Support For Anyone Coping With The Loss Of A Parent.

[Mummylin]

This new thread may help those whose comps have a problem with long threads.
I hope this thread can be as supportive as the last one. It is so uplifting to see the support everyone gives to each other when they most need it.💐

Thigh - I understand what you're saying and meaning... but i've stayed resolute in my 'reasoning' with people - i've stated that i'm simply 'not ready' or am not comfortable with such and such at the moment. I always used to get 'peopled out' fairly quickly - and this has been magnified ten times over since dad passed. Am quite sure i've peed a few people off as they don't understand/empathise etc - but for the first time in my life I DO think 'so what - how bad can it be' because the WORST thing HAS happened, so all else really doesn't matter at the moment.
Counselling helped with this - as she described doing things that you really didn't want to do (to please or fit in with others when you're grieving) as 'emotional labour' - so just don't do it, in situations where you genuinally have a choice. It really helped me to stick up for myself when I felt/feel things to be uneccesarily challenging (like not going to dad's favourite restaurant and being made to feel 'awkward' because I didn't want to just yet) Not sure if that makes sense - and it's easy to say that it doesn't matter what others think... but you really don't need an excuse for these people because of the time-frame of your loss. You don't have to 'prove' that your grief is 'still' with you - we're talking WEEKS you and I aren't we... a few gruelling weeks to supposedly get over or get used to this huge void - to acclimatise to losing someone who was with us for decades...

And it's not measured in our tears - maybe they're a little bit less frequent - or we 'control' them more. But our hearts and heads know what we're feeling - and for me, I'm the exact opposite of the joys of spring... I'm a wet blanket in human form, with a few odd bits of the pre-loss me appearing sporadically...

As one of my friends said yesterday (i'm MUCH less communicative/don't engage as much and with any 'zest' at the moment) she 'knows' i'll reappear at some point, bit by bit and real friends bear with you and the others? Not bothered x

Never a truer post Mother there's no way around this. I don't think I'll be the same as before, why would/should I? We'll live, but there's not a way to 'get over' this. I'm just going to have a slow 'suicide by massage'.

If you see in the papers 'Woman, melts during massage' don't send a card, I'll be too dead to read it.

Thigh - your method of a slow peaceful demise sounds like a noble cause - am with you on that one... anything that helps soothe my troubled sad soul for the shortest time. My DSis-Law is visiting from the US this week (and is grieving for her recently passed sister - tbf there are 16 siblings so 'passings' seem to be 'regular')

Anyway - her/I clocked up 3 massages each in the last week by 'treating' each otherit's the one hour of true nurturing/self-care isn't it? When asked, have requested vouchers for same from here to eternity x

Mother I've developed a Groupon habit and travel round and round obtaining cut price massages and facials. Apparently I look great, not that i give a shit.

Dad's cafe has closed, the people are relocating. I'm glad, mum and I kept going there and leaking.

They were so sweet to him and had individual portions of his soup frozen and labelled for him all through summer.

We'd wheel our lovely 'bag o' bones' around covered in blankets. Honestly we must have looked like lunatics.

I went to Dad's disabled toilet there there auld lang syne and my dogs followed me in as usual. There used to be me, Dad and 2 dogs in the toilet. Plus i had to carry the pee bottle everywhere. It was hard graft!

Thigh - that's a bittersweet tale about your dad's cafe - end of an era

I hope you don't mind me posting. I feel like I am really struggling at the moment. I lost my mum in January to cancer. She was diagnosed a year before but didn't want to know how bad it was. My mum was in the hospital a lot for the last couple of months before she died - I feel such a fool for not seeing the end coming and regret not spending more time with her. My mum told me she was given 2 - 3 years at diagnosis and I am so angry that we didn't get longer with her.

4 months before my mum passed I lost my brother to cancer too. Really don't know how to deal with Christmas coming up - I am very much bah humbug this year and have gone back to crying all the time, it makes sad that I won't see them/talk to them this year. Anyone else feeling like this?

I am also 33 weeks pregnant (first child) and struggling to cope with the fact that my mum isn't going be here and keeping thinking about all the lovely things we could have been doing together when I'm on maternity leave.

Also sorry to read about the passing of your loved ones. It really does suck!

stormy11 so sorry to read of your losses and regrets. You’ll know this but grief really does come and go often and in unexpected ways/times. I sit my lovely old mum (very different to you - she went unexpectedly no warning at all) around a year ago.
For me months 5 and 8 were really tough - harder than any other so far - no real reason objectively - nothing triggered low times that I can identify.
You’ve been through so much. No doubt the birth of your child will be joyful and also tough. I keep hold of thoughts like ‘mum would have loved this, it’s beyond sad she’s not here but in honour of knowing she would love it and would want me to be ok I’ll feel her very close right now’. Kind of helps.
I’m about to be away for Christmas and out of the country/remote. I keep thinking I need to let her know where we’ll be and have phone with me all the time etc. I know and have warned my dp that I may have a bit of a melt down being away and remote and no mum at home as an ‘anchor’ - then I’ll remember mum would want us to have fab time and would love what we are doing etc. She really does love on in me.
Your mum lives on in all of your love and memories and the joy your baby will bring you.
Hugs. It is beyond tough. You will get through it and live with it and your mum would be so proud I’m sure.
X

Silly typos - apols. Had something in my eye

Stormy11 - i've found that nobody minds anything on this thread - and sorry to have to 'welcome' you to somewhere none of us want to be. I know there's no hierarchy of grief and loss - but your mum and brother... and being pregnant would be an awful lot on anyone's plate... what could possibly 'help' apart from being very very kind to yourself - which I think means NOT expecting too much of yourself. You can be as sad/weepy/miserable as you want to be. There's no appropriate timescale for whatever 'recovery' feels like - and yes the 'timing' of losing your mum and having your first baby - well it does suck and must seem so unfair

It's 12 weeks for me since my beloved dad passed away - I've found out that him being elderly (89) has made no difference to the grief - i looked at a rainbow earlier and thought 'dad won't see that rainbow' - he would have thought I was crazy for pointing out a rainbow... And Christmas didn't mean much to him - but family was everything and he would have been fussing/interfering/cooking and it's just so hard trying to face this without him... but if I leak I leak... mummylin who started this thread, told me it gets easier - and I suppose I cry a bit less, and we'll all find our way in this new landscape somehow. It's going to take time isn't it - and your emotions will be heightened with pregnancy. Not sure if i'll have helped you feel even a tiny bit better - but please rant rave, talk about the 'daft' stuff the funny stuff the sad stuff day or night - someone will be around xx

I would normally ring Mum about now.
I feel like a child that hasn't developed enough emotionally to really process grief fully but is still acting a bit "off" because they do know the person is gone and is not coming back. Or like the grief, and missing her, is behind a thick insulating glass wall.
@stormy11 I'll echo what another poster said, you're 1/2 your Mum and your baby is 1/4. So in a way your pregnancy is almost a way of spending time with your Mum as a baby / your Mum as a pregnant mother herself. Maybe not 100% but a lot. I don't know if that sounds odd but hopefully it doesn't sound bad.

I'm just wading through treacle and i sigh an awful lot now.

Dad was impossible to buy presents for - didn't drink, didn't smoke, not interested in clothes or toiletries. I used to buy him cardies but they had to be very specific - fawn, knitted, zip through, a top pocket, 2 front pockets, suede elbow patches.

Sometimes in desperation i would resort to marmalade (fgs!). When he smoked a pipe back in the 80s we could at least buy him a new pipe, very specific - he had 12. When he gave up he buried them in the rockery, a funeral? I asked him why this year and he said he hadn't a clue why he didn't just put them in the rubbish.

Luckily Dad didn't give a monkeys for Christmas so i don't feel bad about it. And no small children so i can just eat and enjoy my misery.

Oh thigh I’m sorry you’re having tough time. Just heard from friend of my lovely old to say they are thinking of her and always will and hoping I’m doing ok. It’s tough and sad.
I can picture your dad’s very particular cardigans so well ! Your description made me laugh - I
Can just imagine your shopping for them and having to reject perfectly
Good ones as not quite right. My parents both had similar foibles !
Support.

My lovely old ‘ma’ not ‘to’.

Heron thank you, I'm glad you had a nice message, it's lovely when other people talk about their memories of our lost loved ones.

I tried very hard with the cardies, i bought an exact replica one year but it was a pale blue rather than fawn. I had to take it back to M&S.

The one thing he loved that I bought was a £20 black, plastic, talking watch, he called it 'the wee man'. As in 'Let's ask the wee man what the time is'.

I wear it now, i got the wee man to tell him the time when he was in his coffin.

I'm able to think about nice things sometimes, i love thinking of all his weird quirks. I often press the button on the wee man even though I can see the time.

Well ! I have my old ma’s Mickey Mouse watch (‘Mickey’ obvs) which also was at her funeral to help send her off as she had had him for decades and loved him !
Coincidence.

And I sometimes look at the silly Mickey arms and kind of think he’s still waving at her wherever she is. Good grief it is tough like the thought of the wee man also.

Thigh/Heron - i wonder if our quirks will be fondly remembered one day... the cardiganswith my dad it was pockets on shirts/waistcoats - a certain number, always in a certain place...he used to get the waistcoats tailor-made in Singapore... he always had a small comb/a secret cigar (he 'never' smoked according to DM but his garage/car always had a very faint whiff of a cigar) and he always had a safety-pin on his belt loop used as a toothpick---- and cheap plastic thermometers EVERYWHERE indoors/outside/in his car/my househe did used to work in engineering and sometimes with heating systems so maybe it was leftover from that.
Am coming to the end of jars and bottles of things he'd opened and left in my fridge - I want to keep all the jars but I know I can't KEEP keeping everything.

Drove to see DS32 today, 3 hours on the road - and I cried for 2 of them - missing dad so much. DH didn't even notice - if he did, he never said anything. It's just so so tough and I can't believe he's really really gone... I want to link his arm and walk down the street/I want to feel the papery-thin skin on the back of his hand/I want to tuck his brylcreemed hair behind his ears - I miss the dad smell and him always being SO SO pleased to see me - I don't get that reaction from ANYONE else on the planet. DM is too bereaved herself and somehow I've realised she's never going to love me the way he did. No one will, ever. Even at 89 he wanted to know about so many things I was doing/where I was going/what I was cooking - and we were planning another trip to his homeland - but then he got ill... and in the last few days, when he was no longer talking - I kept whispering that we'd meet on Orchard Road and go walking and go and eat satay like we used to... could he hear me? Did I make him sad? I know it all has to stop sometime - and we're all going to run out of time - I just had no idea it would feel like this... it feels like the rest of my life will always be filled with sadness
Sorry, my post started off quite calmly - but am having a tough night/day/year since he left

mother87 really beautiful post. Read so I could really picture your dad clearly - it’s often the small things like the feel isn’t it.
Last time I saw my dad I told him about a king cobra I had seen crossing a jungle road - his eyes widened and he started to ask all sorts of things about travel and places and memories we’d shared. I’ll bet your dad hearing ‘orchard road’ will have absolutely loved it.
Stupid little things - just tonight I deleted a programme Frim my sky box and as I did so I noticed It had recorded - series link - the day my mum died. I got her cancelled power of attorney and deAth certificate back in the post on my birthday - had to go sign for it - had no idea what it was - thought maybe birthday related. Another meaningful sad occurrence.
Oh dear - it is all tough. A cousin (American) of mine said it’s like losing your unquestioning cheerleader. Too true.

Heron - thank you... yes your dad's reaction, his eye's widening when he heard your tale - lovely. It just lovely and rare (for me) when someone is SO interested in what I have to say! I really DID feel like the 'apple of dad's eye' - the fact that we were so special is what makes it harder now of course... I wonder how long all those sad co-incidences and occurrences will go on for. X

It also made me realise that our parent had gone through this and theirs before etc etc and many many we come across in our daily lives and have no idea. It’s been humbling for me to realise how resilient we are, mostly.

Having felt weirdly nothing since mum died a week ago, I'm really struggling helping dad with funeral music. Mum loved music but in a very eclectic way. Alot of the stuff I know she loved was music I played for her and that's too personal and excludes other people. Finding something not too sad or depressing but suitable is hard. She wouldn't want popular music and although I'm an amateur musician as is my dad we are struggling and we keep having to imagine what it will be like as she is carried in to certain music and it's really bringing it home.... music was always going to be my undoing in holding it together.

Dad was always delighted to see me and would say 'och, it's the wain!' (me aged 50) every time I walked in the living room.

One of his illnesses he was in hospital and he was scared cos he was so frail and blind so one of us always stayed with him.

One time i thought he would stay asleep so nipped out for a fag. I got back and he had woken up and was sitting with his head in his hands, bereft.

I rushed forward saying 'it's me, it's me, it's Thigh'. After that i only nipped away when he was awake so i could tell him.

Ah poor old Dad, he was a lucky man who loved and was loved.

Didi are there are songs you and your Dad both like with regard to this? Do you have a shortlist?

We had Abide With Me, Dad liked that. And we couldn't very well have 'Donald, Where's Your Troosers'.