I am not doing so great today. Grief has come at me hard and unexpectedly. I lost my mum suddenly15 years ago and my dad in November. I feel that dad’s passing has brought back all the grief I went through when mum died as well as trying to process his death from lung cancer. Dad was 89, he had lived for a long time as a widower and had become a huge part of my life so when he died it left a big empty space.
Yesterday was my birthday and I spent the day crying and cleaning out cupboards in a bid to ignore the pain I was feeling. It has hit me that I no longer have parents, those people who would never have missed my birthday, they are not here anymore and I think I have come to realise I’m not doing as well as I thought I was.
I told a friend that I don’t understand why I am falling apart so much right now, my parents weren’t the best, they were never the ones I would turn to in a crisis but she said she thought it sounded like I was trying to belittle my grief, telling myself I had no right to feel this bad, she’s probably right, I have always thought of myself as self sufficient, can cope with anything, but right now I’m doubting that, feeling that I really am not coping.
You are not alone, I have the same problems, I lost my first wife 12 years ago and my second to MND 2 years ago, I got a double whammy of grief for both hitting me at the same time. Like you I was always self-sufficient and everybody else’s ‘rock’. Now I go through periods of feeling I am not coping, falling apart. I’m told that this is normal for people in our situation and we just have to be patient and we will get ‘better’. So, we have to keep going and ‘live in the moment’ , remember that you are not alone and we are all in it too. Take care and look after yourself
So sorry, you have been through a tough time. Everyone tells me to be kind to myself but that’s easier said than done especially when you are someone who has been there for everyone else. I think it’s probably the case that we don’t take time to heal, we are too quick to try to get back to normal life. I hope you are able to take the time to let yourself process your pain, I am now realising that that is what I need to do.
Thanks, yes I am told the same but it is easier said than done as we know. I have a friend in her seventies who lost her husband 6 months before I lost my wife so it will be 3 years for her in July (ah - this month) and she said to me that she is just starting to ‘get better’. I do not understand why it is so difficult and takes so long. We evolved as an animal over 40 million years and every characteristic we possess has an evolutionary advantage or we would not have it. I keep asking what is the evolutionary advantage of grief? Or at least the impact that lasts so long and is so hard to get through but so far nobody can answer me. If I knew why we did it, I might find it easier to deal with. I have another pressure on me too, my wife left her house (my house is in France) in trust to me with a lifetime interest and right to live in but I am supposed to look after it and sell it and ensure her son’s receive the resultant inheritance and this responsibility is putting a huge pressure on me. It seemed a good idea when we came up with this scheme but the practicalities are difficult. It is hard to sell, it is a grade II listed thatched property and far too big for one person. I have had it on the market for 6 months so far and this puts me under even more pressure although it shouldn’t. Oh well, just have to keep on and ‘do the job in front of me’ as I used to say at work.
For it to have had an evolutionary advantage, there’d need to have been natural selection of people who grieved versus people who didn’t. But we grieve because our loved ones are imprinted in our brains. Animals grieve too. So, rather than it having been an evolutionary advantage, was it just not an evolutionary disadvantage?