If you’re grieving, share something you don’t feel able to say out loud

[Tinywedding]

I’ll go first. I haven’t said these things to anyone as I’m worried they make me a monster.

For context, my dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness (that has a 100% fatality rate whatever stage it’s diagnosed) when I was in my 20s and passed relatively recently.

I really want them to find a cure for his illness so no one ever needs to go through this. But I don’t want them to find a cure too quickly. That would absolutely destroy me if they discovered a miracle cure that he only just missed. Tbh even a recent drug advancement has made me really upset and envious. And then I feel so guilty because I know there are families that desperately need a cure right now.

When it was clear he was dying, I was always hopeful that there would be some miracle that saved him. But caring for him for over a year day and night and his decline took such a toll on me that in the last month of his life I remember thinking ‘oh my god, if he was miraculously cured he does still have to die at some point. Then I’d have to do this again 10-20 years down the line. And I don’t have it in me.’

Maybe no one will respond to this thread but I just had to get these thoughts off my chest. Thank you for reading.

I read and hear so much about last conversations and goodbyes with loved ones as there are dying. I’m so angry that my last 28 days with my DD she was unconscious and didn’t even know we were there. I didn’t get to tell her so much, and I’m madder than hell at that.
People say ‘she knew you were there’ but I can’t feel that.

I’ve read this entire thread and am so very sorry for the losses that have been shared here. Truly heartbreaking. I’ve had a lot of deaths and serious illnesses among my family and friends in the past few years, and it’s left me with a sort of anxiety I never thought I would have. Who’s going next? Will it be me? How would my children cope?

I’ve seen friends lose their loved ones in their 40s after tragic accidents, or cancer diagnoses that led to death within weeks, other friends’ parents die, one of my own parents seriously unwell, and it all seems so random and unfair. Just today I was told a lovely man I used to work with and had kept in touch with since we both moved on from that company, died yesterday very suddenly. On the one hand this makes me feel that I should do my best to live every day to the fullest, on the other hand it seems not unreasonable to imagine that I could also be dead this time next year, so why am I still so stressed about work? I’m only 50. But 4 of my friends never saw their 50th birthdays, leaving young children, spouses, family devastated.

Life can be very unkind. I do think that for those grieving, your loved ones would want you to live your lives, enjoy life as much as you can. Even if only in small moments while remembering them.

My friend passed away suddenly 2 years ago.

I miss you all the time. I miss you more than i imagined I possibly could. We had not been close in distance for 15 years but upon your death you took with you the one person in this world who always accepted me for me no hidden agenda.

I miss knowing that person is alive in the world.

I regret not being able to tell you you were that person but deep down I think you knew as I think I was that person for you too.

I miss you Nic.

oh what a lovely tribute to your friend. It has brought tears to my eyes.
My sister was that person for me but not any more. When our father died she dropped me and moved on firstly to my mother then after falling out with her to a new friend. I have been sidelined as she no longer has need of me at least at present.
It is a weird grief on top of the loss of my father because she is still alive but I can now see that the relationship that I thought was so close was actually just an illusion . The hurt has cut so deep and there seems to be no getting over it for me. I never knew losing a parent could disrupt so much more than than just their loss.

That grief within grief is so hard isnt it? I lost a friend when our close mutual friend died (he had cancer so we knew it was comming) after she couldn't be near me as I reminded her to much of her grief of our friend.

So I was grieving my friend who died and also grieving a lost friendship from the person I thought would get closer.

Its 5 years ago now and I have healed and have distance but I recall how hard that was. Sometimes I still want to pick up the phone and speak with her.

Urgh yes very much ALL of this.

I even look at my own son, who is the age i was when my mum died and think how innocent he is and can focus on his own life, make his own choices without it all being about grief, family politics and other peoples feelings.

There is something I don't feel able to say out loud. But I don't even feel able to say it here, because it is too distressing. Even with a trigger warning, I think people would regard it as too much to expect people to encounter.

So, don't worry, I'm not going to say it. I'll just say in general terms what sort of thing it is.

It concerns the manner in which my son killed himself. He was suicidal, but it's not clear to me whether he fully intended to kill himself at that time, or whether the injuries were just the product of a chaotic and fairly prolonged burst of self-harm. What I want to do is describe the injuries. I want to list them, in some detail. but I know I can't do that. No one can be expected to hear it.

A few weeks after he died, something so horrible happened that I can still barely believe it now. We were his guarantors in a rental agreement, and the property managers emailed me to say that the police had let the landlord down by failing to pay for the clean up of the flat in which my son died. Therefore, they were asking me to pay the several hundred pound costs of removing all the bloodstains. I paid it, of course, because I just wanted the horror of that request to go away (and because I did feel sorry for the landlord of course). But it was numbing, a trauma all of its own inside the larger trauma. I still can't believe that anyone could bring themelves to write that email.

My Mum died between Christmas and New Year. She'd been ill for a long time and it was a blessed release when she went.

My lovely Dad is/was utterly devoted to her. When caring for her at home became too much he visited her every single day in her care home. By the end he was the only person she reliably recognised and her face would light up when he walked into the room. They had been married over 59 years and one of the things he said when she died was how he's hoped they'd make it to 60 years.

A friend of mine and her husband have just received their congratulatory letter from The King and Queen on their diamond wedding anniversary. When she showed me it I wanted to howl and say that it should have been my parents (of course I didn't do that, I was pleased and happy for my friend and her husband as well).

@MyThreeWords
I am so sorry x

I’m glad she died. It made me more happy than sad.

To add some context, she was suffering for such a long time. I think I was supposed to feel sad at the loss but I had already lost her for 2 years before she died. I know some people take comfort in the fact the person is now at peace whilst also grieving for them, but I just haven’t. I don’t need comfort. Her death really did, in the main, make me happy.

I feel fucking horrendous admitting this. I loved her so very deeply and she was there for me from the day I was born until she became unwell. I should feel sad, but I just don’t.

Hit like a punch to the guts.

Best, most descriptive true words I have read in a long time x

Ohh, thank you!
It’s only with my son that we really talk together like that, about the bitterness, unfairness, the raw pain, the grenade-like effect it had on our whole house ( we both nursed DH at home and he died there ) Oh, how different our lives would have been had DH lived.
In “polite society” you have to keep those sort of words bottled up, cos people don’t know what to do with other peoples grief. They don’t know what to do with the grieving person so quietly you get dropped, not invited to many things.
People I had known all my life starting crossing the road to avoid speaking to me.

That hurt.
That really bloody hurt.

I wanted to shout “it’s ok, his cancers not catching! He’s dead now, so you’ll be safe!”

But people can’t bear your grief.

I only found out many years later, that my DS quietly turned down university because as he put it
“ I couldn’t leave you Mother, you were barely surviving when I was here, I just couldn’t leave you on your own”
That broke my heart.

But people can’t bear your grief.

So true. What happened to my mum and therefore my family has been the most isolating experience of my life in a way that never really ends. It blows your life up and leaves a chasm around you.

Six months after my mum died, my boyfriend at the time informed me that since it had been six months I should have forgotten about her by then and moved on - and that it wasn't fair on other people (i.e. him) that I was still sad.

I am not sure how he survived saying that. Evil prick.

That's really awful @dragonexecutive .

It's stunning and quite disturbing when you realise just how limited some people's emotional landscapes are 😣

I had someone very close to me die by suicide about 14 years ago.

His mental health issues had been going on as long as I had known him, he had all the possible help such as people looking out for him, therapy, medication. But it was never enough and he didn’t do enough to help himself. He was also emotionally very draining to try and help.

After he died, i was shocked at first, but then felt relief that it was over for all of us.

It makes me think that suicide is not always a bad thing. Sometimes someone can’t be helped and I think they shouldn’t be forced to carry on if they don’t want to.

Exactly this. DH died of a smoking related cancer and smoked heavily all the way through chemo. He was warned it would make the side effects worse and reduce the effectiveness, but he did it anyway. He always said he could give up if he wanted to, he just didn't want to. I realise he was in huge denial about his addiction but it was still a kick in the teeth to DD and me every time he said it. I watched him suffer so much towards the end and sometimes I just wanted to scream "I hope it was worth it". It's been a year since he died and I'm still angry, but it's gradually decreasing. Some of his family have made big changes to their lifestyles after seeing the effects his had on him, so that's something at least.

But people can’t bear your grief.

I don't think it is always this. I think that in many cases particularly with younger deaths where your contemporaries and friends are also younger, people have no experience of grief, don't understand it and are frightened as they don't know what to say, so they avoid.

It's now common to get to late middle age sometimes older without having experienced significant grief because people live longer. I mean look at say Princess Anne - she was 70 before her father died.

Once you've been through it you get it and I don't think someone who has experienced grief typically does the avoiding thing. I think it's mostly people who haven't experienced deep grief, people who aren't that close to the bereaved person, and people who for personality reasons don't want to face someones emotions. You can probably add to that people who are in raw grief as well. When you are in the worst of it, other people's grief can be too much to cope with.

I suppose it doesn't matter what the reasons are because grief is definitely an isolating experience.

I feel your post.

My husband died very suddenly last autumn.
Our children are 10 and 15,
I feel like I am dying from my own rage at what they have been dealt and desperation at not being able to lift their pain

Mythreewords - I empathise with you about your son. I keep seeing my son as he looked when when I found him very ill and I won't describe it here.

Luckily I wasn't guarantee for his rent. His flat had never been modernised and the landlords would not do repairs. I emailed them to inform them that my son had died but did not give my contact details. I left them to do the clear out.

Well in answer to the posters question I don't feel I can say out loud that my friends abusive and violent husband was directly responsible for her suicide.

My brother hung himself. I feel so guilty because I didn't do enough to help him.

My “dad” is far beyond wicked. He is alive. He has conned people, stolen from shops, threatened death to his poor neighbours and anyone who he is cross with, abused my mum and me and my siblings. He’s an absolute fucking monster and when he cheated on my mum for probably the 5th time, he bullied and threatened my mum into having about 20% of the house’s value which she accepted to get away from him. Why is my younger mum laying dying of cancer and my older dad walking around fit as a flea, continuing to terrorise everyone he encounters. Why won’t a bus run him over?

I am probably jealous of anyone who has gotten to my age (40s) and never experienced the loss of anyone close to them. It feels very unfair. I lost my remaining parent last year.

Grief seems to be like an old friend that keeps coming back

This resonates with me. They are usually the people who say I couldn’t imagine losing my sister, we’re so close. I feel like saying lucky you, and you think I wasn’t close to mine? And then rather darkly, I think don’t worry, you’ll lose someone eventually and it will probably hit you like a tonne of bricks because you’ve gone through life with zero empathy for anyone else. Their time will come. I feel bad for thinking like that but I can’t help myself.