Memories and sadness.

[sleeptight1]

My Mum passed away suddenly 3rd April; I had to perform CPR which was quite traumatic and was unsuccessful.

It would have been her birthday today and I've been doing really well. I had a lot of flashbacks at the beginning and have done lots of self help to try and overcome it. I still get flashes of that day but I don't get the bodily reactions (racing heart, fear etc ). This is progress.

I'm not crying everyday and can talk about her without bursting into tears, which I couldn't do in the first couple of weeks.
I was really close to my Mum, I spoke to her everyday, we would go on holidays together (Mum, Dad, me, husband and my two children). She was a strong presence throughout their childhood.

At the moment whenever I look at photos from times when she was alive - I just feel sad. Not necessarily photos she was in. I heard the theme tune to Peppa pig the other day and remembered how my youngest loved it when he was little and then flash back to those time and they just feel sad now - because she in't here anymore.

I hear songs from the 80's and get transported to my own childhood and it just all feels sad now. No memory feels happy or positive - just sad.

Does anybody else feel like this? Has anyone felt like this and come out the other side?

I'm so sorry about your mum.

What you're describing is completely normal, it's not even been 2 months. It will naturally and gradually become easier to bear over time. Everything you've described is totally totally normal.

It's been 20 years since my mum died and I still remember the early months when I was so sad about every memory and couldn't imagine ever being able to remember them happily again.

But as times goes on and you process what's happened and find ways that help you cope best, it does gradually shift. There are still sad days, but I can remember happy times now. At some point you will be able to as well.

Please try not to give yourself a hard time about how you're grieving. You deserve kindness not a kicking. 💐

Sorry for your loss, I wish I could help but you are further on than me. What self help did you do?

Hi @sleeptight1 my mum died on 11th May & I'm feeling just as you describe.

All memories are now sad and painful even ones without her directly in them because they were before the time she died.
They were the time when she was still here. When the world was just as it always was.

I'm finding looking at pictures of my children when they were small hard. As that was such a happy time. I had my mum and my children, but now they're grown living their own lives and my mum has gone.
I feel so alone.

I'm trying to tell myself I still have my life to lead and need to find a way to do this, but I can't see a way to be happy again.
It feels like everything good is gone.

@AgapanthusWealthy I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your mum. It seems that it is a recent loss for us both. It is so hard isn't it?

@Fajita123 I saw your post on the other thread and I am so sorry for your loss too. I am still trying to learn about the process of grief and ways to get through it.

I was really close to my Mum and she was a huge part of my children's lives who are now 12 and 16. I feel that I am very much going through a 'depression' phase of grief at the moment where everything just feels sad. I'm not a religious person, I wish I was. I wish I was someone that could believe I would see her again, but alas, I am not.

It was Mum's birthday on saturday and we made a buffet for us and my Dad just to mark the day. On her birthday last year we were waiting on some good news on her birthday and I remember my husband saying to her ' Lets hope we get the good news other wise it will taint your birthday!'. It was a glorious day 25th May last year and I can't believe that a year on she is no longer here.

I've been reading lots of books about grief which is helping me to accept that I am going to have some uncomfortable emotions for some time to come. But then I just want to cry because things were going well just before she passed away. I was retraining for a new profession at the ripe age of 47 and was due to finish soon - she will never see it. I have just landed a job that I really wanted for when I qualify - but she won't be here. It makes me feel so sad and I just want to feel like I did before the 3rd April 2024. It feels like my life will forever be split into two parts.

I was reading that it is important to try and continue the relationship with your loved one, even though they are no longer physically present. My Mum loved David Austin Roses so we purchased one for her birthday and we've decided that everytime we get some good news, we will buy another - a potted rose that we can take with us when we move as we don't expect to be in our current home forever. It is nice looking after the rose and waiting for it to flower.

A while ago both my Mum and I did DNA tests for Ancestry and as she is my Mum - her results came back as a 50% match. I got me thinking about a documentary a few years back with Robert Winston who was looking into whether there is life after death. His scientific conclusion was that life after death is through the children and grandchildren we have. So I am finding some comfort in thinking that I have 50% of my mum's DNA so often have an internal dialogue with her when I want to tell her something. I knew her so well that I know exactly what her response would be and can even hear her voice.

@AgapanthusWealthy Like you everything feels tainted with sadness but I know deep down there will come a point where I will be able to look back on those memories and feel joy. I think when we lose someone our thoughts become hyper focused on their final days, hours etc. My mum died suddenly at home after going for a rest as she has a headache and sickness. We were visiting and I found her passed away but had to do CPR. My friend is a funeral celebrant and she reminded me that that day is just a tiny blip in the 47 years of memories that I have of her. At the moment I am hyperfocused on this and the sadness of it all, but I am trying not stop that being my main memory of her. Even though it is painful, I have tried to look at photos and videos as after a little while it does take away the rawness and replaces it with sadness which I guess shows progress in my mind processing it all?

You are right. We still have our lives to lead and I am sure both of our lovely Mum's would want us to be happy and make the most of it. Likewise, I think it is also important that we accept these feelings as being part of our brain coming to terms with everything. Sending you huge hugs xx

So sorry for your loss OP and others replying 💕

My Dad passed away just over 6 months ago and my mother nearly 2 years ago. I still feel it’s at an early stage of recovery re my Dad. He was mid 90s but seemed indestructible. Losing Mum had obvious impact on him as they had been together for around 70 years. He had 2 falls, the first of which was on our DCs birthday. Not as traumatic as what you described but similarly difficult.

On a good day I can think of them both at peace and together again, but some days I think of them when they were ill/in decline. It will get better 💕

Very sorry for your loss @sleeptight1

It is entirely to be expected that you still have very strong feelings of sadness and shock.

For a bereavement of someone close, anything up to two years is considered 'recent'. Give yourself lots of room and time to feel your emotions, to process what happened and to slowly start to think about life without your mum.

Hello, I'm so sorry. As others have said, this is still very early days however one thing I have learnt about grief is that it is not linear. It changes as time passes and you kind of live a new reality around it.

I lost my mum two years ago. It was a sudden and traumatic death- completely unexpected. I wasn't with her but have needed counselling related to the death which did help in terms of finding ways to look at grief differently.

I felt very much like you describe for several months I think. Mum and I were very close. I remember thinking that as well as the pain of missing Mum, that all pleasurable things in life were now gone. Food might as well have been sawdust, I couldn't watch films or TV as my mind kept returning to what had happened, if i listened to music (which i loved to do) it reminded me of mum. I couldn't look at photos for quite a long time.

I still miss mum terribly and always will and there are times when that sense of missing her is so strong it takes my breath away. However despite my fears early on, I do also enjoy life again. i enjoy music, food, TV, film. I can look at photos with love and remember Mum. I've been able to laugh and joke.

It is a journey that we haven't wanted to be on- I have teenagers too and their closeness with mum and their own grief is a whole other situation. But I wanted you to know it can and will feel different to how you feel now.

Oh @sleeptight1 i send you a big cuddle. Everything you’ve written resonates with me so much but I’m a few months further along in the grief journey or whatever it is. I feel the same. I was actually saying to my husband last night that I just don’t want to feel like this forever. What if I’m always this sad? What if every Christmas and birthday is now tainted by the fact that my Mum isn’t here with me? I wish I had an answer for you.

The only thing I can tell you from experience, as my Dad died quite traumatically, is that the “final days/ moments” memories fade a lot faster than the happy ones. I remember looking at my dad in the hospital bed and thinking that it didn’t even look like him anymore and I was panicking that it would be the way I remembered him. Now I remember that feeling but not how he looked if that makes sense? That has been a comfort.

One foot in front of the other is the best advice anyone can give, and be kind to yourself.

My late wife believed in heaven. I wasn't such a believer in the heaven that the church preaches.

My 'heaven' is based on heaven being the happy memories of the person who has gone, their legacy. So in my mind my wife is in heaven as so many people have such loving memories of her. Of course, 'hell' is the opposite.

Gets me through the days.

It's not even been four months yet so I do think about her last days but I think I actively make myself remember those, almost to punish myself (don't know why) But when memories are triggered by everyday things, it's always happy times. Still sad and hurtful but also make me smile.

To all who have lost a loved one. Cherish the memories.

I'm so sorry for your loss OP.

I lost my mum suddenly 3 years ago. One minute I was chatting to her on the phone and an hour later she was gone from a massive heart attack.

As a 'veteran' of 3 years, I recognise many of the feelings you talk about. The shock, the fear, the utter disbelief, the sense that your foundations have been ripped up...that's all grief and loss and there isn't a shortcut through it.

Everyone's journey is different but for me it felt as though the heavy misery first began to lift after about a year. I'd then relapse a bit and then be ok for a bit and so on. Three years on, I still have days where I can't believe she's gone or where I suddenly remember the traumatic day she died and I relive it all over again.

I think the load gets easier and lighter as time goes on and instead of grief overwhelming your life, your life starts to shape around it and somehow it's just a lighter to carry. Of course everyone was different but as someone who's a few years ahead of you, I would say that yes there is hope 'on the other side'.

But it's not a race and at such early stages, go really easy on yourself.

@billyt I'm sorry for your loss of your wife.

I have been reading a book called Proof of Heaven about a near death expereince by a neuro urgeon, and Life After Life which is based on many reports of near death experiences.

I have found them very comforting. I am a Christian so believe we are more than just our bodies, but couldn't imagine what this might mean. I also feel so sad at times thinking 'poor mum, not here with us, she'll be missing us' and feel sad for her.

These books have helped me imagine what she has gone though and that it was a beautiful experienece for her and she is not sad.

It's helped me think about life here in our material bodies, and that it's something very temporary for us left behind till we join her, and we need to live it.

I know this may not help you, as it's something that doesn't resonate with everyone. But I thought I would share as you raised the concept of heaven, which I've always struggled with too despite being Christian.

I very sincerely beleive we have very ,limitde experience of much deeper truths and realities beyind our imaginations and that death leads to experience this.

But it doesn't mean I miss her any less. I want her here with me in this material world as she was. But I am glad I believe she is somewhwhere peaceful in divine light.

@sleeptight1 I feel the same, that all the memories of the past are tinged with sadness, and that they all sit in the 'before' times, my old life, when my mum was alive. My mum died on the 7th May, just a few days before yours @AgapanthusWealthy

Just before my mum died I was planning a photo organisation project, gathering all digital ones, organising them, scanning in printed photos. It was my son's 21st this month and I wanted to make him a photo book of his journey from 0-21. I was going to do this with my mum when I visited her in early May, then help her move into a new house, but instead, she became ill, went to hospital, and died a week later. She'll never see the photos now.

I've managed to scan some photos of my son's baby days but it's been so tough as my mum is in a lot of the photos, and seeing the past when her and my nana were alive is almost unbearable. I also need to scan lots of photos of my mum for the celebration of her life next month. It's so hard.

Love to all on this thread who have lost someone.

My dad died on April the 14th. I think I’m sadder now because it’s really sinking in. I miss him so much.

It’s just horrible isn’t it x

@EveningSunlight it's just been my son's 21st birthday too!

I feel a combination of the loss of hihs childhood as well as my mum, if that makes any sense? It's like a grief for the past and not just my mum.
I want him to be a little boy again and my mum to be around heloing me with the kids.

I want my old life, this new life without my mum and the children grown feels so empty.

I feel a fool for not realising they were the best days and how lucky I was. I took so much for granted.

I know everything changes, but it feels like everything has chnaged all at once and I wasn't prepared.

I'm not sure if that makes sense?

@Piscesmumma1978 I'm so scared of it getting even worse, but others have said to me it does get worse as the reality sets in.

We have 2 holidays bookedwhhc she was meant to come on with us and was really looking forward to. We're now going to have to go without her and I'm dreading it.