How long before emotions stabilise after loss of wonderful mother?

[StillSoVerySad]

I was very close to my wonderful mother who died a year ago next week.

Today I read an interview with Shappi Khorshandi the comedian talking about ADHD where she said this about a period after her ex husband had left her:

My family and friends begged me to take time off work, but instead I drank heavily and sabotaged my career. I went on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross when I was still weeping about my ex in public; I did a tour where I just drank on stage and talked nonsense.

The bit about "still weeping ...in public" really got to me. I realised that I've been doing this A LOT on and off over the past year in an a way that probably to outsiders looks like I am emotionally unstable.

The death of my mum meant I had to take on a full time caring role for another relative who has dementia. This has been tough and emotionally draining. I realise though that a plus side of this has meant my on/off crying + telling total strangers about my grief hasn't been exposed to my work life.

I'm crying a lot at the moment as this time last year she was still alive.

I'm wondering how long does this last? I know I will never get over her death and will always miss her but I'm talking about this uncontrolled emotion and crying and urge to tell total strangers about my woes and how wonderful she was.

It's not as bad as weeping on a Jonathan Ross chat show but it still must give the impression I am a total fruitcake.

I appreciate that the bereaved would cut me more slack but I work with lots of younger people who would just think I'm a loopy bipolar type and not to be trusted with anything requiring serious professionalism.

Is there an end to this uncontrolled grief emotion? How long on average?

*sorry I didn't mean to use bipolar in an offensive way - I was just trying to convey judgmental people at work and a sense of judgment of a person who is emotionally out of control.

My mum has been gone 19 months. I found the year mark harder than the initial loss. I cried 4 times at work in the week leading up to it.

I am going to say I have felt more able to control it, in the last 2 months. I can remove myself or wait til I go to bed. Last Monday I completely broke down, I felt it coming all day and lasted until I went to bed. It did overwhelm me. But being able to keep it until I was alone was better. I didn't feel embarrassed later. Or like I had to prove I wasn't losing my mind. Its a small win but its a win

I have accepted its changed me as a person. I don't know if I will ever completely get out of the hole I am in. Or get rid of feeling like I have a rock in my stomach. But, I feel I have more control over it.

I am so sorry for your loss and I will be thinking of you.

You do not have to take on the care of your relative with dementia - it’s a choice and may not be the right one for you at this time.

I lost my mum in Sept 2000. 17 years later I took on the care of my dad who had dementia. I can't imagine how hard it would have been to deal with the grief and caring at the same time.
It took me around two years to stop being so sad. To stop crying at the smell of her perfume or wanting to tell her something and remembering she was gone.
The emotion and strain of caring for someone living with dementia is overwhelming at the best of times. I hope you can get some support

My mum died in 2015, I think (I don't really like 'knowing' when someone dear to me died) and yes, I still feel the loss. My younger brother died 6 weeks after mum, so the shock and numbness of mum's death - which was expected and merciful - was rather overtaken by the shock and heratbreak of my brother's death (for which I shall forever feel a little guilty, in that I mourned my bro so strongly that the mourning for my mum hardly figured).

Because of my brother's death, I 'got over' mum's quite quickly but it took YEARS to get over my brother's. Everyday my heart would break again when I remembered that he wasn't here. It is honestly only recently that I can think about it without that breaking again.

There is no right or wrong in any of it. Just adjustment to a world that that person no inhabits, a different understanding of reality and one's place in it. Without that person in it. It doesn't matter whether they lived with you, down the road or miles and miles away; whether you saw yhem every day, or infrequently. Your world had that person in it, partly defining you, I was one of 3 children and suddenly I was an orphan and then one of only 2 children. It took a long time for that basic understanding of who or what I was to reflect the new world.

I don't think there is a 'timeline' and it's different for everyone.

The first year after is very tough with all the 'firsts without them' occur. Gradually you learn to live with it better, and keep your emotions in check more, at least in public. I remember someone telling me that it was 14 years since she'd lost her mother, and even then, there were times she'd find herself in tears, out of the blue. I can now verify that to be the case, 16 years on.

Maybe consider whether there's a better way for the person with dementia to be cared for? It's ok to be kind to yourself x

I lost my lovely mum nearly 10 years ago . A few weeks past I'd been having a bad week generally . Found myself sat in my car having full on sobbing crying for her , whilst I still miss her and think about for a fair bit , the emotions can flood back at any moment.
Sorry for your loss .

Sorry for your loss.
I’d say the first year is the worst. All the first things. Then you can start to walk alongside the grief, rather than facing it.

But things will jump up and surprise you many years later. Sometimes things you wouldn’t think of now.

My mum died when I was 24, over 20 years ago now. She went from perfectly healthy to dead in less than 6 weeks. It was a huge shock, as you’d have put money on her making old age.
I can remember when we had our first child how very sad I was that she’d never know them. And when friends whinged that their mothers weren’t doing enough babysitting that made me furious!
And odd things like the last dog she knew dying, cutting a tree she planted down as it was outgrowing its space, Kids smashing a favourite tea cup. But also good things and memories will make you laugh and happy. It wont all be unhappiness.

I think it depends a bit too, if you feel the person got to the ‘end of their days’ or was cheated out of years.
We lost our family matriarch this year, 99yrs old. Although much loved, it’s a much easier grief than someone who died too soon. In my opinion anyway.

@ProfessorXtra

My mum has been gone 19 months. I found the year mark harder than the initial loss. I cried 4 times at work in the week leading up to it.

I am going to say I have felt more able to control it, in the last 2 months. I can remove myself or wait til I go to bed. Last Monday I completely broke down, I felt it coming all day and lasted until I went to bed. It did overwhelm me. But being able to keep it until I was alone was better. I didn't feel embarrassed later. Or like I had to prove I wasn't losing my mind. Its a small win but its a win

I have accepted its changed me as a person. I don't know if I will ever completely get out of the hole I am in. Or get rid of feeling like I have a rock in my stomach. But, I feel I have more control over it.

I am so sorry for your loss and I will be thinking of you.

thank you for sharing this - it's made me teary all over again. the approach of a year has been really hard. I'm assuming its because the initial period the bereaved are in shock.

Given what you've said and @Norachance , it sound like there is hope for me but it's going to take another year.

Caring is very emotional and overwhelming but @kweeble for a lot of different reasons I don't really feel like I do have an option.

I want to recover myself or at least a base line that means I feel more emotionally "normal" whatever that is. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It's like I've lost any sense of the baseline of neutral emotion - an average day with average feeling.

@Jux
My mum died in 2015, I think (I don't really like 'knowing' when someone dear to me died) and yes, I still feel the loss. My younger brother died 6 weeks after mum, so the shock and numbness of mum's death

I'm so sorry for your losses - that must have been so extraordinarily difficult to deal with. I've barely struggled through 11.75 months but to have two such significant bereavements I don't think I'd survive

Condolences to everyone posting who is sharing their stories of loss. It's so hellish. I don't really understand how the world can be so full of the bereaved who have managed to carry on.

My DF died at 54 and then my DM was killed in a car accident at 69 six years ago.
I think about them every day. I can go months with no tears then something will set me off. Usually DC related as they've grown up over the years and it hits home what she's missing.
You do have an option re the caring. We only get one life and things can change in an instant. My mum's death taught me that. She was killed six months after my GM died at 89 after years of my DM running round after her. It's hard not to feel resentful.
What were your mum's plans for the person you are caring for in the event of her death?

Lost my DM 10 months ago. I've generally been ok, still not had a big cry or felt overcome by it. I think it's probably storing itself up for some point, e.g. maybe her 1 year anniversary, or if the cat dies or the ILs get ill. We all react in different ways and your way sounds healthier than mine!

Stillsoverysad the truth is that they were actually the 6th and 7th significant bereavements we'd endured in less than 3 years. I very nearly went mad, tbh, and I look back at that awful awful awful time and wonder how on earth we all got through it. The worst thing was that DD was only just 10 years old when mum died. Mum lived with us, and dd saw her every day, spent so much time with her, mum, and her little flatlet in the house, was a safe haven for dd and mum was a second mother to her. And yet, dd, 23 now, has grown up to be a well-balanced woman, who is generous with her time, hard working and kind. But tough? She HAS it! I am so proud of her I can't describe it, and I think it was largely she who got me through by just being alive and needful.

I'm not surprised you nearly went mad @Jux . I'm finding one hard enough

I think it was largely she who got me through by just being alive and needful.

Honestly as hard as it is I think having to be a carer has done the same for me. it means i have to cook food and meals and not be depressed and full of wine all the time.

I feel a bit insane though at the moment. I get upset by the slightest thing and I am also hair-trigger sensitive. I'm snappy and really angry and irritable at the world. I'm sure this is anniversary related.

I want my mummy back. that's the only thing that will help. its impossible though. i hate that thought. i suppose thats some progress that I can even articulate that.

Oh, lovely, xxx

That anger comes and goes for a while yet, and it's largely frustration - well, I think it was with me - that there's nothing I can do to change it, and we're used to being the solvers of problems for our dependents and yet, here we are, helpless.

I'm pretty much an atheist though don't generally label myself as such, but I found myself wandering into the local church one day just for a bit of quiet really, contemplative quiet where no one would bother me. On the way out a sweet old lady asked if there was anything anyone could help me with, and I said "I just want......" and cried. She was so so lovely. Afterwards, she started popping in, very infrequently, she never mentioned my church visit just would say hi and oh you look busy can I help and stuff. She wasn't a nosy old bag or a gossip just a really nice old lady. We all remained occasional friends until she became too infirm and went to live closer to her family.

I'm not suggesting you pop into church, though obviously you could, but see if you can find the occasional 20 minutes or half an hour completely away from everything and just sit. Look at trees, or flowers, not in your back garden where you can be disturbed, but away somewhere. And turn your phone off!

But you did use it in an offensive way and in my opinion should have asked for the post to be deleted.

@user1469908686’s post really resonates with me, about my dad. He died decades ago but I think about him and miss him every day. Am welling up, just writing this. But the grief does eventually slot into your life and you become less conscious of it. You don’t get over the grief, but you do get used to it.

Huge sympathy for your deep and heartbreaking loss. She was clearly so very special to you and must have been such a wonderful person for you to miss her so keenly.

My wonderful mother passed away 12 years ago (and in another country, making it even harder) - it's hard to believe it's been so long. She was in poor health which helped with the rational acceptance of it but not the emotional pain of realising that someone rare and irreplaceable had gone, the one person whose opinion really mattered to me and whom I truly respected as well as loved. - It was so hard though not being able to pick up the phone for a chat, for at least a couple of years afterwards

Time is a 'healer' to an extent, though, as the cliche goes. The pain is still there, but is different: now more a sense of how very fortunate I am to have had a mother like that at all (and spared the narcissistic kind who I have seen wreak havoc on their children's lives and emotions). Someone selfless,witty and wise who just built others up and made people feel somehow understood and whole in her presence. I saw someone on Instagram recently explaining how the fact that her pain (over the loss of a dearly loved husband) still remains so acute and raw, also means that he is still to her always very much alive and there. That makes a kind of sense to me. I hope it might help you too.