Hi all. New to this site. Lost my son 24yrd. In a car crash. Coming up to 6 years ago now. He was an only child. We were incredibly close. He was my best friend. The question I’m asking is. I feel like I have a permanent invisible disability that I have to carry round with me. Is this normal ?
1 Like
Hello Jim, I think your description is just grief and if that’s what it feels like to you, then that’s fine. When we loss someone who is very special, they don’t just disappear from our world, they may not be there in person but they have left so many bits and pieces they are always with us. Would we want them to have totally gone? I think it’s how we come to terms with our ‘disability’ and how we carry it. Carry it carefully, with love and if possible relax with it and enjoy knowing it’s there if you ever need it. Don’t think of it as a awkward piece of luggage but something to protect. It’s difficult for me to put into words what I am asking you to think about but I hope you get the idea,.Sxx
Thank you Susie. I maybe didn’t phrase it rite. What I meant is. It feels like something is missing ( without stating the obvious). It’s like you feel like there’s something not quite rite with yourself but you can’t quite put your finger on it. It feels like there’s a massive gap in your life and other people can’t see it because it’s invisible to them.
1 Like
Hi Jim10
Sorry you lost your son so tragically , I lost mine 6 months ago and we were also very close. The way I feel it is something similar for me it’s like I have had a massive electric shock that has shaken every atom of me so violently that they are not able to go back into their right places . Everything is out of sync and not connected in the right way. It’s all mixed up confused and nothing makes sense or is real any more.
Well I can’t imagine anything ever being the same again for any of us really on this awful journey .
If any of that makes sense.
Jss
1 Like
Hi Jss thanks for the reply. I actually said to my wife the other day. If your head was a computer. It’s like someone took a microchip out and put it back in the wrong way round. Everything is there , it just doesn’t make sense anymore. The one thing I have learned is that time is no great healer you just adapt and handle it better. How you have described it is exactly rite. 6 months for you. Must be so raw. Confusing and frightening. You find out many things about yourself in the following weeks months and years. We all have to carry our own pain. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Emotions can do strange things to you. You will have many dark days ahead of you. Stay strong my Friend
1 Like
Thanks Jim yes , it’s the guilt one for me that’s the worst at the moment should have, would have ,could have, no answer for that, and not knowing where he is anymore or seeing him . Yes have to work through such a lot, but no answers just have to give it time I expect.
Jss
Jss I don’t know if being on here helps you at all. For me in the early days I would have tried anything if I thought it would make his passing any better. The guilt, wow the guilt!!! I had terrible guilt. The reality was I couldn’t have done anything to change the coarse of events. But I beat myself up about it for a long time. Just like you. Could’ve. Should’ve. Would’ve. But as someone told me. You can’t, try as you might change what happened . It’s “past”. The guilt does eventually subside. You don’t suddenly wake up one day and it’s gone. But it does get less over time. You are probably not in a fit state to do anything at the mo. In the beginning I felt doing anything remotely pleasurable was totally wrong. Going for a beer, a meal. Going on holiday. Anything remotely nice just felt wrong coz I wasn’t allowed to enjoy myself knowing that he wasn’t hear. It took me along time to start going out again. But the guilt does get less eventually 
Yes Jim coming on here really really helps. In the beginning I thought I was just being weak and I should pull myself together , or that I was going mad. Soon found out everyone else seemed to be going through the same feelings as me. I always turn to this site when I can’t turn to anyone else ( don’t want to spoil their day) as I know people on here understand, and in the night when I can’t sleep someone is usually typing away here as well.
Hi Jss. If I’m a nuisance tell me to go away it’s fine. Sometimes you want to talk, sometimes we don’t, sometimes we don’t know what the hell we want. It’s a rollercoaster. !!!
Something that mite help. When my son died. For the first 6 months I completely buried myself it writing his biography. I’m not a natural writer. But it suddenly struck me that as time passes i may start misremembering things. So I wrote down absolutely everything I could remember from him being born up until the day he died with as much detail as I could remember. It’s not a book as such. But I managed to fill about a 100 A4 sheets of paper. I tried to document as many facts and memories as I could. It really helped me writing it, I found it cathartic. It filled the days. I didn’t always feel like writing but I found it addictive. It wasn’t really for anyone else’s eyes. But I’m so glad I did it. After I’d finished. I read it and re-read it over and over. It helped. Now 6 years later I don’t read it but I take great comfort in the fact that it’s there if ever I need to dip into it. And I do find I stumble across memories I’d completely forgotten. It’s just an idea. Hope it helps [quote=“Jss, post:8, topic:43663, full:true”]
Yes Jim coming on here really really helps. In the beginning I thought I was just being weak and I should pull myself together , or that I was going mad. Soon found out everyone else seemed to be going through the same feelings as me. I always turn to this site when I can’t turn to anyone else ( don’t want to spoil their day) as I know people on here understand, and in the night when I can’t sleep someone is usually typing away here as well.
[/quote]
1 Like
Hi Jim no your not being a nuisance,I am glad you found writing about him a comfort. The problem I have at the moment which may be attached to guilt is that I can’t seem to remember the happy times, for the first few weeks it was like I could not remember him at all . Like if I tried to even go there it would be too painful. It frightened me a bit I thought I had lost him altogether . I am reading self help books and maybe memories will come back in the future but I can’t push them. Some people on here say they can’t even look at photos , I can do that , but memories are too much yet . I have an older son who lives away and maybe sometime in the future I can talk about memories to him, but not yet.
1 Like
Jss. I won’t have a single picture / photo of him in the house or on my phone. I get what you are saying. I wrote everything down all the bad as well as the good. My lads car crash was a long twisted story. But I just wrote it all down. It’s very early days for you. How you feel now will be a million miles away from how you feel in a year or two
Thanks Jim
I can only hope for that in the future ,as it seems every day is torture and pointless at the moment jss
Am so sorry for your loss. I lost my daughter in March last year. She was my best friend we did everything together, shopping, meals out, holidays so my life has changed drastically. I felt as though I was really getting somewhere then the last couple of months have taken a really big step backwards. People think I am so strong, but it’s all an act, inside I am broken, my smile is false. I know I will get there but life will never be the same. I don’t think I am depressed, just very very sad. I sometimes think just one more hug, one more kiss but I know it would never be enough. We just have to take one day at a time. Am dreading Christmas and again this year will not be sending Christmas cards but will make a donation to our local hospice. Keep strong
1 Like
Hi Jude53 so sorry for the loss of your daughter I really feel for you, my son and I were so close also, he still lived at home and was so protective of me. He was always there to talk to and confide in, now there is just space. How are we supposed to go on. I feel I am screaming on the inside like that famous painting THE SCREAM , but no one can tell on the outside, like you say a false smile. There is nothing anyone can say or do tho that can heal us or take away the pain anyway, so we have to soldier on.
Take care Jss
We carry on because we have to. I remember losing my dad then my brother 11 months later and saying to mum, your life hasn’t ended it’s just taken a different direction and I have to believe that’s true. Losing a child isn’t the order things are supposed to happen is it?
1 Like
This makes sense to me . Feel like I’ve had major operation & nothing the same. I need to heel after the op the out of sync is what am saying but people say I get like that sometimes. No u don’t & you’ve no idea . Day or night it doesn’t change. I’d set myself up to go to Xmas fare at local hospice. A close friend promised she wouldn’t work that day. When asked what time r we going she so casually said I can’t make it . To her it was nothing am in bits .
Hi maggie8
Sorry your friend let you down, it’s a big deal when you have to psych yourself up to deal with something ,all that effort to prepare yourself mentally and then to be let down. She must not have thought it was a big deal to you , or maybe she felt guilty but she should have let you know and apologised. It does seem to take such an effort to deal with anything now, I just keep putting everything off and think I will deal with it tomorrow but never do . Everything now seems to require so much concentration and I don’t even know which way is up anymore so I can’t deal with anything.
I just think to myself anyway ,does it really matter? Does anything really matter anymore? I am just trying to get through the day some shape and that’s about all I can do at the moment. Take care jss.
1 Like