anyone is grieving for a parent

[2shoes]

I know there is an existing thread where lots of lovely people have supported each other through what is a horrid time, but as I come up to the 2nd Christmas without my dear old Dad and SM, I would like to somehow move on and I suppose help others through this as well as helping myself.
(hope that doesn't sound crap)
so a bit of background
My mum died when I was 18 after years of ill health.
so I got a SM.
we weren't close close but got on well.
she became ill and died a 1 1/2 years ago, then my darling Dad got ill.
he died 6 months(or there abouts later)
I miss him every day.
and thank the lovely Mumsnetters who have helped me through this.
but i can't post on the old thread,
it takes me right back there, so I am hopig a new thread, will get us all talking and allow new posters to join in.........

Ladies, thank you for your toasts :)

The day was just perfect. So lovely to see so many people, some of whom I have known for years, some I have never met, but have heard loads about.

My oldest nephew did an amazing job with his "all about Gran" speech, and my brother did an amazing tribute, which included a poem I had written :)

And the sun shined all day.

Mum would have been so proud.

Thanks again for your continued support. x

Glad it was wonderful SOL, I just knew it would be :)

Thanks Solo :)

How is everyone doing?

I just feel post-ceremony exhaustion!

It will get easier SOL.

I'm Ok though I had a bit of a moment when I toasted your Mum, but that was from a selfish angle as I was thinking about my Dad and the fact that he was such a kindly soul and such a gentleman.

Hi everyone,

Sexonlegs I'm so glad that the memorial day was everything you wanted it to be. Your Mum would have been so proud of all of you.

Solo I'm with you on the 'my Dad was a true gentleman* thought. I'll fight you for it! Only kidding. Aren't we lucky that we had such fantastic Dads? I do count my blessings. I know someone with a really toxic Mother who seems hell bent on ruining her dc's lives. Yet we were lucky enough to have wonderful Mums and Dads in our lives.

Still feeling up and down. Crazy really considering that in November it will have been 4 years. My dh is more aware that I'm still grieving. It's not that I don't talk to him about it, it's just that I'm used to putting on a brave face because of my young dc and my Mum who I am still supporting through this.

Really enjoying having the kids around during the holidays. I see so much of my Dad in them. Only the good bits of course!

Thinking of all of you.

How are you all doing?

Hi. Madworld back again. It has now been over a month since I lost my mum and it stil hurts so bad. Really hope it will get easier.

Hi - 8 months down the road for me since my mum died.........it aint getting much better but here's hoping! Hugs to us all xx

Nearly 4 months here and on the whole ok, but sad yesterday. DD2 turned 4, and Mum and K had such a lovely relationship. Felt so sad that Mum wasn't around to celebrate, made worse by mil phoning up and asking to speak to "my birthday girl" and singing Happy Birthday v loudly down the phone! K got upset and put the phone down on the sofa!!

Love to all.

We'll all be Ok. Not straight away, but one day, we'll be Ok.

Hi, my Dad passed away in 2006, just after I got married. My husband's father died less than 18 months after we got together, in 2000, very suddenly, and his mum died of cancer in 2005, 2 months after our engagement. Our son was born in 2009. It breaks my heart everyday that he only has one grandparent to cuddle him and spoil him. My Mum does a great job, and has said to my sister that she feels the pressure of loving him enough for all 4 of them. It's so hard to teach him about them, when the pain is still so raw, especially for my husband who rarely talks about his parents because he is still so devastated.

Welcome to our thread Trazzletoes.
It's a tough thing to deal with isn't it? My Mil died 3 months before my Dad and I wasn't told until I enquired after her (I'd been in a bad place with seeing her and my Dad both dying from lung cancer) from my Dd's father 3 weeks after she'd gone :( and of course, they'd had her funeral and everything...he'd taken the OW and she hadn't even ever met Mil...it's all threaded with anger here...sorry...

Feel free to post about your feelings on here ~ we all do and we all understand.

Hi. I haven't added to this thread in a long while and when I did it was under another name.

I spent easter weekend with my brother, and we all went to visit my mum's widower (not my dad, her husband of just a couple of years). The day we visited him was the 3rd anniversary of her death (saturday), and no-one mentioned it. I don't know that anyone noticed!

I don't live in the area so it's very rare that I would see the house where she lived for the last couple of years of her life. It's all tied up as tight as a gnats chuff in law (meaning that all the 'stuff' belongs to me and my brother), but it kills me to see that a family that have nothing to do with me are living with my entire family history, whilst me and my brother are powerless to take any of it unless her widower says so.

Actually, that's not entirely true. There are named items from the will which I am legally entitled to but I daren't ask for, even though they belong to me, because I'm scared of the fallout. Pictures, for example, which I let go when she died because her widower was worried about them leaving marks on the walls by not being there. A chest of drawers, because.. I don't even know! it contains my family crockery stuff, stuff that I remember from my grandparents houses when i was a child. Of no great value really.

Anyway. I miss her. And him (my father). I found just enough time to pop to the graveyard whilst alone when I was up there, only to find that the bloody gates were locked at 7pm on a warm spring evening. Ten years ago I would have leapt the wall, I used to hop the wall into that graveyard a lot when I was still living up there dunno why I didn't do it this time, I'm 41 not 60!

Hi Trazzle. I so know about your situation. My dad passed away over 20 years ago and my dh's dad about 10 years ago. Both my dc only knew their Nanny/Nanna . Now my mum has passed away they will just have Nanna. I was the same. I only ever knew my mum's mum and even she died when I was eight.
Solo how awful for you.
I am finding April really hard as it my sister's 1st anniv coming up soon. I think I am finding that harder than her actual death. I suppose thats because mum is not around either.

(((hugs)))) madworld.

Golly, I think you are remarkably calm ~ at least on the outside. That must be awful :(

I know that when my Grandma died (I too only knew my Mums parents), that things disappeared...my Mum was the only one of 5 that really looked after Gm and Gm had had a replacement wedding ring some time before my Gd died and Gm told my Mum to take it and Mum had said 'plenty of time Mum' and it disappeared after her death only to appear on one of my cousins fingers a few years later. The only thing Mum got was Gm's watch because it didn't work. As it happens, Mum had it repaired and it turned out to be real gold. Gm was watching :)
I think often, people are at their meanest and greediest after a relation dies; no idea why and it is very sad.

Popping in to say hello and how are you all?

Hi. Didn't want to start a new thread, but wanted to mark the day. My beautiful mum would have been celebrating her birthday today. I won't tell you how old, she wouldn't like that! She died nearly 11 years ago. I still miss her like mad. It's just not fair!

Jezabelle, you are welcome here. Happy Birthday Jezabelle's Mum.x

I'm guessing that the gap in our lives never closes :(

It does get easier. Really it does. But at certain times I still "need" her. DBro's DS (My only Nephew) has just been diagnosed with autism. These are the times I still miss her like mad. I actually think that when you loose a mum you are close to, the grief will always rear it's head at challenging times. There will always be times you feel like a lost little kid or long to ask her a question that you had never thought/needed to ask before. But it's not every day, or even every month, (although I think of her lots still of course).

But I was lucky to have had an amazing mum who loved and cared for 25 years of my life. Some people never have that.

I feel like that too about my Dad. I suddenly realise that I can't ask him that question which only he could give me the answer to...

Jezabelle, yes you were lucky for those 25 years that others may not get, in which case, I feel very much more blessed than you if that makes sense? I had my Dad for 45 years and still have my Mum two years on from that. I'll probably feel differently when the time comes (hopefully not for another 30 years) and I lose Mum, but my Dad was the one that I could really talk to, especially during the last 10 or 12 years of his life...I think I am a lot like him. He'd sit and cry watching the floods in India for instance or watching the news when a child was hurt or killed; Baby P just crushed him and I'm very much the same when I see pain and suffering...(Dad was from India and I'm sure that he felt the 'there but for the Grace of God go I...' feeling, not to mention that these were 'his' people).

I was bending over last week sorting out and felt a hand on my back. I know it was him, it felt like his hand. I know he's around me; we had a great relationship and we chatted so much. I miss that sooo much. I want to ask him things about his childhood, his Mum and Dad, family, friends. I've heard the stories many times before, but I want him to tell me them again.

Lord, I'm blubbing away here.

Sorry for rambling on. I rarely get to talk about Dad and I haven't grieved properly yet. I think Mum thinks she's the only important person that lost Dad when he went, so I can't talk about him to her as it then becomes about her. I must sound like a horrible person...

My Mum died 3 days before 9/11. I will always remember coming back from collecting the death certificate and seeing the planes crash into the towers. Somehow I felt I had no right to grieve for a seventy eight year old when so many were grieving for younger people. It took a long time to get over it but the memories are now mostly gentle just like she was. Funnily enough Bin Ladens death this week bought some of the more unpleasant memories of the time around her death back but I have every confidence that they will recede again.

Dizzy :( memories and reminders are often sharp aren't they? like an unexpected pin prick, they jab into you...hope you are coping Ok.

It sounds like your dad was a very special man Solo. I know what you mean about not getting to talk about your dad much. I rarely get to tell people what my mum was like.

Most of the friends I see a lot now, never knew my mum. I have got to know them since having my DCs (oldest 5yo). They all have both their parents and, although they're good, kind, supportive friends, they just don't know what it is to loose a parent.

Because they never saw me through the initial grief of loosing my mum, they just don't see the gaping hole that it's left inside me. They talk about their mums looking after the kids and stuff and whilst I smile and nod, they would never know that actually it hurts that I don't have that too, that my DCs never met my mum. Sometimes I just feel like saying "it's not fair!" One friend recently made a throw away comment about how her mum was the best mum in the world. "Only because mine's dead" I felt like saying, but clearly I didn't!!

I sound very bitter, I know. In some ways maybe I am. We've had some hard times bringing up the kids with next to no family support. I know my mum would have been a huge support. But don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. I'm not that bitter and twisted! It's just nice to be understood sometimes.

Oh Jez, I'm so sorry :( it's a really really hard thing to deal with isn't it? I suppose we are lucky in so many ways having had great parents (those now gone), but that surely makes losing them so much more painful?
I too have what I call my Mummy friends (those that I've met since Dd was born)...they are all much, much younger than me and they really can't understand; it's like they don't really want to recognise that it still hurts me...they just can't/don't comprehend the pain of it all. Or maybe they are afraid of their own future pain in that respect? I suppose that is a possibility