I am so so sorry for your loss. 8 months ago is still so new, so raw.
My mum died in her 60s when I was early 30s. It was horrendous in every way.
For the first few weeks I was broken, honestly. Seeing things, completely traumatised by anything that reminded me of the end of her life. I'd say for the first year, she was in the forefront of my mind at all times - everything I said or did was coloured by grief and loss. I felt pretty hopeless.
I promise you - it does get better. You learn to live alongside the grief, to hold it a little more gently. The difficult memories become a bit less sharp, it becomes easier to remember the better times before. Life continues. I had my lovely DC, which has brought up lots of bittersweet feelings. It still hits me so hard sometimes (we're approaching the anniversary and I found myself sobbing on the kitchen floor last night, I still miss her so much five years on). But generally I find I can live my life and find some joy in things again. Which is exactly what she'd want, I think.
Therapy helped me, please consider that as an option if you think it could help you too or if you find yourself feeling stuck in grief down the line. And know that you're not alone, there are so many of us in this shitty club - I wish I could give you a hug.
I read this post on another forum after she died, and I think it did help me, so I'll share it here just in case...
"As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."