My beautiful mum

[Gracie65]

......died yesterday. I am broken. I feel utter, complete, overwhelming sadness and bewilderment. I can't even make sense of it.
Myself, brother and my two grown up children have just spent the most intense, beautiful, amazing, surreal, utterly heart breaking 42 hours with her until she stopped breathing....
We told her how much we love her, said everything we wanted to say to her, held her, comforted her and thanked her for being my beautiful mum.
I stayed with her after she died. I just cuddled her and rested my cheek on her head. She still smelled like her, she was still warm. I just didn't want to let go of her because I knew I'd never be able to get to do that again. Then the funeral people collected her.
I don't even know how to process this. What the hell has just happened.
I just want my mum, my beautiful, lovely mum.

I'm sorry Gracie. It's agony

I went through a similar thing last week and it still feels surreal. I don't know how we begin to process it but process it we do

I'm so sorry about your mum. I'm sure you made her final moments as peaceful as they could be and she knew just how much she was loved. x

I am so so sorry. I am 16 weeks on from losing mum.

The feeling of wanting my mum hasn't reduced. I have felt surprisingly child like at times.

My advice is to just take one hour at a time. Concentrate on the next task. And then the next and the next.

I am here if you want to talk about her. It helped me in the first few days. Unfortunately that's the only advice I have.

I am so sorry for the loss of your much loved mum.

I'm so sorry Gracie . Don't even try to make sense of it now. It's just the most shocking, surreal , destabilising thing to go through. I can't explain what just happened but know that it's completely normal and understandable to feel what you are feeling. I am sending so much love and the understanding that the world as you know it has been changed. It's hard to even describe I know. 💐

I'm so so sorry 💐

Thank you so much for all your replies. To take time out of your day and offer your understanding and support to me is so very much appreciated.
@OneFootintheRave - I don't know how to quote posts but yes, it truly is agony. The depth of what I am feeling is beyond anything I have felt before. I have a permanent knot in my stomach. I am so lost in it all.
@bloodywhitecat - I am so sorry you have just experienced similar. It really is surreal.
@MrsGHarrison87 - thank you. I am so grateful we had the opportunity to support her at the end. I keep replaying it in my head . It all seems so jumbled up now.
@Lookingforphev - thank you for your insight and advice. It feels like I just don't know what to do next. I just can't navigate my way through. I am relying on others to tell me. I'm so very sorry for your loss also. It's overwhelming. I'm trying to rationalise it but it just doesn't make sense. How can it be happening, she was here but now she's not. Yet every part of me is screaming for her, almost looking for her. I don't feel she has gone, I keep talking to her, I keep longing for her reassurance that everything is going to be alright. I am lost without her. I never thought I would be. The impact of her passing feels immeasurable. I just want her to make it all ok again.
@FurryBandito - thank you for articulating so well what I am feeling. " Destabilising " really is how it feels. My anchor has gone. What do I even do now. How can the world ever make sense now she's not here. Nothing feels right anymore. The world is different.
I just want her back. I want to wake up tomorrow and it all be the same again. My mind is screaming that this just can't be happening. I want to wake up from it all. I can't bear the pain. Everything reminds me of her. My whole stability and sense of self was based on her being here. I just never knew it until now.
@ImJustNotMeAnymore - Thank you

My mum deserves to still be here. She deserves to still feel our love for her. She was always so scared of dying. She was selfless and kind. She was supportive and there for us. She didn't deserve the bad things that happened to her in life.

Yesterday we went to my brothers. We spent all evening until 3am this morning looking through photos. Sharing stories. It was like she was alive again for those few hours. It was so lovely.
Mum is going to be buried in her birth town 150 miles away. Her mum and dad bought a buried plot for themselves and my mum. It comforts me a little knowing she'll be with them.
We're going to put a photo board together for her funeral. Everybody is contributing photos of her that mean something to them.
My eldest son is taking it badly. He is looking so lost. He likes to be on his own to cry. I can hear him upstairs. My daughter is devastated. We are all a close family.
I had to speak with work and let them know. I just completely broke down. I couldn't speak.i just became a hyperventilating mess. I feel a lump in my throat constantly. I seem to be incapable of talking about her without completely breaking down.
Work have put me on compassionate leave for as long as I need.
Little things just don't matter anymore. So much has just lost meaning. I can't retain new information.

I just love and want my mum and I just don't know what to do.

I'm so sorry about your mum OP. I recently lost my dad and 9 months on I think about him every single day although the pain has eased thankfully. One of the nicest things to come out of it for me were the dozens of messages and phonecalls I received with some wonderful stories of my dad, some of which I hadn't heard before which gave me a greater insight into his character.

On a practical side have you been able to sleep? and had anything to eat or drink? You may not feel like it but you really need to look after yourself and keep up your energy

@Gracie65, I'm so sorry for your loss. If you don't mind, I will remember you and your family in my prayers. My mum died over 25 years ago. I still miss her and I remember the pain you describe. It hurts so much. I am really close to my siblings and we helped each other. We still do. I'm pleased you've got what sounds like a strong, loving, supportive network. That's your mother's doing so keep leaning on each other and make her proud.
When you said you were looking through photos and it felt like she was still alive...in a way she is. She'll always be with you. I read a lovely quote not long ago.....I don't die when I die. I die when no one remembers.
Keep her memory alive and she'll never be far away. ❤

Lookingforphev- thank you for your insight and advice. It feels like I just don't know what to do next. I just can't navigate my way through. I am relying on others to tell me. I'm so very sorry for your loss also. It's overwhelming. I'm trying to rationalise it but it just doesn't make sense. How can it be happening, she was here but now she's not. Yet every part of me is screaming for her, almost looking for her. I don't feel she has gone, I keep talking to her, I keep longing for her reassurance that everything is going to be alright. I am lost without her. I never thought I would be. The impact of her passing feels immeasurable. I just want her to make it all ok again.

Yes that's how I felt. I remember being on my own, for the first time after it happened. I was driving from Mim and Dad's house to mine. All the way back, I just kept asking her to come home.

No one could make everything feel OK like she could. She is the one person I need to make it OK and she was gone.

I look for her everywhere. She used to message me all day long, annoying me while I was working or in meetings. If I didn't reply she would text me the same question again. When I am meetings now, I still check my phone to see of she messaged. I have text her and begged her to come home. You are not alone in this. Though I am sure it feels that way.

I am sorry your kids are taking it so bad. I remember sat in her living room whole paramedics tried to get her back and for a good 10 minutes I was trying to come up with a story I could tell my kids so I didn't have to tell them she had gone. I felt panicked at telling them. Both are struggling, but they are coming through it and your children will too. Though, seeing them hurting and not being able to make it better is so hard.

I felt so alone and so lost. But MN helped me feel a tiny bit better. Down the line, I still feel lost. In some ways I feel worse. In some a bit better. But lean on those around you and be kind to yourself.

I wish I could give you a huge hug because words seem so bloody useless right now. I remember walking out the hospital at 5pm and looking at the people doing normal things, the traffic driving past, the familiar buildings and feeling totally removed and apart from everything. That feeling that everything had changed and everything was completely wrong is still so vivid, 17 years on.

It’s impossible to think straight, to get words out and to know what to do. Are you able to eat? If you are having trouble getting food down then maybe something like build-up or complan milkshakes might be easier to get down and keep up your physical strength a bit.

What you are feeling is normal. Absolutely horrific but normal. If there others around you who can organise anything that needs doing and can tell you what to do then let them. Whoever can take on the mental and physical things you aren’t able to get your head round, let them do them.

The shock is immense, even if a death was expected. Nothing can prepare you for that immensity. You aren’t alone even though you might feel it . Sending you so much love 💕

It's such an intense time. So all consuming. The night after my mum died I went back to her house and had such a strong sensation of 'hearing' her say night night. Any little thing I could do or have to make me feel closer to her seemed so precious. Her voice was a constant commentary in my head.

I promise it will gradually get easier.

Your parents are like the anchors of your life and when you lose one, suddenly your world is in free fall and there's no certainty left. It's shocking that there's so much turmoil and yet everyone round you is carrying on as if nothing has happened. It's very disorientating.

My dad died 6½ years ago. I miss him every day. I still well up regularly. I'm in my 60s but I still feel a bit abandoned. It does get easier, in so far as you start to accept it and accommodate the loss, but it takes a long time and you don't stop missing them.

My mum has dementia but she knows her mum has died. But she still says occasionally. I miss my mummy, and she died 40 years ago.

I'm so very sorry for your loss. x

I'm so sorry for your loss. I had the same with my mum on Monday. I was at her bedside for over 24 hours, holding her hand & talking to her until she stopped breathing. I lost my dad nine weeks ago too. I'm utterly crushed. As an only child everything now falls to me to do and it's so, do hard. I miss them both so much.

@Gracie65 I'm so sorry for your loss. My mum also passed away a week ago and I've found this forum so helpful and comforting. I hope it provides you with the same.

I’m 6 months on from where you are (possibly we are a similar sort of age too). It’s still so, so hard. But the raw, howling, clawing grief has abated. Time will ease, not heal entirely. I tell myself that grief is the price we pay for love. And also that she would not have wanted it the other way around - to have had me go first. But knowing all that still doesn’t take the pain away. You will feel, if not better, then at least more contained in a while. All you can do for now is ride it out. Day by day. My heartfelt sympathies to you and yours.

How's it going @Gracie65 ?

@Gracie65 how are you doing