Can you help me put a different perspective on this please

[wheelycote]

Spotted the thread for those who have lost parents...where have I been!! I'll definitely be looking at that one...

ok, bare with me and my ramblings.....

.my dad died 18months ago...it was a year of cancer treatment and slowly getting worse until passed away (very tough year). 18months on and I now can listen to his favourite music and look at his photos and accept his passing...it doesn't hurt like it did at first...I can smile now when I see something that reminds me of him....so I know grief has taken its course.....

one lasting major problem I have that is affecting how I see life and live it....

when I went to his house to start clearing it after his passing....it hit me like a brick the realisation that in this house was everything he'd strived for, saved for....worried about, stressed about...had major anxiety about maintaining and keeping. The realisation that sticks with me now, is that I realised that.....in the end, none of it matters....all that worry, angst, stress had been for nothing...it was all in front of me and I was having to get rid of it as if it was random bric a brac

Unfortunately every time I go to plan ahead more than a few months....that little voice in my head says...don't bend yourself out of shape because it wont matter in the end....and it all seems trivial so so so trivial.

I can plan ahead till after this Christmas but then the next planning bit is when Im dead. There's a whole middle bit missing, a bit like lurking in the shadows planning the immediate and watching everybody live their middle bits...if that makes sense.

Buying a house....I cant see the point. I can logically get the point but emotionally my heart doesn't see the need to worry about it.

Going to do a college course...I cant see the point...but I can logically

My DP has just started working away and Im a bit sad about it.....I want to make mine and dtweens world as best as can be.....make the house as cosy as can be....make friends, build a life on my own because logically my head tells me that's what I need to do to be happy.......my heart tells me Im wasting energy on senseless trivial things that in the end will be binned off, given away as bric a brac or simply forgotten (morbid I know).

Please help me turn the realisation into a positive rather than this negative....

I sort of understand where you're coming from. My DM died 20 years ago, and then my DDad died very suddenly 10 years later. I also had the job of clearing the house and it changed the way I feel forever. My parents were quite the opposite of hoarders but there still seemed to be so much "stuff". At the time I had young DC and quite a distance to travel, so I didn't have time to find good homes for everything and a lot ended up at the tip. I still remember tossing things that my parents have valued for years into the skip and wondering what the hell it was all about.

Since that experience I have completely changed my attitude to possessions. I used to hold on to things for sentimental reasons, but now I only keep stuff that I use. I have cleared so much from our loft and cupboards. I never want my own DC to have to sort through years of sentimental crap. I am currently sorting the flat of my auntie who has had to go into care and has dementia. She was a bit of a hoarder and has kept a lifetime of mementoes. Now they mean nothing to her and I'm filling black bags with them. Again it makes it all seem pointless.

I know that you weren't referring just to material possessions. I think you question everything when someone dies, and find it hard to plan for a future that you suddenly realise isn't guaranteed. For me, that feeling passed with time. But I still have no interest at all in "things".

Been there myself when my Mum died, Dad had died a few years earlier.

I had just come back from the hospice to her house where I was staying while she was in there.

I knew that things needed sorting out and yes, a lot of things went to the tip, things were given away but I knew that putting things off would only delay the inevitable sort out.

Clothes, a neighbour said she would sort that out but furniture, washing machine, fridge etc was given to a young couple who had just moved in and had nothing

Got some icy stares of other neighbours but it was a case of being pragmatic and realistic about things.

I did not live local to my Mum, I had my day job, to be fair, they were very good about it but like it or not, things needed sorting out even if that meant a trip or six to the tip

If I had had "time" could have e-bay'd things and given money to hospice but life goes

It happens to us all and we all deal with it in our own way

I have also started to "clear" stuff frommy attic - makes you realise how much "stuff" you acquire over the years !!!!

Thanks, really appreciate it. My dad was a 150 miles away from me so like you both, had to be pragmatic....it was just a surreal time / bizarre time.

I'm worried, seeing life this way means I've given up (one foot in the grave and all that)?...I'm only 37, keep telling myself to get a grip as in theory I've got another 50years, give or take....or is it just that values have changed? Is it just a case of time....absorbing and processing the new values? when we loose someone, does it change us forever?

None of my friends have lost a parent so this is the first time I've spoke about this(not accounting for several bereavement counsellors...that didn't really feel right).

I'd lost my mum when months old, so was always me and Dad. His passing felt like I grieved for both. The strange thing is the questions I have prattling around my head, I want to ask my Dad about....I know what he'd say, 'you'll just have to get on with it and things will work out...they might not work out how you thought they would, but they always work out'.

Hi op,

So sorry for your loss. I lost my mum at the beginning of the year so understand some things that you are feeling.
I think when we lose someone so close we have these really profound and deep thoughts as our whole life has changed forever so we reevaluate everything. I find myself pondering the meaning of life and where my mum will be, can heaven be real etc. on a regular basis. Things that once stressed me (eg work) don't anymore as I want to focus on the things that make me happy.
Although your dad worried when striving for his home and possessions, he must have felt a sense of achievement when he (for example) paid off his mortgage as that is what he wanted; his purpose and what in the end would make him happy. Even though after he had died, some of the things lost meaning, I think the important thing is that they once did have meaning and would have made your dad happy as that is what he wanted in his life.
You have thought about it and decided how you're going to be happy in your life and that is brilliant.

If not being able to plan is adversely affecting you then it might be worth speaking to a counsellor about your thoughts. However, if this way of thinking makes you feel happy then I can't see it being a negative thing.

Sorry for the ramblings, I hope I've managed to make a bit of sense-it is hard to put down exactly what I mean! X z