My mum died yesterday

[Mama3029]

My mum died yesterday after a short critical illness and 24 hours in the ICU. She had been an alcoholic for all of her adult life and we had a strained relationship. She left the family home when I was 8 and we didn’t manage to maintain much of a relationship after that. There were periods of time when we were closer but things always ended badly/abruptly because of her alcoholism.

We hadn’t physically seen each other for 3 years, the last time we spoke was January 2023.

my aunt told me that she was very unwell on Saturday but this was in the middle of the night. Her heart stopped the following morning and she was put on a ventilator. She was sedated and didn’t wake up after that. I was with her when her heart stopped.

Ive never lost anyone in my family before. Im a licensed therapist so I understand grief, I understand I’m not supposed to push away my feelings or thoughts. I know on some level what I’m experiencing is normal. It’s so early days but I can’t sleep, I can’t close my eyes without seeing her face as it was in the ITU, I can’t even say the words ‘my mum died’ out loud right now. My husband is being supportive and as helpful as he can, but he had to guess what had happened because I couldn’t physically speak the words.

The worst thing is that none of my friends know, I was with a work friend at the time I got the message she was unwell because we were out for dinner and I didn’t want her to think I was acting weird so she’s been great. My ‘close’ friends from university I have realised probably aren’t as close anymore because I don’t feel like I can reach out and tell them. We’ve all drifted apart over the last few years due to jobs, kids and marriages but stay in touch - seeing each other once every month or two and chit chatting about stuff that doesn’t matter (how are you, what have you been doing etc… ) but honestly, I’ve realised that I don’t feel like I can text or call them to tell them this. That level of intimacy feels like it’s gone. I don’t even know how to start that conversation even though they know my history with mum. I think their reaction to it would make me feel even more uncomfortable than I already feel. Trying to keep this all together in front of my 3 year old makes this even harder, I can’t fall apart because I’ve got to be her mum.

It’s strange to me that I can come here and post all of this to strangers but I don’t feel like I can talk to people I actually know.

I would really appreciate some advice from other people that might have been here

Condolences.

This sounds like 'ambiguous grief', which as a therapist I'm sure you already understand. It seems to me even more painful than 'straightforward' grief.

I know you already know a lot about grief - it's great you posted here, your grief needs to be witnessed.

'Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.' @iamdavidkessler

Sorry I have no advice, just wanted to reply and hopefully bump your thread.

Posting to strangers is often easier as you can be completely unreserved, nobody here knows you. Vent away, you are among friends.

Sorry to hear about your mum. I suspect you are grieving now about two things. One is the loss of your mum, but in a way, the bigger thing will be the finality of the loss of the relationship that you never had. I imagine that you probably think you have reconciled that the 'normal' parent child relationship didn't happen for you, however there is a finality to it now that will take a while to process.

Take your time, allow yourself time to grieve.

And have a big hug from all of us.

Remember that therapists need their own therapy sometimes. Please get the help you need. Her death has triggered something very profound which is not simply grief.

I'm sorry your mum has passed, and yes I've been there too.

Naively, I thought that by distancing myself from my mum the grief would hurt less as I'd already "mourned" any mothering relationship - but that just wasn't the case and I couldn't comprehend just how much it hurt, the extent of the numbness and the shock of it all.

There were all sorts of complicated feelings, and in truth it felt easier to push them aside than actually reconcile them, but as an adult child of an alcoholic - I think it's really really difficult to work through grief, there is still too much societal shame around alcoholism in families, and the instinct to keep family affairs private us a tough nut to crack.

Please give yourself more time and space to heal than you think you need, funerals bring out the very best and worst in people so try not to be blindsided but strange behaviours in others, and finally, people often don't know what to say to the bereaved and so withdraw - it's not you, its ignorance on their part.

However you can get through the coming weeks and months, try to use the world and people around you as touchstones, you can find solace in very unexpected places.

Thank you for your kind words. I’ve been experiencing anticipatory grief for quite some time. We’ve been here before with mum time and time again where she became very unwell, wouldn’t help herself and we had to step in as a family. She would always find a way to defy the odds pull through. I don’t know how she made it to 60 in honesty. We’ve been in limbo for years waiting for this to happen (at least 10 years, if not longer)

The reality somehow always hits harder, it’s intense sadness but a relief at the same time. Sadness for what we didn’t have and for the life lost but also reassurance that she is no longer in pain and suffering (physically and psychologically)

Losing my mum was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with. From your description, your relationship with your mum sounds similar to my relationship with my dad (gambling addict rather than alcoholic) who I have also lost.

Both their deaths triggered a deep and profound cycle of healing for me. It’s often been painful, very disorientating and dislocating and my life has changed several times over during that time. But I would say it has been the most transformative period of my life and I had no idea that this level of emotional connection with myself was possible.

One thing was that I really found out who my friends were. It was often surprising how that turned out. And I found new friends along the way. Like you, I was less close to my university friends than I had been and felt kind of isolated.

I was the first of my friends to lose a parent. It made it difficult for a lot of my friends to understand what I was going through. That, sadly, changed in time and I also met and connected with new people who had lost parents. That really helped.

Several years later I remember chatting to the fiancés of one of DH’s friends. She wa talking about their upcoming wedding and the plans they were making. Her mum had a wedding dress shop and we were speaking about wedding dresses. I said I just ordered mine online as I couldn’t face having to try them on without my mum there and I kind of broke and apologised for it.

She just looked me straight in the eye and said “I know what it’s like, I lost my dad. You just think about who’s not going to be there.” and it was the first time I really felt that someone my own age got it and understood.

I’ll add that I really came to understand the phrase “it’s coming up to go”.

There was a lot of trauma that came up, from my childhood and also adult relationships with my parents.

I think because my body held on to a lot of those things out of self-protection and I was finally able to really let them go on a deep level because those people were no longer around and I didn’t need to retain specifically attuned hypervigilances any more.

So some trauma based work
might be wise, and consider somatic as well as talk based therapy for that.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I’m so sorry to hear what you’ve all been through.

My work entails working with traumatic grief, complicated grief and birth trauma. Bereavement often falls to my counselling colleagues. I practice CBT and EMDR and my natural way of coping is to intellectualise my emotions (something I’ve become very aware of). It’s also hard in my profession because you want to go to the nearest therapist and ask for help but in doing that at this stage I feel like I am invalidating what I know is a very normal emotional response to this experience. I will definitely consider seeking out some EMDR if I’m still struggling to process these images and memories in the next 3-4 weeks.

I guess I’m just having a moment where I’ve realised that I’m reevaluating my closest relationships because what I’m feeling now doesn’t feel safe with them. That feels sad too.

Also maybe consider playing Tetris a good bit over the next few days. It’s been shown to reduce incidence of PTSD after a traumatic event. I got PTSD from being present at my mum’s death.

Dealing with that event based PTSD then became dealing with the C-PTSD from my childhood.

I had always dealt with things via over intellectualisation so there was a lot of repressed emotion and unresolved trauma. Grief and the removal of the people involved in creating the trauma combined to just absolutely overwhelm that coping mechanism.

And as it sounds like you’ve just experienced the death of your mum, are experiencing intrusive thoughts and are feeling unsafe in your friendships & possibly a need to isolate, please make sure you’re not alone for the upcoming days. You could be at risk.