@Frikonastick
So many of you are saying about not wanting to talk about your parent because it upset the other parent, and I think, I mean would it have been better if they let you talk but didn’t themselves seem upset? Or would it have been ok if they were openly grieving with you?
Firstly, I am so sorry this is happening to your family.
Personally I think it's more important to just keep reassuring her that it's not her that's upsetting you but what's happened that's upsetting you. It's a small but critical difference.
That's what's distressing - seeing the grief all over their face and feeling like you caused that pain by talking or crying. So it's just really important to reiterate and reassure that she is not the one causing your pain. Doesn't magically make it all ok but takes away the needless guilt and self-torment.
I don't think trying to almost playact or turn yourself into a robot is good for either of you. It creates distance and a sense of distrust over the falseness/insincerity of it, despite being well intentioned.
I always remember the night my mum told me and my sibling she was dying, the three of us sitting on the sofa without saying a word quietly crying together with our arms wrapped around each other.
It was horrific and remembering it has made me cry all over again, but at the same time I'm glad we shared that and were together in that moment of pain. It was a comfort - to know I was offering comfort to my mum and sibling, to receive comfort from them, and to be close and honest and together in that moment of indescribable shock and horror and pain.
You're not going to be perfect here because there's no perfect path. You're doing your best and learning as you go along - open and honest communication is an important part of that and what will keep the two of you from being torn apart from each other.
More generally, I would advise reading the Cruse bereavement information on how teenagers are affected by losing a parent and how they grieve, as it is different to adults.
You are right unfortunately that this will be a lifelong loss and lifelong grief, because as she grows up and embarks on adulthood there will be a succession of new losses that her peers won't understand. It can be very isolating.
It is really hard having to watch peers share moments with their parent that you can't, but your peers not realising at times how thoughtless they're being or how painful it is for you. Not being able to say anything or react because then people get fed up with you or start telling you you should be "over it" . Or that you should have forgotten you ever had or lost that parent by now!
Watching peers in your 20s who take it for granted they have that parent supporting them in the background or at the end of a phone when they're worried or don't know what to do. And if you ever try to explain how hard it is for you not to have that, being told you're being pathetic because you're an adult and you don't need your parent now anyway. By peers who hold themselves up as "independent" but are actually propped up emotionally and practically by the parent you don't have. Whose faces fill with horror at the mention of their own parent's mortality, but have no empathy or compassion for what it must mean to you that you haven't been able to talk to or hug your parent for a decade now. That you don't have the support they do to be "independent".
There will be periods of time where things feel manageable and then suddenly periods where it is unbearable.
I still feel angry at the people who told me time would take the pain away because actually it gets worse the more time that passes. I wouldn't have coped with being told at the time it was the lifelong loss I feared it would be, but it would have helped if people had acknowledged that when I expressed it and when a new milestone arrived that made me realise it had blown up my life forever.
It wasn't until I met other people who had been through what I had too and for the first time understood me (and me them) that I started to feel less alone and isolated - that didn't happen until my late 20s! If you can find a bereavement support group for her I think it could make a big difference. I cannot emphasise enough what an isolating experience it is to lose a parent so young.
The more informed you are and the fewer assumptions you make the better. Don't beat yourself up for not being perfect, what counts is that you care enough to respond to mistakes and to be thinking about this in the first place.