"Pre-grieved?"

[Cicatrice]

My Dad died earlier in the year, having had dementia for some time. And I really don't feel much different to how I felt before he died. I keep waiting for "something" to hit me, but nothing has.

My Dr said to me that when someone who has dementia or Alzheimers dies you don't start grieving, you stop. Do you think thats true?

My friend has recently lost her mum and talks about it hitting her anew every time her DS does something new or cute and she goes to phone her mum, but my Dad wasn't there in that sense for years before he died. Have I grieved already? Is this it?

You are not alone.
I think you start the process early on when they are diagnosed but often we are kept busy looking after them and even thou we know they will die it kind of doesn't seem possible.
Grieving takes many forms and there are no shortcuts it hits you when it hits you.
My lovely husband had avterminal brain tumour, mostly he wasn't aware enough to know what was happening to him but I always knew.
Steve died last June and me and our three kids are doing ok mostly.

I am so glad to read this thread. My mum died last December after 6 years of illness (cancer) and I thought I would be completely unable to function. We were very very close.

But it didn't happen that way at all - although for the first few months I was thinking of her, and esp her last days, constantly, the truth is that I am more or less ok (other than the very large amount of time I spend feeling guilty that I'm not grieving "properly" or "appropriately".)

But when I think about it, I spent 6 years crying and worrying and dreading and sobbing... the emotions were so intense, while she was still alive, that even though my mother was still 'there' in a way someone who has dimentia is not, it was definitely a form of mourning.

I find that as the anniversary of her passing gets closer, though, the last month before she died is coming back to me again and I am feeling more emotional. I do wonder sometimes if some day I will wake up and feel the "intense" feeling we all say we're missing.

I don't know what the ideal time between diagnosis and death is for those left behind. I do know that my Caroline found that three weeks was not enough warning of her own death especially when she never had the chance to visit or speak to some of her closest friends between her diagnosis and her funeral.

I think I would have welcomed longer to get used to the idea but watching her suffer might have been too much for me to sustain.

It is now just over a year since my Dad died. The time around the anniversary of his death was very hard for me, I was tense and tearful all the time. (DH was horrified when he asked me what was wrong and I said this was the anniversary of his death. He had forgotten - or he has it in his head January when we had to clear the house was when he died.)

I still haven't had his name added to the stone, it feels like the last thing I will do for him.

But I have never had the grief wave that I feel I ought to have had.

sorry to hear about your loss.
I went through a similar thing when my mum died, she had been ill for so long and in hospital, that it was like she had already gone. have to say it was only later when I had kids(she died when I was 18) I really realised what I had lost.
so in away I think you probally grieved for your dad when you first lost him iynwim

2shoes - yes the dementia is a long bereavement, and vicious because for a long time you don't realise that they are ill and slipping away, you just think that they are being an arse.

My poor father took 3 years to die of dementia. The end was pure relief. It was like putting down a weight. The three years were the grieving time. I think sufficient tears were shed.

I am so so sorry for anyone going through the dementia nightmare but at the end all I could think was that now he was free.

I find it comforting to think that you can still do things for people after they have died, like look after the things they cared about. Even little things help. I feed the birds for dad.