3 months today since mom died.

Losing a parent
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This is my first time posting on here so don’t really know where to begin…

I am 26 years old, and have an extremely tight knit family. Growing up my safety circle was my Dad, my mom, my brother and sister and my grandparents… but apart from that I never had any kind of relationship with any extended family like cousins or aunties and uncles ect…

3 months ago today, my mom got taken to hospital for stomach bloating and died within 12 hours due to liver failure and a ruptured bowl. (The cause of death was alcohol and stress. I only recently realised the extent of moms decades of alcoholism.) With my family being as small as it is, it feels like a pillar has been removed and has impacted our lives more than you can possibly imagine.

She was my ultimate best friend, the only one who would listened to me when I cry, told me I was beautiful and how proud of me she was, but now she’s gone, I don’t feel genuinely connected to anyone and feel completely alone. My Dad is the non-emotional type, but during this time he is relying very heavy on me for emotional regulation and off-loading, but doesn’t necessarily know how to respond when I talk freely about how this loss is affecting me. He says he wants to give up, so the idea of me speaking freely about how I feel the same way feels wrong.

I feel so so so alone, and the future looks very dark and bleak. Doctors said she would recover quickly then within hours she just died… at 53… I have felt intense fear every day since she passed.

I have almost reached the point of giving up because I feel like I have to pretend every second of every day with every single person I know and pretend that I am okay, but I am not okay and its getting harder and harder to hide. I don’t want to smile, or laugh. I want to cry but feel like I am not allowed to. So now 100% of my alone time is spent crying and mourning. So i’m either pretending or crying. I can’t keep going like this…

Please, someone just tell me that this feeling goes away eventually… my mother is the first person I have ever lost and is my first experiencing death outside of family pets. the thought of ever going through this again makes me want to shut down although I understand that loss is one of the only guarantees in this life.

help me…

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Hello @AR27 ,

I’m part of the Online Community team and I can see that you are new to the community - I’d like to thank you for bravely starting this thread and sharing how you are feeling so alone. I’m so sorry to hear about your mum. Most community members have sadly experienced the death of a loved one and so will understand some of what you are going through.

I’m sure someone will be along to offer their support. In the meantime, you may wish to look at these Sue Ryder resources which might be helpful.

I really hope you find the community helpful and a good source of support and I also hope you feel you can access more support should you need it.

Thank you again for sharing – please keep reaching out and know that you are not alone.

Take care,

Alex

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I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

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Dear AR27
I too lost my Mum three months ago. It is the hardest thing ever, and the pain hurts like hell.
I am 54, and Mum was 89. I lived with my parents all my life. Had relationships which didn’t work out, and eventually became carer to both. Dad passed 12 yrs ago. I focused my attention on looking after Mum. We were very close too. Mum was mother, best friend, and person I lived with all my life…til now.

I am sorry you have lost your lovely Mum at such a young age. You sound a very thoughtful, kind daughter, having considered how your Dad might cope if you speak freely about how you feel. The difficulty with saying nothing to him is he may currently feel he is struggling alone, so please continue to tell him you are there for him and that you share similar feelings following Mum’s passing.

Self esteem is knocked to the floor following a bereavement. You are feeling so many different challenging emotions. Everything feels so final. None of it feels fair. You are doing incredibly well keeping going, although it doesn’t feel like it. I too have that intense anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I feel sick most of the time, and extremely tired.

There are a few things I try and remind myself…
Mum lives on in me… I am her flesh and blood quite literally, and by looking after myself I look after her
She loved me unconditionally and I must carry on to honour her and all the love and years she gave me…I cannot give up, though I too feel like doing so
I am told that my feelings will change over time…the pain will feel less profound as we adjust to a new way of life…it seems hard to imagine this but then I remind myself of the millions of people who do carry on their lives…they are grieving or have grieved, and at some point their pain seems something they can manage. We have to trust that will be true for us.

I started having counselling last week. I’m not sure she understands how ill and exhausted I feel. I haven’t felt able to work with this anxiety, but she said at the end of the session I am fit to do a phased return. I don’t agree. Then there’s Christmas looming. Not sure how I’ll get through it. No family nearby, no siblings and I want to hide though I know it’s not helpful. Today I managed to get out to the hairdressers and then had a brief walk in the park. I have some housework to do after lunch. I’m taking everything one day at a time.

You are helping yourself as much as you can. It seems, unlike me, you have managed to return to work? Naturally, you are struggling and putting on a brave face. The tears are normal…never feel you can’t let them out. You must! I read somewhere it is time and tears that heal the grief. I’m not crying as often lately, though that dark, heavy feeling is still there. So, I know things do change over time. I’m told the first 6 mths are the absolute worst…the first year dreadful…and that after two years the acute grief eases.

I’m here for you if you’d like to reply back. Please know your feelings are normal, you are doing very well, and you are not alone.

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Hi there

Thank you for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful reply, I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing what I am, I do not wish this on anyone at all

This has been the absolute worst thing I could ever imagine going through, I almost started to let myself believe that my family were invincible and it was going to be us against the world, but life taught me super valuable lesson there…

I went back to work by month 2 after it happened, but the only reason I did was because having all that time to just think about it was like emotional torture and I was just desperate for a distraction. I dont know if that was the best move now because now im finding myself breaking down and getting emotional at really inconvenient times with out being able to control myself, its a vicious circle of not wanting to be alone with my thoughts then being forced to deal with them at the worst times.

The common thing that everyone is saying is that this pain, never goes away… I am really struggling with that thought of never being okay again… Im normally the most positive, sunshiny person that can find the good in all situations but this I feel has changed me from my core and havent seen that joyous side of me since mom passed away, I hoped that one day I would go back to the way I was but the longer this grief blankets my heart every day I just can’t see me ever bouncing back from this.

The understand where your coming from about the holidays, Thanks giving just passed for my family and was the first without her, you really really feel the hole they left behind on days like that where you always remember being together. I don’t want to even think about celebrating this year, I think I will just grinch it out this year and maybe make up for it next year, but everything just feels too raw to try and be celebrating anything.

My Dad and I are very close still which I am profoundly grateful for, he is my whole universe now and I really am trying my absolute best to keep him grounded and keep him positive, the thought of losing a spouse is a pain I dont even want to begin to imagine so my heart aches to know the heart-break he is enduring and managing to keep the house-hold afloat still - it really is astounding but my ability to provide support is dwindling, I am running out of will power to say everything will be okay when in actual fact it feels like the future is just dark and painful.

I hope you are keeping strong, just to know that there is someone weathering the same storm and heart break as I am is just enough comfort to get me by for a while and happy to keep on replying until this world feels a little normal again… you too are also not alone.

Lets just get through this year, and hope the new year will bring a new perspective.

I can feel your strength in the message you have left, and can only hope to emulate the best I can in my own experience.

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Hi there

Thank you for your beautiful reply, the way you describe these emotions is very poetic and I appreciate the love and effort behind the words.

As Christmas quickly approaches I am trying my best to prepare myself for the tsunami heading my way, but am grateful for platforms like this with such a beautiful community.

Thank you again, it means more than you could ever know and wishing you happy holidays.