Is this grief?

[captainPugwashh]

My dad died when I was 12. I'm 33 now. I've been alive longer than I knew him for. I have wonderful memories and horrific memories. They fit together like a jigsaw.

He had bowel cancer for 2 years and died at 50 in 2003. We went on wonderful holidays but on one in the us he got jaundice and we had to travel home with him going immediately to A&E and didn't come out for 2 months as it had spread to his liver and he needed a stent. I'd do my homework in the car driving from Preston to Liverpool every night to see him after school.

Sorry rambling. Sometimes I think of him and it's happy and joyful, sometimes I think of him and it's still like it happened yesterday. I found some photos of him about a year ago and sobbed like a child.

Im at my mums now and I've found an entire box of photos of him that I've never seen and it hasn't made me cry at all. In fact I feel so grateful I've seen them.

Is this just normal losing a parent grief? It's hit and miss as to whether I randomly cry when I see new photos or feel happy. He's been gone 21 years, and I see him in my children.

Christmas doesn't help!!

Yes my lovely this is grief.

everything is and always will be mixed up together but combined with enough distance through time which allows you to not be swallowed with the pain every time you think of him. So you can have times when you think of him happily but others where it feels like you are all of a sudden drowning in grief and pain.

it is confusing too because you were so young (I was young too although older than you) you didn’t get the chance to form a relationship with him as the person you became so it adds another dimension to it (i think so anyway)

I lost mine at 21. I’m also at the point where I will have been without for longer than I had him. It’s very weird isn’t it and it brings up new elements.

the best bit of advice I can give you is that however you feel is completely fine and you should just feel it with no judgment on yourself. Except if it is affecting how you live and negatively impacting your day to day life.

it is ok to miss him and it is ok to sometimes not.

for me I feel very much that my life was before he died and after, I am ok most of the time but almost 20 years later on some days I miss with a power like it happened yesterday and feel that I miss he hasn’t seen x or y or z and it fills me with sadness that I can’t share it with him. Other times though I can think of him with great joy!

im sorry @captainPugwashh

My dad became very ill when I was 12, his health deteriorated badly and he died when I was 23. He spent the last 5 years of his life in a car home, because we could no longer care for his needs at home.

He died 31 years ago this month. My life is split into "before Daddy was ill", "when Daddy was ill" and "After Daddy died". I cried when I found out, although it was expected. I cried at his funeral, but over the years the sadness has become more mellow, more bittersweet. I feel angry at times that he only saw one of us marry and only met one of his grandchildren- even then he was so ill I'm not sure what he understood.

Photos don't generally make me cry anymore. As I grew up in the 1970s, there aren't actually that many! DS is 16 now. He is so like my dad it's unbelievable - who'd have known that mannerisms were inherited! DS moves the sane as dad, and weirdly has the same fingers!

Posted too soon…
Seeing DDad in DS is a new kind of grief, one that I was completely unprepared for after 30 years. Grief doesn’t go away in my experience, but you learn to live with it in a slightly uncomfortable way. It demands more of your thoughts and emotions sometimes. I’ve found it’s best to give into what it what it wants - tears, anger, reflection, sadness. You will find your was @captainPugwashh . Handhold whilst you do.

@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads I completely understand what you mean about it being a totally new type of grief. My kid makes gestures I've never seen in anyone other than my Dad. It's crazy!

Sending love xx

@Ginkypig thank
You for your lovely post. I just feel so sad. It's a different kind of grief and one I never expected to experience!

I know.

no one talks about the fact that grief stretches through your whole life or that you experience new elements to it unexpectedly sometimes many years later.
or that when you lose someone as important as that when you are young you experience different versions as you grow up and mature because you’re insight grows and our understanding of the world changes. The “simple” pure pain when young becomes complex and mixed with parts of life that you didn’t get to experience with that person because they were gone too soon.

i have not experienced the unique experience of seeing him in my children like you and @IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads have as I haven’t had children. I feel sorry for you both it must be incredibly painful and wonderful at the same time. So difficult for you both. I can imagine the juxtaposition of pain but also it feeling lovely that your child has him in them must be a very hard thing to live with.

just know that while it might feel like it and of course obviously no other person can truly understand your experience that you are not alone, lots of us live like you do too. We are just as confused and helpless and don’t have the answers either. We are all just trying our best to live with the reality of it too.

im sending you massive unmumsnetty hugs @captainPugwashh im really sorry you’re also in “the lost parents” club.