Has anyone lost their mum? Did it ever get better?

[Justanotherusername27]

Sorry to post on this thread but people on bereavement are in a similar predicament to me and I just want someone a while down this road to give me some hope.

I lost my mum, best friend, saw her every day, me and my son lived with her for a long time, holidays, video calls advice etc a few weeks back. The dream parent, dream grandmother and perfect. She was normal until December, got told she had stage 4 cancer and died at the start of March. It’s her funeral on Monday. I’m absolutely devastated. My world has been torn apart, I feel, and somewhere I know (hope) it’s not true but I will never be happy again.

Mine and my families worlds have been blown apart, everyone is struggling significantly and everyone has undergone a personality change. My mum was everything to everyone. It was traumatic what happened, she was in early sixties, fit and healthy and did not want to die. It happened suddenly.

If I didn’t have children I’m not 100% sure I wouldn’t have joined her on the other side but I can’t put them in this position but I just want some hope.

I know and understand I’m going to be in pain for a long time, grief is love and I love her endlessly. But I want to know if I’ll ever get through this and not feel so devastated forever. I’ve seen people write things years after the fact and they’re still devastated and never got past it. I don’t want my life to be like that I just need some advice on how to get through. People tell me ‘grieve your own way, feel your feelings’ but it doesn’t help me. I need to know, if it’s possible to move on, still respecting and honouring my mum, but to be happy like she would want.. how do you deal with this level of loss?

My mum died over ten years ago. It does hurt, I miss her terribly and I feel... different, like part of me died with her.
But, life has gone on. I have moments where I feel sad that she's not here to share happy moments with me, or to be a shoulder to cry on, but the crippling devastation has gone.

Essentially, for me, time has helped. It still catches me off guard occasionally, but most of the time I'm fine, life is good and I'm happy.
So yes, it should get better, be more bearable. It'll never completely go away, but the grief becomes something that is part of you and your life rather than something that overpowers it.

My mum died in 2019 , she had been seriously ill for the previous 5 months and frankly it was a happy release . It occasionally catches me like a few days ago when I had forgotten someone’s name but on the whole I’m at peace with it . We had been very close , spoke every day , saw each other several times a week . My dad died over 30 yrs ago , very sudden and no warning I definitely have not come to terms with his death as well and for me it’s a case of try not to dwell on it as I find it too upsetting . It’s early days for you @Justanotherusername27 and you will find a way to deal with things in time . 💐

This is from a 12 year old Reddit post and it helped me so much when my mum died a few years ago. I thought I'd would lose my mind with the grief in that first year.
5 years on, I have stopped crying. I cried every day for the first year and almost as much the second. But it DOES get easier. I never it would.

"As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Sincere condolences on your loss.
My DM passed 2 yrs ago, stage 4 cancer.
I moved in with her, WFH at her house, personal care, medication etc.
I did my absolute best, she passed when I wasn't there (that's a story for another day).
Two yrs on I'm still absolutely racked with guilt, should have done more, should have been there at the end, it tortures me every day.
I've developed a habit of muttering under my breath "I hate myself"
I don't think I'll ever get over it.
This reply is not going to help you but I really hope it becomes easier for you ❤️

Firstly, sorry that you too have lost your Mum. My own Mum's decline was as fast as your Mum's, one day perfectly fine and sadly died within 3 months.

What we found that helped us was not feeding the negative thoughts that she was no longer with us but instead remembering all the fun times, her little quirks and phrases. Talking about her like that.

Secondly, we took comfort that we knew her well enough and it sounds like you are the same. That if you were to imagine a conversation with your Mum I bet you could pretty much guess what her response would be. I could hear her voice, the inflections, her tone etc so it felt like she was still with us. We talk about her all the time with my sister, we say Mum would have loved this, or been proud of our children or she would have hated that X shop had closed down or that they made that road one way etc. Physically she is not here but emotionally she still is.

The physical pain sometimes still punches me and it has been 14 years. But the every day rawness that you feel right now has lessened.

OP I read your message and I could have written it myself. Even the circumstances of a short illness. My wonderful mother is gone 2.5 years now. She is my waking thought, my last thought before I sleep and I dream of her most nights.
When she got sick and died I thought I’d never heal. It was a bomb going off in my world and I was shattered. The first year was awful. I was so scared and lonely and I was a shadow of myself. Slowly things started to get better. It definitely took over two years for the rawness to go. I’m not the same person I was before but I’m so much better than year 1. I still miss her fiercely, and I think I always will. Having a wonderful mother is such a gift in life, losing her was and is like losing a piece of yourself.
people mean well and they’ll say “she wouldn’t want you to be sad” etc etc but grief isn’t a choice, and feel it all. I cried so much, talked all the time about her and I think it helped me.
my heart aches to think of someone going through it.

My mother died after a short and brutal illness 5 years ago. The worst part of it was she got the all-clear two weeks before her illness returned with a vengeance. The last days traumatized the entire family. I was with her in her last minutes. 😔

I am very sorry for your loss, OP. This will not get better for a while, I'm afraid. Please don't make my mistake: do not escape into anything (work, etc.) Allow yourself to feel the enormity of your grief, acknowledge the fact that she is gone.

Very wise of you to say grief is love. It is. Ever heard or said "I love you so much it hurts"? That's what you are feeling now. But all love is good, holy, healing, so do continue to love your mum, please do.

You will come out of this, I promise. It will take time, but you will.

Ignore family members who are unkind or unhelpful. Lean on those you can count on. Don't underestimate friends, they might have more to give than blood relatives.

My heart goes out to you. 😥

Obviously it may not be relevant in your circumstances @itsgoingtobeabumpyride but I was a nurse for 30 years mainly doing nights and have been present at more deaths than I care to remember but very often families would sit for days and the person would pass in the 10 minutes or hour that they left for a wash / wee . It’s very common for people to wait to die when relatives aren’t present . 💐

OP this post is exactly what it was like for me - if it wasn't for our DS I think it would have been a very different outcome for me as well.

I felt numb for a while and weirdly, I went into some kind of role where I wanted to make sure everyone was looked after at mums funeral. I wanted the best send off for her, I must have looked insane like the "hostess with the mostess", but it was a weird auto pilot thing.

I still cry about it, I still get really angry that she was only 64, was an amazing person and other horrible people get to walk around living their lives, I still get heartbroken that my gorgeous son will not experience how funny, kind, loving and caring his nana was and he has to hear it second hand from me.

But it has got a bit easier, the days pass a little better and I have learnt to live with the pain, it only gets overwhelming occasionally now.
I send all my thoughts to you it truly is the most heartbreaking situation.

@itsgoingtobeabumpyride I had similar, used to believe I should have done more for her, that I missed a chance to ease her pain. That's the PTSD whispering poison, I do recommend therapy. Caring for your mum has left you with survivor's guilt, please do seek help.

I am so sorry for the loss of your lovely mum.

I am 2.5 years down the line. My mum died suddenly. She wasn’t well that morning but nothing that suggested it was really bad. Just thought her asthma was playing up. She was on the phone to me at 10am. And gone by 2pm.

So I don’t know what it’s like to watch your mum be ill and the impact of all that comes with that. But the shock to my system on top of the grief is very difficult. So a different experience but painful in their own way.

I can say there were times I wanted to die and be with her. But, like you, I have kids. The horror I feel that they would be feeling that loss made me feel sick.

It’s been a hard road. I could cry at the drop of a hat. I miss her deeply. But now I can think of her and smile. I can talk about her, sometimes without crying. I enjoy life. I don’t lay in bed all day anymore. I do go out. I go to work. I see friends. I take the kids out and laugh with them. But there’s a part of me that’s always missing her.

a big thing for me was fully accepting that life was never going to be the same. I wouldn’t be the same again. And that was ok.

I can’t say time has healed the pain. But it comes in waves. There’s longer between the waves that that are so painful I want to curl up into a ball.

When I feel like that I think of Vision on wandavision ‘what is grief, if not love persevering’. I accept the pain because it’s proof she was was loved and and still is loved.

It gets liveable. I promise.

I lost my Mum 15 years ago . . . I had been her carer as she had cancer for the last 4 and a half years of her life. I knew she was dying for the last 9 months of her life but, somehow, it was still a shock when she died. The first year was hard, particularly when a new baby was born that Mum was so looking forward to.

Gradually I got used to her not being here any more, could look at her photo without crying etc. Then, about 4 years after she died, our family experienced a tragedy and, awful as it sounds, I was almost glad that Mum wasn't here, experiencing what we were all going through.

Now, 15 years later, time has helped to heal the hurt & loss. This morning I had coffee with three friends, two of them sisters. We have all lost our Mums but we were talking about them happily, remembering the meals our Mums used to cook and some of the funny things our Mums used to say,

I used to hate it when people said to me "time is a great healer" but it really is. I can't give you any advice about how to grieve but can only tell you from my own experience that somehow the grief becomes bearable, that I so very often think about her and my memories of her are happy

Sending you love OP💐

I'm really sorry for your loss OP. I'm in a similar position - Mum was fine and dandy until Christmas, diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in January and died exactly one month later.
Adrenaline kept me going and numb until the funeral but now I wake up and go to sleep every day feeling like my heart is breaking. The weight of my sadness is so heavy but I know this is all okay and it will lighten. I've been told we start to feel less heavy with grief without realising, although it never goes away. I hope this is the case for both of us x

I lost my mum in 2012 to cancer. We talk about her often. We always say 'what would she think of x' and 'how proud she would be to see you doing y'. That way it feels like she's still here. Also seeing her characteristics in the children is a comfort, one of my sons has a gentle heart and a lovely dimple just like hers! Sending you love and healing thoughts.

I've lost my mum, it's 16 years since. I cried everyday for the 6 months she was terminal. And at least every day for the 6 months after.

My babies were very tiny, and the days were filled with grief and babies. Then I took antidepressants, but they just held off the grief. When I stopped them, I had to greive like I should have. But they kept me going when I needed it.

Those early days were horrific, not knowing what the meaning of anything was. The pain of waiting, for her to come. Knowing she wouldn't.

But time eased my pain, and I learned to live a life without her. And my mum had travelled this path, and mothered us despite losing both her parents before she was out of her 20's. So I knew I needed to do the same for my babies.

I miss her, but the grief has eased with time. And I've adapted to a world without her in it.

Keep going, the only way is to keep feeling and keep going.

Going through very similar.. I lost Mum on 13th feb and we had the funeral on 4th March. She was 66, fit and healthy and sadly like yours diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. AllI can say is I'm so sorry, I wont lie I feel lost. But all I can do is take one day at a time

Please do pm if you would like to talk x

I remember driving past people smiling in the sunshine going about their lives as if the world had not split open. Not feeling as if the air had been sucked from their lungs and the weight of gravity was pushing them into the ground. How could they all just be when she was dead?

but day by day, the air returned and the gravity lessened. I still miss her. I still wish I could talk to her. I still wish she could see her amazing grandchildren turning into young adults. It’s rare though that the overwhelming grief hits me anymore. Mostly now I think of her and just smile.

It’ll definitely get easier, and everyone deals with it differently, you will learn to deal with the grief as time passes by …

Your mum will want you to carry on her legacy through everything that she taught you to be, I was 4000 miles away on holiday when my mum died, 2 days after I asked her doctor if I could still go and he said yes, she will be fine… that was a bit of a sore one lol..

She had to deal with losing her mum just like you have, these are the things we don’t think about, but take care of yourself and take as much time as you need to heal..

So sorry for your loss OP. My mum was diagnosed with cancer last June and passed away in November. Absolutely shocked and heartbroken and it is all still very raw. Sometimes I forget, then the realisation comes flooding back. Now Im finding odd things catching me out. For example, walking into Tesco several weeks ago to be hit with a wall of mothers day gifts - nearly burst into tears, and a funeral car driving past me with 'mum' flowers on the coffin - that one I did cry at. Knowing I wont get my traditional terrys chocolate orange this Easter. Everyone says it gets easier, im taking baby steps getting there. Just be kind to yourself OP x

Thank you so so much to everyone who responded to this. I’m going to pin it to remember to go through it in my darkest moments. She had stage 4 lung cancer and it had gone to her brain. With steroids, she could have passed off as normal if she wasn’t so bloody worried. They told us they were treating it and had planned for the next 3 years. Then four weeks ago Monday she seizured and couldn’t control part of her body. Closed her eyes and never opened them again. The trauma of those days essentially waiting for her to die just overwhelms me. And watching for signs she might wake up or come around. So cruel and awful watching the person who birthed you, had always been there fade away.

Im on maternity at the moment, my daughter was 9 weeks old when my mum passed, my sister is heavily pregnant and my mum will never get to meet her baby. It’s so sad.

thank you so much for everyone messaging. I just needed hope. I’m scared for the next few months and what they will bring. I’m scared for us all, my son is ten and broken. She was a second mum to him.

if those in the same circumstances wants to PM me, happy to go through it with you, we aren’t alone. Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences with me and I’m so sorry we’re in this position x

@Justanotherusername27 i am so sorry for your loss sweetheart. This is and will be one of the very worst times of your life....there is no getting away from that.

Every loss is unique, just as every person and their relationships with those around them is unique. So it is hard for anyone else to say how you can get through it.

I lost my mum 20 years ago when I was 25, she was 57 and died three years after her first cancer diagnosis. It blew my world apart and it sent my life off on a trajectory I never expected. At times I went to sleep not wanting to wake up in the morning. But I did. And over time, living became easier. I will always miss her. But we only get one life and no one makes it through without catastrophy.... It is what happens to us as humans. There is no getting away from it. Maybe you can take some strange comfort in that.

The best advice I got, in the early days of my loss and grief, was baby steps. Take only baby steps. One foot in front of the other. Can't get through to tomorrow? Just make it through to tonight. Can't get through tonight? Get through to the next hour... And so on and so forth.

Make no big decisions other than those that are absolutely necessary. Do nothing that will make your life harder (eg I married a man I knew wasn't the one for me, just because I wanted to have something normal. A husband. A marriage. Sooemthing other than the unending sadness and grief).

It's an absolute cliche but it is also true... Know that your mum would absolutely want you to live and enjoy your life. Cry as much as you need to, talk about her as much as you need to, buy a notebook and write her letters, sharing your life with her (I also did this.... It helped me enormously). And I know this sounds odd, but I took comfort in the fact that although my mum is no longer here, it didn't end my relationship with her. She is still my mum and I am still her daughter. So much of who and what I am is because of her. And that will be the same for you. She is a part of you and that will never change, she is always with you.

Look after yourself, the first few years are tremendously hard but you will make it through..... I wish you love and healing on this journey xx

My lovely mum died very suddenly three weeks before lockdown in 2020. My life feels like it has been in two sections - when I had mum and when I didn’t. I look at photos of us on holiday in 2019 and we just looked so happy and carefree. I spoke to her everyday, I have all her WhatsApp messages saved and sometimes read them through. My DS still cries at bedtime because he misses her so much, he’s 11 now. I have dealt with it by throwing myself into work and we now have a dog who is a great comfort as she is so cuddly. I’ve also been on anti depressants/anti anxiety medication since she died.

My day to day life remains productive and positive, but there is a background sadness there. Sending you hugs x

I lost my mum quite young 21 years ago and it does get easier. You learn to live with it. Just lost my dad as well which has dredged up a lot of the old grief related to my mum.

Oh OP your story is eerily similar to mine.

I lost my mum last month to lung cancer which had spread to her brain, a bleed on the brain took her in her sleep thankfully. She became really ill in January but refused to be admitted to a hospital, was diagnosed with a heart problem by the GP and treated accordingly but nothing was improving. When she finally allowed herself to go to hospital they found the masses in her brain the next day. She died 1 week later at 66 years old. She'd been living with the lung cancer completely unbeknownst to herself or anyone else for a long time.

I'm emotionally strong in a way that makes me almost cavalier about death but God do I miss her. We used to talk everyday on the phone as we lived 3 hours apart and I think it's our hour long rambles about anything and everything that I miss the most.

And parking. She used to love to moan about people parking and I'd laugh at her for it but I wish I could listen to it one more time.

I'm generally OK on a daily basis but some things hit me hard when they catch me by surprise. I went to send a message to my dad on their joint Facebook account and the last message was from my mum. I don't think things like that will ever not affect me but I have to look after my dad emotionally- the way I view it is I moved away and built my own life with partner and kids, for him - she was all he'd ever known since he was 17 and now he's on his own and navigating the world without her.

Hi OP,

Your situation is very similar to mine (down to the baby and heavily pregnant sister!). I am now 10 years on. My experience is that is does get easier.
The early days were incredibly hard. I missed her terribly and was so angry that this had happened. I would look around and wonder why everyone was carrying on so normally when my life had been ripped apart. She was so young when she died and had so much life left to live. Getting to know my dad without the context of my mum was hard. Each day I would wake up and have to remember that she had died.
Her death did change me - I feel like I have lived 2 lives - 1 pre mums death and 1 post her death - I am definitely more appreciative of everything now and dont sweat the small things.
I don't know how it gets easier but you do grow around your grief. I now laugh when some of my mum's phrases come out of my mouth Amd although I miss her, I don't yearn for her like I did 10 years ago.

I am so sorry for your loss. I would encourage you to reach out for bereavement support (our local hospice was great) x