Four years on and feeling intense guilt for being happy

[SomethingInTheAirToday]

I lost my nan nearly four years ago, just after Christmas. I know for a lot of people they’ll think that it’s silly to be that upset by a grandparent passing, but all three of my other grandparents had died before I was born and she and I were very close. It destroyed me for a while, I spent the first year after her passing in what I would call a depression and really struggled to do much without being upset the entire time.

it’s eased over the last few years but I’ve always found Christmas very difficult. Her last Christmas was horrible and it really ruined the season for me. But this year, I actually feel quite excited for it and it’s making me feel really guilty. I also have some really exciting plans in the new year and again I’m feeling so guilty for being excited. She would feel so anxious about what I’m doing and I almost feel like I’m disrespecting her memory by doing them.

I know I’m being silly but how do you cope with it?

Please realise that you’re supposed to eventually feel happy, even after an immense loss. Yes at the start of those glimpses of happiness you will feel guilt but you know in your heart that your grandmother would never want you to live your life in the fog of loss.

I felt the same after I lost my younger brother. When I gave birth to my second, I felt such huge joy but was hit with grief that he never met him. But you have to allow yourself to move through the grief and find your pieces of happiness. That is what life is about.

There is no timeline to follow and you have to make your own way through it. It will throw curveballs at you, and some days it will leave you breathless, but one day you will think of her and smile instead of cry.

Im so sorry for your loss,

I think it’s very normal. This is my second Christmas without my mum and I was really surprised to find myself looking forward to Christmas Day with my young children. Then I felt immensely guilty to think I could enjoy it without my mum there. I think that after a huge loss that is just life - there will always be a deep sadness for the absence of that person, it just becomes a part of you rather than all of you over time.