'm only speaking for myself here, but I've found that in the very beginning (after a loss) I'd just feel out-and-out numb in a lot of ways (although not so numb I wasn't feeling a good part of the sadness). Then I'd think that initial numbness had worn off. With losing my father, I recall that it was four months later when one afternoon it all kind of really hit me.

I thought I'd moved from one state to another (and I'm sure I had), but what I would later discover was that even though it felt like the initial numbness had worn off, I didn't realize that a lot of a "lower level" kind of numbness was there, even it wasn't so obvious to me.

That, for me, was why I've often been surprised to be hit with yet a new and different kind of grief at about a year or so following the loss. It hasn't at all been the same intensity or type of grief that there is immediately after someone passes away, but it's just seemed to be "way more" than one would expect after a year.

My husband and I lost our little 20-month old nephew years ago, and THAT death was something that, for me, was even too big for there to be enough numbness to even ease the horror a little. On top of the baby's death, itself, there were the added "complexities" of grieving for his parents, and for his grandparents who had not only lost their grandchild but had to watch their daughter go through that. Then there was worrying about helping my own children deal with the loss.

Someone like a niece or nephew is close enough that it's particularly awful to lose them, and yet there are the parents and other family members that we can grieve for, separately from our own grief.

With my nephew, as awful as it was for me to have my own grief, I kind of had to put my own grief aside (even just in my own thinking) because I knew what I was going through was "less important" than what his parents and grandparents were going through. On the one hand, I knew I was among close family members who all shared the awful loss. On the other, I put myself on a "lower run of the importance ladder" under his parents and grandparents.

When we'd all be talking and together, it did feel as we all shared the loss together. When I'd be alone and thinking, though, I sometimes felt as if I was the only one on my particular "rung" of that "closeness ladder".

I just thought I'd mention this experience in case it's anything you have run into, or may run into as you process the loss.

That forum I mentioned above (The Light Beyond) is a place where people go and discuss their grief, and they have things categorized as "loss of a mother", "loss of a friend", etc. I don't know if there's anything there that would help you, or if just sharing your own thoughts/experiences would help you; but it's a good site for someone who would like to be in touch with others going through loss, without having to worry about doing something like joining a support group or otherwise "making a bigger deal" than the person wants to make.

I think one of the biggest aspects of the time helps heal (beyond just putting distance between us and the loss) is that over time, we process those thoughts/feelings that need to be processed.

Again, sincerest condolences to you and others in your family.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

samboiam, thank you for your kind words. It's very nice of you to link to this Hub, and I appreciate it. I'll go take a look at The Grip of Darkness next time I'm in a "reading mode". For now, I'm planning to go into a "sleeping mode". :)

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

exquisitestill, thank you. Condolences on the loss of your grandfather. There's no doubt about it - getting used to that whole "cemetery thing" takes time; and that first visit is particularly hard. At least, though, you've got that one difficult part of the loss under your belt. It can take some people a lot longer than 3 months to be able to go to the cemetery. I guess it depends on the individual, who it was he lost, and circumstances.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

rontlog, thank you. I've read the Dark Black Cave; and as I mentioned in my comment on it, I think it describes grief and life after it perfectly.

I'm sorry to know that you're still (I'm guessing) not quite out of that cave yet, and sorry to hear that you lost both parents so close to one another and so young. My father was 62, and he died over 30 years ago. To this day, my siblings and I still feel we were short-changed in losing him as young as he was.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

rontlog, glad you've come this far. It will, as you know, get easier from here.

The link to "The Dark, Black, Cave" is below.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Movingon, I'm sorry to know your husband has passed away so recently. I imagine another reader my come along with his own personal experience with losing a spouse, but for now I'll add my own response.

I don't have personal experience with losing a spouse, but I know what my fifty-something mother went through when my father died. Being middle-aged now, I do have friends and family members who have been in your situation (and one who is processing a recent break up of a 38-year marriage - not the same kind of loss, but a major life change too). Based on personal conversations, but also research about the grieving process, that thing about sometimes wishing there were someone there to take care of you is something a whole lot people feel (at least from time to time). I almost think it's more likely to hit people who have had a good relationship and marriage more than someone who didn't, because someone in people in good marriages often get used to having that other person who tries to take care of him/her. People who haven't had that have often gotten used to life without it, so some of them haven't lost something they once had (and often, for a very long time).

I can't tell you how many people, even just in my own little circle of relatives and friends, I've heard talk about how they just never thought they'd have to live the rest of their lives without that other person. That much I know from my own experience with losing people who were close, even if they weren't a spouse.

I've always found that (even if the writing would never go beyond a file box in my closet), just putting things into words can help make it easier for my mind to process things that, before writing, may have just seemed like a "gray, non-descript, fog" . One nice thing about the Internet is that people can/do run into other people who feel/felt exactly the same - and sometimes it's just kind of good to know you're not the only one who feels one way or another.

I do know, even if it's past that "all-important" first year, the loss of your husband is still awfully recent; and that it's still pretty early to hope to feel "completely yourself" just yet. I think of my mother and how, even though she always missed my father, she went on to build her own life, her own way; and how "kind of proud" she was that she'd gotten through losing two husbands (one to WWII before she married my father or had us) and, of course, my father (after being married to him close to 30 years), and to have found herself "OK" and with "her own" life.

It takes time, and it takes a lot of processing, but little by little, people usually get to that place where they've moved on (even if their loved one will always remain a part of their life).

It doesn't sound at all selfish to say you miss something that you had that was a nice thing to have in life. I was talking to that person who's adjusting to the end of her long marriage just the other day. We were talking about how we get used to living one way and having a "certain set" of things in our life, and how we often don't see the other things in life that there would be if our circumstances were different. She's just not starting to discover some of the things she didn't know she was missing, even in the situation she saw as "the way she planned her life". She's becoming pleasantly surprised to keep running into these small ways in which she's discovering that her new life isn't just about what she no longer has, but about what she can now have. These things don't change the larger picture or loss, of course, but they eventually help change the colors in that "gray" picture; and even help people "living that picture" see and have things they never saw/had before.

Based on my own set of losses in this world, I don't happen to be someone who thinks "good always comes from bad". Lots of time nothing good comes out of bad. I think, more often, good comes in spite of bad. Either way, though, I'm pretty sure that no matter what any of us feel in any circumstances, there have always been millions of people (and always will be) who have felt exactly the same way.

I know none of these words (no matter how many of them there are) will do much to help you process things right now, from "where" you are; but - boy - I do know you aren't alone or selfish in your thoughts/feeling, or in the fact that you can't believe you'd write what you have for others to read. Just by doing so, though, you're reaching out to others who may need to know they aren't alone either.

Sincerest condolences on your own life-changing and difficult loss.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

Beverly, it isn't clear from your post whether your husband has been gone for five years or more; based on the words you used to describe your daughter's age, I'm guessing it hasn't been five years or more.

I think the thing is, it pretty much takes that full five years for people to really feel ready to move on. It gets better after the first year or so, and gradually people get more and more used to live without the other person. (So it isn't like someone feels as horrible at four years as they did as one year. ) Again, I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking if it's only been two or three years (or even four), and your friends are thinking "enough" time has been passed, you may not really be as ready as you're friend(s) think you are.

Then again, if it's been five or more years, and you're still not ready to think about marrying someone else; that's understandable and normal too. After my father died my mother just said she "plain, old" didn't even want to think about getting married again - ever.

I think with big loss (and after the numbness and even "horror" that come immediately after a death wear off), we're still left feeling so acutely disturbed by the loss it amounts to "getting stress chemicals going" in our bodies. What I've found was a sense of anxiety without there being any real-seeming, immediate, cause of the "non-descript" anxiety. It can feel like you're afraid, only there isn't anything you're aware you're afraid of.

Loneliness is something else that just naturally follows the loss of someone close.

I think if you're having real trouble dealing with the loss you may want to think about talking to a professional. If nothing else, maybe s/he could give you some tips for getting through whatever stage you're in, but it may also help you feel that much less lonely if you have someone to talk openly with.

If it's been five or more years, it may be particularly helpful for you if you were to see someone; because sometimes people can "get stuck" in grief.

Other than that, I can only try to imagine what I'd do if I lost a spouse (or remember what I've done in the past after losing someone close); and I think all you can do is try to find pleasant things to "give your mind a little rest" for a little while. If you can find things to do that will give your mind x number of minutes/hours each day when you're not feeling "disturbed", your brain will also have a chance to rest, and with enough chance to rest from the stress/sense of loneliness and loss, in time it may be enough to help your brain stop "giving off" quite so many "stress/anxiety chemicals".

If it hasn't been five years yet, I think (and this is only my personal opinion, based on my own experiences) all you can do is start by trying to make some kind of peace with the idea that you won't be feeling like yourself for awhile; and that you need to address your "injured emotions" in the same way you would something like injured/broken bones - treat them with some rest, some nurturing, and try to find some things you can do even if you're not going to be up to/able to doing what you'll one day again be able to do.

I think if I were in your situation I'd try to make sure I had lots of positive time together with my daughter, try to ease the loneliness with having pleasant time out visiting women friends, and maybe plan to keep any male company visits to something like dinner and a movie (and let people know that's all you're interested in). Things like dinner or a movie are always nice, and if that's all you're ready for, I imagine the right guy would understand.

After 29 years, besides all the other aspects of grief and losing someone so close, you also have the challenge of having to adjust to life without him (which is separate from having to process the actual thing of losing him).

Condolences on the loss of your husband. I don't imagine much I've tried to offer here will help. Most people do eventually find they've gotten through their "storm" and find themselves more ready to move on.

Lisa HW Hub Author 2 years ago

John, thank you for sharing some of your own challenges here. It will help others who read your comment to know they aren't the one one going through something similar.

Losing a spouse after a long marriage is a loss "in its own category". Not having experienced that, I don't think I have anything much useful to add to the comments you've already made about your own experience.

I do know that, no matter what any of us ever does/goes through, when it comes to dealing with the loss of a loved one, a whole lot of other people have also done the same kind of thing when going through a similar loss.

Two years still isn't a very long time when it comes to getting to a "different place" in terms of getting through the grief/loss process.

Sincerest wishes for your continued strength in getting through this difficult process. Thanks again for sharing with others here.

Lisa HW Hub Author 23 months ago

generalbrat, there are no words to express how sorry I am to hear you've been through such a loss. Our little nephew "went" at 20 months, only days after being stricken with a serious throat infection. It was just awful (and he was a nephew). Having to know his parents went through that was yet another part of the awfulness of it all. Having to see his grandparents go through that loss was yet another awful thing.

Then I had my own little kids, and it was quite a thing for them to lose their little cousin.

I haven't yet seen your Hubs (and I will), so I don't know how long ago it was you lost Ryan. For my nephew's parents it has been about 20 years now. Somehow, they kept going. They had to because they had an older child to be strong for. Life kept going on, and I suppose, all these years later, they've made some form of peace with it.

There's one thing I always think of that this couple went through. They said losing their child was SO unbearable, the only thing they could think might make life a little more bearable was to have another child. At the time, they had people "judging" them and insinuating that they thought "all they had to do was have another child and be fine". The mother said what people didn't understand was that it wasn't about having another child and being fine. Another child would be a whole, new, different, person; and they knew that. She said, though, that the grief was so bad all they could think might possibly make it a little less bad was to find some "big enough" source of joy to bring to their lives.

The mother said, "Even though even the kind of joy a new baby brings still wouldn't be enough, it's the only joy that's at least somewhere near big enough to help take the place of some of that overwhelming grief." I understood what she was saying, and I wished anyone who didn't would have been more supportive of this couple in this wish to find some "big joy" that might give them and their eldest child "something nice" in a life that had been so shattered and sad. The mother said how she wished people would know they weren't trying to have a "replacement" baby - only trying to find a new source of joy in all the sadness and grief.

Two years after losing their little boy, they had a third beautiful little son who was so completely different from their second son. All these years later, my grown children, their father, and I continue to think of, and mention, our nephew/cousin. He'll always be a part of our lives. I hope, in some way, you may find it comforting to know that years later others will continue to think of your child and see him as a part of their life.

Lisa HW Hub Author 22 months ago

Kris, sorry to know of your daughter and you are going through. There's never anything any of us (especially strangers) can say to make someone feel better, even if we wish we could. My friend's son lost his fiance in car accident, and it was such an awful thing for him to lose the person he was planning to marry.

I think, though, that maybe the best thing I can try to offer here is my own experience in a fatal car accident when I was 20 and when the best friend I'd grown up with (the driver) was killed by a drunk, speeding, driver. Needless to say, my two parents were sick at the whole thing. Months later, my father had a heart attack and died, and I've always suspected that he was so upset at what I was going through he may have sped up a heart attack that may not have occurred quite so early under other circumstances. Today I have grown children of my own (and grown nieces and nephews), and I know how awful it is to watch someone we feel protective of suffer loss or unhappiness.

Having been the daughter with loss, but also the person who has had to watch someone else go through loss of a different kind; I'm convinced it's sometimes worse for the "other" person than for the person, herself. There's no doubt about it, being the person who has had the "primary" loss is the most difficult in most ways. At the same time, though, Nature has a way of getting us through some things. When I went through the accident I knew I a "monster" to fight, so I mustered up that fight, and it got me through. (I'm not comparing a best friend to a boyfriend, of course, but my years of memories of my growing up were left to be my memories, alone; and a whole future my friend and I had taken for granted would be shared was wiped out. (I've written about it my "drunk driving" blog (at my profile).

Still, even though I was, of course, in grief; I always wished relatives and friends who didn't know if I was OK could know I was OK (not too happy, by any means, but OK). Their worrying about me actually made me feel more isolated at a time when I really could have used someone who understood. What was happening was I was feeling I'd changed in everyone's eyes and was suddenly "some delicate flower" that nobody knew what to say what to. I've actually had a person or two say (to me), "That accident damaged you forever." Well, it didn't. 30-plus years after that accident, I'm still the same me I was before it happened. Yes, it made me unhappy. Yes, it gave me something I had to fight and get through, in terms of grief and adjusting. Still, I knew - way back then - that I was, underneath it all, OK (but with something awful to process). I wasn't going to let a "monster" (the accident) take away more from me/my life than it already had, and that's what got me through. Other people didn't seem to know how to "fight that monster" and refuse to let it take away their view of of me and a take-it-for-granted faith that I'd get through it because I was strong and sensible. I've never been someone who "leans on people" anyway; but when something that big happened, and I REALLY pulled away in a lot of ways; people started thinking there was something wrong with the fact that I didn't "turn to them for support". I guess my point is that "kids" (you grow up sooner when something like that happens, but that's not such a horrible thing) are often far stronger than parents imagine they are. I was, after all, 20 (and people younger than that live through serving in wars and whatever else they do). Also, I imagined how it would be if I had been killed instead of my friend, and I kept in mind that I would have wanted her to move on and not worry about me.

When I was old enough to have kids my late friend's age, I did go through a "secondary-grief" kind of thing. It didn't take long to go through it, and it was more melancholy and "new awareness" than grief; but I realized what would have helped would have been if someone had told me that this new form of "issues" might arise 20-plus years after I thought I was over the whole thing. After my father died, but before my mother died (years later) I would go through a variety of losses, and it was always just that much more difficult to know how worried my mother was about me. I wished she would know that I would be OK.

As a mother, one of the biggest, biggest, things in life that I've had the most difficulty "coming to terms with" has been all those times when I've known my children is going through some sadness (bigger than what "everybody goes through" but not of the kind your daughter is going through). Today (unlike when I was 20 and didn't know how parents feel about grown kids), I understand that overcoming that protective instinct and empathy for our children is (I think) pretty much impossible. I know I'm not offering anything helpful here, but I just thought sharing my own experience from both angles may make some sense (in view of the fact that nothing I say is going to help you or your daughter feel any better). As the "secondary sufferer" in a number of situations, I've learned, too, how isolating it can feel to be grieving your own loss while also feeling like you have "no right to grieve that much", in view of the fact that someone else was the "main griever". In that situation, we often feel we need to be strong for the other person; and I think that can mean "pushing down" our own feelings/grief to do that, and maybe slowing down the matter of processing our own grief.

Sincerest condolences to you and your daughter.

Lisa HW Hub Author 22 months ago

Norma, so sorry to hear that you're going through such a recent loss. Fortunately (for me), I haven't gone through losing a spouse. I know what my mother went through when my father died and she was widowed in her early fifties. (Well, of course, I DON'T really know what she went through, but we were close and she talked about it; so I have a "rough idea".)

When I referred to five years, it wasn't to say that how someone "where you are now" will feel the same for a solid five years. People who have lost loved ones usually say the same thing: That the initial grief feels like a major, major, nightmare; but, over time, feels less like horror and more like sadness that eventually, and ever-so-gradually dies down to be something that seems more like wistfulness than "acute" sadness.

People process grief their own way and in their own time, of course; but from what I've experienced, read, hear from others, etc; I think it's often a matter of that first year being "its own thing" and being a matter of taking steps through it, with each week and month moving one farther away from the initial loss. Then, it seems as if Years 2 through 5 are "their own thing", but a very different (and far easier to live with) thing from Year 1. Somewhere between the beginning of Year 2 (when one still can feel pretty awful and wonder if he shouldn't be feeling much better "by now") to the completion of Year 5 it's generally a slow but certain move toward feeling back to oneself completely (although a "oneself" who will always live with the loss. Happiness and feeling normal, though, tend to move in gradually and kind of "push the 'older' loss farther and farther back in the mind most of the time.

You're not alone. That's for sure. The one thing that kind of helped me get through the initial months after my mother died (and I had been taking care of her) was that she had been in and out the hospital frequently. When she "went" I kind of had the feeling she was "just in the hospital again". I wasn't "nutty enough" to "leave reality" and go into "real denial" or anything like that. I'd catch myself and think, "Oh, she isn't coming back." Still, I didn't make any big effort to get rid of that feeling and, instead, try to make myself "feel the reality". In my head, of course, I knew she wasn't coming back. Somehow, though, I had the feeling; and I discovered that having that back-of-the-mind feeling was something that got me through so much of any single day.

As I think I mentioned above, my thinking is that people in the first stages of loss (and six weeks is very much "first stages") need to find the one or two thoughts that are at least somewhat comforting, and keep reminding themselves of those things as way to "come down from the cliff" when the grief gets particularly bad. One by one, the days keep passing; and somehow people get through them.

Sincerest condolences to you. Stay strong and do what it takes (that isn't destructive to you, of course) that will help you get through this initial time of grief. There's no doubt about it - you've got a long road ahead. That road, however, is a whole lot different after six months, eighteen months, three years, etc. etc.

Lisa HW Hub Author 22 months ago

Ladybythelake55, sorry to know you've had this kind of loss. I think "moving on" can mean different things to different people. I'm not sure that when someone has had more loss than we think of as "the average amount for their age" it's really all that possible for them to "just overcome it all" and "return to their regular, old, self".

I think that time, alone, isn't the thing responsible for our feeling at least a little more "healed", but that it's the new, happier, experiences/thoughts (or at least experiences/thoughts that give us a sense of well being in some small way)( that come with that additional time and start to nurture the soul (and/or maybe get brain chemicals in a little better balance after awhile). I think the problem may be, though, that one major loss, by itself, takes time and a whole lot of "soul-nurturing moments of wellbeing or joy". When we get more than one major loss (especially in too short a time), and then may have a bunch of other smaller losses/sources of unhappiness added to the mix; it can be pretty difficult to get enough positive experiences in a short enough time to help "balance out" the sense of loss and kind of push it to the background a little at a time.

People who have a lost a child generally say they never really "get over it". They just learn to live with it. People who were close to their parents and lose them usually say they never really get over that and just get used to living with it.

The one thing that has helped me "give myself permission" to take a rest from thinking about someone close I've lost is to think of whether they'd want me using up the one mind/life I have to be missing them; or whether they'd say, "Just stop thinking about me for awhile and think about something happier." If that person truly loved us, usually that's the kind of thing they'd say. Some people would say that's "escapism" but a) it can help here and there, and b) I see it as taking what control I can of my own thoughts and managing (at least to some degree) my own sadness.

Sometimes we miss people for different reasons. It may be that we miss what they brought to our lives other than just themselves (in which case, I think we need to find our own ways to find whatever it is they brought to us for ourselves). In other cases, we just plain old miss having that person in our lives. That - I don't think - ever goes away, and that, I think, is where (at least for me) stopping myself from spending too much time thinking about the person has helped.

Sometimes too, I think we can have so much big loss/grief in our lives it's almost natural to start to let it affect the identity we see for ourselves as "Sad Person/Have Been for Years and Always Will Be". We can start to feel as if we're "made of sadness" when so many other people are "made of something regular". Maybe we start to set ourselves apart from all the "regular" people, and maybe that reinforces our image of ourselves/feelings that we're different and can never be like everyone else. One thing that has helped me has been having "fight". "Fight" has helped me vow not to let the "monsters" of one loss or another define who I am. I've always thought (whenever I've been through one of those stretches of loss), "I will not let this define me. I will define it and put it in its place eventually." The other thing I often think is that we have one mind, and we can't find a way to ease its troubles some; that mind will start to affect our physical health. The "fight" in me reminds me, "Life is short (no matter how long we live), and I have one life. This thing isn't going to destroy my health and make my life any shorter than it isn't already is." Along those lines, I've also always reminded myself that person who is gone is no longer here and no longer has to deal with worries/sadness. They had their one life. I have mine. Somehow I think that I owe it to them, to myself, and to God (if there is one, and I usually lean in that direction) to take whatever good care of the one good mind and I heart I've been given.

People are different. Loss is different. I don't know if any of these thoughts apply at all to you/your situation. I just know they've helped me get past (to whatever degree I'll ever get past) a lot of grief/loss. Maybe the thing, too, is that we shouldn't expect ourselves to return the same old "before-grief" us. Maybe that's expecting too much, and when we can't do that we feel like we're failing. Maybe, instead, we need to learn to be happy (or at least happier) "around" (or in spite of) the fact that we'll always be a sadder us than we were before we lost someone.

Lisa HW Hub Author 22 months ago

Lilly, so sorry to know you have "that one" to deal with. My friend lost her teen-age sons years ago. Even though it's "old" for her now (as "old" as it will ever be), when she talks about him I still feel so helpless in wishing there were something I could say that would help.

I'm not at all comparing the loss of an elderly mother with the loss of a child, but I do know that after I lost my mother I still wasn't "all over it" at 8 years. I was a whole lot better with it, but I definitely was not where I eventually got to be with it once, maybe, 10 years had passed. (Of course, there was a lot of extra "horror" surrounding my mother's death, so there were "complicating factors" beyond "the usual"). After 5 years passed I thought, "Well, this is it. This is as over it as I'm ever going to get." That wasn't correct. Somewhere along the way I apparently kept getting "better and better" with it.

I can't make guesses about you in your situation. I do know, though, that there can be the thing when we reach x number of years and think we're as "good" as we're going to get, only to discover a few years later that there's apparently no cut-off point for continued healing.

Thank you for sharing your own situation here. Someone else in your situation and stage after such a loss may see your comment and know they aren't alone.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

Angie, I'm sorry to know you've had those big losses. It's really recent for your husband, and (although I know everyone can be different) it hasn't really been all that long with your mother either (as far as losing parents goes). It's really important to me that nobody here gets the idea I'm saying it takes that full five years before ever feeling at all better. It doesn't. Again, I know people can be different; but I think a common thing is that people feel a whole lot better at 2 years than 2, with gradual improvement with each year. A year and a half is still soon soon with your husband, and you've got the added challenge (for lack of better word) of having to be thinking about such young children.

Based only on my own experience losing someone close (and I haven't lost a husband, so I know that's a whole different kind of thing; although my mother was widowed fairly young), and based on what others close to me have said; I almost think you may be at one kind of "lowest point" right now. There's that initial "lowest point" that's "its own kind of thing"; but then there's a different kind of "lowest point" in terms of having sort of settled in a life without the person (so it isn't brand new any more). At that year or so stage, people just seem to start expecting to feel a lot better than they do; and I don't think any ever really feels that OK at even a year a half. This time next year - maybe. Maybe even six or so months from now.

What I've found (at least for me, and again - not comparing it to the loss of a young husband) was that the more life and "the world" seemed to "settle in" as that first year had just passed, the more (in some ways) it made how rotten I was feeling seem to stand out more and kind of call attention to itself, to me, and kind of remind me how "not OK" I still felt.

Also, I think when someone first passes away we think about that person, then we think about all the immediate and more urgent things to deal with. It takes awhile to get around to thinking about us, ourselves - just us and what the loss means to us.

I know none of this is going to help, but I guess my main point is, don't expect too much of yourself quite this soon. For me, the numbness that happens has always been a good thing because it helps us get through the time when we're still not ready to be rid of the numbness. Feeling normal again comes so slowly and such a little bit at a time, people don't really see it happening - but it does. It's just too soon right now to expect that.

I'm just muddling my way here, when it comes to thinking about your comment, but I wonder if it would help if you make a point of separating being unhappy because of losing your husband and the father of your kids, and being unhappy with a single lifestyle. They're two different things (even if one led to the other). I wonder if it's a matter of having to process all the things of losing your husband and his death; but then having to separately address the issues associated with being single. The loss, itself, is one of those things that can just take getting used to; but the "single" aspect of it has its own set of things that might be something that could be addressed, one at a time.

Maybe you can't speed up the grieving the process, but I wonder if there are small things you could do to speed up adjusting to (and even seeing the positive things about) being single (and there are some). If you're lonely, try addressing that in small ways. You don't have to "go out and find a boyfriend". What about increasing time with people you feel less lonely around? Can you fill more time with things that are pleasant enough to make your days just a little less "empty" (if that's the word that applies). Are there things you and the children could do more often that would give you more happy time together over the course of a week? If you're tired with something like working and after-school care (or other nitty-gritty aspects of life without that second person), could you find ways to improve on any of those kinds of things?

Just thoughts. If you've already tried all that (and you probably have) disregard my thoughts, of course.

Either way, hang in. It will get better.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

rmvl, I'm sorry to hear of your loss. It's still a pretty recent loss, so I'm not surprised to hear you're not at the "feeling-ready-to-move-on" stage yet. Sometimes you can't ask, "why". Some people believe there's "a reason for everything", and maybe there is. If there is, though, we're not going to learn what that reason is, at least not while we're here on Earth. Then again, maybe there is no reason. If your husband became ill, sometimes the only reason is awful "luck". If he had an accident, sometimes accidents happen when someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time. What has always helped me was to keep reminding myself that we're all here "on our own terms" and "for the x amount time we happen to get. We can share our lives, love, and time while we're here with the other person; but where each individual usually is "on his own" is when it comes to his time on Earth. When someone young has died, sometimes it can help to think of how he may have been spared some particularly difficult thing that may have come later, or else to think of how it's always harder on the people left living than one the people who aren't here to feel sad or suffer.

I don't know if this is the wisest thing to do or not, but some people find that not letting the room be silent when they try to sleep helps - maybe a tv with a timer, or a radio (something droning but something that may be going on in the background to listen to as you fall asleep). Some people may find it helps not to try to sleep until they're absolutely exhausted and ready to "pass out". The reason it's difficult to believe he's gone is that Nature has a way of making it difficult to believe while you're in the grief process. For now, try to be OK-enough with not really believing he's gone (you know, in your mind, he is - but if you can't really make it sink in, that's how people often feel for awhile).

I haven't lost a husband (my mother lost two, though - one at 24 and the other in her fifties; but I've lost other close people). I think you should keep taking it a day at a time, don't feel as if you have to "move on" right now, when you're not ready. Instead, just take it that day at a time; and one day you'll discover that you've begun to move on. If you get any chances to go out and talk to friends or family, and maybe have a little pleasant time that may help get your mind off your loss; go. You don't have to expect yourself to have "big fun" - just a pleasant time. The more pleasant time you can find, the less miserable time you'll be having. Eventually, some of that pleasant time (or at least sort-of-pleasant time) will build up and help you feel a little better, a little at a time.

You may not like to work, but working may at least give you something else to think about; and a way to get out and at least be talking to people. If you'd like to do different work than you do now, maybe you could think about figuring out how to find the kind of work you may like to do (either out at a company somewhere, or even at home). Since you've found yourself alone (at least for now), maybe you could concentrate on you, as an individual, and on what you would like in your future. Use what you'd one day like in your life as a guide for steps to take now to start building that. If you can do that, chances are more new and different things will start coming into your life and making you feel more like you again.

Stay strong. When it comes to moving on, you know how they say "You have to walk before you can run?" Moving on is the same kind of thing. You have to get through that whole first year or so before you can even begin to really move on. You've gotten through that much, so you have that much behind you.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

rmvl, I want to be careful to again say I haven't lost a husband - only my parents, other relatives, close friends, etc. Based on my own experience, I can't say I've started to forget anyone. What happened with me, though, is that maybe a very long time (like 25/30 years) I'd realize I felt as if I didn't know that person any more. It's hard to describe. There was definitely a distance, as compared to, say, after only 10 or 11 years. Well, with my mother (who I had until I was in my middle years) it will be soon be 15 years. I'm realizing that "distance" seems to kind be there now, although it isn't anywhere near the same as with my father (over 30 years). It's more like you feel like they've missed so much since they've been gone there are things they don't know about the "later you".

It's definitely not forgetting at all (at least for me). For me, it's more like moving from "loving someone the same as always even though they're not here any more" to "someone I loved so much when they were here".

It definitely doesn't take away from how much I loved them, or even how much I'd love to be able to have them still here. It's more that it's being able to remember loving them, remember them with love and fondness, but not hurting so acutely. When you still feel like you love someone it hurts acutely to not be able to have them here. So, I guess, that's how the "moving on" (emotionally, anyway) process seems to go.

This is a really corny verse I once saw on a sympathy card, but I found it very moving (in spite of the fact that I also found it a little "too much"). It was: "God gave us memory so that we may have roses in December." Corny or not, I think that's true. I also think that sometimes we may hold back on feeling free to allow ourselves to move on, out of fear of forgetting the other person. From what I've heard, and based on my own experience, I don't think we ever forget the people we deeply love, even if (for some reason) we wanted to.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

Eiddwen, thank you for sharing your own experience with others here (and, of course, so sorry to know you've had such awful losses). I'm sure there's someone who will run into this Hub and find reassurance in seeing that you're somehow managing to keep going on and put things in as much perspective and "light" as you seem to be.

I agree that the one thing that can help a lot of people keep going and not let themselves "give up on life" is what you said - that the loved ones would not want that.

Knowing that you lost your daughter so recently, I don't really feel worthy of even trying to offer words that would at all come close to being appropriate or useful. I felt the same with some of the people who commented above, but they asked for some kind of feedback (so I thought I'd at least try to think of something that might possibly be at least a little helpful or reassuring). I'm tempted to say that since you didn't ask for anyone else's "two cents" you seem to have found your own way of managing (and I'm sure you have, in view of the fact the we have no choice in these things).

I guess I'm just trying to say that I'm not someone who would presume to offer that "two cents" unless someone asks; and I know very well there's little I could say that would help you feel any better with such an unimaginable loss not all that long ago. All words just seem so empty sometimes.

Again, thank you for reminding others here that it's possible to keep in mind that loved ones would not want us to just stop living and laughing.

Deepest condolences on what you've been through.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

Dawn, there aren't words to express how sorry I am to see such your story here. You have the double "whammy" (for lack of more dignified and somber term) of seeing your son's death as being caused by strangers who should have been watching out for him, and of that "worst-nightmare" loss of a child, as well.

The only forum I know of off hand is the one mentioned above, "The Light Beyond". I don't know if there's anything on there that may be helpful or not.

I just did a quick search for:

"online support and chat for parents who lost a child" and did come up with quite a list. I don't know if any of them would be what you're looking for or need. Here are a few that lead to other resources. If you searched the same words or similar phrases maybe you'd come up with something right for you.

http://www.lossofachild.org/resourcesforparents.ht

https://www.griefhaven.org/

http://www.griefnet.org/support/sg2.html

Also, I don't know if this would help; but I'm wondering if you just started writing (like on HubPages), wrote about either what happened with you son, what you're going through, or else something completely unrelated (just to get your mind off things sometimes); that might help. HubPages has a great community, and you could start with a few Hubs on whatever you think you'd like Hubs on, go the forums and maybe do a little a little "idle chat" (just to have something light to do on the Internet), and take it from there. If you didn't want to write more Hubs you wouldn't have to. If you decided you'd like to create Hubs about things unrelated to your son or your loss, you could. (If you have some great ways to make birthday cakes or know something about cars, finances, or anything that interests you; you could put together a Hub on anything).

Thank you for sharing your situation here, and it isn't at all "too graphic". A Hub like this is exactly the kind of place where such contributions are welcome, because there are other people who will read what you wrote and not feel so alone.

Again, sincerest, sincerest, condolences.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

Peggy W, thank you for your kind words. I'm sorry to knoc that you've lost both your mother and your brother so recently. It's nice to think someone found the Hub at least a little helpful. You've had more than your share of loss, and I'm guessing you're still pretty much "in the thick" of grieving the loss of your mother and brother. The thought that my mother never had to be in a nursing home was one that helped me too. My father went from the house (where he had a heart attack) to ICU and then a regular bed in the hospital, so knowing that neither of my parents were in a nursing home is something I'm grateful for.

When my mother reached a certain age, I used to think about how she'd lost her parents, siblings, a young husband (WWII and before she married my father and had us, kids), friends, etc. It always surprised me that she'd just seemed to have kind of made peace with all the loss. It was almost like death had become something she was used to. I wondered how she could seem like such an "old hand" at dealing with having lost so many people. I've discovered that it can almost seem as if the first or second major losses are things we have to figure out our coping techniques on, and then subsequent losses are kind of a matter of bring out, and dusting off, those coping skills we figured out the first couple of times out.

Today, my sister and I go to our parents' grave at the local cemetery; and although neither of us can really (even still) quite believe they're really there, and although both have us have said we feel a sense of melancholy there (of course), we also often slip into "ordinary" conversation about things like which graves look nice, what we'd like to buy for our parents' grave, or whose grave (of someone we know, like someone else in town or our uncle and aunt) looks like someone has come and put something new on it.

We find ourselves chatting and laughing and kind of acting as if we're at the local park (or something). We often mention how strange it is that this whole "cemetery thing" has become so routine and run-of-the-mill for us. Now, I guess I understand how once my mother got to be a certain age she seemed as "comfortable" (up to a point, anyway) with death as she did. Maybe she wasn't really as comfortable with it as she appeared, but she certainly did seem practiced at it.

Life is quite the learning experience, isn't it....

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

(Correction: That should have been, "....sorry to know" (not "knoc"). I noticed that too late to correct it.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

suzinaz, I'm sorry to see that you've been through so much "big" loss in such a short time. I have a friend who went through something very similar.

The five-year thing is something I've noticed in my own experience, but it's also something that was confirmed when Diane Sawyer (ABC) did a special on the 5th anniversary of September 11. She said how "all" the families seemed to have reached a new stage, and how they had started to seem to have started to rebuild new lives/futures. I'm uncomfortable to say the five-year thing is a "rule of thumb". Grief is different for everyone, as you know. I think the five-year-thing is more a "rough idea of what a lot of people seem to notice".

I'm only one person, but from my personal experience, I'd "cautiously" say I think there's a big difference at 5 years no matter how much loss there has been. It's important to say that it doesn't take the whole 5 years to start feeling better than you did at 1 year. It's a very gradual thing. The point about the 5 years is that it can feel much different than any of the years before did, even if each of them felt increasingly less "gray".

I had one year in my life (when I turned 21) when my best friend from childhood and I were in a car accident that killed her. Months later another close friend's brother died at 17. Months before our accident another close friend's two brothers and their friend were in a horrible accident. Two boys died. One was severely burned and nearly died. That little stretch of time was all "topped off" when my father died (similar to your husband, only my father was 62). In the case of that little stretch of time, I did find the five-year mark felt very different. Of course, awful as all those deaths of young friends was, none of them was "equal" to losing my father. Then again, though, there were other factors that introduced other kinds of sad things into the "mix", as well as the fact that I was as young as I was.

Fast forward to a stretch of years between my late thirties and early forties. I had so much big, awful, horrible, and overwhelming loss over the course of a few years; my life just felt like I was in a horror movie. Truly. I had numbness like I'd never had before, and I pretty much lived on adrenaline for those relatively few years. Besides all kinds of big, bizarre, loss that didn't include death; there was the loss of my nephew at 20 months, my father-in-law (after losing his legs through congestive heart failure), a couple of uncles, a couple of aunts, a friend, my mother (after being bedridden for 15 months and losing her legs the same as my father-in-law had shortly before). On top of it, there was cancer in the family, cancer scares for my husband, loss of long-time pets - and this is the stuff that's easy to describe here. Again, I just felt like I was the star of an awful horror movie. It was beyond grief and just horror. But, I'm the mother of three kids (and at the time they were young). I had to keep going and keep being strong for them. If it weren't for that "precious" numbness, I don't know how I would have survived or stayed sane or whatever else one would think would happen under such horror.

At five years after the last biggest and most awful losses/sources of grief had hit, I do think I felt a lot different than I did earlier. I can't judge the first four years because, honestly, it was all a blur (in ways). There were too many big things hitting my life to even be able to sort it all out. Still, yes, at five years I was feeling that things had calmed down and I wasn't waiting for some new horrible thing to hit at any moment.

Before that, I had figured out how to "push it all" to the back of my mind and try not to think about any of it. I wondered if that was healthy, but I knew it was the only way I could kind of feel "regular" and keep coping. I told myself, "Do whatever it takes "mentally" to cope and be "regular" for myself and the kids".

Anyway, I can't give a good reading on those years between the first anniversary of any of those losses and the fifth, but I do know I was very different. I know, though, that with so many "peripheral" and "complicating" things to process and deal with, associated with each "main" awful loss; there was a lot of leftover, but not acute, grief kind of hanging around in the back of mind. I'm going to continue this in the next comment block because I'm not sure what kind of space is left here....

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

susinaz, (continued from above)...

I actually (and without any credentials or "right" to even consider this) kind of developed a theory about PTSD, because I wondered if I may have a mild case of it. I read about it, and I wasn't having any flashbacks that involved "leaving reality" (mentally) at all. Still, what I'd done was push all the awful stuff to the back of my mind, try not to think of it, and hope some new, positive, experiences would "come in" and "lighten the grayness". Well, there were some positive experiences, as there usually are in most lives; but they weren't as "big" as all that loss. It felt to me as if I needed some equally big positive things to help fill that "gray room" in my mind.

To give you an idea, I picture a prison cell with a vase of beautiful flowers on the table. The positive things weren't doing it for me at the time.

What it felt like for me was that, because the "bad stuff" hadn't been successfully or adequately replaced by positive stuff; it was as if the bad stuff was just kind of still in the "main part" of my mind, getting older and harder (as opposed to remaining fresh and acute) as time went on.

I discovered that smoking cigarettes actually help "give me the mental strength" (nicotine, of course) to keep those more acute thoughts in the background. Still, there was all that "old, dead" grief left in the foreground. If I didn't smoke I'd start to feel as if there was a Pandora's Box of all the memories I didn't want to think about, coming out in a unbearable way.

That's when I started to wonder if some mild cases of PTSD are a matter of someone's going through SO much but not having that "equalizing" amount of positive, new, experiences to really "clear out" the "old, dead, calcified" stuff. I've read that when people feel sufficiently threatened (and that isn't necessarily feeling threatened with their own death, although that can be a part of it much of the time) the hippocampus and amygdala have certain things occurring that are now associated with PTSD. I was, for the most part, living my life reasonably normally and doing what I needed to do for my kids and myself. I was laughing the way I always laugh. All seemed normal in so many ways. Still, I was living each day, always (or at least often) spending a lot of mental energy trying to keep myself from thinking about all the horror and loss at all.

I suppose, in all honesty (and I don't like being this honest with you right now, I guess), I'd say that at five years after the last big awful thing happened (but even then, a lot of awful things didn't stop happening; they just weren't as big), the acute grief had run a similar course to grief I've had in more simple, basic, situations of losing someone close.

What had replaced the acute grief (at least in some ways) was, I think, a less intense, "lower level", chronic grief that was easier to manage for several years. It's important to mention that I know some of that chronic, low-level, grief could have been alleviated if I'd gotten a few things (acknowledgement, information, other things from a few people I needed them from); so I don't want to suggest that you would have something similar (if your grief is all "death-related" and a matter of nothing more complicated than too many "individual cases of standard-but-major mourning"). For me, some of the complications and aggravations of that "standard mourning" were caused by people. The only reason I'm mentioning all this is that it's all I have to go on as far as personal experience goes.

So, with all those words, I guess I'd say that the five-year-thing generally does apply, no matter how many different "cases of big grief" occur within a short time. With a husband and parents, all of whom are such major, major, losses in life; I'm not sure it's good to assume that 5 years is a "magic number". At the same time, though, I do think people can help speed up SOME of that healing process if they have enough positive experiences in their life to at least help offset some of the loss.

When I was going through my "horror-movie phase", I just kind of felt as if I was number than usual, to the point where I was SO numb I almost didn't feel any of it (and yet, of course, I did at the same time). It felt as if I was walking through some battlefield, hoping only to avoid being "attacked" yet again. I felt as if my main objective (other than being a solid, supportive, mother to my kids) was to "just emotionally survive".

continued next comment block before wrapping up.....

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

susinaz, (continued from above....)

I probably shouldn't even bring up my own personal experience, because each loss is different for each person; and each person is different from every other person. Then again, sometimes one horrible reason for grief can, in ways, be very much like all other horrible losses.

Also, I probably shouldn't paint quite such a bleak picture, because even when all that loss was going on for me, so was life. There was laughing, enjoying time with my kids, holidays, socializing, etc. etc. Those things helped keep all the loss a little more at bay, by essentially keeping my mind more filled for awhile; as well as, I'm sure, altering my brain chemicals at least temporarily.

I don't know... The process of grief and loss and the time it takes to sort it out, let it get a little older, and generally feel ourselves emerge from within again; is so, so, gradual and subtle and complex it's hard to describe it or put a time-table on it.

I've pulled what was a "running thread in the background of my mind" (at least a lot of the times) out to the foreground as a way of trying to describe it or label things. I hope that my doing that doesn't create the impression all that "grayness" "stays in the foreground" more or longer than it really does.

For me, a lot of time has now passed since that stretch of years. I suppose I'd describe the earliest (5) years as dealing with the process of letting acute grief fade. That "lower level" and far less extreme, chronic, sense of "residual" grief did hang around for a few years past the first 5. I guess it was "Phase II".

This that I'm about to guess comes from, as I said, nothing but guessing: I suspect (and am really cautious to emphasize I'm only guessing, by on what I've gone through and nothing else) that maybe if there's a whole lot of big loss, there is a "Phase II". It's important to keep emphasizing, though, that we can feel pretty happy a good part of the time even during "Phase I" (especially after the first year of not having "horror"). By only discussing all the bad stuff, I may have created the impression that there weren't lots of good moments full of good stuff. (But this Hub isn't about the good stuff. Just keep in mind there's no balance in the discussion.)

For me, personally, (and I know this is because of those "complications" and "other people" I mentioned; and I don't think there would be this if I were "just" (forgive the "just") dealing with the loss of more than one loved ones); there has been a "Phase III", and I think I'm there now.

On the one hand, all that "horror" is "ancient history" for me now. It's just part of my "story", and it's as much a part of my life as my eye color or the fact that I was raised in the city I was raised in as a kid. The fact that I can write about it all, as I have here, shows that it's all just an "account" at this point.

Life has gone on. I'd say I've been "over it" (all) for ages now. Where there has been a "Phase III" is with some really, really, "background", grief that, at this point, I'm starting to think is either adrenal fatigue or mild depression. I can tell you right now, and without mistake, that I know what it would take to make me feel like myself; and at this point, what it would take is no longer time. It would take those things I mentioned above. In other words, don't go by me because my situation is different.

The only reason I've brought all this up is because I know how big those losses have been for you, and I know how complicated and difficult it can be to have so many big losses around the same time.

I'm not suggesting this to you, because I know I had no need to see a counselor and "re-hash" what I was going over and over in my head; and what I pretty free to talk about with friends and family anyway; but in view of all your loss, I don't think it's a bad idea to consider talking to a professional IF you feel like you could use that. Looking back, while I didn't see the need to talk to a professional as a way of "re-hashing it" or getting "support", what might have helped was to find someone who could do what I've tried to do here, which is kind of layout some of the things to watch out for on the road from grieving to "normal again".

Back when I was in my "horror-movie" stage, I couldn't even imagine, or think about, getting back to normal at all. All I could think about was getting myself through each day. I suppose, if I'd thought about it, I would have assumed that time, alone, would heal most of it. I think I also would have assumed that, "messy" as it all was, there was some linear progression from grieving to not grieving.

It wasn't linear, like moving a game piece in a board game. It was more like "being in" several board games at once, and then changing to a whole new set of board games. The only thing linear about it was the moving from day to day; and over time, eventually moving from one bunch of board games that I was "in" simultaneously to another bunch of them.

Somewhere along the way I just discovered that I was no longer in any board games and was, instead, in the "fresh, green, grass" of life. (In other words, I guess, I moved from not feeling I really "in life" to again feeling I was.) The trouble was that even once I got to "real life" I still had some processing to do. It was just that it was easier and more clear-cut once the "board-game" phase was over.

I have no idea if you, or anyone else, will ever read all this. I have no idea if any of it may be at all helpful or if it just look like the "rantings" of a crazy person. LOL I just know that I have a rough idea about how you must be feeling right now (at least in some ways); and somehow it seems to me worthwhile to at least try to share some of what I think I've figured out, in the hopes of possibly saying at least a few words that may, in some way, be a little helpful.

Lisa HW Hub Author 21 months ago

susinaz, you raised a couple of points that I think are worth mentioning (before I close this "encyclopedia-sized" "input" of mine:

I think when you've been through a lot in a short time people don't quite know what to think, what to say, or whether you're "OK in spite of it all". Believe it or not, like you (and in spite of what this Hub and all my comments might lead people to think), I'm an extremely "light" and positive person too. Between that "lighter" nature, and seeing some of these overwhelming losses as something that "aren't going to win", those aspects to a personality can, I think, in themselves help bring some of those "positive things" into an otherwise not-very-happy mind after going through such loss.

You're right. A lot of these rough times in life can bring people closer, and once it all dies down you can look around and think, "Why, look what we've all gotten through as family." That's yet another one of those "positive" things that adds "nourishing" to the mind/soul.

My sister and I were once comparing what was "worse" about losing our father versus losing our mother. After some back and forth we both kind of came to the conclusion, "You can't be going over what you "maybe could have done" or what made one death worse, and all that." One of us said, "No matter how you look at it or what the circumstances are, having someone die is rotten." One person was too young. Someone else lingered. Someone should have done one thing or another. Etc. Etc. All that "wheel-spinning" (while some of it may have some use in our processing it) can turn into wasted energy. Somehow, for us, just recognizing that bottom-line - all death is rotten, helped us kind of simplify the processing and come get a little closer to some kind of "peace" with it all.

I've always been very grateful for any numbness that comes at such times. It's helpful not to be able to feel quite as much as we otherwise might at such a time. We still feel the loss acutely, but the grief helps numb us and keep us from feeling as if we'll "lose our minds" over it.

Stay positive. It sounds to me like you're doing what most solid, otherwise positive, people do after going through such a time - hanging in, doing your best, and taking it a day at a time.

Thank you for your generous sharing, as well.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Brooke S, I'm sorry to know you lost your father so recently.

You're right that everyone processes his own grief in his own way, and the same person can process grief over losing different loved ones differently too. Usually, there are some common things people tend to do. On the other hand, when someone loses someone he loves but is extremely close to on a day-to-day basis, it can be different from losing someone we love but don't have in our life on a day-to-day basis. My sister and I have often gone over "what was worse in what ways", when we'd compare losing our father (suddenly when we were pretty young) to losing our mother (after long illness and when when we had passed 40).

I think our individual grief is our own, and there is no right or wrong way to process it. Most of the time, we have no choice but to keep "traveling down that road" when grief first hits, and over time we move farther away from it. I guess, if we feel like it's more than we can deal with, that's time to think about talking to someone (like a counselor) who specialize in grief counseling.

There's no doubt about it, it's a rotten thing to have to go through; but usually, just because we do keep on living our lives, we do get breaks from it here and there. As time goes on, those breaks from it come more often.

Sometimes, too, when someone has been sick for a long time, we may do some grieving before we actually lose them.

I think one reason we think more about the negative things than positive ones after losing someone is that we need to "mentally process" all those disturbing, negative, things (that often are hard to process or leave us feeling confused about something that was or wasn't done - that type of thing).

After my mother had a heart attack, was bedridden for months, and eventually needed to have both her feet "taken", that was, needless to say, a really, really, tough one to process. My sister and I discovered that both of us had a dream or two (or three) in which our mother was doing something like dancing around the kitchen on little fins (instead of feet). We laughed about the silly dreams, because we both said our mother and we were happy in the dreams. It was obvious to me that I needed to process the idea that my mother had lost her feet, that we hadn't been able to bring her home and figure out some way that she could sort of have a normal life, and that at least she was no longer suffering.

Later, my sister and I both discovered that we'd both had "arguing dreams" about our mother. I now realize that I was processing my "issues" regarding my mother and losing her as if those issues were in layers, and the dreams "addressed" the top (most obvious) layer first, and worked their way down to the "next-down" layer, such as working out issues associated with having done something that may have upset my mother, or having had her make choices about her own care that kind of made me a little angry.

The last dream we both said we had (not necessarily at the same time, or anything like that - but within similar time frames) was a hard-to-analyze one. In it, our mother and father were both in the house we'd grown up in. My mother was in one bedroom, alive, but sick (the way she'd been when she was bedridden). My father was in the bedroom they'd once shared, only he was "sort of alive" but in the room full of cobwebs. (They were both buried together.) I realized that what I (and probably my sister) was doing was trying to "emotionally process" that my mother and father were "equal" (as opposed to once being "one-deceased/one-alive"). What I realized, though, was that emotionally they didn't feel "equal". I had processed losing my father over twenty years earlier. It was "old". Emotionally, my mother "wasn't in the same place for me" as my father. So, the dream kind of had them "equal" but in different rooms and in different states.

It was as if I'd processed first the issues associated only with my mother when she had been alive and sick. Then I processed issues associated with my relationship with her during the time she was sick. Then I processed things like my overall relationship with her. Finally, I processed the reality that she and my father were in the same place physically, but not in the same place in my "emotional thinking".

That weird dream was the last "processing dream" (that I can tell). Since then there have been the occasional dreams when my mother is alive and doing "the usual stuff" she always did. I suppose, maybe, that's the occasional surfacing of an underlying wish that she could still be here. What it seems like to me is that those initial "weird" processing dreams (with weirdness like little flippers, my mother dancing around like a mischievous and happy leprechaun, and the cobwebs-thing probably were images that came from some "disturbed" place in my emotions. I'm guessing that some of those things I was processing were so disturbing to me I didn't even let them "come to the surface" in my awake thinking.

I thought I'd mention this in case you, or anyone else who reads here, start to notice odd dreams. I don't know if everyone processes things in this way (when it comes to dreams after a loss), but I found that when I recognized what seemed to be happening with the "layers" being dealt with from the top down, it was easier for me to see what I'd been dealing with in any particular dream. As a result, I was more able to process the issue on a conscious, head-on, way; rather than have it keep showing up in dreams.

Again, sincerest condolences on having lost your father so recently. Stay confident in knowing that your grief belongs to you, and that you are the one who knows how you need to process it. You'll know if it ever seems to be more than you can process, and if that were to happen you can always seek some help.

I think, usually, most of us just keep muddling our way through grief until we get to the day when we know we've muddled our way back to mostly the way we used to be.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

pat, I'm so sorry to know you're going through this, because as anyone who lost a mother they're close to knows, it's pretty much one of the biggest, worst, losses people go through. One thing that I always kept in mind about my mother, though, was that the managed to get through this life without having lost one of her own children. That, in itself, is reason to know that no matter what kind of life a mother had, it was a blessed and fortunate life. On the other hand, I have a family members who went through the loss of a child, and when that child's grandparents died only a few years later, I kept thinking how, at least, they weren't living with their loss any longer. I knew they didn't have time to get over that loss because they were as elderly as they were when their little grandson died.

This may not seem to much, in terms of "advice"; and it doesn't related directly to moving on after losing a mother. I think, though, that only time helps people move on, "inch by inch"; and until time can do its job, the only way to feel a little less horrible each day is to find those things to think about that help just a little, and sometimes only for a very brief time.

They tell people with incurable physical disease that they can't approach it from a "make-it-go-away" approach. Instead, they learn to manage it. I think grief is kind of an "emotional version" of the same thing. Everyone processes grief differently; but I think you're kind of "in the heart of it" right now. It's long enough to past that initial stage but really not long at all.

It think the only things you can do are to try to take care of your physical health (sleep as much as need to, eat as good a diet as you can, get out and get fresh air, etc.) When the particularly disturbing thoughts start to creep in, find those things to tell yourself that help "trim down" the "degree" of those thoughts.

Don't try to sleep when you're not tired. Laying awake for a long time is the worst thing for not feeling bad. If you need a radio or other droning talk on to help you keep from "slipping into too much thinking", use that.

As I mentioned above, give yourself permission to find a few minor things that may make you laugh, or at least "feel neutral". Over time, those things do add up; and even if they don't add up to nearly enough, for every minute your mind isn't focused on sadness, that's a minute when your brain isn't "initiating" a cycle of "negative-feeling" hormones/brain chemicals. When I had too much in terms of grief, I actually found (and this will sound really ridiculous) online dollmaker sites, where you can just "robotically" make these little "paper dolls" and drag clothes and hair to then have "virtual paper dolls". They're useless. Using time that way (for an adult, especially) seems ridiculous and bizarre. Still, as I started to kind of enjoy thinking of what the next "outfit" would be, I found I was kind of getting involved in it. (I now have a disk somewhere with a "paper dolls" in whole Miss America Pageants, dance recitals, and any number of other "events".)

Why that worked was that it required no real thinking (but it also required enough thinking that I wasn't completely thinking about my grief) and could be done "robotically". (After my father died my mother had done something similar with multi-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles.) It has to be OK to just find some "dumb" thing to waste time on, because that's better than feeling some of the stuff we feel after losing someone so close. That kind of thing requires just enough "brain use" to help direct the mind away from the grief. Something like watching television or movies doesn't usually do that. For me, it wasn't as if I spent all my days doing "the doll thing". It was just when I was in a really bad slump and didn't feel like doing anything else anyway. (For months, my mother had her latest puzzles out on the dining room table, waiting for those times when she'd feel like finding a few more pieces.) Whatever the "idle entertainment" a person uses as a way to keep his mind of grief, one day the person just realizes he isn't interested, and doesn't need the activity, any longer.

Besides having to process not having your mother here, you're also in the process of needing to get used to living life without her in it (after a life of always having her in it). There's the grief over "just plain losing her", but then there's that issue of getting used to living life without her. They're two different part of grief. If you're like most people, you certainly won't feel lost and alone forever. You will find happiness again, and you will find peace. "Lost and alone" are parts of grief. They pass. So is feeling as if there's no way on Earth you can ever feel happy again. It's what pretty much everyone goes through. It does pass, but it is so gradual you don't even know when or how it passed.

If it ever gets so bad that you feel like you just can't deal with it on your own, there's nothing wrong with finding a professional who deals with grief counseling.

I know that no words that anyone says to you right now can help. That's the awful thing about grief, and it's the awful thing about knowing someone is going through it.

Something else about losing a mother or parent is that it can be different, depending on your age. I lost my father when I was 21, and that was "particularly bad" because it was a giant shock, left me feeling "short-changed", and had a number of different "elements" to it that I didn't have when I lost my mother around 40. On the other hand, I'd spent all those years living with her in my adult life. Getting used to a "new adult life" without her was harder. With my father, it was more like being launched prematurely into "real life" or "adult life". So that's something else to factor in. (My cousin was in her 60's when her 89-year-old mother died. People think it should be easier because at least someone "had a long life". Maybe in some ways it is. In other ways, though, someone like my cousin had to adjust to a "new life" after living more than 60 years with her mother in it. One way or another, it's never easy. These are things to consider, though, when you're trying to break down the elements of your own grief and think of ways to process each of those elements.

Sincerest condolences. Hang in there. It will get better. No matter how you process your own grief, time will help. Sometimes it seems like it takes far less time than you'd ever imagine to feel a little better. At other times, it seems like it takes far more. I guess that's because grief has all those different elements to it, and each needs to be worked through in its own time. (Maybe a life in grief is kind of like those multi-thousand-piece puzzles my mother once did. Piece by piece, and bit by bit, the picture becomes whole.)

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Gemma, I'm particularly uncomfortable offering too much of an opinion; because I'm only a freelance. What I've offered here is from a blend of personal experience and observations and having read all the "usual" stuff about grieving that most people read, at least at some point in (usually) adult life. In other words, I'm just reminding you (or anyone else here) that I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about when it comes to people other than myself. (I do know myself and my own experiences and observations well, but that's it. I do know that most things we go through when grieving are things a whole lot of other people have also gone through when they grieve.)

When my father died I had no children. At his funeral, though, I knew I couldn't let myself cry; because at the time I felt as if I allowed even a hint of crying to start I'd not be able to stop (and it would be so overcoming I'd just be a big mess - and I don't just mean having a sniffly nose and having my mascara run). Anyway, I just told myself not to cry there in the church or at the cemetery. I removed myself "mentally", went through the motions, and got myself through it. In fact, I didn't even allow myself to really have the kind of cry I needed for a few months. I cried, but it was always with the idea that I couldn't let it get to out-of-control. When my mother died - same thing. The difference then, though, was I couldn't let my three children or any of the other children in the family (my mother's other grandchildren and some young people who saw her as their "mother" in for one reason or another). I just knew that my siblings and I were, by that time, "the only older generation" left. I saw it as my responsibility to remain strong for the teenagers and early-twenties grandchildren, for whom losing the grandmother they loved so much was absolutely horrible.

A person or two thought there was something "wrong" that I chose not to allow myself to cry. There wasn't (as far as I'm concerned). I cried in smaller amounts when the situation wasn't one (like saying a "final goodbye" and all the overwhelmingly sad things associated with a funeral). Just a few months after the grief wasn't so brand new, I did have a giant cry over my father. With my mother, I'd grieved over one incident or another before she died. (For example, the days when she lost her feet there was some major, major, grieving for the loss of "her as she'd always been" and the loss of the hope that she'd ever get better and no longer have leg pain. My point is, I knew I had to deal with the overwhelming grief my own way. I think that's only way anyone can deal with his own grief. When my girlfriend lost her father she hadn't been close to him. My girlfriend had her own set/kind of issues associated with grief. Hers wasn't about not having her father in day-to-day life. Hers was about regrets that she hadn't had him in her life on a daily basis. People and their relationships with someone like parents are just different.

When a family member and her husband lost their 20-month old toddler years ago, the mother said they wanted to have another baby because it was so horrible to lose their child they desperately needed "something happy" in their lives, and they thought the only "happy thing" that could be anywhere near an "equal level of intensity" to the sadness would be to have a new child born. She said friends and family members acted as if they didn't understand and thought she was being shallow, by "trying to replace" the child she lost. She said, "We aren't going to replace him. He can't be replaced. It's just that we need some big, happy, thing in our lives; and the only thing that "equally big" would be to have a new child born into our lives." They were acting out of their desperate need for something that could somehow make their lives a little more bearable. They new a new child wouldn't replace their son. They just thought, since he couldn't be replaced, and since they were as unbearably sad as they were; the one thing they could do was try to bring something positive into their lives, and try to move on from there (rather than "wallowing" in grief, without even trying to introduce some new, big, kind of happiness - even if it would be alongside their grief). (Maybe your mother is doing something similar, when it comes to meeting someone new?) Also, though, some people prefer to get through a rough time alone. Others tend to look for support or company from others. I don't know your mother, and nobody can guess about someone else's "mental matters", but I suspect she may just be looking for something nice - a little brightness - in her life.

With the dreams, I've had those "refusing to acknowledge me" dreams. What I realized it was for me was processing that sense of knowing that even if I believed (which I wasn't sure about anyway) there was the chance a deceased loved one might be watching "from somewhere", and even if I tried to talk to them; they wouldn't be answering me. On a more "Earthly-thinking level", I recognized that I felt the person was with me, but I also knew that feeling s/he was with me wouldn't me s/he would be talking back to me. Another aspect to it could be knowing that the person is no longer able to know what we're going through, worry about us, or acknowledge the happy or sad things that go on in our lives. There's the thinking/feeling, "You are out there somewhere (or you are with me somehow), but now you'll never know what's going on in my life." I found, when I was going through the grief process, that I felt like it was "one-sided" loving someone, in view of realizing/believing that the person could no longer return the love. If I really thought about those dreams, I realized it felt to me as if I was no longer in a two-sided relationship. I was loving (and loving a whole lot) someone who could no longer feel or reciprocate. This is pure guessing, but maybe you were processing the realization that you, at that time, didn't know how your father was feeling about you, once he had passed away and was a "a different kind of person" (namely, a no-longer-living person).

I don't know much about all there is to know about repressed feelings, but I think what you need to ask yourself is whether you are dealing with your grief as if it's a "monster to fight" or whether you aren't feeling the grief at all. Then, I suppose, if you're not feeling the grief at all you need to ask if there's reason not to feel it (for example, not being all that emotionally close to a parent). I can't really find (in the writing above, or at least readily) how long it's been since you lost your father. If it's only been months there's a really good chance you really aren't able to even "confront the reality" yet. You may be aware of what that reality is but just not be able to spend a lot of time thinking too much about all the associated issues (especially the ones that feel unbearable when you think about them). If you're 18 and it's be over a year, that means you were awfully young to lose your father. Losing your father at 18 (or as I did, at 21) is also awfully young. We're not ready to lose parents so young. My sister and I have often said that we think our kids' losing their grandmother in their teens may have been even harder, because really little kids don't really "get" what's going on when someone dies (or at least they don't have the level of thinking that teens do). Teens are still young, but they have that more advanced level of thinking everything out and being more aware of all the aspects of death. In other words, it may be harder, or more of a challenge, for teens to process grief the way someone older may be able to (not all older people process it very well either sometimes), because they still haven't had those years and the time to pick up a little more "emotional skill" or coping skill, no matter how intelligent or emotionally mature they generally are.

Someone could say that I "repressed" my feelings when I didn't cry at my parents' funerals. They weren't "repressed". I was in touch with them. I was fighting

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Latasha, I wrote a whole, long, response to your comment; but it turned so long I needed several comment boxes. What I did was turn all those remarks into a separate Hub. I'll post the link to it as soon as I have one (which will be within the next half hour).

I don't even know if anything I've written will be even a morsel of help, and I don't know if you even feel like reading all that. Still, your comment seemed to warrant some real thinking about what you've living with right now. I just thought, even if you don't feel like reading it, maybe some of those thoughts might help someone else in some way.

Sincerest condolences on the loss of your husband, and I'm sorry to know what you're dealing with. If you do to choose/feel up to reading the separate Hub, I hope it isn't a giant waste of time for you. If nothing else, please keep in mind that you are far from alone in such grief.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

tna77, I'm sorry to see of your loss. It sounds like you have a healthy attitude, but it hasn't been very long since you lost your boyfriend; so I'm not surprised you have dreams about him. I think what's happening is that your mind/brain has to process some of the things/issues associated with having your boyfriend here and then losing him before you really are ready to "let him go". In other words, we can "know in our heads" that we need to let someone go, but in our emotions/hearts (which amounts to our brains, as well, when it comes down to it) there's a certain amount of processing that has to be done. I think when we process things "on an intellectual level" (when we're awake), they aren't "hidden" and waiting to come out in the form of dreams. I don't know... I sometimes think it's no more complex that our having so much to process "intellectually" there's only so much room in our heads, and time, to process everything there is to process within x amount of time.

I think a person could also be perfectly ready to let someone go, but there could be issues not related to letting go at all that a person's dreams need to resolve.

In any case, five months is not a very long time at all when it comes to losing someone close. Obviously, I don't know how old you are or how truly close you were with your boyfriend; and those things can make some difference. If, by any chance, you don't feel ready to let him go at five months that would be pretty common. We can let people go "in our heads" because we know we have no choice and know what's a healthy way to deal with a death. Whether we can let someone go with our hearts - well, that's a separate matter.

People just need to relax and know that however we deal with loss and grief is usually "normal" and "OK". People and relationships are different. Most of us move on one way or another.

If anyone feels as if he can't deal with the level of grief or with how abnormal life feels for him, then seeing a professional at least to "get a reading" on what's to be expected never hurts.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Latasha, here's the link I mentioned above...

http://hubpages.com/hub/When-Grief-Doesnt-Seem-To-

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

WannaBWriter, thank you for your kind words and sharing with others who may read here. You've certainly been through what seems like unbearable loss. Years ago I lived on a street that had a pond at the end of it. The young couple across the street had elderly parents living with them. (They were from a culture that believed being sick and "a burden" was "shameful".) The elderly man used to walk by my house every day. I figured he was getting some exercise. One day, as always, he walked by. Later, I heard he walked into that pond, never to come out. I was, of course, bothered by that (especially to hear that he had reason to think he would "bring shame" if he were ill). I guess, though, it was how he wanted it.

On the other hand, also years ago, I wrote a thing for a newspaper on suicide. The experts I interviewed said how, so often, people are in a moment of feeling that they can't stand to live another minute, and how if they could have resisted the urge to "do something" it wouldn't have happened when it did. They said, too, that sometimes drugs or alcohol reduce inhibitions that would otherwise help a person control the urge to take such an action. So, I suppose, in some ways, this particular kind of suicide could almost be considered an "accident" (not that they didn't want to do it at the time, but that they may not really have chosen it at any other moment).

The editor of the paper chose to use the words, "No Easy Answers" in the feature's title - and I guess that's pretty accurate. Of course, if someone is suffering with serious enough depression, that risk is always there. I suppose, regardless of why it happens, the survivors need to keep in mind that they had no control of someone else's actions.

I'm so sorry to know you've lost both a son and a daughter. If anyone can help reassure readers that life does keep going on, it's (unfortunately) you. Again, thank you for sharing here.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Michelle, I'm sorry to know you've lost your father so, so, recently. I can only speak for myself (although people I've been close to have said something similar), but I think what you described is something a lot of people do.

When I referred to those "bits and pieces of small joys", I was mainly referring to the longer-term, more "outside", stage of grief; after the initial process of it has passed, but while it still hangs on even after making a certain amount of progress. Then again, though, I didn't intend to specifically "rule out" that earliest stage of grief either. From personal experience, I do know it's easier to "accept" those small joys after a certain amount of time has passed, and the grief isn't quite so acute.

I really think, for the most part, however anyone deals with those earlier stages of grief is OK. Then again, even in the worst of times, worry, or grief; there are often reasons to laugh or smile. I remember when my father was in ICU after having his heart attack. My mother, sister, and I sat outside waiting for our five-minute visits with another wife of a patient and her grown kids. We'd sit outside, and someone would be cracking one joke or another. You'd think we were having a party (or something). It wasn't that. It broke up the tension and the awfulness of having someone in ICU, and hearing those "Code 99, ICU" announcements every once in awhile.

There was nothing we could do (any more than there is anything you can do now) about making the situation with my father any different or better. So, we had no choice but to sit outside that Intensive Care Unit, wait with that family who was waiting for their own five-minute time for a visit, and find some way to make that horrifying, frightening, and sad time a little more tolerable.

My father died on Thanksgiving, and there was a kind of "fancy" Christmas party planned by the people at work. I don't remember the date, but, of course, it was a couple of weeks before Christmas. I didn't feel like going to a party, but at the time I thought, "If I don't go, what will be the benefit to that?" The guy I was going out with (and eventually married) hadn't just lost his father. I had the dress. So, even though I felt like it was kind of wrong to go to a party so soon after losing my father, I knew he wouldn't have wanted me to stop living. I knew my mother didn't want me to stop living. (She actually said I should go.) And, again, I just thought, "What would not going accomplish?" Naturally, nobody feels like "partying it up" a few weeks after losing their father, but, I went, talked to people, slow danced a little, and wasn't thinking about my father (for the most part) at least for a few hours. For just that few hours, I was, at least in a lot of ways, not the person whose father had just died. I was just one of the other people who worked with all those other people. It didn't do anything to change or speed up the grieving process. All it did was give me a break from what was overwhelming sadness.

It's not crazy to find yourself laughing or not feeling horrible at one time or another. Our brain chemicals change when we're laughing or feeling "sort of happy for a little while". It's not only mentally healthy. It's physically healthy to laugh or have some pleasant moments. People in some pretty miserable circumstances often find one thing or another to laugh about (and sometimes they even find humor in those miserable circumstances). It's all part of the resilience of human nature (even if it's pretty limited this soon after such a loss).

Laughing doesn't mean betraying your father, or not grieving his loss. It just means that life does go on, and laughing does happen again.

I have three grown children myself now, and I know what I'd want for them if anything happened to me. I'd want them to let themselves laugh, and enjoy those brief moments of not feeling miserable; because sometimes it's not just time, alone, that heals. It's the addition to those reasonably (or very) pleasant moments that can help fill up that otherwise "empty" time of waiting until time has done its job.

When we lose someone close, we can feel as if our whole world, and whole sense of what we are, can be turned upside down. Those little moments of laughing or finding some other joy can be the things that remind us that we're still the same person we've always been.

I'm not suggesting people "go wild", run away from their grief, and become non-stop party-goers. I'm just saying that within the context of generally living our usual lives, we don't have to forget that laughing has always also been a part of that usual life.

Again, I'm sorry to know you've lost your father so recently. I suppose, as you say, there is some comfort in knowing he didn't suffer for a long time.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Marieli, I'm sorry you're going through what may be one of the more difficult stages after losing someone. So many people expect to feel so much better after a year, and so many people even dread what they will do on the anniversary of the death. As I mentioned above, I think one of issues with that year anniversary is that some (certainly not all, by any means) of that numbness we may not even realize we live with in the months following a death has begun to wear off. We start to feel the loss almost more, at least in some ways, at around that year anniversary.

I know what you mean about wanting to "erase those days from the calendar". No matter how long it's been since losing someone, a lot of people find they dread the anniversary (or at least don't want to see or hear about that particular date).

Do what you need to do to help make those two days pass in a way that works best for you. Each day only last 24 hours, and some of those hours will probably be spent sleeping. If you need to cry, cry. Whether you believe it or not, the first anniversary can be the beginning of moving to a different stage of grief (and one that isn't quite so painful, even though, of course, it still isn't "great" a good part of the time). Those two days will pass a lot more quickly than the several weeks or days leading up to them, and dreading that anniversary.

If nothing else, I do hope you keep in mind that approaching this one-year anniversary can be a particularly sad time; but believe that things will most likely start to feel a little better, a little at a time.

Again, I'm sorry to know you're going through this difficult time, and hope you don't feel too discouraged about not noticing a lot of improvement in how you feel just yet.

Lisa HW Hub Author 20 months ago

Anna Marie, I know it may seem like I say this same thing to everyone who posts here, but there are no words to express how sorry I am to know you have gone through such an unbearable loss.

I'm not, in any way, comparing the loss of a mother with the loss of a child, by any means; but that eight years you mentioned rung a bell for me, because - really - it kind of took eight years for me to get "somewhere" different from a still-sort-of-fragile-ish" point at five years after losing mother, to a more "stable" stage. After five years, I was, in many ways, much better and mostly OK (sort of). Even so, though, I still wouldn't do things like look at pictures of my mother, or think of some things. There had been a lot of "side issues" and some particularly heartbreaking "surrounding issues" with my mother's death, so maybe that didn't help. There was, though, definitely still some residual stuff going on, between even that five-year point and the eight years. So, to me, the fact that you mention eight years after your own awful, awful, loss doesn't surprise me at all.

As I think I mentioned above, we lost a 20-month old nephew years ago. With whatever losses I've ever had in my life (including my parents), that was just the worst, worst, thing that ever happened. And yet, as the mother of this little boy said to me, she managed to somehow live with it, and go on. The little boy she had after losing her second child is now in college.

I know there aren't words anyone can ever, ever, say to someone in your situation; but I always think how I wish people in your situation could at least know that there's probably not a mother in the world who isn't aware of, and pained by, the thought that another mother must live with what you do.

Thank you for sharing with readers here.

Lisa HW Hub Author 19 months ago

Cindy, I know that words from a stranger can't mean much to you, but I'm so sorry to see that you've had this kind of thing to deal with. I know that "the suicide factor" in your situation makes it exponentially more challenging, tragic, and difficult; and I'm not comparing the two situations in any way, but someone close to me is going through a version of seeing life unravel after layoffs forced her into early retirement and some other changes/losses in her life. Based only on seeing some of what she's going through, I can only imagine how that "suicide factor" makes it all so much worse for you.

Of course, I don't pretend to be qualified to make any guesses about why your husband would do what he did (especially when he had a daughter), but I can only imagine he either had some kind of depression that affected his reasoning ability (serious depression can, as you probably already know), or else he was just in such pain at the moment he couldn't even think about anyone or anything else but getting out of pain. Sometimes, too, some parents (maybe fathers more than mothers) don't realize how much they truly mean and are still needed (in a different way than when kids are younger, of course) by their grown children.

My mother (who died of natural causes, so it wasn't suicide) used to always say, "You always feel the same way about your kids, no matter how old they are; but how they feel about you changes." Well, my mother only had her own mother until she was 23, and her mother had been bedridden for quite awhile before she died. Between that, and the fact that 23 is still young enough to be "putting the finishing touches" on maturing completely as an adult, I don't think my mother was able to really know how "the same" even grown kids still feel about parents on that deeper level than just who supports whom, who needs whom to tie their shoes, etc. etc.

My sister and I, both of whom had our mother until our forties, have often said that our mother never really knew those ways in which we still felt very much the same about her as grown-ups as we did when we were younger (even if it had nothing to do with needing emotional or financial support from anyone).

So, while I don't pretend to be able to make any accurate guesses about why your husband did what he did (and in fact, pretty much know I know nothing about a whole lot of things in this world), I'm just wondering if, maybe, (depression-related unreasonable thinking and/or pain or not) he underestimated how important his role remained in his daughter's life (whether or not it always seemed that way on the surface or in all circumstances).

The reason I say I wonder if fathers may do that more often than mothers is that a lot of men don't quite have the understanding of the needs of sons and daughters that so many mothers do. I guess, even if I want to be clear that I'm not guessing (and am only saying things that occurred to me as a result of your post) about your husband, I'm just wondering if, maybe, the reason having a daughter didn't stop him from taking the action he did could have some relationship to something like his not realizing how important his being here was to her.

I suppose, since you belong to the group you mentioned, people have raised this kind of thought; but it occurs to me, too, that nobody would ever know if someone (like your husband) could have secretly been seeing a doctor, been diagnosed of some bleak condition, and thought he'd spare everyone the pain of it all (but also the attempts to convince him to try to keep fighting whatever it may have been).

A family member of mine lost her almost-two-years-old little boy and thought, in her unbearable pain, she'd sign up for a support group. She went for a little while but decided it wasn't for her. She said it was all just too depressing to hear everyone talk about their own stories. I don't know... I suppose there's something to that thinking too.

The loss of your husband is still such a recent thing for both you and your daughter, it's so understandable that you'd feel as you do this soon afterward. Maybe, too, you're in that stage mentioned above, with kind of expecting to feel a little less horrible but still feeling as bad as one often does at about a year.

Somewhere between trying to re-build your life, or build a new one; and working to push yourself farther forward than you can be right now; is some middle ground where you try to live life but also keep in mind that time will move you forward, no matter what you do or don't do. I wonder if, maybe, you're trying to push yourself "more forward" than you're ready to be, without allowing yourself to take enough "mental rest" days off.

Please overlook it if every thought I offered here is useless or doesn't apply. As I said, I know nothing and don't pretend to know anything about your situation. I hope you can stay strong (and give yourself that "mental rest" time you probably need. Maybe your daughter is like me - someone who needs to work out sadness and loss in her own, private, way. If she's like that, she'll most likely find her way to working it all out (or else she'll one day discover she hasn't been able to and will then see the need for looking to someone else for any help they can try to offer).

Again, so sorry that you (or anyone) must go through this kind of thing.

Lisa HW Hub Author 19 months ago

lost, thank you for sharing on here. It really is fairly recent for you, so - no matter how many complex "layers" of things/feelings there are to sort out - chances are as time continues to move on you'll eventually feel much better than you do right now.

Of course, I'm only basing this on personal experiences, but I think; on the one hand, there will always be things we live with or go through that people can't really understand unless/until they go through something very similar. So, chances are you're right that some people wouldn't really understand what you're dealing with. On the other hand, I've found that if we just tell people what we're dealing with sometimes, they do at least see how difficult it is for us, and they often either understand better, or at least try to.

I think there's a chance that what's making you feel as if everyone and everything has changed (besides that the fact that, in many ways, losing your mother is a huge, life-changing, event) might be that you're still feeling the "unsettlement" of a fairly recent loss (along with the complications of the circumstances). I know when I've had big,complicated, losses I've been left feeling as if I'm up in the air for a good long time.

We don't know the world without our mother in it for our whole life, and then - all of a sudden - that world we knew changes. That, alone, is a huge thing. When my mother died there were "peripheral" complicating circumstances (completely different from your situation, but - oh brother - it was a complicated set of things to process). Some of them I made peace with. With others (that I couldn't make peace with), it was more that, as time went on, they just seemed to matter less. I suppose I ended up "tucking them in the 'can't-feel-better-about-this-but-it's-old-now 'mental file'".

I suppose, since you say you had been "the parent" too, you didn't just lose your mother, but you also lost that element in your life that involved your having an adult to be "parenting" - yet more change in your life. Something else you probably feel like you lost is the future you had thought you'd be sharing with your mother longer. There are just so many elements that can come into losing a parent.

I suppose, too, if the family members and friends were also close to your mother, they had their own ways of dealing with the loss. It's too bad they don't seem to have understood that your relationship with your mother was one kind of relationship and theirs was another, and however anyone felt after the accident, each person needed to process his own loss his own way, and in his own time.

If you were close enough to them, maybe, in time, you'll gradually rebuild our relationships with some of them. When some "upheaval" goes on in an family, it does have a way of pulling some of the people apart for awhile.

I wonder if it would help (or even if you'd want this) to have a "relationship-light" kind of thing with some of these people: Maybe agree that there have been strains between you over the loss of your mother, agree not to talk about those "areas of strain", and just kind of keep talk and activities "surface level" and "neutral" for awhile. Sometimes, once there has been strained relationships, it can help to "start small" and just kind of get used to having pleasant time together again (even if everyone sets aside the larger "issues of contention"). In the beginning, it can feel (for a very short time) that there's an "elephant in the room", but if everyone keeps things pleasant and "non-hot-button", that feeling can pass. Of course, I don't know how everything happened, and maybe you just have no use for any of these people.

Relationships can be re-built. No, they won't be the kind of relationship you may have thought you had before; but if there has been so much misunderstanding or unwillingness to understand, maybe the relationships weren't all that "deep rooted" before either. So, sometimes starting "sort of anew" and staying away from the "hot-button" issues can at least mean having SOME relationship. If you have your husband for the "bigger" things, or if you met some new friends who may understand better, you wouldn't need those "old" people for more than "just socializing" or else maybe even enjoying time together without "getting deep".

If you're like most people dealing with a fairly recent loss (and two years really is "fairly recent" when it comes to a mother and/or the complications surrounding your mother's accident), the only way you've really changed is that you're a "new, sad, angry (or whatever else you're feeling) you" these days. That will probably pass with time, and you'll go back to being the "old, regular, you" eventually.

Sometimes, too, when someone is lost in an accident and so suddenly, friends and family really don't quite know what to be saying or thinking. I was in an accident in which my best friend was killed. I wasn't driving, and she (my best friend, and the driver) wasn't impaired. Even with that, a whole lot of people just didn't know what to say to me and kind of stayed away. For as many accidents as happen every year in this country, it does seem that when it happens to someone close, it's still a kind of "foreign" thing that people don't know how to deal with.

Since you said your mother hit a truck, I'm guessing it wasn't a matter of her intentionally trying to kill herself by doing something like driving into something like a wall (or something); so, when it comes down to it, it was an accident. She didn't "check out" intentionally. I really think most people who drive impaired just don't believe anything will happen.

If you haven't already talked to someone like a counselor, and if you get to feeling as if you just feel too sad and alone in dealing with your sadness; maybe it would be worth setting up at least an appointment or two. Maybe someone who specializes in helping people in your situation sort things out might be of help.

In the meantime, take it a day at time. Maybe I'm wrong, and I don't know you or the details of the situation; but I have a feeling you'll one day discover that you haven't changed as much as you feel like you have right now.

Lisa HW Hub Author 19 months ago

gr82bme, thank you for your kind words.

Lisa HW Hub Author 18 months ago

officielle, I'm so, so, sorry to know you lost your husband so recently. I, personally, have not been through losing a long-time spouse; but I know that this soon after losing someone is about as bad as it gets, as far as how we feel goes. People go through the stages of grief in their own ways, but in general, so soon after losing someone involves that shock and grief stage.

I know exactly how it feels (for different reasons) to feel as if you're "taking it one hour at a time". When I've had those times (again, for different losses/reasons than you are right now), the only way I've dealt with them is to tell myself just not to think about it for at that particular moment. I'd tell myself, "I'll think about this later, but just not now." Some people say that's "escaping", but there is no escaping the kind of grief you're living with right now. There is only fighting off letting it feel worse by trying to think about something like the whole rest of your future. That's too big a thing to take on right now. Right now, as you said, you need to take on each minute and each hour. I think (based only on my own experience) that the only way to get through those minutes and hours is to try not to complicate what's already a challenge to our mind by adding more thoughts and worries that would be better left worried and thought at a later time.

I don't want to seem to be under-estimating the impact and degree of losing a husband of such a long time by referring to one experience I've had with losing the closest friend I had for years, but I do know what it's like to feel as if (even if we never know the future) we have a "framework" for a future, and that framework includes one person or another. (I wrote about "going into an unknown future" in a blog, "Drunk Driving" (which can be found through my profile on here.) After losing my closest friend in a car accident, it seemed as if the road, world, and future ahead of me had been erased and replaced with "white nothingness". When we feel like the future you'd imagined with someone has turned into "nothing but a blank, white, expanse", the reason we can't imagine that future it is, I think, because the "picture" we once had can seem to be erased when someone we'd imagined would part of that picture is suddenly gone.

It's not like we can imagine all the things that may happen in the future, but we have that general picture that someone will be in it. It's the one thing we tend to think we have when it comes to imagining our future (those stable, always there for years, relationships that become a part of us and our lives).

We lose the person with whom we share so much past, but then we also lose that "framework" for a future; so we don't just mourn and miss the person we lose. We need to process having had a "puzzle piece" in the picture that was our past missing (because it can feel as if the whole "puzzle picture" is falling apart), but we're faced with having to completely re-think years of that "framework" we thought we had for our future. In other words, we're faced with what looks like nothing, or an expanse of blank, white; because losing someone has come along and destroyed what we thought we were looking at as far as a future goes.

I don't even think we always consciously build that "framework" we imagine for our future. Sometimes we do (as when we're a married couple, planning to have x number of children when we buy a house). In many ways, though, we don't. Instead, that framework grows around us, as life with that person unfolds and becomes the part of life that is "wrapped around us" (externally), rather than the part of life we experience from within, as individuals.

Having all these things "eradicated" around us, and in front of us, are whole separate losses from the actual loss of, and missing of, the person we've lost. Just as life seemed to build around us in the past, it does keep building around us as each day (or at least year) goes by. The colors do start to show up in that "blank white expanse", but it takes time and new and different days. Once we're past the initial horror of losing someone (and that, alone, takes time), there are things we can do to help speed up the process of making those "colors" come back into the picture. So early on (as it is for you), though, I don't think it's possible to see what kind of future you can have; because you don't have those "new colors" that have started to show up yet. You can't build something out of nothing. You need a few pieces (those "colors" that happen a little at a time) to start building with (and around).

I don't know if this is right or not, but I think, for now, you have to make that conscious effort to put all thoughts of the future (and maybe even a lot of thoughts of the past) out of your mind; and just concentrate on getting through those hours each day. The thoughts about the future and past can come back later when you're more ready and equipped to deal with them all.

For now (and, again, I don't know if this is right or not - but it has worked, for the most part, for me in the past), I almost think you need to treat your acute grief as if it's almost like having the flu (I know that's a weird comparison, and do know grief and "flu" aren't at all alike). What I mean, though, is that if you had the flu you may know what you're able to do and not to do for now. For awhile, you're really sick and pretty much can't do much of anything. After awhile, you start to gradually feel a little better and do a little more. Grief is kind of like that. You wouldn't expect yourself to think about your plans for the future if you had the flu. You'd probably be pretty comfortable thinking, "I just need to rest right now. I'll start thinking about things when I feel better."

Then, one day, you wake up and think, "Hey, I feel like I may wash my floors today, because I'm feeling a little better."

I think when you're in acute grief the only thing you can do is take care of yourself, aim to rest your mind and body as much as you can, do what you can that helps you get through each day (be with a close friend, watch a silly movie if you can, find some "mindless" activity that helps keep you busy, etc.).

One day you'll just discover that you're starting to think of one little aspect of your future a little at a time. For now, maybe, try not to even think about it. I think trying to think about such a "big picture" right now is expecting too much of yourself. Yes, it's awful (and unsettling and upsetting and sometimes horrifying) to look at the "blank, white, expanse" instead of the picture we once kind of took for granted; but that's one aspect of grief that requires more time and more living. I just think that while we're still looking at that "blank, white, expanse" ahead of us, all we can sometimes do is not look at it and find something else to "look at" instead.

You lost "your everything". No doubt about that. What you didn't lose, though, was yourself or your life or your future. I don't know about you, but when I've lost someone close I've found that it can be so bad sometimes I think I may "lose my mind". The thing is, though, we don't lose our minds or our days or the need to find a way to get through them. The only way I've ever been able to get through times of acute grief has been to set aside all those thoughts and worries that really can be dealt with "another day" and just deal with the day-to-day (and as "mindless as possible") things.

Between doing that, and finding those few comforting thoughts I could hang onto ("At least he didn't live bedridden for years" or "At least he doesn't have to live with the kind of loss I'm living with" - that type of thing), somewhere along the way I noticed that time had passed and life felt normal again.

Again, sincerest condolences. I don't know if any of these thoughts will be at all useful to you; but either way, hang in. You will get through this awful time and come out OK.

Lisa HW Hub Author 18 months ago

Fossillady, sorry to know you lost your husband only a year ago, but thank you for sharing your encouragement with others (but especially with officielle) on here (and the kind words, as well).

Lisa HW Hub Author 16 months ago

SueWish, I'm so sorry to know you loss your sister so, so, recently. I think when someone dies of a long-term, devastating, illness dealing with the whole thing (from while they were sick on to beyond their passing) is more complicated. It's not just a whopping kick in the head to lose them (the way it is to lose anyone close) - but there are all those complicating, and sometimes conflicting, things we need to process. Their illness, and all the emotions that it involves, becomes part of our life. We live with hope and no hope at the same time. We start to lose the person long before they're gone (but then, too, they're still here and we keep hoping something will get better or at least slow down). There's just so, so, many conflicting and complicated emotions.

When my mother died (after a long-term, awful, set of health "horrors") I didn't think I could ever process the complicated set of thoughts/emotions associated with her illness and eventual passing. I couldn't think of the "old" her because it made me feel bad. I couldn't think of the "new" her because that was, in some ways, worse. She hadn't lost her mental abilities, but physically and emotionally she had become someone "new" in a lot of ways (and yet - more conflict - not in some ways).

For the longest time after she died, the only way I could get through the days was to tell myself not to think of her at all. I told myself I could think of her later, when I was more ready; and that she'd want me to do whatever it took to get through the worst time after she passed away. (She had lost her mother, and she and her sisters always said how awful it had been. I told myself my mother wouldn't mind if I didn't think of her if at all possible, at least until I was more able to deal with thinking of her.)

I told myself that not thinking of her at all obviously didn't mean I didn't care about her. Also, not allowing myself to think of her (if at all possible) didn't magically make me feel OK. All it did was help me feel as if "where I was" at the time was bearable.

As time went on, I gradually "selected" one disturbing/upsetting thought/emotion and tried to address it, one at a time. At first, I'd even find just one thing unbearable to think about for more than a little while. After awhile, though, I had gradually (and in only the smallest, smallest, "doses") allowed myself to address/face each thought/feeling.

Some people would say that was "escaping". I don't really think it was. I knew what I was doing. I planned it. It wasn't as if I was off on a trip to Paris and pretending all was great. It was a very conscious and careful plan not to allow myself to even try to face/confront/process all that giant, overwhelming, mess of issues before I'd had some time to process the "main thing", which was losing her at all.

It looks to me as if you've already used this "trick" of not allowing yourself to think of her in some ways. I'm no psychologist; but based on my own experiences with losing people, it strikes me that now may still be too soon to allow yourself to think of your sister when she was "herself". I know people process things differently, but thinking with losing my mother was that I had time to allow myself to think of the "OK" her. I wanted those thoughts of her to be treasured memories - not thoughts that made the pain of losing her worse. I had to process all the stuff associated with the "not-OK her" first, and somehow, it seemed to make sense to deal with the immediate matter of losing her, and the matters of what went on leading up to losing her; before moving past that and onto the stage where thinking of her was a matter of thinking of the "her" she'd been before she got sick.

When someone has been sick for a long time (and when it's been really devastating), it's like losing and also having them for a long time; but it's also like losing the "old" them and the "more recent" them. I almost think you may have been processing losing your "ok" sister all along, and now you're in the process of losing the "new" her. If it works the same way for you that it has for me (or for people I've talked to about this), I'm guessing that, emotionally, (not "intellectually") you need to first reconcile that the sister you lost was very much the same sister as that "earlier" one. The sister you had become the "new" her, but the same "her" nonetheless. I guess what I'm getting at (and you've probably "gotten at it" many times yourself at this point) is that reconciling that she was the same sister as ever, and dealing with losing the person she was most recently, might be the tasks at hand. Once those two tasks are done, I'd think that being able to think of the "earlier her" wouldn't so much seem like "haunting" as it would seem like a fond, comforting, memory. (Just some pondering. I don't pretend to think any of these thoughts will be of any use or insight.)

Chances are, if you're like so many other people who have a similar kind of loss, you'll recover. It's way too soon now to even be able to imagine feeling at all normal again. Maybe, though, it would help a little (for now) if you tucked those memories of a healthier sister in a "mental file" for a little longer. It's still awfully early. Maybe you're just not ready to confront that particular aspect of the loss this soon.

Just on another note, I don't know how involved you were with caring for her on a day-to-day basis; but even if you were living separate from her but living with the worry and fear (etc) of her illness, I'd imagine you now need to have some time to just "crash" and rest. The best thing you can do "for her" now is to take good care of yourself.

Lisa HW Hub Author 16 months ago

prhh29, your post showed up while I was typing the one above. I'm sorry to know you've lost your young husband so recently. I agree that the reader contributions above serve to help others know they aren't alone, and that the world is full of people who have a pretty good idea of what those who've lost someone recently are going through.

Losing a husband has its own set of issues, and I, personally, haven't had that experience. I think at this early stage, though, those issues associated with losing a spouse aren't really the things to be processing at this time. I think, so soon after losing someone close, the main task anyone faces is getting through those first days.

As far as dealing with those early days goes, I think it can sometimes help (at least for some people) to first try to eliminate the stretches of time, or activities, that are most likely to make you feel bad. I think, though, each person has to have a kind of "play-it-by-ear" approach to those earlier days. If you feel like doing something, go ahead and do it. If you think something will make you feel worse, then let that be something for another day. What always made me feel better was to be with people and talking about things other than the loss. It was a chance to give my brain a rest from it all. I stayed away from music, because music would get me crying. At those times, I've also stayed away from tv shows/movies about negative or depressing stuff. I've always been someone who goes out by myself for outdoor coffee, because I find the fresh air and exercise always make me feel either better (or as if I've had "special time" to myself). Doing little things that are just kind of nice can be a reminder that even our saddest days don't have to be completely without minor joys.

I've known more than one person to sleep with the radio or television on because being in silence can lead to too much thinking. After my father died my mother switched to a different bedroom because my father had had his heart attack in the bed. Keeping busy until you're ready to "pass out" (rather than having time to be awake and thinking) can help eliminate a lot of opportunity for getting those overwhelming thoughts going more than is idea right now.

If you have a long commute that gives you time to think, maybe doing something like listening to audio books might keep the chance to "think too much" to a minimum.

People don't usually feel like they can concentrate on much of anything at that time, but finding some "mindless" activity can help keep a mind busy without requiring a lot of thought. I had that time when I would sit at the computer and make "cartoon dolls" online (my 13-year-old daughter had shown me the sites). It was entertaining to make outfits for the "dolls", and I found myself saving whole little cartoon dance recitals for my niece's little girl. It kept me busy (and actually kind of happy) to do something this simple and mindless. As I started to think of how my niece's (and friend's) little girl would enjoy the collect I'd made for them, I was feeling as if I was doing something nice for someone's children.

I don't know if this is "mentally correct" or not; but as I said above, I think the earliest days are not the days for trying to process and ponder much of anything. We do those things when we're more ready. It usually just comes naturally. In the meantime, finding those ways to keep too-much-thinking to a minimum, to find those small things that add a little niceness to the day, being with people and just kind of enjoying "neutral" conversation, and doing what we feel up to doing at any time, are all ways people get through those early days.

Being able to give to, and offer, support between your husband's family and friends can help them, as well as you. You all share the loss in your own ways, and that can really help. Then, too, though, it can also help to be out with people who aren't as close to the loss.

I know there's nothing much new offered here, but these are pretty much the only things I can think of that help people get through those early days.

It's only been a month for you. Chances are, over the next several weeks, you find that you've settled into some version of a "workable routine" that includes doing those things that help you feel a little less acutely aware (at least at times) of the acute grief you're dealing with. I suppose, too, it's important to keep in mind that there are those awful days and hours that are going to happen, but people get through them and get past them. I guess my main point here is just to keep the task at hand simple: get through each day, one at a time. The rest of the processing and moving on and getting past will come in time and when you're ready.

My mother was in her seventies when she died. I was just about forty. Not long before she died I said something about how "horrible" it was that I was turning 40. She said, "Don't say that. I remember how old I thought I was at 40, and now I think how I wish I knew how young 40 really is." I'm nowhere near my seventies, but I thought it may be worth mentioning here how young 40's is. There's no doubt about it: You have along journey ahead as far as moving on after losing your husband goes. Still, you're so young and still have so much time to build whatever life you'd like to build for yourself. (My mother was in her early fifties when my father died, and she went on and built a whole new life for herself without my father. We kids were pretty much grown, and she built a life that included a new kind of purpose and meaning, beyond just us kids and our father. Actually, my mother's life with my father and us was yet another case of her re-building her life; because she'd lost a young husband in WWII before having any children.) Hard as it may be for you to imagine right now, people go on to re-build their lives in their own way - and sometimes more than once. Eventually, their lives don't feel so much about loss as they seem to be more about being full and enriched and blessed.

Maybe in these earliest days, it can help to keep in mind that your life has been more whole for having had your husband (and his, for having had you and his family in his life). That's not just a saying to help you feel better. It's an important thing to keep in mind, because it's what matters so much in this life.

Lisa HW Hub Author 16 months ago

prhh29, thank you for sharing with readers here. What you've shared is going to let someone know he's not alone. There's no doubt about it, one of the hardest parts of losing someone is that "nitty-gritty" of just getting used to not having them in those small, day-to-day, life activities. I think that's why so many people who lose a spouse think about moving, but it's also reason they're often told they shouldn't make such a decision at such a difficult time.

Sincerest hopes that your find more and more ways to get through the next months. I do think people do find their own ways once the loss isn't quite as recent as yours is right now.

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SueWish, I know you don't need me to reiterate what an awful and difficult situation that had to have been for you and everyone else. You probably also don't need me to mention that guilt is pretty much a part of all grief for all people. There's always second-guessing what we did, and there's often (usually, I think) one kind of guilt or another.

This may seem unrelated, but your remarks above made me think of when I was a little kid and my mother was hospitalized for eight months for a lung infection. My little brother was two, and he was a toddler who got febrile seizures with just about every fever he got. He'd been a premies, so he was prone to getting pneumonia with a lot of infections too. I was six/seven at the time. My father was trying to figure out how to get x miles away to the hospital where my mother was, but he also wanted to get to the hospital in another city. My mother told him to forget about going to see her because all she cared about was that my little brother had someone there each night at the hospital.

My father earned a modest income, but he gave a good chunk of it to my mother's sister (who quit her job to do this), who would come to the house each day and be there for me, my older sister (12), and the baby.

My mother so often said how awful it was to be separated from us, and how she didn't know what she would have done if it weren't for my aunt, and for the fact that my father found a way to go to work every day but also get to the hospital nights for my brother (when he had a couple of stays at least).

It wasn't something she could even talk about very often, because it was so hard for her talking about it was hard. Even if your sister wasn't able to be aware, or if she wasn't able to express it; if you've been there for your sister's children chances are that's about all your sister really would have cared about.

Sometimes it can help if we try to put ourselves in the other person's place. In your case (and maybe you already do this), have you asked, "If the shoe were on the other foot, would I have expected her to be there more even if I weren't aware that she was?"

Chances are, you'll process all these kinds of things as you realize more and more that we do what we do at the time, usually because it feels as if it's the only thing to do at the time (for one reason or another).

15 years is a long time to live with your sister's illness, and 4.5 years is a long time to have her at the stage she apparently was for that length of time. You may have already done this, or thought about it; but I'd think, if things get to be too much for you, maybe it wouldn't hurt to talk to someone who specializes in counseling family members of long-term, terminally ill, individuals. Quite a "chunk" of your own life has been spent living with having a terminally ill sister. Having just that aspect no longer in your life has to be a major, major, adjustment. Maybe a counselor could offer you some tips, or share a few things that s/he knows you may be able to expect as the months go on. Just a thought.

Lisa HW Hub Author 16 months ago

Russell_A, thank you. I'm sorry to know you've lost your mother so recently. Needless to say perhaps, but I wish there were something I could say that would be helpful, but I know there isn't. Somehow, no matter how difficult a time this is, the strength to cope does come; and things get better and better, a little at a time. Again, condolences. No doubt about it, it's a rough thing to get through.

Lisa HW Hub Author 16 months ago

Zen_45, I'm sorry to know you lost such a close friend so young. As you may have seen above, I was in an accident in which my best friend since adolescence (and the driver) was killed. We were weeks apart in age and both 20, weeks away from turning 21. I'm not "pushing" more of my "gloomy" writing, but I started a blog (without intention of doing much with it, other than send a message about drunk driving and speeding); which can be reached through my profile. I'm wondering if reading the two "victim stories" on there may offer you any insight (or at least someone else's experience with having lost a close friend so suddenly, and at such a young age).

Of course, I can't assume that my own experience will be the same as everyone else's; but I have a feeling that grayness won't last for you. It's just that it's still so soon. There are elements to losing a close friend so young, and having someone so young lose their life suddenly, that, I think, present a set of things to process that can be different from something like losing an elderly family member.

In my case (and even though I'd lost my elderly grandfather at ten), my friend's death (and the accident in general) were a kick in the head and were things that suddenly knocked me out of the youthful belief that I (and someone like my young friend) was invincible. It took some adjusting to the realization that "things CAN happen to me" (us).

There was the getting used to living life without her in it, and there was the getting past the resentment that her future had been taken from her by someone who chose to speed (and someone who meant nothing to her, and to whom she meant nothing when it came down to it).

That feeling of having unfinished business is one that people commonly get, and it's one that women who have miscarriages also get. I guess it comes from the fact that there is, in a lot of ways, "unfinished business" - that reality that someone isn't going to fulfill what was once kind of taken for granted that they would.

I think, too, there's a sense of being "up in the air" (uncertainty) when something that's such a kick in the head happens; and I think that up-in-the-air feeling of not being very grounded and certain can contribute to that sense of unfinished business. I assume a lot of that feeling of uncertainty/non-sureness must come from some of the "anxiety chemicals" we "have going" when we've gone through such a loss/event. After my mother died I kept saying to people, "I feel like I need some answer of some kind, but I don't really know what the question is." It seemed to me to be a different version of that "unfinished business" feeling I'd had after the accident and an unrelated, later, miscarriage. The difference may have been that I knew my mother had had a fairly long (ish) life, so there wasn't the factor of a life/future unlived.

What helped me was to keep reminding myself that if I'd been the one to leave my friend behind, I wouldn't have wanted her languishing in grief. I'd have wanted her to pick up and move on. It also helped that I vowed she, nor the senseless way she died, would not be forgotten (and close to 30 years later, I continued to keep that vow by writing our story online and long, long, after I was "over" the loss).

I can't speak for your friend, of course, but I had time to see the speeding car coming at us; and I had time to be fairly certain there was no way I'd survive what was about to happen. It seemed as if Nature took care of any emotions with, perhaps, adrenaline, because I was calm and (sort of) OK with the idea that I "was about to die". I was disgusted with the other driver because I didn't want to die, and I (foolishly, I suppose) hoped my parents "would know it was OK with me and that they didn't have to feel too bad". Other than being disgusted and concerned, however, I was amazingly calm and fine with what I was so certain was about to happen.

In times of what we believe are imminent danger, in times of pain, and sometimes just through the quick and merciful loss of consciousness; Nature often has a way of sparing us one thing or another.

I think youth works both for and against us in situations like yours (and mine, at the time). The colors will return to that "blank, white, future" you see now, I think. A little at a time. When they do the grayness will leave. If your experience is at all similar to mine you may feel you've been "launched into maturity" sooner than others your age, and a part of you may always kind of resent that. Still, that may be the same part of you that refuses to become "old and bitter and fearful and uncertain" in this life; and it may be the same part of you that decides you won't let a terrible tragedy rob you of yet more than it already has.

Lisa HW Hub Author 16 months ago

Russell_A, thank you for sharing your own experience with others here. After losing my father at 21 (versus losing my mother around 40), I did find a very different set of things to process, even though there was a similar "basic grief" with both. I wouldn't have believed I'd be saying this years after losing my father; but while losing him so young (he was 62) was a giant, giant, shock and kick in the head; losing my mother after having her in my adult life for so long was, in some ways, harder.

With losing my father, though, there was the thing that my siblings and I always felt robbed of having him in our adult lives. Just a couple of weeks ago my sister commented on how our father would be turning 100 years old at the end of January, if he'd lived. She said how now we don't "have that thing that we could still have him if he hadn't died so young". She was saying how we wouldn't likely have him now anyway.

With my father, the "different" aspect was primarily what life he didn't get to have. With my mother, the "different" aspect was primarily with processing so much of the pain and sadness that went on as a result of her long-term illness and suffering.

I don't know... Either way it's a rotten, rotten, thing to go through; and yet we all (if our parents are fortunate enough to go before their children, "the way it's supposed to be") somehow process it all and get through it.

Lisa HW Hub Author 15 months ago

Glenn, I'm sorry to know you're going through the loss of your close aunt; and I'm sorry it's taken me this long to reply to your here. Actually, because of the subject-matter involved, I usually like to try to put a little extra time and thought into my replies on this particular Hub.

Your comment about your aunt's being the last of her generation in your family rung a bell for me, because we lost our last remaining aunt not long ago. There's definitely some aspects to losing that last person from our parents' generation that are unique to that particular loss.

Because I was hoping to offer more on here than just "I know what you mean", I've been waiting to have the opportunity to really take a little time and add some observations of my own. As a result, "waiting for the opportunity" has led to "waiting and waiting" - so I just thought I'd reply here, without further waiting to be able to "come up with something more substantial".

Thank you for your kind words about my own losses over the course of my life. Some came earlier for me than they do for others. At this stage in life, though, I guess everyone else who's middle-aged or older has gone through their own similar set of losses.

Although I can't come up with the "more substantial" comments (on losing that last person of our parents' generation), I have to kind of smile when I think of what a close cousin of mine said after we lost our last aunt: She kind of laughed at her own choice of word, but she said, "It's really strange to think that, now, we're the 'reigning' generation." We both laughed because none of our parents/aunts were the "reigning type", and neither are we. Still, we both know what she meant.

Peculiar little jokes aside, there is something awfully lonely about seeing someone, like a last remaining aunt, go. My siblings and I (and that cousin I mentioned) have all seemed to just kind of stepped into that "reigning generation" role, or be thrust into it, and found our ways to try to be that link between the past and the future for our own children.

When we think about all those links that connect one generation to the next, that can sometimes make up for that temporary feeling of loneliness (that happens after first losing someone); because we realize that, as part of that chain that ties together family members, there's little reason to feel lonely.

Again, Glenn, sorry to know you've had this loss (and sorry, again, to have taken this long to get back here).

Lisa HW Hub Author 14 months ago

seanline, I'm so sorry to know you're going through this, and it's so sad to know your little girl has lost her mother. So soon after loss most people (I think) have that very same feeling about not knowing how they're going to face the road ahead. They take it a step at a time (because they have no choice), and somehow, they keep going. Eventually, they start to feel better and surer; and life gets more and more normal.

Your daughter needs you now more than ever, and if you're like most parents, you'll discover that your love for her will give you the strength. Right now, while you're grieving, accept help if you have people who can help with some things. Since you just got back to your home, a lot of what you're feeling right now is part of being hit with some of the harsh realizations of your usual home without her being there as usual.

I'm not comparing this situation with yours because my mother didn't die at the time; but when my siblings (2 others) and I were little my mother got a lung infection and was to be hospitalized for months. I was just about 7. My baby brother was just about 2. My sister was 11/12. I was with my father in the doctor's office when the doctor suggested my father talk to someone about finding a foster home for us. She said something about knowing he had to work. My father sat there in the chair, looked right at the doctor, and said, "That's out." (meaning that the option of foster care was not an option in his eyes) The doctor went on a little more about how my father would have to continue working each day, and he said, "I'll figure out something." She (the doctor) said, "What you going to do?" He repeated, "I'll figure out something. They're NOT going into foster care."

He ended up paying my aunt (who was a working, single, mother of a disabled child of her own) to quit her job; so she could be at our house each day while my father worked. She'd come to our house after she'd gotten her own child to school and after he'd gotten us all breakfast and ready for school. She'd leave to have dinner at her own house with own child, and he'd make dinner for himself and the three of us. My brother had been a premie, so he was toddler who was frequently hospitalized with pneumonia. My father would be going to the hospital to see my brother and finding a way to visit my mother.

On Saturdays he'd do housework and things that needed to be done. On Sundays we'd all get dressed up (which is what they did in those days) to go to church, have a Sunday dinner, and then go visit my mother at the hospital. Paying my aunt and hospital bills meant he barely had any money after buying groceries and bills.

His thinking (and my mother's thinking) was that there was always a way to manage somehow on little money. The main thing was that he kept us together, and that he be there for us. My sister and I shared a bedroom and would cry every single night, worrying that our mother was going to die. There was no doubt about it, we were sad and afraid. Still, during the days we had normal days and we went to school. We had normal dinners and did homework. Evenings and Saturdays were normal (and we weren't crying all the time). We didn't have our mother at home, but life was otherwise normal and OK. The one thing that helped us be reasonably OK most of the time (and only crying on those nights before we fell asleep) was that we were with the father we loved so much (and who loved us so much); and that he did what he could to keep things normal and happy at home.

He was someone who always did silly things to try to make us laugh, and I think that helped him to laugh amidst the worry too. He would spend time with us, talking about everything. I remember hearing him up, around the house, getting things like lunches and our clothes ready for the next school day. If he wasn't working he'd be with us (unless we out playing). He knew my aunt was someone who would be good to us during the day while he worked. That's all he and my mother cared about.

When my mother was able to come home she would always talk about how "the one thing" that helped her get through being away from us was that she knew the kind of father we had and knew he would "always find a way" to help us get through.

My siblings and I grew up to be people who saw how perfectly capable fathers can be when it comes to taking care of children, taking care of a house, making meals, etc. In those days, a lot of people didn't really realize how capable fathers could be in that nurturing, care-taking, role.

Most of the time, when parents love their child(ren) they will manage to "figure out a way", just the same way my father did when he was faced with three young kids who missed their mother, a house, and a full-time job.

Having you there will help make up for the fact that your daughter won't have her mother around. I'm guessing that, a little at a time, you'll find yourself figuring out one way or another to meet the challenges you may face. Like most kids and parents, you and your daughter will continue to grow close as she grows.

What you feel right now is what everyone tends to feel after losing someone. It's a rough time; but chances are you'll be more than able to "figure something out" in a way that holds your little family together. All that aside, being busy caring for your child (and, of course, thinking up silly things to do that will make her laugh) will help make some of the gray days ahead a little brighter.

Lisa HW Hub Author 14 months ago

crystolite, I've never implied or said it's easy or anything even close to easy. I'm not sure exactly whether you're referring to this whole Hub or just the last comment and last few lines above. I think the overall Hub (and all the readers' comments) make it pretty clear that nobody thinks it's easy.

I can see how someone might interpret might reply to seanlin as my suggesting "it's easy". The fact that I didn't load up my reply to him with words about how horribly difficult and long the road is likely to be for him, and his daughter; isn't intended to imply I think it will be easy. It is intended to convey what few day-to-day, and seemingly minor, things me might be able to do now; while he takes each day, minute by minute and hour by hour. Before people can move on, they have to deal with getting through each minute, hour, and day as best as possible. The small, seemingly insignificant, things people can do to make each minute or hour just a little bit more pleasant can make a big difference.

When something horrible (like loss of a child's mother) happens; on the one thing, it makes it more difficult for the remaining parent because he has to 1) remain strong and positive for the child, and 2) watch his child go through such awful loss.

On the other hand, it also makes it a little easier for that parent, because most parents' love for their child(ren), and determination to remain strong for a child or children can help them find whatever it takes to remain strong, do what needs to be done, and be that support for the child.

When I referred to my own father's words, "figure something out", it wasn't intended to imply "figure something out and make things all wonderful". It was intended to convey "figure out something out when it comes to remaining strong, remaining together, getting through this rough ("horrible", might have been a better choice of words but I didn't want to add yet more discouraging words to something aimed at someone who's already in grief, uncertain, and discouraged) time; and any difficult times ahead; and eventually move on together as father and daughter.

One of the biggest (and common) things people do shortly after losing someone is to think, "I don't know if I can't do this," or "I can't imagine being able to keep going." That's where seanlin is right now, but the reality is that people usually end up "figuring something out" (when it comes to "getting through it" or "continuing to go on") all the time. Not all (not even parents) manage to find a way to rebuild life and themselves, but in general it's what people discover they've managed to do.

To be candid, probably the one thing that made me want to be encouraging to seanlin is that I've too often seen times when people with children, and in difficult situations, have been told, "This may be more than you can take on yourself. Maybe you should think about putting your child/children in the care of someone else."

Vulnerable, frightened, parents who don't feel at all confident in their own ability to "figure something out", or in their ability to come up with the resources and strength to do what's right for their child; often have their concerns "fueled" by (even well intentioned) others who have not, themselves, seen first-hand that strong, loving, parents can be more than capable of "figuring something out". In the situation I described with my father and the doctor, and I heard and saw the doctor's doubt when my father refused to take her advice about foster care.

As it happens, I've had lots of exposure to teen mothers and families whose children have ended up in foster care. As an adoptive mother of one of my children, I've been "paying attention" to the whole issue of birth mothers for about 30 years now. Separate from all that, as someone who has had to help my own three (now grown) kids get through serious, serious, loss; I've discovered the strength and resourcefulness that we parents often have little choice but to muster up.

At this time when someone like seanlin is in the ever-familiar throws of wondering how on Earth he's ever going to manage and keep going, my aim above was to try to point out to him/remind him that he's "under the influence of" acute grief right now, and many of those fears/uncertainties he's experiencing are the direct result of that.