Thank you @ScrollingLeaves - at the time I didn’t really feel/understand how young I was: partly, I think, because I’d always been very mature/sensible, but also because I immediately experienced huge amounts of pressure to take responsibility for looking after my home & family. It was assumed my father would be hopeless/helpless - & of course that he’d remain so; & much was made of how young (3 years my junior) my sister was. From here, 10 is so very young to be thrown, literally overnight, into a world that makes no sense at all. It is - for me, at least, but for others I know too - a grief that gradually receded from its all-consuming nature, but rather than being “over it” I live alongside it now, as if in a house by the seashore. Sometimes when I walk along that shore, simply living my life, I will find myself swamped by a sudden inrush of sandcastle-smashing grief, or even dragged right out to sea into a crashing storm, half-drowning before I am released onto the shore once more. What I know now is that even if I’m trapped under the waters of a griefstorm, I will not actually drown. I used to long to, as a child & teenager. To simply die, not to kill myself (a sin), & make the unbearable pain of it stop. That grief is the trade-off for living mummy, being so very loved - & knowing that I was. I’m quite sure we’d’ve had dreadful rows when I was a teenager because we’re so alike, but one of the never-hads I mourn is our adult relationship. This year I will turn 40, the age mummy was when she died: the idea of becoming older than she got to be is a very strange one.
@NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom
Motherloss is not something people naturally respond to well, on the whole. I was bullied (I didn’t tell anyone, naturally 🙄) in my last year of primary school, which barely even registered in some ways as I was so desperately miserable (found out much later my teacher repeatedly told other staff she was hugely concerned but didn’t know what to do… so they all opted for “nothing” 🤦♀️). By time I finished secondary school I’d realised that my peers were responding to dreadful spectre I represented: I was proof that people’s mummies died; that they died suddenly; & that they died when they weren’t ill - ie, any of their mothers could suddenly be ripped from them at any time. People’s parents responded to that same thing by being overkind - my sister & I were overwhelmed with (unreciprocable, of course) invitations to go to tea with people after school & our fridge filled over & over with mostly-unsuitable food. (Having to keep track of whose dishes were which + ingredients + cooking instructions [once I’d got people to supply latter] was of course not at all stressful. And yes, people wanted to help & they didn’t know what to do. But they also wanted to make themselves feel better & be seen to be doing a good thing; so it does matter I was having to try to play fridge Tetris with stuff my pescatarian brother couldn’t eat & often had so much dairy I’d be ill if I tried to.) Parents saw me & signalled “please do this for my child if ever…”; but the majority of my female peers simply saw me, in a way they could not articulate, as a literal living nightmare. The boys were gentle with me - several of them were grieving mummy’s death as a personal loss, which may have made a difference - but most of the girls treated me as if I had become a monster as something monstrous had happened to me. Cruelty & spite in words & actions - mostly the physical stuff was pinching me, but going unchecked emboldened them to “accidentally” push me down the stairs & “accidentally” spray me in the eye with the deodorant. As is often the case, it was one girl leading it - & keeping her hands clean. The girl she got to spray me in the eye with deodorant seemed genuinely shocked by it having actually hurt me.
A few years ago someone from my church’s mother died the night before I was taking her two youngest girls (of four) & some others out for day. The elder of the two was 9 & had adored her granny; & we spent a bit of the day (at her instigation!) talking about there not being right or wrong ways to grieve (she was quite distressed one of her big sisters hadn’t even cried) & also not to worry about her mummy crying. She was finding it destabilising because at 9 you go to mummy when you’re upset & she makes you feel better; & instead with this she was upset too. She knew about my mummy & asked questions & apparently I managed to make her feel much more secure about all of it.
People definitely do shy away from young people who’re bereaved though. Or - as you say, who have cancer. These days they might be there to use a [tenuous] connection to them for social media likes; but actual support? Ahahahahaha no.
Girls’ responses to the deaths of their maternal grandmothers often include preemptive maternal rejection & defensive isolation; or, at the other end of the spectrum, massive separation anxiety similar to that seen in girls whose mothers are/have been seriously ill. Engaging in magical thinking of “if I’m constantly with her nothing bad can happen” - perhaps more common in younger girls, before the natural phase of separation?
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Sorry that’s all a bit long & babbly; & I didn’t want/mean to merail your thread @Moomoola 😶