Worried that I’m feeling ok after mum’s death

[ZuzusPetaIs]

My mum passed away two weeks ago and the funeral was on Wednesday. She was 94 and living in a care home. Her “active dying” phase lasted for a week so, during this time, we were allowed to visit one at a time 24/7. In the run up to her death, I felt absolutely terrible to the extent that the GP prescribed me medication to help me sleep and to quell anxiety. I spent a lot of time at her bedside and it was just awful....... easily the most difficult week of my life.

I was very upset between her dying and the day of the funeral (Wednesday) but, since then, I’ve been feeling a lot calmer. It’s still very much at the forefront of my mind, but I seem to have what I’d describe as a calm acceptance of it all. I feel a little bit sad but am fairly normal apart from that. This isn’t at all how I expected to feel.

I’m now wondering if this is a calm before the storm or whether I’m just getting back to normal. If the latter, then I must admit that I’d feel a bit guilty.

There’s still adminy type things to do like collecting her ashes, paying the balance on the funeral and doing final accounts (as I had Power of Attorney). But her estate is small (about £5,000) so there’s not going to be much sorting out and it’ll probably be done quite quickly. Ditto her possessions - when she moved into the care home four years ago we had to give up her rented home and it was at that point we cleared a lot of her stuff - and that was difficult but she was still living so not as difficult as dealing with someone’s home after they’ve died. I’m going to the care home on Monday to get her possessions from her room, but that’s not going to be time-consuming. I guess what I’m saying is that there’s not really too much else to sort out so I’ll likely have this done next week.

I know death affects everyone differently, but I’m having real problems with the fact that I’m just not feeling that upset; I don’t really feel like I’m grieving.

I was wondering if anyone on here had experienced similar feeling.

I'm sorry your Mum died. My experience is that it tends to come and go. You could be fine for a while then an anniversary or a little thing will set you off. I found it to be more of a process than a tsunami but as you say, everyone's different.

Yes, this is similar to how it was for me. The grief will hit you when you're ready - right now you're processing it all and still in shock, so your brain is dealing with the trauma in stages - all at once would be overwhelming. There's no one right way to grieve.

The above was how it was for me - it's like waves, they come and go. Right now is a calm (which can be just as worrying as stormy periods as doubts start to creep in about how much you loved your parent blah blah blah). For now just be kind to yourself and allow yourself to process the whole experience. I'm very sorry about your mum, may she rest in peace ♥️

I'm sorry about your Mum. I think what you're feeling is normal.

I'm sorry for your loss. I expect you have been grieving for a while before she died. It's not that you didn't love her or don't miss her, it's just that you knew it was coming so it's different from losing someone unexpectedly and having a huge load of feelings to work through all at once. My Dad was in his 70s when he died but he had been terminally ill for years, so while I was very sad when he died I wasn't knocked for six. I have little bits of grieving still, a funny story that I would have liked to tell him or seeing or hearing something that reminds me of him.

Hiya, I spent five months watching my dad slowly deteriorate and then pass away from cancer. The next day? Absolutely fine. Remember lying in the bath thinking “is this normal?” Still had my moments of crying, for instance the funeral, and even now it can catch me at random times and I’ll have a little cry but not often and it’s not for long. Never had a big sobbing session really altho sometimes I’d be watching something sad on tv and find myself crying more than the sad thing really warranted and I would think hmm, is this really all I’m crying about? But generally, fine. Did wonder if it was normal, especially as my sister had a much harder time (she was pregnant which didn’t help) but last year I discussed it with my mum and she was exactly the same. She said a week after her mum died, she and her sisters were sat chatting and turned out they all basically felt fine and were like “um, should we not feel a bit sadder?” so clearly runs in the family! Idk, I feel like i grieved so much once he was alive, once he had gone it was more relief, that his suffering was over. I’ve actually struggled more to get over my break up - I think because my dad had no choice, he would have stayed alive if he could but he couldn’t, so that’s that.

Obviously this is just my experience. You may well find for yourself that when you’ve done all the admin stuff it hits you more, or even a few months down the line. Or you might be like me and just generally feel ok. I have no idea! I was the same after my aunt died last year but I’m me and you’re you! Just thought I’d share how it was for me.

One thing I will say tho, clearing his van out was bloody hard! That familiar smell of cough sweets, air freshener and a lil bit of BO (it sounds gross when you put it like that but it wasn’t!) made it very difficult. But got back to normal pretty quick. What reassured me was that I didn’t feel numb or anything, just normal.

Sorry for your loss 💖

Thanks for the replies. I re-read what I’d written and something you said @SionnachRua resonates........ I described collecting my mum’s ashes as an admin thing. An admin thing? Wtf?? This is clearly not admin, but it’s telling as it shows how I’m perceiving it and it may well be that I need all these things to be over before my brain will let me grieve.

I’m hoping that this is correct. No one wants to feel like s**t but I kinda feel that I owe it to her to at least be affected by her death, iyswim.

It's how I felt in the week or so after my dad died. When it changed and I was overwhelmed with grief it was a real shock.

I'm so sorry about the death of your mother. I think your feelings sound normal - whatever normal is! My father died about a month ago, but as he'd been in hospital all year I think I've been grieving him all year! Funerals exist to give us things to keep us busy, so it's very common to have a low after the funeral. Please be kind to yourself x

Reading with interest, it's Ben 10 weeks since we lost mum to covid. It's a very strange process of almost going into auto pilot getting things done and not actually feeling very much. I guess it's the body's way of protecting itself?
I can only say I'm very numb, I'm frequently sad but not cried since the day she passed. Even though I want to. It's all very surreal I can't believe she's even gone.
Anyway I'm rambling, for you.

@BlackAmericanoNoSugar I can see what you’re saying. My mum was diagnosed with dementia five years ago and the consultant said she thought it’d be two years max. Stupidly, I also read a lot on the internet about how someone with my mum’s type of dementia died....... big mistake as the likelihood was that she’d decline to the extent she’d be verbally and then physically aggressive, would swear a lot and wouldn’t know who anyone was. In reality, she lived for five years, had “happy” dementia whereby she was always laughing (at childish things with a dollop of toilet humour, but she was happy) and she knew exactly who everyone in the family was whenever we visited. But I definitely went through a grieving process in the few years post-diagnosis.

@angelcakebananabrain this resonates with me. I’ve been speaking with my siblings plus my eldest niece (who’s in her 30s and who my mum raised) every day and they’re all feeling similar to me. I’m not looking forward to Monday as I’ll need to sort through all the more recent stuff - getting rid of furniture and white goods four years ago was one thing, but folding away her clothes, packing the photos/ornaments she had and even sorting through her toiletries is going to be difficult.

But I take comfort from what you’ve said.

The admin thing makes a lot of sense. I remember doing the same - I had a mental checklist of stuff to do for the funeral and went through it all so mechanically. Sorting the flowers, hiring a singer...I did it all feeling very 'removed' from the situation.

It's a self-protection thing I think and I find it releases over time. Sometimes over weird things (I will never forget the time when I caught a mouse in a mousetrap and the floodgates opened for an hour 😂).

Then once you have taken as much as you can, the self-shield returns and you go back to feeling a bit numb. Again, this is all for me but reading the other posts it doesn't seem like I was alone. She died extremely unexpectedly and the shields shot up right away.

I think when processing grief you really just have to accept where you're at. If you're bawling, then that's it. If it's numb, then it's numb. You can't force it and your system will relax and allow you to feel when it's ready (and when those painful tugs on your heart come, let them stay - don't shove them back down. That was my mistake).

@gingerfreckles no, not rambling at all. It was Covid-19 with my mum too...... tested +ve then three weeks of it being extremely mild to the extent that the main problem the care home staff had was keeping her in her room! Then she took a dip, moved to end of life care the next day and died a week later. She was asleep most of this time and the last intelligible conversation I had with her was her that she liked my hair. For info, this is over-processed, very dry blonde hair with 2” grey roots coming through .

I am sorry for your loss OP . I was like this when I lost my Mum. She was quite young but had been ill for a long time. I cared for her. I think that I did my grieving when I knew she was going to die and I accepted it. I was told repeatedly that it would "hit me". It never did. She wouldn't have wanted that either. Don't get me wrong, I have times even 17 years later where I'll feel sad and have a cry but otherwise I try and focus on happy memories.

Then once you have taken as much as you can, the self-shield returns and you go back to feeling a bit numb

Yes, exactly this, numb in the early days and then floored by it for two weeks and in tears over the most random things and then numb again for the last couple of days. I felt happy the other day and then felt guilty,

Thanks, everyone, so much. I think something else that has helped me is that the funeral director was amazingly supportive. We were allowed up to 10 family in the crematorium but about 40 other folk turned up so we left the crematorium doors opened and they had speakers out in the car park. So it was a good funeral in current circumstances.

@ZuzusPetaIs funny the things mums come out with
I never got to say good bye to mum she went in with a chest infection then went to icu for 10 days before she passed.

I think the last poster was right in that we just have to except it stage as it comes and especially don't let anyone try and make you feel that you should be feeling a different way. It's your loss and your feelings. I find sometimes in an effort to be supportive people same some unhelpful things which make us feel worse.

@TheFormidableMrsC it must be terrible losing someone when they’re young. In her pre-dementia days (when she was late 80s) she said to me on a few occasions that she wasn’t afraid of dying and that she’d “had her life”. This is a comfort I can have but someone whose mum dies young can’t.

@gingerfreckles it's hard not saying goodbye, I was the same with Dad as he went from conscious and not showing any signs of his impending demise to seriously ill in a couple of hours, in a coma a few hours later and dead two days after.

@chocolateequinox I understand the feeling guilty by not being sad, but it seems that it’s just part of the grieving process - the underlying thing is that we feel like crap but our bodies’ defences say “hang on, we’re not having that”. Hence we see-saw between emotions

@gingerfreckles I’m so sorry your mum was hospitalised and you didn’t get to visit as you would have in a non-Covid world. I’ll be forever grateful for the care home policy that allowed us to visit once she’d gone to end of life care. They even gave us a guest room to use for overnight stays and brought us cake, juice, sandwiches, tea/coffee, lovely little toiletries, etc. And this was a local authority care home! I’m really sorry you didn’t have that

Perhaps it’s because she lived such a long life. We all know that one day they will have to go so maybe it’s not so much of a shock.

@Custardcreamies101 I think that probably has a lot to do with it. She was alive for so long and saw so much in her life - when she was born, only rich folk had electricity in their homes, for example, and the first black & white tv transmissions hadn’t yet been shown.

From previous conversations I’ve mentioned above, she said she was ok with dying 6/7 years ago. It’s still very sad but I’ve known for a while that the day was going to come. It’s completely different from someone dying younger. There used to be a saying that you’d get “three score years and ten” (ie 70). But my mum got “four score years and fourteen”, something that would have been unimaginable in the mid-1920s.

I’m sorry about your mum
I felt similar right after my dad died, and was ok for the first 6 months after he died and able to get on with life as normal. After that I was hit with terrible anxiety that I’m still battling which took me by surprise, so I’d say watch for signs of grief/depression later on because I found it really crept up on me.

I'm sorry about your mum OP My dad has Huntington's disease, he's been deteriorating in mind and body for years, but had a massive downturn last week. He's currently in hospital, and his neurologist has said that all they can do is keep him relatively comfortable. He's on the way out.

I've been grieving for years, but the past week has filled me with wildly conflicting emotions. One minute, I feel quite calm, accepting, and to be honest just wishing the end would come, because he's suffering so much. The next minute, I'm inconsolable and panicky and terrified. Of course, this is all made 100% worse by the fact that the current climate means we can't visit him.

I live on the other side of the country. I'm doing my best to support my poor mum, deal with the hospital, all the logistics of death, and all on the phone. I have power of attorney too, and my mum and I have had to give joint consent to withdraw my dad's feeding tube when it's obvious that he's at the end. Because of the type of illness he has, it's more than likely that his death won't be a calm, dignified one.

It's torture, isn't it? But nobody can tell you how to grieve. The conflict in your feelings and the numbness is normal. I so hope you're able to be kind to yourself - don't let ANYONE tell you how to feel, you don't have to justify your feelings to anyone x