To think that bereavement has made me cold and lacking in compassion

[caramelswirl]

I was browsing through Facebook last night and one of my girls I knew at school had sadly lost her grandmother. Of course, I posted a brief message of condolence which was perfectly pleasant and fitting for the occasion.

However, the first thought that jumped into my mind was along the lines of surprise that someone my age still has a grandparent. Mine died very young, followed by both parents in my teens (separate occasions.)

To my shame, rather than sympathising with people who have lost their parent or grandparent, my instinctive thoughts often go along the lines that the person concerned should be grateful they had their for so many years longer than I did.

I should add, this isn't something I ever verbalise, which is possibly why I have 'owned up' on here, and I wonder if anyone else ever has similar thoughts which they suspect do not reflect particularly well on you as a person.

I have lost my Dad (but at a ripe old age) and lost my partner in my 20s. I too feel little sympathy for those who take often distant bereavements so hard.

I very nearly speak out when it is a bloody pet. (Sorry - but your dog or cat do not require the same level of concern as a human).

I am jealous of "normal" parents because my parents' marriage was dysfunctional and ended in divorce, acrimony and my mother's alcoholism, father's philandering. When I visit people with happy families and multi-generational good will, I find myself feeling jealous. I am also jealous of good sibling relationships (or even ordinary, average ones).

I have a really lovely DH and 2 children. 2 of my sisters are bitter and angry about my relative good fortune (although I married an ordinary, but lovely, bloke - they went for and were dumped by, very wealthy men). I feel I am due my happiness after my 20s being so tough and hate that they resent it so much. But, I sort of understand....

I think it's a completely natural reaction especially when you mention in your OP someone of about our age (though am possibly older than you?) losing a grand-parent. Perfectly understandable for one of your first automatic thoughts to be "gosh, you were lucky to have them so long, just how old were they?" But then this last year we lost someone much too young in my (extended) family too.
I too almost feel people make a lot of fuss about losing parents and grand-parents at the end of a full and well lived lifetime.
Is that bad of me? I haven't lost a parent yet so may be in for a shock with the strength of feeling of loss when that day comes. I guess for those losing parents and grand-parents later in life there is a different sadness that they feel that person has always been there, and so still should be? But still if you lose a grand-parent in your 40's you've had a pretty good run haven't you?!
Hugs to you ((caramel))

My children who are young who lost their dad to cancer last year then two grandparents would entirely agree with you op.

I have to say I didn't start the thread so people could pour scorn on people's upset and grief and hurt.

I'm so sorry to say it like that but while I am ashamed of my fleeting thoughts I must say that if I had loved an elderly person or pet who died - some of these comments would have upset me.

I hope my post didn't read too badly caramel- I was only saying that having suffered the bereavement of a young person in our family I can understand how you might feel.
Sensitive stuff all round. Much love to all x

No, I don't think yours did at all juggling - but there were some bordering on 'how dare people be upset' which wasn't really the intention of the thread and could, I thought, have the potential to be extremely distressing to somebody.

I think we all relate people's losses to our own so it's normal, but just a thought. When my grandmother dies, I will feel it desperately but it's so complicated. She lived with us until I was seven, was the warmest and most solid person in my childhood and because my father became alcoholic, she left our home and I hardly ever saw her again. I see her once a year and am nc with my father and I grieve as it is when I see photos of her at my cousin's homes (I never had a relationship with them either but we are Facebook friends as adults).

I think grief for a grandparent can be bound up in all sorts of other feelings that are hard to articulate, and it's really pointless comparing losses. Loss just is. It comes to us all and everyone suffers it. It's just the nature of the human mind to evaluate and compare and weigh up value but ultimately if someone is suffering, they're suffering and the fact others are suffering more doesn't really remove that.

Was that aimed at me and my comment about dogs? I certainly don't pour scorn on their upset and grief - I do as I should, say how sorry I am, ask after them, even send cards.

However, I thought we were confessing how we feel, secretly, on the inside.

I do feel that it is just a dog / cat etc. I can't feel any different. My partner died when I was 26 and I spent 2 years completely grief stricken. I have to bite my tongue when it is an animal, particularly when my own family openly make comparisons in how upset they are (dog is more upsetting, apparently FWIW).

I don't agree about pets. I think a pet genuinely can be the most important, relied-on, loved and loving "other" in someone's life and losing them can be just as devastating or more so than losing a relative, if that happens to be the case. I don't think grief should be ranked or anyone should feel they're not allowed to feel more upset over losing a dog than a parent or grandparent. They feel how they feel.

I have one or two older neighbours who live for their relationship with their dog. I don't like dogs myself but I can see they would be totally devastated if their dog died.

I know I will take the death of my mum extremely hard. She is my mum and my best friend and the only adult who was ever there for me and offered me any security. I speak to her at least once a day and I don't know what I will do when I can no longer do that. I kind of hope that as they age you emotionally prepare a bit more, if that makes sense.

While I know I have been blessed to have her, even if she dies at an old age it will be a death that will knock me for six.

My children lost their dad far too young, they are just kids who will never have their dad watch them grow up, get a job, have their first girlfriend, child etc and that is a tragedy. He was only 39. They feel cheated for sure.

A death of a grandparent or parent at a good age is not a tragedy, it is meant to happen but loss is painful no matter what and I feel sympathy for anyone who loses someone, but not the same level of sympathy I feel towards people who lose people at a young age or have someone die at a young age.

My husband is almost 40 and has three living grandparents. It will hit him hard when they die but he knows how lucky he is to have had that time and that they have been able to watch their great grandchildren grow.

This has been a very moving thread to read - I talked a lot to a friend who lost her DF a year ago and one thing that struck home was that she said she'd not only lost 1 person, the whole family unit had changed. He was the peacemaker of the family and since he's gone, other family members have fallen out and now don't speak. I think she feels the loss of him to mediate between others very badly.

to everyone on this thread.

I think that anyone have lost a loved one at an older age (70-80) endures what I once read described as "the privilege of ordinary heartbreak"
I lost my beloved dad 8 months ago at 67.
I don't think I will ever get over it tbh.
But compared to those who have lost children or children who have lost a parent at 30/40?
I feel lucky to have had him for as long as I did.

OP, I totally understand how you feel. I lost a friend suddenly to cancer in her early 20s who had herself lost a baby to cot death at 16. She never got over the loss of her child and the shock of her passing so tragically 8 years later changed my perception of loss/bereavement forever. When I hear of people losing grandparents at my age I am often struck by how sad but also how lucky too to have had that person for so long. I think it's a natural thought process.

I do worry about people who struggle with the death of an elderly grandparent, how will they cope when a parent dies? I don't think anything bad of them though.

Although my view is somewhat altered because my cousin died of shitty leukaemia at 15yrs. Even my dad's death at 67 (after a good life and 'good' death) didn't seem as bad as that.

I do feel for one of my colleagues at the moment, her dog died and she's been knocked sideways by it.

I agree that you can't compare grief - but I do understand what you mean and I absolutely understand that jealousy when people casually rely on their mothers for a spot of babysitting or ring for a quick chat, or annoyance when they have the gall to complain about something trivial their parents said/did. I want to say - just be grateful they're here, which I know is unfair. I hate myself for it, but it's there. I lost my mother when I was a teenager and my father in my thirties. My perspective has changed as I've got older, though - I think less about how awful it was/is for me, and more about how awful it must have been for her.

A moving thread and I can empathise with a lot of it. I remember sitting at a table not long after my own parent's funeral and listening to a friend's sister in law pointing out a tiny rash on her hand, with her mother clucking sympathetically. I just wanted to rage that there was never again going to be anyone who cared for me in that way. I was fucking irrational for about two years and slowly got better after that - a year of bereavement counselling really helped.

Dear Baddz - you are in dark days at the moment, but twelve years on after the loss of a parent, I can give you hope that it does get better. I never believed it would do, but it does.

Rebecca Ahbrams 'When Parents Die' is well worth reading.
I think there's a book called 'Motherless Mothers'.

I thought I was odd that I felt like this, but am glad to see so many others who feel the same.

I feel a little envious of people who still have parents still alive (mine died 27 and 24 years ago). Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, one grandmother when I was 3 and I barely remember her. My maternal grandmother died when I was 12, but I didn't have a close relationship with her so it barely registered on my radar.

That makes me sound heartless, but as I didn't have any kind of relationship with my grandparents I just find it difficult to empathise when someone loses a grandparent.

OH's dad died when he was 4, so DD only has one grandparent - 85 year old MIL who has alzheimers.

The upside for me is, I suppose, that I don't have ailing parents to worry about.

Thank you maybe...that should have read 18 months though!
Seems like yesterday in many ways.
We did CPR but....:(
I must admit I don't feel much sympathy with those who mourn for animals.
I just can't equate the loss of a human being to that of an animal.

My youngest Ds has had to have bereavement counselling :(
Sadly the same day we lost dad my mum had a heart attack.
I really worry about anything happening to my pils - my dc are so much closer to them :(

Bunbaker...I get the grandparent envy!
I lost all mine by the time I was 4 and don't remember any of them.
I see the lovely relationship my dc have with pils and I do feel a pang of envy even now and I am 42!

My DF died 15 years ago aged 54, I was 26. The IL's ( now in their 70's) are lovely people, but I can't help but be riled when DH and SIL fuss and fuss over them having minor ailments. FIL had a knee replacement last year and we never heard the end of it. It was a straightforward success but you'd have thought it was touch and go life saving surgery. I can't help but feel the early death of my father has made me less compassionate, if not a little jealous that other people close to me have had both their parents for longer. It makes me feel bad.

OP, I'm another who feels just as you do. I'm jealous of people whose Mums got to know their grandchildren. Mum died a few weeks before I had DC1. I got terrible PND and felt so alone and like there was no one to turn to (no sibling had children at that point). I still feel very miserable when I see Mums and their daughters together even a few years later but I do take comfort in the fact that I was able to love her so much. Some Mums are nightmares and I was very lucky with mine. But YANBU so acknowledge the crapness when it occurs to you then try to get on with something else if you can.

When it comes to grandparents, I have similar feelings of envy or inability to empathize, I have to say. It's one thing for children to be upset over the loss of a grandparent but I struggle to understand that kind of grief among people my own age (mid-30s). To me, anyone who has known their gps and had a good relationship with them as far as adulthood is very fortunate.

In both mine and DH's family, our parents lost their mothers as young children (FIL's mother and my mother's mother) and even our remaining grandparents died early on our own childhoods. My DH's grandfather who was a very kind loving man died tragically when DH was 4. He should have lived for years as he was healthy and only early 60s but he was in a car accident.

So, yes, when friends my age talk about their 100 year old grandmothers and how they'll miss them 'if anything happens' I do inwardly think 'well, they had a good innings' even though l would never actually say that of course.