How do I know if I’m coping with grief or avoiding it?

[purplerain100]

DM died 8 weeks ago. We were close, a very pure mother / daughter relationship and I cared for her up to the end (not alone I should add, other family members took turns). She’d been ill for 3 years. I saw her waste away & then die. Im in my late 40s.. never been through such an experience before. But thing is, I’m ok. First few days were physically intense- big ugly crying waves- then it eased & now I’m prob only crying properly once a week.. I think about her and her dying almost every moment I’m not busy though.. just in a sad, can’t believe it type way. I do keep myself busy with work, friends & exercise.. but I carve out time to sit & think about it all here & there.. I mean, you can’t just sit thinking about it all day can you! I know everyone says all grief is normal & no wrong way to grieve etc but there’s also lots about not suppressing it.. what if by keeping busy i am suppressing it? How do you know if you’re pushing feelings down or just acknowledging them but then moving your thoughts on?? Because I feel ok. I’m functioning well, I’m laughing.. should I still be sadder at this point though? Or will an almighty wave come & knock me down in three months time?! I was terrified of grief before she died and now I’m in it I feel ok. Why has it not hit me as hard as I expected it to? Any similar experiences would be helpful. But honestly I don’t need to hear again all the ‘all feelings are normal’ tropes!

You are you – there's no right or wrong in this situation. You've had three years to prepare, and then you've witnessed the process so your mind is not treating this as an unbearable shock, it's known what the outcome was going to be for a long time.

I felt like you when my Dad died. We knew it was coming, and despite the well meaning wails of "oh that doesn't make it easier" I found that actually yes it did. That's not to say it didn't bubble up at times, but it definitely wasn't the life changing trauma that it is for some people.

What I will say is that I found sometimes I could get into a bad mood that didn't feel like grief, but the only thing that helped was listening to Griefcast. So it probably was grief.

I haven’t cried in company since I lost my husband who was honestly my soul mate, my other half - however you say someone who you loved utterly.

It was sudddn, unexpected and I was with him when it happened.

It’s been … weird. Not how I would have expected it to be. Somehow I feel like my feelings are too strong, deep, intense for tears or smashing things or whatever to come close to helping. From the outside I have carried on. But inside I’m broken in a million pieces and occasionally managed to get some pieces together to appear normal. I’m a completely different person now. But neither I nor anyone else could define what’s changed.

Crying once a week and thinking of her all the time after a series of days of huge waves of sadness isn’t avoiding it Op. That sounds like a perfectly normal grief process to me. Especially as it wasn’t a shock and you knew she was dying for a long time. Your brain had already prepared for it and probably processed some of it before she even passed.

Sorry for your loss. Just sharing my experience, may or may not be helpful. Feel free to ignore. I lost my dad about 5 years ago now, different situation to yours as we had a complex relationship, he was an alcoholic and not an easy person in lots of ways (although absolutely brilliant in many others), but in common with your loss it wasn't a quick or easy last few years and we had quite a lot of time to process the inevitable although his actual time/manner of death was still a shock. Like you I felt pretty OK afterwards, got back to my usual routine pretty swiftly, didn't take a lot of time off work or anything (which I know some people did find odd , cold even in me, although they did they didn't say so in as many words), carried out outwardly functioning very normally and didn't feel all that much different internally either. Like you I was a bit worried whether I was 'doing grief right' and friends even tried to persuade me (very kindly) to 'let it all out', 'make time to grieve' , and I did try, but it never really worked for me, I could sit there thinking sad thoughts or looking at pictures of him or listening to his music and I still just didn't really feel any huge wave of emotion or anything. The only time I really felt any very strong emotion or cried lots of tears was at a very, very inconvenient time some months later, at the wedding of a close relative of DH's when it really wasn't appropriate to have a huge emotional meltdown. So I went from trying to make myself feel something to having to make a huge effort to hold it all in, not entirely successfully (sorry SIL and BIL, hopefully you continue to believe those were uncharacteristic happy tears)😔

Anyway the thing I think I learnt is you really can't schedule your feelings or grief in the way I was trying to, it isn't some kind of pressure vat situation that builds incrementally and can be vented in a controlled fashion, feelings aren't logical or predictable, even if like me logic and predictability are the cornerstones of your entire personality so I would like my feelings to play ball please 😂. It didn't really make sense to me that I was effectively numb or perhaps 'shocked' about a death that was not unexpected and in many ways a relief, then full meltdown at an unconnected and otherwise very happy occasion, then go back to mostly normal after, but there we go. That is what happened. I subsequently had some bereavement counseling to try and make sense of it all and without going into all the complexities around my personal story with my dad, the conclusion I came to is that grief and loss just is what is, you just have to roll with it. Sorry for the lack of any real wisdom.

I think the best advice I can offer is just don't worry about what anyone else thinks or does, if you feel up to your usual routines and things that make you feel good, do that, laugh if you want, feel relieved or at peace or even joyous if that's what you feel (I'm sure that's what your mum would want), but if other more negative feelings pop up too, even unexpectedly or at bad times, you can't stop that happening so you just have to live with it... Grief isn't something you go through and then is over, you've always lost that person and you will always feel something about that, the nature and intensity of the feelings may shift over time but they're never gone away...

Thank you @NoctuaAthene - this is very helpful. Appreciate you sharing your experiences.

@HobgoblinNorFoulFiend I’m so sorry you lost your special soul mate. I can relate to what you say about feeling like you’ve changed as a person but somewhere deep inside that isn’t necessarily apparent.

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale I have listened to a bit of that podcast too. It’s interesting to hear other people’s experiences but I’m realising grief is as unique as a finger print. Each and every time, every person.. I just thought mine would be deeper/ more intense for my mum. I feel a bit like I’m letting her down not being sad about her all the time

@purplerain100 I think there's definitely no rules when it comes to grief, my Mum died a year ago, also after a fairly long illness that was never going to get better.
Those couple of years watching her get so unwell were far harder than the year since she died. Anticipating the grief was far worse than living through it.
I also cared for her in the final few days at home and that's the bit that I replayed a lot after and still do to some degree.
But other than being a wreck the first few days and around the first anniversary I think i've coped far better than I expected. I've also questioned wether I was just burying the grief I should have been feeling but I think what your feeling now is completely normal and I hope you carry on doing well xx

I lost my mum four weeks ago and I could have written your post!

I think I spent a lot of time over the past few years anticipating her death and the grief that would come afterwards, so in the end it hasn’t been as bad as I expected.

I feel (guilty) relief that her, and our, stress and worry are over, relief that I don’t need to become her carer, glad that her suffering is over.

Occasionally I will allow myself a cry - listen to a particular song, look at a particular photo, then I feel better afterwards. I think that’s stopping the grief from building up and brimming over.

My mother died unexpectedly at the end of last year. It just feels odd. There is an absence. Some sadness. A lot of memories. But there is also just a level on which things just continue in quite an ordinary calm way.

I'm the same with my Dad who died in February. Was awful for the first two weeks. After about a month I felt OK. I still cry now and then, miss him, think about him. But it feels like I'm doing too well, not grieving properly. I don't have the answer but I very much relate.

Hi Op,
I’m really so sorry for your loss
I lost my lovely DM a year ago last week, I was also her carer for 3 years and nursed her through end of life all by myself. I coped really well initially, first few weeks and months spent dealing with her house / finances / funeral - it’s only really now that I’m absolutely engulfed with grief. Truly heartbroken. When the days continue, seasons change, and all the support disappears, I truly feel the weight of my loss. I think about her from the second my eyes open until I go to bed at night, some days I wish I could escape replaying those last days and only remember happier times.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve, I kept very busy and I do think it did me good - I have 3 DCs who were off school on summer break so I had no choice really but to carry on.
Continue with whatever is working for you each day, be gentle with yourself x

I wonder if it’s because there’s so much out there around grief… how to deal with it etc, but aimed at those who are really struggling with it. So many insta posts about it being overwhelming etc.. I imagine if you lost someone suddenly, traumatically or a child say, - or if you yourself were already mentally fragile or without support networks - then the experience of grief would be much more debilitating?

Your grief is your own and can’t be compared to any else’s.
I felt very strange after my DM died. I was her only child, and had dreaded losing her. We were very close. She died very suddenly and unexpectedly and I kinda felt glad it was over and that something I’d dreaded for years was done and that I had survived it. It’s been 4 years now and I can’t say I will ever feel the same as I did before she was gone. There are still memories and songs that remind me of her and I do still miss her and cry from time to time but generally I think how lucky I was to have had her for as long as I did.

Every person deal with it differently. Even then, the individual will deal with each subsequent death in a heir lives differently.
it’s quite possible you had anticipatory grief as she declined so are further along your own path.
fwiw. I fell apart when my dad died, but pulled myself together and carrried on after a week and only very occasionally cried for a year or two before it morphed into a more “oh dad would have loved xyz” and had a happy reminiscence. My mother - I had a party when I heard she had died. My in laws I cared for and I knew both were dying, so I felt sad, but relieved they were no longer suffering, and guilty that I had my life back. Yet no real grief in the traditional sense.
DH died and my world stopped, and I’ve had two breakdowns. It’s taken a long time to feel functional again.

I think there is almost a societal compulsion. You must 'grieve' now or you are 'denying/suppressing' your grief. There's this urge to pathologise/medicalise experiences which are part and parcel of the experience of living.

We have always lost our parents. It is in the right order of things.

Perhaps other societies had better rituals in terms of mourning which offered more support. Perhaps there were times when religious faith in the afterlife and church attendance offered some comfort.

I am simultaneously finding a major bereavement life-changing, while retaining the ability to carry on as 'normal' - eating, sleeping, working, socialising.

I don't know if this helps.

This. Sounds totally normal to me. Sorry for your loss OP x

I looked at this thread as DH died almost three months ago, after three and a half years of increasing frailty, and I wondered the same thing. I miss him (after 30 years of marriage) and every day there is something to tell him. But I'm coping, well organised and making plans for the future. It's a relief to find others are in a similar position. Thank you.