Dealing with, idk, blankness? A weird lack of grief

Coping with bereavement
1

Hi,

My Mum died 6 months ago and I still haven’t cried. She had a catastrophic brain haemorrhage and there was nothing the doctors could do except keep her comfortable until she passed, three days later. I’m actually very happy with the way Mum died; she had a horror of being weak and helpless, and this way she was fit and active until the aneurysm, and then in no state to suffer. I know the hospital looked after her as well as they could. I think it was a good death.

I loved Mum and I know she loved me, and intellectually I know her death hurt and I miss her, but it all feels … distant. Every so often I feel like I might cry, but then the feeling fades. I don’t feel depressed; I’ve been getting on with my life almost exactly as normal. But everyone says grief is supposed to be a terrible rending thing with floods of tears and it just … isn’t like that for me. I have a nagging feeling I’m somehow ‘doing bereavement wrong’ because I haven’t collapsed at any point.

I’m still a bit annoyed at some friends who kept aggressively pushing me to cry with them, and seemed almost disappointed when I wouldn’t. But as an only child, I had to hold it together to help Dad with the funeral and all the paperwork; I couldn’t fall apart then. Now, I’m worried I’ve missed it somehow, the moment when I could have grieved ‘properly’.

I’d just like some reassurance that I’m not, idk, defective somehow, for not grieving the way TV and films say people should.

Thank you for listening.

2

Hi Hazel, welcome to the community and very sorry to hear about your Mum.
Just to confirm - you are not defective or abnormal in feeling the way you do.

Like you say; I think we are a bit conditioned by what we think should happen to us when someone dies and there is absolutely no right or wrong.
Grief is such an individual thing and everyone will react differently, in fact quite often people don’t react in the way that they expected they would.

Don’t worry about how you feeling, you seem to be a very open and level headed type of person from what you have said and it sounds as if you are coping well - don’t let anyone make you feel like you are not reacting ‘normally’.

Sometimes grief can hit people unexpectedly when they least expect it, and this may or may not happen with you.

I wonder if anyone else on the community has experience of feeling like they had ‘missed the moment’ and have some good advice for.