For Anyone Needing Support After Losing a Parent. Very Supportive Thread (November 2023)

[Crunchymum]

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

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/bereavement/4493231-For-Anyone-Needing-Support-After-Losing-a-Parent-Very-Supportive-Thread-March-2022?page=39&reply=130357515

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

Can I join? DM died on 30 November a month ago.

I’ve nodded at so many of the posts I’ve read on here, putting my thoughts to paper. I’m so sorry there are so many of us going through this. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The overwhelm of dealing with the admin and clearing her beautiful house where I had 32 Christmases. It feels so empty now without her there.

She was my best friend. She was so wise. I worry I won’t make good decisions now she’s gone. I’d talk over everything big in my life and she was so helpful. Lots of pieces fell into place after a chat with DM.

She used to text me too about stuff on the telly if there was something good coming up.

Chatted every day, texted every day. We’ve been away since Boxing Day and I used to call her when I got back. And text her pictures when we were away. Always in touch.

She loved DB and I dearly. I feel so alone. She’s just a memory now and I still can’t fathom it. I look up at your sky and wonder where she is now. It seems unreal to imagine she no longer exists.

I talk out loud to her every day and tell her about what’s going on in my life. When I’m on my own. I recorded some of our conversations before she died so I’d have that feeling still when she’d gone of us being together. I miss her so much.

So sorry you are going through this @JaffaCake24 I lost my mum in March. She was my best friend too so I get you.

I came here now as I can hear fireworks going off and people celebrating. There’s no celebrating in my house. Just the acknowledgement that the worst year of my life has ended and a new one has begun and with that there is hope of little bit of peace albeit I burst in to tears as soon as I realised it was midnight. I cried like a baby for my mum and everything I have lost this year.

Sending love to each and every one of you ❤️

My dad died on the 23rd November (suddenly, after being sent home from hospital when he shouldn't have been!) and I just can't seem to be able to come to terms with the fact that I won't see him again. It still doesn't feel real. I keep thinking that one of these days he'll just walk into my house or phone me for a chat. It's just so horrible.

My mum has been staying with me since my dad died. Her own health isn't great and my dad did everything for her. I worry that I will lose her too, so I am trying to mind her as best I can.

Very grateful to have this thread and all of you lovely, supportive, understanding people ❤️

A new year ticking over feels like losing her all over again.

DM died at the end of October ('23) just turned 74. Unexpected, traumatic.

I can't believe I won't see her again. That she won't see a sunrise or her grandchildren get bigger. It was too soon.

Tonight feels as painful as that night. My heart is breaking all over again. For us all - I am so sorry.

I'm sending what little strength I have left to you all, sisters. We will survive, but tonight I am an open wound.

A new year without her in it. I can't believe it.

Thanks everyone for the supportive posts. I feel absolutely awful at the turn of the new year. It really is like another loss thinking it's a new year and she is no longer here. She was so full of life. I've been to her grave 3 times since her death and it just makes me feel worse.

Thinking of you all

This thread has been a great support, thank you all and so sorry for your losses.

This afternoon I have to take my mum to the out of hours doctor at the hospital where my dad died. I haven’t been back since we walked out of there the day he died. Obviously very concerned about my mum, but so many other emotions too

Thank you everyone who posted in the last day or two. NYE would have been an awful struggle without you but it's good to know my thoughts are normal. I feel like a weight has been lifted now it's behind me. I need to change the calendars over and also have to take down the Christmas tree later which will be a wrench...but it's time to move forward and get out of this weird festive no man's land.

@Nishky32 hope you mum is ok. It’s so difficult isn’t it. My son was admitted to MAU where my mum was before she died and being back on that ward just broke me completely.

I lit a candle 🕯️ for my parent today, I just wanted to say that for those of us struggling with bereavement - we did it, we got through the worst of the festivities, it's been really really tough throughout - starting another year but I feel like I achieved something just getting through it all. Xx

@JaffaCake24 I hear you. Constant contact. Constant photos and silly screenshots and sharing of views of what’s going on on the tv. It feels so strange that there is nobody to send WhatsApp messages or photos of the kids to now. Her messages have moved further and further down my WhatsApp inbox now as so many send Happy New Year gifs. I can’t delete her messages but I can’t read them for fear I’m trying to reach out to touch a wisp of mist.

Every New Year’s Day we had a big meal and homemade trifle. I forgot to ask her what her recipe was and it’s left me in such a panic. I can’t get anything back now or ask her about her past or about when I was small. I don’t know how to move forward with any certainty. Thank you for the poem @MeinKraft those are wise words. I wish it just didn’t bloody hurt so much. Back to work tomorrow to deal with all the stress and pressure and juggle but I feel like my legs are made of lead.

May 2024 bring all of us some comfort and peace x

Wishing everyone on this thread a peaceful new year.

To those of you having just done your first festive period, well done. You muddled through and are out the other side. Grief doesn't disappear but it gradually eases and becomes less acute and more bearable. To me it's a darkness I now carry deep within.

My first Christmas without my mum was 2020 (so the height of Covid and restrictions were in place that first Christmas so I couldn't be with my family). Mum had died suddenly and unexpectedly 3 months before and she loved Christmas, in fact one of the pictures we used for her funeral was of her in front of the Christmas tree. I wanted to honour her by making that first Christmas special but I just couldn't. Spent most of Christmas day in the kitchen crying. It was bleak and dark and a very sad time, not just because I'd lost my lovely mum but because I couldn't freely be with with my dad and siblings. My sister has bubbled with my dad so he wasn't alone but it was a weird time within a really weird time.

We've done three Christmases since and mum would be proud and happy to see our laughter and our fun. It's what she created for us every year and it's a wonderful way for us to commemorate her - we make Christmas as special as she always did.

I remember that first NYE. I didn't want to exist in a year my mum hadn't been alive in. I didn't want to year to turn, I wanted to lay down toddler tantrum style and refuse to leave 2020 as I felt like I was leaving mum behind.

It does become easier and I've worked hard to reframe my thinking about it all. I try not to feel guilt that I'm another year away from my mum being alive. I try to see I'm a year forwards in being a loving a kindd and present mum to my kids, just how my mum was for us ❤️

There'll always be tears at Christmas but there'll always be happiness too.

I’m so sorry. It all takes so long doesn’t it? It can take quite a long time to get a post mortem normally but with Christmas I imagine it has increased quite a bit. It took 4 weeks for my Dad’s post mortem to be carried out and then to get an interim death certificate. It will be 5 months to get the post mortem report apparently. We have been told to expect it to be around year before the whole coroners process is complete.

That’s how I feel. Dreading it. I have both my parents things at the house. My mum died before my Dad and he never moved her clothes etc. they are all still in the house for me to go through as well as his things. And I don’t live locally so it is more awkward but at the same time I want to go through it all. It is the same house I grew up in too so lots of memories there. I don’t want to pay a stranger to do it although I know at some point once I have gone through everything realistically I guess I will probably need some kind of house clearance company.

@Catsolitude hugs and sending love, I feel your pain so much. It's so hard to have lost that one person who loved me just as I am, unconditionally. She was the best DM and I felt at my very best when I was with her, like I could take on the world, I could cope with anything.

I don't know how we fill the void left behind. I'm very sorry you're going through this too. I hope with time life will feel less empty. I'm sure our DMs would want us to be happy - as that's what they wanted when they were alive. I keep trying to tell myself to cheer up as DM wouldn't want me morose and sad all the time. So I'm trying hard to have some good moments. But I'm still crying every day and wondering where she's gone.

I hope you have a reasonable day tomorrow at work and it's not too stressful going back. I have found keeping busy has helped a bit but I also want time to just think about DM and what it all means.

@Mepop I am dreading going through the house too. I'm telling myself millions of people have done this before me, including my own DM - but it's not making it any easier. Why are we so unprepared for death?

It reminds me of having my first baby, but the opposite experience. A new life full of joy and many new experiences. Now a life gone full of sadness and many new experiences. Perhaps we can't be prepared, in the way I couldn't have known what it was like to have children. I can't know now, what it's like to lose a parent until it actually happens. I find being human very hard at times.

@PepsiCoco that must have been so hard.
Mum is ok thank you, an issue with veins in her leg but not DVT

@Crunchymum sorry I was trying to thank you for your above post earlier when the toddler and baby derailed my typing and I had to ask mnhq if I could delete and start again (they are now asleep)

Your post summarises so much of what I'm feeling this Xmas/NY period and just can't seem to find the words (or, any words at all, sometimes I can't even make small talk with people anymore)

Another mummy IRL at a baby group told me I absolutely had to "make the magic" for my DC this year regardless of my grief- I didn't, I couldn't, I did everything in the usual way the elf/Xmas eve box/nativity/baking all of that but I was going through the motions. And faking it almost every day. Probably not all that successfully either.

There was times when I was sobbing unable to breathe doing the bottles and dishes because that's the only time I'm alone.

Your post gives me gentle hope that there might be hope, if that makes any sense. (Does anything I've said make sense idk?)

Sorry for the long post- thank you anyway is what I'm trying to say. Im so sorry for your bereavement too. As a mum whose lost a parent you get no headspace to process xx

I’m a new poster on this thread.
Heartbroken to say that we lost my beautiful Dad on 27th December.

He had metastatic cancer. Had tried radiotherapy, several rounds of chemotherapy, had an inoperable tumour. None of them were successful

I am numb at the moment, trying to support my Mum as well. Exhausted and drained.

Not sure how to find comfort at the moment

@QueenBean22 I am so sorry for your loss. My dad also had cancer and although we knew his death was imminent it was still a horrible shock when it happened. It’s so hard.
As well as supporting your mum, looking after yourself is important. I felt it helped when I really acknowledged my own grief, a couple of weeks later.

My mum died a few months ago. The end wasn't good tbh. I think I'm ok then see something like this thread and it just sets me off. 😢I'll bookmark it until I feel a bit stronger. Thank you x

I've dipped in and out of this thread for a while hoping I wouldn't need to post on it yet but unfortunately I lost my wonderful mum on the 29th December 2023 she was only 61.
She had been diagnosed with a reoccurrence of vulva cancer after 10 care free years cancer free and unfortunately was told it was stage 4 last June. Had chemo which after a while stopped working as it spread to her hip bone causing it to fracture, had a hip op and came out of hospital with a plan to trial a different chemo but unfortunately was readmitted to hospital on Christmas Eve and it seems she had pneumonia in both lungs and just couldn't recover from it but we are not entirely sure what happened as the hospitals communication was awful. There was no indication that she was end of life therefore devastatingly none of us were there when she passed as my father and brother had been sent home at the end of the normal visiting time. I'm clinging on to hope that she would not have been aware as she had been incredibly drowsy all week.
The last time I saw her was Christmas Day and I had no idea it would be the last. My heart is broken but I'm trying to stay strong for my 2.5 year old who she absolutely adored.

@Amethyst2502 you don't have to stay strong for your child. It is important that children see the reality of grief because then they know that grieving is normal and it's easier for them to grieve as they get older. So cry as much as you need to and don't bottle it up.

I'm so sorry that you've lost your mum. It's so hard. You are in the very early stages and in my experience, they are the worst. For me, it was like a physical pain, I wanted to tear my skin off and be outside my body because being inside it was just impossible to bear. Someone told me to take things an hour at a time, and then a day at a time, and that helped. Don't think too far into the future. Deal with the here and now. It's all you can do.

In time, you will need answers from the hospital (I am in a similar situation - my dad died in November. He was told that he was fine and there was nothing wrong with him and they sent him home. Less than two days later, he was dead), but for now, you just need to look after yourself. Keep going. You can do this. It is unbelievably and unbearably painful, but keep going. Thinking of you.

@Amethyst2502 so sorry to hear about your mum you'll be heartbroken.

Since my lovely dad on the 20th Dec nothing has progressed. We're still waiting on the post mortem and until then we can't arrange funeral dates etc. We're in limbo, sometimes I get so frustrated that I am in tears about anything and other times it's like I almost forget he's died and I'm laughing at something. Let's hope we hear something from the coroner today.

Thanks for the new thread. DM died in March and it’s still really difficult.
I wasn’t there when she died and the guilt is still eating away at me. I had a panic attack and started vomited so every one told me to go home and get some rest. No sooner had I drove 30 mins home and got in to bed and closed my eyes then I got the phone call.

I really didn't want to have to join this thread but my Dad died this morning. So sudden, paramedics couldn't save him. He was only 68. I'm heartbroken.