Mothers anniversary

[Tiddlesem]

My mother died when I was 10 years old from breast cancer, I remember visiting her in hospital and her passing away in our house. They had a priest come to our house to tell us that mommy is going to die.
Anyway it's coming up to her anniversary 22 years and I feel so sad. What nice things do people do to deal with the sadness that comes around at anniversaries etc. Finding it so hard as I have 2 young DDs who I have to look after but I'm struggling to be present or play with them at all.

Oh OP that's tough.

Totally different scenarios but my dad died three years ago and each anniversary since I take my mum and my 2 DSs away for two or three nights. So we have a good time as a family, make lovely memories and spend time talking about grandpa. I just hated that sad feeling and wanted to make it more of a celebration each year

@catin8oots thank you and I'm sorry for your loss also. Losing a parent is so hard. The grief really has been hitting me hard but it's obviously been such a long time that it's surprising how strong the emotion is..

Today is my sister's 10th anniversary. Bastille Day too, she loved France and everything about it. She was 49.

At some private part of the day I put the tiny souvenir French flag beside a nice pic of me and her in Nice, and say Au Revoir, till we meet again, and of course a tear or two.

Sorry for your loss. It never goes away, but anniversaries are often quite tough x

My mum also died from cancer quite young although I was older than you were when your mother died. I can't imagine what that must have been like for you. I'm around the 20 year anniversary mark too and I've never succeeded at trying to do nice or celebratory things. Sometimes the sadness still takes my breath away.

I don't know if this is the case for you but I think for me it's because some of my anniversary sadness is reliving how she died and the awfulness of that, so it doesn't sit right with me trying to do celebrations around that time of year. It makes me feel worse but I know other people find it helpful and I respect that.

I let myself be sad without beating myself up and just trying to focus on looking after myself and riding out the waves of sadness. I try to find things that are comforting to get me through one moment at a time, eg maybe listening to a podcast or some music. Sometimes I just write off the day and accept that I am not up to much.

I am sorry you're struggling. If you can, try not to beat yourself up for how you're feeling. I hope that if you were feeling physically off colour you wouldn't give yourself a hard time for being temporarily less present with your girls - see if you can think of this the same way. You're not a robot, we all have spells when we're not quite ourselves, it doesn't hurt anyone in the long run.

Even though it's been a long time you're still allowed to feel sad. Be gentle with yourself 💐