To ask when grief is meant to hit.

[ADJ1151]

Not a nice thing to talk about so I apologise. Also posting here for traffic for traffic.. sorry.

Yesterday I lost a close family member kinda suddenly. They had been ill it wasn’t expected.

I was at the hospital.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me before.

But it hasn’t sunk in. I’ve shed a few tears but nothing like I would have expected.

I had a long drive home last night and had to keep it together so I could get home safely.

I expected it to hit when I got home. But I come home and I had parcels needed to be opened, I tidied up, seen to dc who were home waiting for me to get back.

I’m obviously very sad and spun out but I haven’t really cried much.

I’m not much of a crier anyway. Anyway would fall me a bit of an ice queen. I really do feel emotion but struggle to show it 😭

How am I meant to feel?

It just doesn’t feel real!

I had a crap nights sleep and was sweating all night kept picturing them but no tears!

Apologies for this rather morbid post this morning.

My other family
Members are in bits but I’m just the expressing it the same way!

My mum died five years ago from dementia. I didn’t “grieve” at all in the conventional sense. Never cried, didn’t actively miss her.

I was so disturbed about this that I was in therapy for a year and a half. I have felt more distressed by the end of certain relationships than I did by the death of my own mother. I now miss her very much because I am reminded of her all the time by my relationship with my daughter.

Grief is not mandatory and it’s not linear. There’s no correct way for you to feel. Be kind to yourself and accept that whatever you feel or don’t feel is right for you x

OP I'm sorry for your loss, but it is still very early days.

My father died a couple of years ago after a long illness. I thought I would fall to pieces and be crying and breaking my heart. But that phase has never come. Instead I felt numb, and since then I have found that sometimes something hits me, I feel weepy for five minutes, and then it passes. I miss him terribly, so it's not that I don't care or didn't love him, but the whole grieving process has been a surprise to me.

Sorry for your loss OP
Don't beat yourself up

My Darling Dad died last May and I cried at the initial news and then nothing, . for 3 weeks . I started to think I was a psycho with no emotion in all honesty but it did hit me . In fact over the last few days I have been ever so sad and its now been 9 months . Feel worse now.
We all grieve differently .

However you feel is how you're meant to feel.

I lost a close family member in November and it still hits me at the weirdest times I wore a pair or socks she bought me yesterday and I felt the wave or grief and sadness but most of the times I just get on with it.

I am sorry for your loss. Grief is strange and hits everyone differently.
I thought I was numb from AntiD's when I attended funerals of family then a friend died suddenly, he was my Dsis friend he had an awful life, he was very caring, always smiling, it was very sad it buckled me.

I felt numb too after the death of a close relative. Didn’t really process their death until years later and in the meantime it affected every other relationship I had. Only talking about it helped. Suggest you speak to your GP and get some help.

Theres no right and no wrong way to grieve. My sister is a carrier and I am not. She does the receiving cards, sharing memories and I make the tea and tidy up! It's all relevant
I am sorry for your loss.

Think you have gone into autopilot at the moment, so getting up sorting out kids housework etc. As other people have said it will hit you at unexpected times.
Be kind to yourself take it easy if you can. Xx

Crier not carrier!

I am so sorry for this sudden loss @ADJ1151. As others have said, you are in shock and particularly with children at home, there is a certain amount of compartmentalisation that needs to happen (in my experience). Just take one day at a time.

I was advised not to seek 'help' with my grief until at least 3 months in (6months for counselling from Cruse). This is a natural process and as others have said, it will take time for the shock to subside. That said, I did get distressed within that time and Cruse provide services for this early stage. 8 months on from my latest bereavement and I'm only just starting to do any real processing and as many will tell you, grief from previous deaths is only now being processed 5,10 years later. Go gently ♥️

Put a load of washing on.. surely this isn’t normal?? Perfectly normal. Your brain hasn't really taken it in yet,

I remember the time between my mother's death and her funeral as being an almost happy time - spent with my father trying to dig out the particular hymn tunes he wanted, basically close together time with him. It wasn't till after the funeral that the reality sunk in - and even then for me it wasn't a continual feeling. I'd left home and had my own family, so she wasn't part of my everyday life. You can love someone and be close to them, but unless you are seeing them every day, their death can be less overwhelming than, say, a work colleague who you lunched with every day.

So expect to get hit one life returns to normal, particularly at points were you would have expected to be with your close relative. But your brain will be doing some processing in the background, so the grief you will feel in the future will be more tolerable than if it had hit you straight away.

Suggest you speak to your GP and get some help. Far too early for this! You're quite normal. Don't worry about it.

Put a load of washing on.. surely this isn’t normal??

My Mum died and we went to buy a kitchen appliance. It was incredibly surreal. I want to cry and tell everyone what had happened to us but I was in an utter daze.

I didn’t cry after my mum died. On the third anniversary of her death I started crying at work and couldn’t stop. It completely hit me

It hits you when it feels like it. Often at times when you really don't need it too. It's horrible and I'm really sorry for your loss.

Everyone is different. I knew my dad was dying and I did have tears when he died, but I then walked into work and stayed all morning. I delivered a 10 mins eulogy and my friends couldn’t believe I got through it. Everyone grieves differently and whilst I’m very sad my dads not around anymore I also know he has zero quality of life left and he wanted to go. Seeing him in the chapel of rest also helped me as he looked so serene, I’d been so worried about that and that gave me a lot of peace

Should have added that sometimes it hits me out of the blue, driving along and a song comes on, see something in the shops. His birthday etc.

I only had a good cry for my dad a couple of months after he died.
Don't force it and don't fight it.

Sorry for your loss. I lost my mum this year and I cry all the time. That said, I don't think anyone should feel pressured to cry or to grieve in any particular way. We are all different. The doctor in the hospital told me to be good to myself after my mum died so I say the same to you. Be good to yourself, be kind to yourself and give yourself permission to feel whatever you feel. Take care.

Some very interesting posts . My MIL died last year and both myself and my husband have felt I think detached . No floods of tears . It’s been hard as if we don’t feel we have reacted properly. But sometimes we will be driving and it will be quiet or something will come on the radio and the tears and sadness just arrive . Or something about cancer comes on the tv and the wave of feeling lost hits you . Then it goes again . It’s one of those things people don’t talk about and I find all your comments quite comforting .

My darling Dad died at a grand old age, he was a soldier in his youth, before I was born. 10 months later I was in a supermarket on 11th November, I knew I had to get out before 11 o'clock. I suppose I could have just walked out but I hung on to my trolley in the queue and got to the checkout at 11 o'clock. I stood there with tears running down my face, biting my lip to control myself. This remembrance day my dog (old girl, best dog in the world) had to be put to sleep first thing in the morning, I carried on with my day and stood with acquaintances at 11, no tears.
Grief comes and goes, it comes when you don't expect it, it comes when it's "inconvenient``. It is a good thing but it's your thing. Don't think you aren't doing the right thing.
It's a part of life we need to embrace.
Take care.

It can hit any time and it might not hit at all.
People tend to assume that you should have got over it after a few weeks but you probably won't.

Grief hits everyone differently but the sad fact is life goes on in a normal fashion and subsequently it can appear surreal.
As in one minute you are watching someone die, you go home and the kids need fed and you need your roots done. It’s the strange juxtaposition of life.
When my dad died I felt the earth should stop for a while but it didn’t and I walked around in a trance.

The day after my brother died, the washing machine packed up and I found myself laying on my back with my head underneath it to diagnose the fault, telling DP for fuck's sake don't let go as I'd quite enough of Shit Things Happening for that week already without adding being Decapitated by a Knackered Bosch to the list.

As I was already in my notice period for Redundancy, had hated the job with passion for months beforehand and had only stayed for the payoff, I think I sort of saw it as a perfectly logical extension to how generally shit my life was going at that point.

Having something to think about - a technical problem, a plumbing problem, a particularly difficult part in the Requiem Mass I was rehearsing at the time (perfect timing there - but it was Faure, so it is absolutely beautiful melodically - and Faure was an atheist, too) - was so much better than anything else. It gave me respite from trying to work out how I felt and how I should feel and so on.

I certainly didn't feel like celebrating, but stupid, pointless, tragic things happen. I had more difficulty with having to be in contact with people I'd gone NC with years beforehand and the memories that dragged up. So I went about a lot of 'normal' things - dealing with breakdowns, repairs, having showers, trying to sort out ways to wash clothes, applying for new jobs.

There's no set way that you have to feel or act. I'm very conscious of his absence and just don't feel the same about the music he loved anymore. I don't feel happiness at hearing the excerpt from a book that I read to him whilst waiting for the transplant team to be ready for him - one that was completely appropriate and utterly inappropriate to be reading to him in the circumstances, even if he could have heard me (which was one of the reasons why it was perfect, as the inappropriateness would have hilarious to him). So I'm pissed off that things I loved are tainted by the gap I know has been left by his absence.

I'm not sure I feel quite 'right' or that I ever will again, but movie-style grief? I can't see that happening now. And I'm OK with that.