Grief in the longer term?

[Kai1981]

My Dad died unexpectedly and suddenly three weeks ago. We were close and I'm devastated.

I've read and heard a lot about grief recently and there's a general theme of 'it never goes away it just gets less sharp and less raw'.

I get that this is supposed to comfort the bereaved but I find it pretty soul destroying. I've lost someone I loved and now my life is changed for the worst forever as well? It's like another part of me has died too.

I guess I'm just looking for stories from people who've managed grief in the decades that followed in a way that is somehow relatively positive? Is that possible??

I'm sorry for your loss OP.

My brother died almost ten years ago. My experience is that nothing is as painful as where I was three weeks after he died - the pain was both a dull, heavy weight and eviscerating at times, I look back at how it felt fearfully - I don't want to be there again. The sadness was absolutely violent. But I feel OK now, there are sad moments and my loss will always hurt, just not as often as it did in the early days. I don't get overwhelmed like I did. Muriel Gray once described it as emotional muscle that you grow in response to grief, I would agree with that. I'm stronger, I've developed the capacity to be happy while carrying sadness.

My only advice (not that I think you've asked!) is don't rush it, grief takes its time. I read somewhere that a person typically starts to process their grief after six months, so give yourself a break, let yourself mourn, you can work it out later.

I should add though, I remember well that feeling of wanting things to return to normal. In the early days my perspective changed so much, although I really mourned my previous innocence, I thought grief would make me a deeper person somehow. I'm happy to report that it hasn't really! These days I get almost as caught up in the small things as I did before.

My mum died very suddenly and unexpectedly last year so I can empathise with some of the things you will be experiencing. At the beginning I had people say things like, 'you'll never get over it' or 'it'll be with you forever but it'll get easier'. Like you, I didn't find those statements helpful at all!! I think in the immediate loss, you want to know there's hope of being able to rebuild, not be confined to a life of grief. Or at least that's how I felt.

One year on, having never experienced someone close to me die before, I would say that firstly everyone is different and so your path through grief is your own and won't look like anyone else's. Secondly, in the aftermath of a sudden loss, you are thrown into a new world that you do not want to be in. Everything feels all 'wrong' and you have to process the many ways you miss him and how to construct a life around the space/absence. However for me, although I got chucked into a new world that still feels strange and all a bit wrong, it is also starting to feel a bit more like a new/different normal. Miss my mum very much but I think it's possible to get a sense of 'normality' back and it's quite likely that the way to feel now is not the way you'll feel in 6 months or in 12 months. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there is hope that in time you can reshape/rebuild and start to make sense of your world again.

It’s hard to describe it but I think the previous posters have done well. To borrow a modern phrase it’s about living with the “new normal”, which you basically learn to do. Of course it’s not the life you would choose but you will manage to carry on and the pain does lessen. Eventually there are some days when it’s not there at all, but saying that it ebbs and flows. You get used to that and you are prepared for it.

I’m sorry for your loss

Such wonderful words written on this post.

I am a counsellor and have worked with historical grief.
I have also experienced 3 losses over the past few years.
All of them affecting me differently.

I would say that in time, clients have wanted to really process the loss. It has a space within them.
Especially if the loss was a close loved one.
The intensity isn’t there in the same way as early on in grief but the sadness can still rise up.

Look after yourself op. Take the time to allow each emotion to rise and fall.

Sorry for your loss . I have lost both my parents , and yes the grief is long lasting . You will think of them everyday . Sometimes it will be a happy memory thought , or something that has happened triggers it , or perhaps an emotional need within yourself . Does it ever get better ? No is the answer . But it will get less painful eventually , and little by little you learn to cope with it . It changes your life , but your life will go on but in a different way.

My mother and brother died about a decade ago and honestly, while I do feel sad about it if I think about them, and I do miss them, on a day-to-day level I feel fine. On the other hand, I would say it is like part of me died with them - it does permanently affect you. in that you’re not the person you’d be if they were still with you. It’s not necessarily worse in the longer-term - just different.

I’m sorry for your loss - go easy on yourself and don’t set a timeline on your grief.

My DM died young and unexpected over 20 years ago.
Yes it gets less sharp, but it never goes away. Things will happen, like writing this to you now, and the tears will flow, bringing it all back.
It’s so unfair. My DM never got to hold my babies.
But she will be for ever young, and forever in my heart.

I have lost both my dad and more recently my mum.

It feels like a physical pain at first, but trust me it does get easier. Yes you will always have a huge dad shaped hole in your life and even 8 years on I still shed an occasional tear for him but you adjust to cope with the new normal. Give yourself time, it is still very raw.

So sorry for your loss, OP. I lost my mum suddenly and unexpectedly a year ago. I was trying to help my dad make sense of everything I'd read about grief and how we were feeling - how I visualized it was at first it feels like a black hole - it takes up all the space in your soul and everything gets sucked into it (everything you think and do relates to your grief). Over time, the hole doesn't go away, but it gets smaller and less powerful and you're able to see the things around it and move your attention away from it - it becomes a part of your whole, but doesn't consume you. A year on and I am still very shaken by the loss of my amazing mum, but I find plenty of joy in life.

When my beloved mother died, I thought I'd lose my mind with the grief and never recover. A few years on, I cope.

I found this poem incredibly helpful. I've posted it in here before, I think. When she first died, I was so bewildered and devastated that I read it multiple times a day and found deep comfort in being so known and understood by the author.

As time has gone on, I still read it regularly and it continues to comfort me but I no longer sob and howl over it. Now, I can pick it up, smile with a familiar sadness and put it down again. It's no longer something for me to hysterically cling to.

I'm struggling to find who to give credit to but it's called Grief Comes in Waves.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

God it makes me shiver still.

Thank you all so much for your responses, they are so helpful and well-explained.

Thinking of it as a 'new-normal' is a comfort too.

I am sorry for all your losses and hope others' words and help bring as much as solace as you have for me.

I'm sorry about your dad.

What helped me was someone explaining that you still have a relationship with the person who died, albeit you can't interact with them physically anymore or seek fresh opinions. But you can still revisit that relationship internally, you can still inform your decisions with their perspective, and they are still part of your life.

It's a very particularly western cultural idea that after someone dies you have to act like they never existed and grieve then put it all in a box. That is toxic and not how it is in other cultures that recognise the person is still part of your life and that grief does not work like that!

Learning and understanding that - and letting go of the shame I felt at not wanting (or being able) to pretend my loved one never existed or never talk about them - was the turning point for me in no longer feeling like I was being destroyed from the inside out.

I love that - you still have a relationship with that person. That's comforting, thank you.

I guess life will never be the same but I guess I get a lot of relief when I talk to my dad like I ask his opinion and I reflect on what he may have thought/done or advised in that situation. But yeah it’s never the same. So sorry. I’ve been where you are and god it’s awful. It does get better/easier or sim ply life moves on. Dad didn’t get to see me get married or have kids and he was a loving guy. I think he would have been an amazing grandfather.