If your parents are deceased, how long did it take for you to feel happy again?

[Toomanytakeaways]

Maybe it isn't the best worded question but just wondered if there's anybody here who has lost one or both parents, and how long it took you to start to feel happy/positive again, if it has? How often do you get down?

I lost my dad when I was 13. Took me until I met my DH many years later to feel truly happy, but that was probably due to a lot of life factors, not just the loss of my dad.

I lost my Dad ten years ago and my mother a few years later. The missing of them comes in waves. Sometimes I miss one or the other so much I have a lump in my throat and can’t speak. Usually when my dds do something or ask something and I know how much it would mean to that parent. Sometimes I just want to talk to them, there are things that only they would know, little jokes between us, all the history of a family.
The first year was really tough. I did retreat from the world slightly but my dc were little (teens now) and that kept me going. When my Mum died I had more warning and felt more prepared as I knew what losing a parent felt like, but it is also hard to no longer have any parents. You do feel adrift.
On a simple level I just miss them and wish they were still here. Sometimes it is painful and I long for them, sometimes it is sad but ok.

I lost my mum very suddenly 11 months ago. It's not that I was sad and then felt happy. I felt moments of happiness and positivity very soon after she died. But I carry a grief with me now and it's something that is with me in all things.

The feelings around it are not something to fear. I used to panic in the first few weeks that I would be someone who would break down and cry in the supermarket. Actually, I have been that person... But then I go home and have a nice evening. It's not pure sadness vs pure happiness.

Obviously 11 months is quite recent in terms of grief. But that's how ive found it so far.

One parent died 2013 the other this year. Still feels very strange to think they are both gone. It's the circle of life though and nobody lives forever. Both parents were of a reasonable age when they passed.

I'm 43. I lost my mum in September.

I am generally a happy person as my natural state. That hasn't changed at all but the grief kind of sits over it.

At the beginning there was a lot of grief covering my happy state, so the happiness didn't shine through much. Now the happiness prevails and the grief covers it only in waves, but still daily.

I'm not a sad person and probably only had a week and the funeral, where the sadness completely overwhelmed me 24/7. Even on those days some happiness shine through.

I think how much the grief takes over partly depends on your natural state before the loss, and also what else in life gives you meaning.

I have two children that need a fun and happy mum, so I couldn't let the grief take over.

When the waves come though, I do miss my mum deeply. I think of her multiple times a day. Sometimes I cry. Often I make time to remember her. I listen to her favourite songs every day in the car on my own, it's my mum and me time. I'm ok with that.

I hope in time the waves become less intense. But for now I think they are appropriate. I loved my mum (even though she was abusive to me as a child) so it's natural to feel strong grief still and I imagine it will be a slow process before the waves get less frequent and eventually fade in intensity. Not sure I want them to yet. I like to feel close to her.

I lost my mom 6 months ago she was only 55. She was ill with cancer for a long time but it didn’t make the end any easier especially when the cancer spread to her brain and she became paralysed. I’m only 23 so it’s been very hard and I really do miss her. I have good days and bad days but I’ve found myself not wanting to do as much as I used too.

I assume I will get better with time but it’s only been 6 months.

I lost my dad 6 years ago, he was 60, I was 33, he was a huge part of my life. It took me the best part of 3 years to come to term with the shock of his sudden death and in the last 12 months or so I've started to feel 'normal' again. We were very close and I felt guilt at not having given him a grandchild (I since have but he's never me them of course).

I don't think there's a true average 'recovery' time. I feel envious of others who have had time that we didn't have, but I feel lucky to have had him for the time we had.

My dad passed away last May...after just over a year on the end of life care pathway.

He was my absolute hero and I was able to take a sabbatical from work to help care for him. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and an incredibly dark time, particularly as it all happened at the same time as the pandemic so very isolating and not much in the way of external support services.

I think the fact he was 83, I was able to play an active role in caring for him and the fact that we had such a good relationship helped me to feel at peace with his loss fairly quickly, but it never goes away.

Last week I was on holiday in a place he also loved but which we never visited together. We shared a passion for books and art and used to go on long country walks almost every weekend when I was a kid and the place is all about those things, so I spent a lot of time feeling quite tearful, but also really close to him. I hope I'll be able to scatter his asked there someday.

Grief is a very strange thing...I think you just need to accept your feelings as they come, and trust your own pathway really.

My dad died when I was young but I hadn't seen him for years so didn't really affect me. My mum died when she was terminally ill. I was glad she died when she did, she was out of her misery. I think I look at death quite pragmatically. I'm not dead, I still have my life and whilst I miss my mum every day I don't, and have never, dwelled upon it. Took a week off work to get the house gutted and the funeral done and that was it. Back to reality.

I am 4 and a half years in and will probably be never truly happy again to be honest but I lost dad in traumatic circumstances and my mum seriously ill and in a nursing home and I was also made homeless at the same time as losing dad so there was a lot of trauma behind it (my parents only in their 60s)
then my younger sister died last year only in her early 30s I feel completely alone cos mum so unwell these days so I just try keep busy so I not thinking about it all the time
My dad was my absolute world and I cannot live without him even though it was over 4 years ago 😢

My mum died in April this year. She had dementia and wasn’t ‘in the room’ much for the last 2 years. In her lucid moments she said she didn’t want to be here anymore so her sudden death was something of a relief. Sometimes I find myself crying though - it just erupts out of me. She is in a better place now.

I lost both within a few months of each other in 2020. Mum first (covid), then dad(cancer). Me and DP went out yesterday for a drink and we had quite a few laughs. DP said that yesterday was the first time he'd seen my smile reach my eyes in a long time, so I guess for me anyway, almost 2 years. I have laughed but not properly laughed iyswIm, for a while. But everybody is different. My elder sister will shed a tear quite often and my younger one is receiving bereavement counselling. There is no absolute to grief, it's as individual as fingerprints.

My mum died very suddenly when I was 18, she was 48. I don't think I will ever really get over it tbh. It was such a massive shock and still catches me me by surprise at times, 30 years on. I don't get upset as such but I feel very sad about what could have been and feel very envious of kids that have grandmothers as my kids never really had one.

My dad died 2 1/2 years ago and I'm ok with it now. We were extremely close when I was growing up but less so in recent years. He'd had a good life

My DM died before I had my kids, and that’s what hurts. She never got to hold my babies or be called Nana.

My Dad died when I was 23. He had cancer and it killed him in about 6 months, so I did have some time to prepare. I honestly prepared for grieving like I was taking an a-level in it - I read books, listened to podcasts, sought out therapy in advance, reached out to people I knew who had been through similar… I did it all. I also spent a lot of time with my Dad and moved back home for the 2 months prior to his death. I also journaled everything I was feeling.

This set me up incredibly well for what I feel now, 5 years on, was a really healthy grieving process. It was incredibly traumatic and I’ll never ever be over it, I miss my Dad every day and I think about him all the time. The immediate few months were very tough. I cried a lot, felt very angry and confused. Then at about 3 months I really started to feel some joy again. It was a painful, difficult, spiky joy but it was joy. I worked incredibly hard to make sure I was feeling it.

I had a rough patch around the 1 year anniversary, which was very tough and I was experiencing a lot of flashbacks to his death, so I returned to therapy for 3 months and that helped a lot.

I’m now 5 years on and I feel joy as often as I did before, although not in the same way. I describe grief as a prism through which all my emotions are refracted. I am much more aware of the beautiful, wonderful things in my life and the moments of joy are brighter through knowing the loss and through knowing that life can get very dark and painful. I am so much more aware of the love in my life and the love I feel for others. Grief is hell, and missing him is awful, but my God has grief made me a better person. And in many ways more joyful, although that joy is hard won.

I’m 58, my dad died when I was 16 - it was pretty traumatic but I still had my mum. She died nearly 9 years ago and it was the worst time of my life. Am I happy now, yes I am. I miss her but my days are not filled with grief. It took me the best part of 18-24 months to really feel ‘normal’ again.

My mum passed away a few months ago. It doesn’t seem real and I don’t even think I’ve started grieving yet. The funeral didn’t really help - it all felt very strange and unnatural and too public.
We were very close but I just can’t process that she’s gone.

I think it depends on how they passed and at what age. I am 62 and lost my mum a year ago and my dad in June this year. They both had dementia (Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia) and were 88 and 89. I had cared for them for 15 years, it was tough as I had 3 teenagers at the time and worked. I felt it was a blessing for them in the end, very little quality of life for a long time. I don’t miss the caring but am sad about what happened to them.

Difficult to answer as so many variables from person to person.
My dad died 22 years ago. We both cried this weekend when I unpacked his old Filofax. Both Dh and I adored him.
My mum - instant euphoria when we heard she had died. But we had zero relationship.
Mil - Dh has been depressed for nearly two years, we’ve ended up moving for a fresh start for him. Which seems to have worked. I grieved her whilst she was alive as I cared for her throughout her Alzheimer’s decades.
Fil - neither of us really grieved for him. He was very ill and very stubborn, plus did things making us both very uncomfortable in his company. It was a mixture of relief and yet sorrow for his widow (mil).

I recently lost my father, I’m in my 50s. It hasn’t really affected me much. It’s a bit sad, but iIt’s not a huge part of my life and I was happy over something else later the same day. He split up with my mum when I was 7 and wasn’t a big part of my life. I hadn’t seen him in person in over a decade and only kept in touch online and by phone a few times a year.

I expect my mother’s death will hit me harder.

Lost my Dad to dementia five years ago. I fully recognise Siezethefish's point of view. The relief was immense, which sounds awful but unless you experience it, you really can't understand. I am periodically sad (at the loss of my beloved Father) and relieved (that he is no longer suffering) in equal measure.
I honestly believe I lost him 2 years before his death.

I’m dreading this. My beloved Mum is very old now, but I just cannot imagine life without her, and filling up just thinking about losing her. I know she hasn’t got too long left.

I find that there doesn't come a time when you are 'over it' you sort of learn to live with it, and even then it can sometimes overwhelm you for a few minutes, I lost my Father in my 40s, then in my 50s I lost my youngest son, my husband died in his 60s when I was 65, my mum died in her 90s, and had dementia, so I felt I had lost her before she actually died, and her actual death didn't affect me so much. Each death has affected me differently, but now I can think of them all happily, mostly, although I do still miss them.
Silly things can upset me, like some gadget in the middle of Lidl, that I know my husband would have bought, but even as my eyes prickle, I have to laugh.

I lost both of my parents a few months apart, they were in their late 90’s.
i was, and am, quite pragmatic about it, they were very old, very frail and neither wanted to carry on living- in fact my father had been wanting to die for many years. He wasn’t depressed, just morose and bored I think.
I haven’t grieved at all. Perhaps that makes me a hard bitch? I don’t know.

I lost my parents just over a year apart, in 2006 and 2007. My sister and I were bolstering each other to help support my Mum approaching the anniversary of Dad’s death when Mum had a devastating brain haemorrhage.
To start just about everything to do with them brings poignant memories and often tears, but as time goes on the odd thing brings a little smile.
I had young children so was kept busy, and there were moments of happiness quite early on. They still had things like birthday parties, sports days, etc. Things would distract my attention from my parents’ deaths, and I would be ‘normal’ for a while - until the crushing reality hit me like a bullet, once more.
You can realistically expect your friends to have good and bad days for a long while to come. I think it must have been 5 years before I could reliably avoid upset and tears from various triggers, but sometimes something just happens, and it’s like their loss was yesterday.
I recall having to stop my car about 2 years after Mum’s death as unexpectedly a song which she loved, and was played at her funeral, came on the radio. I was very upset then, but I would say that by then I was mostly happy before and after, if that makes any sense.