Coping, Richard E Grant A Pocketful of Happiness and Not Being Bitter

[BereavedSingleWoman]

Seeking advice about finding happiness and a New Way

I am grieving for the loss of my mother. I know many people will dismiss that as something that is the normal order and something you should get over but it has devastated me. My mother was a really extraordinary and kind woman and my best friend. Before she died, I gave up a high powered career and moved in with her to be a carer for several years before she died so we were ultra-ultra close. I'm single, never married, no children. My mother I suppose is the "love of my life" in the sense of the person I have had the purest and deepest love for in my life. I've had periods of dark nights.

I have been following a few people who write about grief and one of them was Richard E Grant whose wife died and he wrote this book called A Pocketful of Happiness - she told him to try to find a pocketful of happiness in every day.

Anyway, he posted this video here

www.instagram.com/p/CnpljLbImxk/?hl=en

which at first I loved, really made me smile and thought that's way more than a pocketful of happiness. How lovely for him I thought.

This video was filmed at one of their friends houses in the Carribbean. He's written about his friends "scooping up" him and his daughter and people trying to fix up him and him saying he isn't ready yet.

Then I started to think about it this video particularly and some of the other stuff he's posted and it sent me into a deep depression because that kind of happiness seems so far out of reach for me.

Basically it's easy to find a pocketful of happiness if you have friends who will invite you to stay with them and hold glamourous house parties in the Carribbean. It's a huge distraction in a lovely place. It made me feel really envious and start wondering how I could find people to look after me like that. And knowing that I can't. Not because I don't know anyone like that but because I would never be included - partly because I'm grieving for a parent (which socially is dismissed as less important than a spouse in a long marriage) and partly because I am a single woman.

In my career as I got older and more successful, for example, I've got to know many people with luxury second properties abroad, some of them very well. I never get invited to these things - it always seems to be couples and single men.

I'm using this as an example but it seems like if you are a man and have lost a spouse, people rally around you and do what they can to help you. If you are a single woman who has been devastated by the loss of a parent, no one seems to get or care how terrible it can be.

I can feel in myself that I am a risk of becoming isolated and really bitter - which is not at all how I was before all of this.

Anyone got any advice how to stop this canker getting worse and stop envying other people.

I've stopped reading Richard E Grant as a first step as I don't think it's helping me.

I’m going to return to the most important sentence in your post, OP: I am grieving for the loss of my mother.

Give yourself lots of room to let bitterness and resentment and envy show themselves. Close books. Open them up again down the road. You’ll see things with a different perspective months from now. Even years.
Grief can go from being the ugliest beast encouraging a violent war within us to becoming the biggest, most comforting hug and reminder of our love for the lost.
Grief makes a shapeshifter of us all and there’s nothing linear about it. You’re down, you’re up, you’re back down again.

And this grief is about your mum, your relationship with her, your relationship with yourself, your life, your roots, your history, your loss. It’s deeply personal, profound, and full of heavy lifting.
Grief is part of your transformation.

A year ago, I had my ‘Fuck You’ head screwed on tighter than tight. Angry. Spitting nails. Full of a sorrow that was hot enough to melt me. Surely, I won’t survive this, is something I’ve thought many times.
Now I live in this place of peace and enlightenment. I know what it is and I know I can call it that. And I know it’s true. I suppose it’s peace of a sort.

The death of your mother will also be a birth for you, OP. In time… in a while. Now’s the labour… the hardest emotional terrain to traverse. But you will cross it, with weight, with rage, with sorrow, with resentment, all strange and necessary allies with roles to play.
What will survive of us, as Philip Larkin wrote, is love.
Go easy on yourself. Let the grief move through you. You’ll come out the other side knowing love and remembering who you are without sorrow’s weight bearing down on you.

I recommend the film Nomadland. It really is, at its heart, the story of a woman traversing grief’s terrain. When Frances McDormand recites sonnet 18, I just lose it. And the ending is so gracefully and quietly powerful. Sending you loving hugs, OP. Time is an ally, a friend. Don’t forget that. Time will deliver peace. 💐

I'm so sorry for your loss OP. I found the Joan Didion books on loss and mourning very comforting.

Joan Didion’s books are amazing. I’ve been reading Blue Nights. I’ve not read The Year of Magical Thinking but I know that it was a book that helped my own mum after my dad died.

I'm so sorry for the loss of your mother and how deeply you feel this. I found your post very moving.

I'm extremely touched by the love you shared with your Mum - I think it must have been a wonderful and affirming experience for you both. It's profoundly unfashionable to feel or say this about our mothers. We see so much around us that dismisses that relationship and denigrates both the reality and concept of 'mother'. But what other relationship is like it? When the relationship is healthy, there is nothing else that can come close and be as comforting, accepting, truthful and solid.

Of course we all have to separate for our own growth and self development. Whatever time of life or death this comes for us, it must be done. And it can be extremely hard.

But you have shared the most special connection with your mum, one that has been based on mutual love, devotion and service. Now it's time for you to turn to yourself and devote the same energies to you. Easier said than done I know, but being 'scooped up' by friends and taken to their luxury home to be cosseted is all very well...but when you don't have this safety blanket (which most of us won't) then you are left facing the stony reality of your grief in a very direct way. All we can do then is look within and slowly begin to draw on our own inner resources, finding a new way to navigate our world where we become more of ourselves not less.

Your Mum will always be there in your memory and your heart. And the biological line from mother to daughter can never be severed. I find that thought a great comfort. We carry our mothers within us always.

I feel as if I'm about to waffle on...so apologies in advance.

Firstly, I'm really sorry for your loss. I agree that some people have ideas about which losses are more or less serious, annoyingly. But I am not one of those people and I don't see your grief as lesser in any way.

Secondly, I have seen his posts on Twitter about this too. I was really struck by how lucky he is to have so many people looking out for him and to have so many opportunities. I thought perhaps I was being mean in my head but perhaps not.

Also, I haven't read any books on grief, but I know people have commented that Rev Coles, if you read his book, also seems to have access to a lot more support than most people will have.

I say this from the position of being very well supported after my dad died. But - and I know he won't mind me saying this - it sounds as if you were far closer with your mum than I was with my dad. So perhaps it's more that I felt the support I got was enough, but another person might not feel that.

My cousin was extremely close to her mum and was devastated when she died. I had no time frame for expectation of recovery, but within the wider family, there were comments about how she should be over it, has a husband and DC to think of. She didn't "recover" sufficiently to stop the comments - and people pushing her towards counselling that she didn't want - until about two years after.

Re being bitter, it's good to be aware of it. A neighbour lost her DH a couple of years ago. We all helped with practical stuff. But she became very bitter. So it's now at a stage where previously, we enjoyed socialising with her, but most of us don't want to hang out with just her.

I don't know if the male/female or single/not single makes a difference as much as sheer dumb luck.

do you think it's possible the envy is a separate issue to grief? It came through your post as if the envy is really troubling you in and of itself.

Oh wow. @TheVanguardSix this is really beautiful and powerful thank you so much for taking the time to write to me like this. It has made me cry but more in a sense of mutual understanding than sorrow - not a bad crying if you understand

Such a beautiful post, Vanguard

'I recommend the film Nomadland. It really is, at its heart, the story of a woman traversing grief’s terrain.'

Very much agree. A really wonderful film, beautifully performed

Thank you @EmmaEmerald @SisterWendyBuckett @crispinglovershighkick

Now it's time for you to turn to yourself and devote the same energies to you.

Sadly I can't do that because I am now caring for my father who has dementia. it never rains but it pours as they say.

do you think it's possible the envy is a separate issue to grief? It came through your post as if the envy is really troubling you in and of itself.

There is a lot that is bothering me about it

one is my fear that my personality and nature has/will change. I used to be softer, kinder I think. Caring, stress and bereavement really buffets your personality. Before I'd have just watched that video and felt exactly how I felt the first time I watched it - which was 'that's brilliant, what fun, lucky him'. I fear that I'm going to become a lonely and bitter and resentful woman

one is my envy of the support that he has - which I won't get as an adult child grieving a parent - no one notices you really.

one is my envy of the fun situation he finds himself in there in a fabulous house in the Carribean with fun people - which I cannot access - not because I don't know anyone who could take pity on me and invite me to their holiday home in Provence or Antigua or wherever. I do know people like that in that sort of social circle - which kind of makes it worse - because I would never be included. Because I've never been included. I think like I said it's a single woman thing - single men are different. Maybe its different if you knew one of the house owners before they married but I think meeting these people in later life means you never truly get embraced into a social circle if you don't have a partner. Or I suppose it could be that no one wants me because I am detested of course. I hope its not that. I used to be fairly amusing company, have a ready supply of witty quotes from Shakespeare to GBS and can mix a mean cocktail if required. It's a lifetime ago though

one is my fear of my future long term - I look at that video and think Richard E Grant will be fine. He gets these lovely staycations courtesy of his friends - who are already trying to fix him up. He's got his daughter. He will sooner or later feel ready and meet someone fabulous and he'll have a future to look forward to.

I will struggle to rebuild my life and find friends - most have fallen by the wayside as I have been a carer, moved from home and work and unable to go out. My once (very) high powered career has been put on hold (which long term is probably tanked) and my income has dropped. I feel like I have no future like that to look forward to. I don't have friends (and didn't before all this) offering to fix me up.

I don't know - it's just that video particularly really got to me. They look so relaxed and happy and surrounded by people and what a place to be. I'm sad I will never have that support or be invited anywhere like that.

Now it's time for you to turn to yourself and devote the same energies to you.

Sadly I can't do that because I am now caring for my father who has dementia. it never rains but it pours as they say.

I'm so very sorry to hear this 💐

Thank you @SisterWendyBuckett

Sometimes I don't know how I am still standing.

OP is the caring situation something you’re okay with? I find what we can do for parents is very subject to change, due to time and circumstances.

@EmmaEmerald yes and no

yes in the sense that I am doing it willingly and it's very very hard but done with love

no in the sense that I'm not ok with anything in my life at all right now because it's pretty much collapsed around my ears and everything is coloured negative because it's seen through grief.

so does that mean it would or wouldn't help to get some respite care?

I think it's good that you found Vanguard post helpful. I feel like it shows you aren't bitter.

I'm so sorry OP, I can only imagine how hard it must be for you and the special relationship you had with your mum. I hope as time passes it becomes a little easier.

@TheVanguardSix
What a beautifully written and insightful post.

I think it's good that you found Vanguard post helpful. I feel like it shows you aren't bitter.

Thank you @EmmaEmerald I don't think I'm trapped under a layer of bitterness just yet but I'm scared that it maybe coming.

What triggered this fear was my change of feelings towards that video - I'm so envious. I just look at it and want that for me - I want to have friends who care enough to ask me to go away with them; to be in a fun distracting environment; to have a laugh doing ridiculous impressions of Tina Turner; to just be in such a beautiful room in the Carribbean - but it all seems so far out of reach. Like wishing for the moon.

Also it's made more painful to be me because I honestly feel that if I was exactly the same person I am today with exactly the same social circle and had moved through exactly the same life path - but I was a man who had lost his wife, this or something approximating it would not be a fantasy and be perfectly likely.

It's a horrible feeling - to feel envy like that - it's a sour feeling. That's it. It makes me feel dirty and sour.

PS:
@TheVanguardSix I have sent you a PM to thank you for your lovely post to me.

I miss my wonderful mother so much. I can't think about how I will never see her again. Just writing that makes me tear up. She was so amazing I can't tell you.

Really beautiful - both physically and spiritually. When she was younger she looked like a 1950s Hollywood star. She never spoke badly too me. I read about other people's difficult relationships with their mother and we never ever had that. She never told me I was fat, should lose weight, that I wasn't good enough or acheiving enough or why wasn't I married or anything like that. She was just always kind loving supportive. She was also really clever and super-educated and herself a professional-achiever ahead of her time. She was so witty and funny and we laughed so much together as we had the same sense of humour. I know I am so lucky that she was my mother and I had her in my life.

I want her back and I can't bear the thought of an endless stretching future of years without her. It hurts so so SO much.

Your mum sounds amazing and all that love she had for you is still with you. I miss my mum too so really relatebut have a partner and kids which does make it easier so your road is harder, I'm sorry, but I think it is hard being on your own and losing such a significant relationship like this. I just want to say that that loving relationship is so special and many people never experience it, no wonder your grief is so deep. I certainly respect someone grieving something like this. When you feel ready you can reach out and start to make connections to the world with people agan but gosh it is so hard when you are grieving, so hard. You don't feel like doing that now, of course you don't. Your mum's love is still with you.

How beautifully you write @TheVanguardSix 🤍

I think comparing your situation to others is never a good thing. Grief is very individual and very personal.

I'm sorry for your loss, the death of a much loved parent is always difficult to get over. Personally, I'm not sure you ever do, only find ways of dealing with it.