Grieving Advice Needed (Long and Sad)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This post is so totally not something I’d ever thought I’d be doing on the SDMB, but here goes.

My mom died last Monday, of ALS. She’d had it for three years–basically the whole time I’ve been at college. The viewing’s done, the sympathy cards have stopped hitting our mail slot with a loud clunk, and things are starting to go back to “normal,” whatever that is. I’m an only child, and I’ve moved back home to be with my dad (I’m 20) until he moves, since he’s being transferred for work in a few months. He’s been telling everyone that we’re both fine, and we’re doing okay. I’ve been trying to get back to my normal activities and going to my classes, so I don’t miss too much.

So, when do I start feeling better? When do I start feeling normal? When do I feel like a big chunk hasn’t been taken out of my core, and some sort of empty, gaping painful void is all that remains? Sometimes, I feel okay, and I joke and act happy and giddy and just generally be myself. Other times (and this is mostly what I don’t let people see), I feel like someone is scooping my insides out with some sort of blunt instrument, and I really feel like cutting myself (something that I haven’t done in a long time.)

Grieving is a funny process. I’ve had people tell me “you’re doing so well. If my mother died, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.” This sentiment chafes a little: it makes me feel like I’m not as sad as I should be (after all, I’m doing my best to go about my daily business, aren’t I?) Also, it’s very hard to say how you would feel about your mother (or someone very close to you) dying unless it actually happens, don’t you think?

I’ve got so much going on in my life right now–I graduate from grad school in a month, so I’m in the huge academic push right now. I was suppose to have a job interview the Thursday after she died, but I’ve been putting it off for a while. I’d like to do it this week, but it feels too soon or something. I’ve been feeling weird about going out and doing normal things. Part of me knows that my mom would want me to do it, but part of me feels just so goddamn sad that I don’t have a mom anymore that I don’t know what to do.

I know that a lot of people feel weird about giving advice and trying to make people who recently lost someone feel better–but god, I love it when people tell me what I should do, and give me advice. Sometimes, I just feel like giving up because I have absolutely no fucking idea about how to go through with this. I’ve heard from many people to take it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time. My mom’s best friend just told me to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I’ll be walking across campus to a class or to my job and I’ll feel like someone punched me in the gut, and I just CAN’T. I can’t put one foot in front of the other, and I just feel like I need my mom so badly.

When do I feel better? When can I be happy and think about the wonderful memories I do have of my mom instead of feeling the loss of control and fear that she must have felt in her last moments?

God, I need advice so bad. Can someone help me?

2

{TWG}
It’s been a few months over a year since my Dad died. So here’s the short term - it doesn’t really get better. It doesn’t hurt as much, most of them time, because it’s not in the forefront of your mind… and then you’ll think of them, something they said, or the way they laughed when you told a joke, or them hugging you when you’re down, and you’ll start bawling. Maybe worse than you ever did when they’d only been dead a week.

When he died, I was in shock, period. I was in almost a euphoria throughout the entire funeral and wake. All I could remember is how much I loved him. And how much he loved me, and the rest of our family, and all the people who were his friends. There were over 400 people at his funeral - and so many more who couldn’t come. And now I’m crying because I remember how he last looked - and not that he looked bad - and I wish I could see him again.

Don’t let anyone, ANYONE make you feel bad about how you’re grieving. You have to do it in your own way, and there is no wrong way. Not crying does not mean you didn’t love him. Laughing about things that happened only means you cherished the times together. And if you have to cry, and feel terrible, know that it will pass, and think of her when you are in a time when you can grieve, because it won’t last forever.

I know I’ve gotten a ways off from what you asked for… but I’m a bit carried away. I’m gonna go cry now.

Nothing will change the good that you had with her, or the happiness you and your father gave her. Just remember what’s good when you can.

3

Feeling good is actually not a betrayal of your love for your mom.

OK, it’s a blunt thing to say. I know your hard feelings are real, I don’t even suggest that they are not. But the process of healing has to include inviting your mother into the joys you are going to have in your life, and not locking her memory up in a room where you grieve.

I will not deal with the issue of spirituality, but rather with the one of your mind, and emotions. There is a mother in your mind and heart. She will live there as long as you live. That is true, for good or ill, ask any victim of abuse. Your mother will never leave you. So, bring her along as you grow, and become joyful again. She loved you before, and she loves you still. She wants you to be happy, and wants to smile in your heart, over the joys of your life.

No, the hurt actually never does go away. You do get to the point where you know where that hurt belongs in your life. And you can make the part your mother plays in your heart one that includes both pain, and joy. Like being real, and being alive was. Like it still is. Love does not die.

The love she gave you is real. It still exists, and it can never be taken from you. So, give it some company, and love her still, and have some joys to share with her.

In the end, you say, “God help me.”

I encourage you in this plea, as well. He will. He too wants joy for you, and joy to share with your mother, and Him.

God bless you, now and always.

Tris

4

On May 20, 1999, my father died of a heart attack. While I was making plans to fly home, my mother made the arrangements for the funeral.
Seven hours later, on the same day, my mother also died of a heart attack from the shock of my father’s death.

After a point, there were no more tears left in me.

Everyone has their own period of grieving. Some quietly.
I wish I had some sage advice, but I don’t. I still think of them often and miss our daily phone calls.

I do not send flowers to their graves. I do not go back. I am sure some of my relatives find that odd, cold and heartless.

My parents were very much in love with each other, they travelled often and were best of friends…I prefer to think they made that final journey together and are happy.

Now I don’t think of their death. I think of their life.

5

Lots of people are uncomfortable with how to deal with death and they say things that they have not thought through. Thank them for the “compliment” then ignore them. (Not because they have done anything “wrong,” but because you don’t need to add their expectations (or your perceptions of their expectations) to what you are already trying to sort out.)

In other advice (worth every penny you’ve paid for it):

Unless you think you’ll blow the interview in your current state, take it now. You’re still going to need to pay your bills and having a good job helps.

Do go out. (And pass this advice on to your dad, who may need it.) In the first few months after a bereavement, some people will avoid you from the discomfort of not knowing how to treat you. Others will extend offers of social activities to “get your mind off it.” If you turn down too many of those offers, people will stop extending them (not wanting to be rejected over and again) and you will find yourself cut off from former friends. With new jobs and new locations for both you and your dad, you are going to lose some contacts anyway. Don’t make it a practice to turn down those offers that will help make new contacts or maintain old ones.

There is also nothing wrong with seeking counseling at this time. You don’t need a shrink, but it may be a good time to have someone to talk to who can let you know that you’re OK (not free of pain, just OK). It sounds as though you were not involved with a hospice program, which is a shame. If your folks did use hospice services, get in touch with them and ask if they have an after-the-death follow-up program.

Pay attention to Tris.

6

((((The Wrong Girl))))

I am so, so, so sorry that you lost your mom to ALS.

It seems like just when the sympathy cards stop coming, that’s when you need love and support the most. If you feel comfortable, I’d go ahead and tell your friends, family members, and professors that in fact, hey, you do need a little bit of extra help, kindness and understanding right now because sometimes you’re fine, and sometimes you have to tell yourself “left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.”

Since you’re a college student, I would imagine that you probably have access to some sort of free grief counseling, and I urge you to take advantage of it, especially if you feel like you need to revert back to cutting yourself. A counselor can also be a great person to work with your professors on your behalf so you’re not overwhelmed. Also, the ALS Association in your area might also be another good resource, if you aren’t familiar with them already.

As for the job interview, I’d put it off a little while longer if that’s what you feel you need to do. I’m sure your potential future employer understands and is willing to give you some more time. As for school, just push through if you can, get extensions if you can’t. Take the summer if it’d help. Just take care of yourself right now. Sit down in the middle of campus and have a moment if you need to. Really.

You’re completely justified in your response to the things people say to you about doing so well. They don’t know what to say and they’re just trying to say something. Just try to keep that in mind the next time someone says something similar.

I’m sorry that I can’t give you any more advice (which you are absolutely free to ignore by the way) or answers than that. My SO lost his dad to ALS his last semester of college too. Sometimes he went on with his life like nothing happened, sometimes he just fell on the floor and cried. It’s been three years and three days and there are still good and bad days.

My heart aches for you, TWG. I’ll say a prayer for you tonight. Keep us updated on how you are doing and email at will if you need to.

7

I’m just going to focus on one very small thing, because any more attention I take away from Tris or Tom~'s posts here will haunt me until I am a very old man:)

I have never lost a parent. I have never lost a sibling. I have never lost an aunt or uncle, and really the closest to me that I’ve lost were a dog in high school (as real a person to me as any I’ve met, and more so than many others) and a good friend about a year and a half ago in college.

The pain doesn’t go away. What does happen, though, is that it stops being so all-encompassing and blinding. You begin to be able to function with it, to be able to use it for something without being completely paralyzed by it (which paralysis is a completely acceptable, and fairly common, thing). Instead of your life becoming about the pain, the pain slowly transitions from being your life to being part of your life. It will always be with you, to be sure. You will never lose that, just as you will never lose the joy you had with your mother when she was still alive in the physical sense (people don’t die altogether, you know:) They just stop breathing).

Take an approach to this process that works for you. There are a thousand and one well-meaning people who will suggest ways to get over it ranging from “go skydiving! Nothing connects you more with death than impending fear of it!” (yeah, and nothing connects you more with pain than a severed limb, but people don’t often recommend that;)) to “life is pain, highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.” These are both valid means of dealing with a loss to those for whom they work. They may do well for you, and if they do, great! But if they don’t, that’s just because … well, they don’t. There are any number of ways to grieve, to deal with the loss of someone or something, to move on, to cope, etc. The best way to deal with it is what makes you feel most comfortable.

People will probably (depending on which school of thought they subscribe to, of course) ask you what you want to do because they want to give you as much control in a time when you do not have as much as you did (impending, and actual, death tends to make many people feel a loss of control, and appropriately so). My best suggestion for how to tell them you want them to suggest stuff to do (if I am reading this portion of your OP properly) is to ask if there’s a good movie they want to see, or some restaurant they haven’t been to in a while, or something like that (you can tell how dull my social life is that I’m suggesting only a movie and a meal;)) If they bring the point up that they want you to choose, look them in the eye and gently explain that it is easier for you if they do so. Or something you think will work instead; not knowing your friends, I don’t claim to have some license on What Works.

So then, when do you feel better? Well, from what I have learned lo these fantastically long 21 years of my life, you do not ever feel all the way better throughout your body about someone’s death. Even the people you don’t like;) But what does happen is that you come to accept that you can’t do much to create new memories of them, and so your mind works extra hard to keep some of the better ones. To this day I can replay in my mind the day I walked over to my grandparents’ house from school (lest I seem like Abe Lincoln here, it was about a 50-foot walk;)), knocked on the door, and my grandfather appeared. At the time he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer (he died I guess a year or so later? I don’t especially remember when it was, only that it was:)). Anyway, I knocked on the door, he answered, and I gave him a nice big hug. Then I just walked away. That was all I needed to feel that I had some sort of control over my life, and his, at that juncture.

And for the longest time, despite what I had been told, I didn’t have any particularly meaningful memories of him. Nothing. I wanted to, because he had always been somewhat of a hero to me (look elsewhere among my posts in MPSIMS, especially a thread titled [url=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=166520&highlight=know+AND+strength”“Mortality; or, I Think I Just Grew Up”, for more on that) and more importantly a constant in my life. Not being able to remember much of anything about him was bitterly painful to me.

And then, for reasons I still cannot identify whatsoever except to say “shit happens”, things started coming back. I remembered that hug, I remembered correcting him on a crossword puzzle answer, I remembered him disciplining my brother when said brother hit his glasses with a stick. I remembered (and can still play back in my mind more than 8 years later) how he sounded when he said “hi ho!”, which was his standard greeting. I remembered the game he loved to play with us four nearest (geographically) grandchildren.

It’s the little things. And they may not come back to you tomorrow. Or they may. Ultimately, as far as I know there isn’t much you can do to change that:) But it is the tiny pieces of him that are still inside me that keep him alive, even if nobody else ever remembers him (and they do. Again, see the thread if you’re interested). And it is in that very same way, and who knows what others, that your mother will never die. Dying, in an all-encompassing way, means something goes away entirely. And as your very OP proves, your mother is a far cry from going away wholesale.

About a year ago, I sort of stumbled onto some piece of wisdom … and knowing me, I must be misremembering it from someone a lot brighter:D:

Strength lays not in being able to move the biggest rock or being able to withstand the most intense pain without crying. Rather, it lays in knowing your weaknesses and allowing others to fill those in when you cannot.

Know strength.

8

So much good advice here. My heart goes out to you, I know how devastating such a loss can be.

I had a hard time after my dad’s death. Some of the things I wished I’d done are:

Letting myself feel “entitled” to grieve, for as long as it took. (A year is not at all unreasonable, but everyone is different.)

Getting help from a doctor or therapist when I felt overwhelmed. Therapy, medication, whatever it took. (Everyone is different and will need different levels of help.)

Telling my sometimes assinine friends to “STUFF IT” when they nagged me to “snap out of it” and told me that I was just using my grieving as an “excuse” to not be as perky and “normal” as they thought I should be.

Just being easy on myself. Allowing myself to have good days and bad days without pressuring myself to “move on”. In my case, I never felt guilty for the good days; my dad wanted that, and I knew it. I just didn’t know how to reconcile with the depressed, dark, bad days. I didn’t think I had an “excuse” to feel that way, that I had to keep on pushing myself to “snap out of it” and be normal and happy, like nothing devestating had happened.

I don’t know how much of this will be helpful to you, because we all react to loss and grief differently. But one thing that is universally true, and is repeated on this thread many times: ANYTHING THAT YOU FEEL IS APPROPRIATE. Feel giddy? That’s appropriate. Feel like utter crap? That’s appropriate. Sure, you can’t just let yourself go to hell, (I’m not encouraging you to dance naked in the street just because the mood strikes) but your feelings are your feelings, so don’t let anyone dictate to you what is the “proper” way to feel, to react, to behave. Just do your best, talk about your mom as much as pleases you. Remembering her and talking about her is a very, VERY good thing.

My good thoughts and prayers go out to you. And remember—eventually, the feeling will become bittersweet. You’ll always miss her, but eventually, that feeling of loss will be intermingled with a sweet, sad beautiful feeling, because your love for her and your memories about her are still alive, and still make her alive to you.

9

["]Mortality]([url=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=166520&highlight=know+AND+strength”“Mortality; or, I Think I Just Grew Up”[/url). Grr. I would farkle up the coding on my own thread…

10

And you did it again!!! :wink: (Sorry, just had to rub it in…) Will this link work? Checking “preview” is your friend.

11

I give up.

12

When my father died, someone told my mother that she would know that she was beginning to heal when Dad’s death wasn’t the first thing that she thought of in the morning.

Bless you, bless you. I have known such grief. So many people have given such solid advice here on surviving it. You will.

But now is the time of your mourning.

13

Sometimes getting through grief is like walking miles barefoot through broken glass. You do just put one foot in front of the other, for as long as you can. Eventually, you arrive at a place where it doesn’t hurt so much.

Do whatever you need for yourself to feel better. But keep moving forward at whatever rate you can.

I’ll be thinking good thoughts in your direction…

14

It took a full two years for me to speak about my father without choking up and to look at photos of him without completely breaking down.

The hurt will ease. I promise.

I’m ever so sorry.

15

My father died very suddenly when I was seventeen. Completely out of the blue. We found out on a Monday night at 10:00 when the cops came to the door, having tracked my mom’s address down. For some reason they didn’t have a current one so’d had to do some searching.

It was several months before I started getting really back on my feet. After the initial shock was over, I’d go through periods of feeling all right, and then it would hit me that he was gone, and I’d feel HORRID. Gradually the feeling okay times got longer and the feeling horrid ones got shorter. They’ve never completely gone away, after ten years, but I can talk about him and look at pictures without immediately breaking down. More than a few minutes, though, and I get sort of teary. It’s been ten years. I still want him back.

What’s more, this seems to be my personal normal way to grieve. In December my fiance ended our engagement for the STUPIDEST reason. I’ve been on the same rollercoaster ride ever since; I’ll be fine, and then while driving or something I’ll just start crying all over the place. Most of the crying I’ve done in private, so people are under the impression that I’m dealing with this “really well,” whatever THAT means. (As if I’m SUPPOSED to deal well being dumped by the love of my life.)

Putting on a brave face when you’re dying inside is NOT dealing with it well, no matter what people think.

Whatever you feel is all right. Don’t let anybody dictate what you should be feeling or how long you should be feeling it. Though if you find yourself just incapacitated after the first few months, I’d consider talking to somebody. Healing takes time.

16

My mom died from ALS six years ago. It’s a special kind of horrible. No death of a loved one is good or easy. Watching your mother lose a piece of her ability to move her muscles each day, but maintaining her full awareness of what’s happening is wordlessly, breathlessly horrific. It’s been six years and I cope. It took a long time, but everyone’s different and entitled to grieve as they do. There are no rules about grieving. You do what you do and please don’t let anyone make you feel that you must do things one way or another. At various points of my mother’s viewing, I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe and at other times, socializing with friends and family I hadn’t seen for awhile. There’s only so much the mind can wrap around at once, and then it shuts off for awhile to keep your sanity. Sometimes I still feel that punch in my stomach if I allow myself to think about what really happened. Most of the times I don’t and just concentrate on her being as opposed to her not being. I found it helped to communicate with people who had been through a similar thing. My email is in my profile. Please feel free to use it, even if it’s just to vent. And I mean that sincerely.

17

Thanks for all of your kind words and stories, everyone. I was feeling so crappy and upset last night when I posted this thread. I read this thread this morning and cried again, but this time I didn’t feel quite as bad. It’s so encouraging to read about how others have gone through this.

Today feels like a better day, or at least it feels as if I’m trying to make it be. Thanks again.