For Anyone Needing Support After Losing a Parent. Very Supportive Thread (March 2022) )

[Crunchymum]

I hope no-one minds me starting a new thread, the old one is almost full.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/bereavement/4352163-For-Anyone-Needing-Support-After-Losing-a-Parent-Very-Supportive-Thread-September-2021

As always lots of love and strength and support to you all xxx

Hello @LucyintheSky21

Glad to see you are holding up 'as best you can', it's all we can do most days isn't it?

You are always so kind about my posts (I rarely get described as uplifting in real life 😂). I'm just glad if I can shine a little bit of light on this brutal and never ending process.

Day to day I'm doing alright, I still see beauty in the world and I still have moments of genuine happiness and joy. But I'm not same person I was before the day I lost my mum. I am changed, I am darkened, I carry a sorrow so deeply now that I'm fundamentally different.

18 months is still no time at all. I'd say - for me - it was around the 18 month mark that the constant bleakness lifted a little. Eventually it just gets a bit less difficult?Grief is such a lonely and isolating experience which is ironic given how universal it is

My dad's funeral is tomorrow. Still largely in denial I think then I let myself think about the things he did for me even a matter of weeks ago and it's like being hit by a train.

Best of luck and I know how you feel, my Dads is tomorrow and I'm an emotional wreck, just want it over with now

@Thisisus4 @Fedupofdiets
If I have read correctly that you are both at Funerals today / tomorrow, I hope that they both go as well as they possibly can. I am thinking of you. x

@Thisisus4 @Fedupofdiets thinking of you tomorrow xx

I hope I'm not posting too much on here. I don't want to take over and be a pain. I don't have too much real life support. I'm really struggling. Work pressure is huge and I just want to sack it all off but there's nobody to take the slack..my manager is off sick too and there are deadlines that can't be missed.

I'm struggling to go through the motions..I've got a chronic illness too and a son with ASD and no partner. Everyone else is hoovering up my energy and all I want to do is actually go to pieces and have a good cry at last. It's been 7 weeks since Dad died and almost a month since the funeral. I don't want anyone to need me. I want to just be left alone and to actually grieve.

@Sohereitissuddenly

I just wanted to reach out i hear that you are struggling at work. You spoke about deadlines and your boss being off sick. That is not your problem you need to think about yourself. Maybe call your GP i was signed off work for 4 months after my mum died very suddenly and unexpectedly. If you need time then take it because your mental health is more important than any job. Take care

I've been following this thread for a long time now.
Thought maybe I'd introduce myself.
My dad died in October 2022 from oesophageal cancer. He six days from his official diagnosis and wasn't really poorly until about a month before he died. It all happened so fast. He was only 66 and me 28. I have two kids age 7 and almost 2. My 7 year old occasionally mentions him and says she misses her grandad.
He leaves behind his mum ( my nan) who is 89 to and we are very close and he and my nan where always very close to.
Still don't think it's real. Still think about him every single day and miss him every day. Also have found myself smiling though when thinking about him recently.
Knowing my dad how I did he wouldn't want his death to get in the way of me living my life. It's a strange thing isn't it.

Hi all. Just popping on here to dump some thoughts if that’s ok? Nearly two months on and I’m having a real slump. I just miss my mum so desperately. The white hot shock has subsided thank goodness but I’m now just left with a constant never ending sadness. If anything this is worse. Little things just sneak up on me and set me off. One of my son’s baby pictures has just popped up on our Alexa device and I remember sending it to her and her saying something funny about it. I cant believe I’ll never get another reply from her or see her again. I miss her so much I could scream.

Sending love to all in this horrible boat 🌸

@Ttc42nearly43 thank you. I have emailed my manager today. We'll see what happens. Trying to get through day by day.

@Strugglingwithoutmum I am in same place and feel worse but aggravated by work stress. It's 8 weeks on Saturday since he died. I'm utterly exhausted and have now started to cry more. I didn't cry much until now. I feel really deeply sad.

You’ll be up and down. Sometimes you think you’re weird because you’re not crying, then out of nowhere you bawl over something little. Crying is probably good, it’s letting it out a bit.

It's been a bittersweet day today - I've finally managed to sort out a memorial stone for Dad which will be ready in the next 2 months so we can arrange to have his ashes interred. I was so pleased that it was all going ahead, then this sucker punch happened when I realised that Dad wasn't there to tell about it and I've sobbed nearly all day.

I think I've realised though that you just can't fight it, and have to give in. I've started taking pairs of sunglasses everywhere so I can hide my eyes if I've been crying again

We still haven't sorted dads memorial stone out and he passed last October.
They have no room to intern ashes at the crematorium he was buried at and no room.for a proper headstone at the moment

Feel like I need to sort it before the first anniversary of his death though. No idea what to do with them.
❤️.
We haven't collected them from the funeral home either

Can I please join this thread. My lovely Mum died recently, and I’ve already lost my Dad, so I really feel like the anchor is gone. I’m adrift. I feel so alone. I’m in tears every day, multiple times a day some days, others just briefly, but at some stage every day there are tears. I’m the only one in my friend group to have lost both parents, and I am really struggling.

Welcome, @GrievingOne. I'm sorry you're struggling too. I've had a really busy weekend, but am just sitting quietly and i feel the weight of the loss on my shoulders again. I can't believe how much I miss my Dad. Sundays are especially hard as I used to spend the afternoons with him and do his shopping/housework.

Thanks @Badger1970

This seems like a stupid thing to say, but I’m often now struck by the thought who is looking out for me in the world now?. I say it’s stupid because the reality is that no one has been looking out for me for many years, I’m fiercely independent and self-sufficient and for the last decade I’ve been providing care to my parents, and they would not have been able to look out for me, so this really is all theoretical, but it’s just so lonely and bloody isolating.

Someone said to me recently that you could never have enough time with someone you loved, and it’s so true.

I feel so sorry for you when you say about Sundays… they must feel empty now.

And I feel so bloody guilty for ever thinking that trying to care for hugely ailing parents while working 50-60 hours per week in a demanding job was a source of stress.

@GrievingOne I am so sorry that you lost your Dad and now your Mum. I lost my Dad a few weeks back, he was in his 60s. Mum is still alive but it has left me with the awful awful feeling of how it would be to lose her too and I am very anxious about it. I know I would feel the same as you - utterly bereft and totally alone. Even though you have been providing care for them and they were unable to 'look out for you' they were your parents and you loved them and they loved you. I don't have any answers I'm afraid, this grief business is new to me and is very painful and complex. I hope that you have people around you to offer some support and a shoulder to cry, I have found reading this board a comfort just knowing others are walking the same path

I am similar with my mum still alive and my dad dying in his 60s.
I to have wondered what it will be like if my mum dies before me. It's really strange having now experienced a close loss.
My dads mum has out lived him and it seems very cruel this way round

Sorry to all having lost someone special to them

Please may I join?
Lost Mum last July and Dad at the weekend. Just feel numb - haven't cried - so feel heartless.

@Heffapotamus not remotely heartless. You're probably in shock. I sat at home the evening that Dad had died and just felt nothing - we'd been expecting it, but at the same time it was the biggest shock. 6 months of caring, managing, arranging... then nothing. Just silence. It really rocked me to the core. Then when I started crying, I couldn't stop and didn't for about 2 weeks. Everyone feels and deals with this their own way... go easy on yourself

So sorry to hear of your loss.
I haven't cried since dad died but it doesn't mean I don't care and he died last October.
Go easy on yourself

Thank you. Dad had been on the palliative route since March - but he kept going... and going.
I guess it will hit me eventually.

Thanks everyone for the support. Lots more tears today, it’s been one of those days. And I’m being unreasonably irritated by an acquaintance who keeps sending trite “thinking of you at this difficult time” messages but is of no actual support or help. I know people feel helpless and don’t know what to say, and he probably wants to let me know he’s thinking of me, but I just find the messages insincere. I bet that if I said I need help with xyz he would not step up, nor would he offer to meet if I said I was lonely- firing off a text is very minimal effort really. But then he’s an acquaintance rather than a friend so I’m probably being harsh.

I didn’t know this thread existed. I’m still struggling after losing my mum 9 weeks ago so came looking for support and found this thread so checking in. I was close to my mum and felt like she was the only person who got me. My dad is still here, he’s completely lost without her but for me I just want my mum, she was my best friend and gave the best advice. My dads a bloke, I love him dearly but it’s just not the same.

@Cocopogo we're all in the same boat here. Reeling, and trying to make sense out of something that makes no sense at all you're among people who understand completely.