Is DH being unreasonable about death/grief?

[DottyandOtty]

Chatting to DH earlier about relatives dying. He was saying that he is concerned that he feels little emotion at the thought of his parents dying. His grandma is unwell and he was saying that he doesn’t feel anything about the prospect of her dying, only duty to go to the funeral. They were close in his childhood but since teenage years that relationship faltered (this is despite the whole family spending summer holidays there until he was about 21). So it isn’t that he never had a relationship with them, though he does have quite a formal relationship with his parents.

He went so far to say that the only thing he feels really raw emotion about is the thought of DC dying.

Does anyone else feel this way? Or do people think it’s likely because of problems in his relationships with those people or rather something ‘wrong’ with him? I was saying he should speak to someone about it, but maybe it’s quite a normal way for people to feel? Just not spoken about much?

It’s hard to imagine how you’ll feel if someone dies, until it happens. In my experience anyway. I wouldn’t worry.

He may have grieved already. He may be holding back his emotions. It’s just how it feels for him - those his feelings, I would just try and understand them.

Hmm. I've lost a couple of elderly relatives recently and truly only felt relief that they were no longer suffering. I'm not sure why, but I just didn't feel loss or sadness.

But I've woken up in hysterical tears at a dream about my cat being run over and ran around the house at 3am looking for him to check he's ok.

To be honest I think it's more common than people will admit. I felt the same about deaths that are in the natural order of things ie elderly people. Obviously I'm sad that they are no longer here but not the kind of overwhelming grief that some people feel.

My husbands Nan just passed and he was like ‘that’s sad’, but no other real emotion. He told me he felt that she’d been gone for a while (dementia), so didn’t really feel upset about it.

It’s really abstract thinking about someone dying. It’s pretty hard to really know how you’ll feel until it happens. I always think that the older someone is or the longer you have to “prepare” the less emotion there is about their death when it happens. I was sad when my grandad died, but after two years of him not knowing who I was because of dementia it wasn’t like I imagine it would be if I were to lose someone in tragic circumstances or, heaven forbid, a child. But I couldn’t tell you how I will react when my mum dies because it’s not a thing I really think about.

I think everyone reacts to death differently. I'm not a very emotional person. I love my parents and have a great relationship with them and of course I will be sad when they die. But I find it hard to imagine suffering the debilitating grief that some people do, even when their parents were very elderly when they died. I also find it hard to understand the outpouring of grief from members of the public when a famous person dies. Untimely deaths of non-elderly family and friends are a completely different matter though.

Isn’t it that he can’t conjure up the feeling now? I remember do exercises in dreams v where v we had to do examples of situations and act the Hong. It never worked for me because I could evoke emotion.
I an generally quite an emotional/ sensitive person, but obviously not in a conceptual way.

In drama not in dreams, and I don’t know what a Hong is???

We've had interesting conversations about this recently as a sil and very good friend of dh's both lost their dads. Both are heartbroken. Dh's dad has dementia and hasn't spoken or shown any recognition to anyone in years. He was ill recently and we all prayed this was it for him as it's a horrible half existence. I can't imagine people being devastated when he goes as I think a lot of dh's family including us have already grieved him to an extent. Obviously I could be wrong on this!! My own dad wasn't well recently and despite being very elderly he's been in excellent health and shape until Christmas. The absolute fear in my gut when he was hospitalized for a second time was awful. He's doing ok now, who knows for how long but I can imagine being an utter mess when he goes.

I think its quite normal to be honest.

I don't think grief is an automatic reaction to a family death to be honest and if we're talking about an elderly person from whom your DH is quite far removed it would be more weird if he did feel grief. Grief is a psychological trauma in response to a death but its not something which you have to feel whenever someone dies and it doesn't make you uncaring or repressed if you don't feel it.

I didn't grieve when either of my grandparents died really in the conventional sense. I felt sad for a while and in the case of my grandmother I still think about her a lot and have a lot of love for her but it would be a stretch to say I grieved.

There are different reasons for people's grief. When someone is intimately involved in your daily life, grief will be a lot more consuming than if they live at a distance and contact is a monthly phone call and three visits a year.

If you have a difficult relationship, then there's grief for the relationship you'll never have.

I don't think it's unusual to have a 'manageable' level of grief over the loss of someone as part of life's natural order, if there are no other complications.

I admit that I feel the same about the death of old people and find myself bemused when I hear that people are heartbroken by the death of an elderly relative. It’s the natural order for people to die when their bodies get old and start failing.

I love my ILs. MIL is likely to die soon. I grieved for her when she lost her independence and when she stopped being able to have a coherent conversation. I don't expect to be particularly emotional when she dies.

Similar for some elderly relatives on my side.

As for my own mum, she's not a nice person, I grieved for our relationship long ago, so I won't grieve much when she goes I think.

If one of my siblings, friends or children died soon I'd be distraught.

I’ve not felt any heart wrenching grief for anyone I’ve known over 80 who has died. It has always seemed their time. Thankfully my parents are still around in their 70s. I hope they live a long time and I’ll definitely miss them when they die but it’s passed the point it would be “tragic”.
Someone I’m close to lost both parents before her own wedding and before her children were born. That is tragic, I don’t know how she gets through the anniversaries and big dates.

It sounds to me like it might be to do with the way he has been taught to deal with emotions, i.e. suppressing them because it was not encouraged to show them. It's not a problem by itself but may be a problem if he finds relationships difficult, or lacks empathy in a way that affects his work, or something like that.

Thanks everyone. Your responses are reassuring. I don’t think he’s already grieved for her as such, but it seems as he grew up his interaction with his grandma came to an end. I don’t think this was completely down to him, I think she’s just one of those people who thrives off the company of children and finds adults a bit dull.

I know it’s difficult to imagine how you’ll feel but I do believe him. I think his main emotion will be shame and guilt at not feeling what he thinks he should feel. It’s good to read that other people have felt this way and so when it comes to it I can hopefully reassure him.

Sounds fairly normal to me. 2 of my grandparents lived into their 90s, and had long periods of illness before the end. When they died it felt very much like my parents’ loss rather than mine. The end of an era, and a relief at the end of a lot of suffering. By that point I was in my 30s, and I hadn’t spent much time with them since childhood. My MIL died at 63 and my DH, despite having had quite a tricky relationship with her, was inconsolable in ways he’d never have anticipated. So you really can’t know how it will feel until it happens.

It’s really abstract thinking about someone dying. It’s pretty hard to really know how you’ll feel until it happens.

This ^

In the same way you can't really "get" the emotion you feel when your dc is born, you don't know how it will feel when a parent, or Grandparent dies.
I also agree that sometimes, when it is a considerably older person (which I'm guessing it may be as it is your dh's Grandparent), then there is more 'expectation' and more chance to appreciate they have lived a full life and now 'their time has come'.
People fell things differently and people express their emotions differently.

I don't expect to feel any grief for my mum when she goes. She's had some close calls, when I felt nothing.

I will definitely grieve when my MIL dies, even though for her it would be no bad thing, as she has dementia. But I love her dearly, and she'll leave a huge gap in my life.

I don’t experience much emotion over people dying as my view on death is that it is simply the natural order of things, I know and accept it will happen. I don’t fear death for myself or others with the exception of my children, I think that is because the bond with your children is unique so I don’t think he is abnormal at all.

I have been to many, many funerals in my lifetime (large family) and have been upset by seeing others upset but not for myself. The majority of them were for older relatives whom you 'expect' to die so I wasn't particularly emotional. Even with my grandparents (I wasn't particularly close to any of them) they were ill and died.

I do wonder sometimes how I would react if it were someone I was emotionally close to (basically DH and DC) as it would be a new experience.

If he hasn't had much contact with them recently, then it's fairly normal not to feel very upset at the thought of their death. I hadn't seen my grandfather in 10 years when he died and wasn't really even upset by it. My other grandfather's death 12 years previously was devastating because we were close and he stepped in when my father couldn't be arsed with me.

When elderly people I loved have died it was always been very upsetting for me even when they were well over 90 and had awful illnesses. But that was because of the relationships we had rather than just because someone had died.

I believe we have physical and mental barriers in place that prevent us from “feeling” things that haven’t happened. You can imagine what you might feel but you won’t feel it until it actually takes place, of that makes sense.

No one really knows how they will feel until it happens. Sometimes it sneaks on you and bites you on the bum when you don't expect it. Other times you think it should but it doesn't. Grief is weird and unpredictable.