My dad died on December 18. Since then, the whole grieving thing has been going okay, I guess. But yesterday I went to my mom’s house and for a brief, irrational instant, that it was my father sitting at the table.
It wasn’t, of course. It was my brother.
I had to work very hard to keep from bursting into tears, just because I hallucinated my father at the table.
Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing? Is there anything that helps convince your brain that yes, he is dead, and he’s not coming back, ever?
Time. And sometimes, even years later, you can still get tripped up. My mother’s been gone for 15 years, and every once in a blue moon I’ll actually pick up the phone to call her and tell her something.
You’ll never, ever stop missing your father’s presence in your life. But it will get easier, I promise.
Several weeks after my dad died, we got a phone call and for a second I thought it was him. My heart leapt and then it crashed. Horrible.
I also had a lot of dreams about him. Right after he died, my mom sold the house and moved. (She just needed to do this, she said, and in retrospect I guess it was appropriate.) So I had these dreams, night after night after night where he wasn’t dead after all, just away somewhere, and he’d come back and ask where the house was. Every. Damned. Night. I had this dream. The dreams tapered off after a year, but I still get variations of them on occasion, and it’s been a looooong time since he died.
I am no therapist and have no special insights on grieving, but I went through a pretty bad patch after my dad died. I look back and realize that it could have been somewhat better if I had:
taken it easier on myself. No, “I need to snap out of this.” For most folks, it takes time.. TIME TIME TIME. Like a year or so. For me, and from what I hear, a lot of people, this means that you’ll have these patches of feeling okay, and then something will set you off and you’ll cry. And from what I hear, this is pretty normal.
not let other people pressure me into “snapping out of it.” I don’t even know where to start with this one. Suffice it to say, some people are uncomfortable with the whole grieving process and will try to jolly you out of it as soon as possible. Some of them mean well, but really, it doesn’t work that way. It annoys me when people say “Life goes on” as a way of trying to squelch the grieving process. If people do that to you, tell them to shut the hell up.
realized that everyone grieves differently. Just because someone down the street seemed to “snap out of it” really quickly, doesn’t mean you will too. Besides, you don’t know how they really feel inside.
You miss your dad and this is a difficult time for you. You will get through it, in the way that works best for you. One of my friends went into therapy after her dad died, and that worked for her. Another got on some anti-depressant medication, and that really helped. Looking back at my own experience, I think I could have used both the medication and therapy. (I had a tough time.) But not everyone is me and will have the same needs as me. And not everyone is you and will have the same needs as you.
Just take it easy on yourself and be open to getting some help, if that’s what you need to do.
I am sorry about your loss. It takes time. Remembering your dad is a good thing and in time, missing him and remembering him will have a sweet feeling to it. He’ll never be gone from your heart.
And in preview, what Shayna said. You never really forget. And that’s normal and it’s good that you never really forget. And she’s right—it does get easier. I promise too.
My grandmother died around three years ago now and sometimes i still pick up the phone about to ask her when i dont know the name of a premature form of a squirrel or i want to talk about beetles. Time doesn’t heal all but you learn to live with it and thats the best you can do. Warm thoughts your way jsgoddess and Shayna and everyone else who experiences this.
My brother graduated from Air Force basic in January, and we (me, my mom and her husband) went to San Antonio for it. I’ve always thought my brother looked a lot more like our mom than our dad. Since our dad was an AF officer, I saw him in uniform a LOT. In fact, on the few occasions I saw him in work clothes that were non-military, it was downright strange.
During orientation they said you probably wouldn’t recognize the recruit you were there to see.
I RECOGNIZED him all right, but at first glance I thought, “Oh my God, it’s Daddy.” The resemblance was, and is, uncanny.
Oh, I wish he could have been there.
Rarely when I’m out and about I’ll see somebody that from the back resembles my dad, and my first thought is to run up and see, just to be sure. I don’t think that’ll ever go away completely. Especially since my brother suddenly looks so much like him, even if I’m the one who got the eyebrows.
And listen to the other people here; don’t let anybody else tell you what you should be feeling, or for how long you should be feeling it. Be kind to yourself. If you need to cry, find a good place and do it. Pay attention to your eating and sleeping habits. Don’t be surprised if he turns up in your dreams.
My Dad died about a year ago, and occasionally I think I see him in stores and such. The momentary surprise is more because he hadn’t lived in my state for several years that the fact he’s passed, now that I think about it. I suppose I realize it’s not him generally before I remember he’s really gone.
I’ve had one and one only dream about since. I was in my old bedroom from the last house we lived together in, and he tried to scare me by putting his arm into my window, as a prank. I was mad for a moment, then I realized he was dead, but he had already disappeared into the distance.
It’s been over 10 years since my mother died and still, from time to time I see someone who reminds me of her, or I hear an echo of her voice in someone else’s accent.
The biggest shock, however, was that about a year after she died, I decided I needed a short haircut, and one day soon after that I looked in the mirror and realized I had gotten the same style she always wore, and it was like seeing her in the mirror. Major freak-out.
I also had an extraordinarily real dream about a month after she died, where she simply came into the room where I was, smiled, and greeted me by name. I had a wonderful feeling of comfort and relief that none of those awful things had really happened, after all. It wasn’t until I had been awake for a couple of hours that I realized my cheerful mood was based on my own imagination.
Time helps, lots of time. If you lose someone you love you will never, ever, be completely over it. Some time, a day will come when you realize you haven’t thought about your loss all day. Some long time after that will come a day when you can think about him, and be sad, and at the same time be glad that you had each other for as long as you did, remember the good times, and laugh.
Now I’m getting all lachymose myself and the screen is getting blurry, so I have to stop.
The same thing happened to me after my dad died and it was a horrid little stab to the heart every time. It was a tiny bit of comfort to tell myself it was a testament to the love I had for him (and to what a great man he was), that I wanted to see him everywhere. Speaking with my grandfather was really hard, they looked just the same and their voices were so similar. It really has gotten much better.
I second what others here have said and want to add that you might want to talk with your family as well, if you don’t already. You can help each other get through a tough time and might even learn or re-visit some nice things about your dad.
Another thing to add (as if I haven’t rambled enough) was how comforting it is to talk to others who knew him. Like Ashes, Ashes says, talk to family.
Right after my dad died, we got the typical sympathy cards. The ones that touched me the most were from some people who took the time to write a few memories about my dad in the card. This one friend wrote the best card ever. She wrote about some of the cute odd things that she remembered about him—how he used to lay on his back on the front lawn and look up at the stars (he was an odd one! ;)). They were just these little memories, but since she’d been through the loss of her dad herself, she already knew that the sharing of memories is the best therapy of all. And it is.
Later, I did the same thing when the husband of a friend died. I wrote a similar kind of condolence card to the widow. The woman’s daughter contacted me especially to tell me how much her mom appreciated that card.
And it bears repeating: the way you grieve and the way you feel right now is probably appropriate for you. There is no one “proper” way to grieve, so don’t let anyone tell you that you should be over it by now, or you got over it too soon, or you weren’t sad enough, or you’re taking it too hard, or anything like that. Looking back at my own experiences, I think that was the single most inappropriate thing people did to me (and I did to myself)—trying to push me or pressure me into feeling (or not feeling) something that wasn’t right for me at that time.
As so many have said, time is about the only thing that helps.
About six years after my dad died (1990), my brother flew out to visit. My cousin and I went to the airport to get him. My brother stood at the luggage carousel and my cousin and I were about 10 feet behind him. I glanced over at BroTone and I swear my Dad was standing right behind him. The clothes, shoes, hair, silhouette, everything was Dad. My cousin (who hadn’t seen my Dad for at least 10 years before he died) elbowed me and said, “Look!”. I knew it wasn’t Dad, but at the same time just drank in the vision. Eventually the guy turned around, and the magic was gone. For a couple of minutes, though, it was like having him back.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, eventually it can become something kind of sweet and not so emotionally devastating.
If my experience means anything, jsgoddess, you never get over it. My father died 38 years ago. He was 56 then and I was 23. Two week ago I was in Chicago and staying in a hotel down in the Water Tower area. As I walked across the lobby I say a tall, burley man with a receding hairline, glasses and a "get the hell out of my way " expression on his face approaching me from across the lobby. It stopped my breath for an instant. It was my father, just as alive as I was and looking just like he looked before cancer turned him into a pathetic wreck.
I looked again. It wasn’t my father. It was me, reflected in a bank of mirrors. I was, none the less, shaken for the rest of the day.
The point is that even when you think the grieving is over, even when you have long accepted the fact of the death of someone who was important to you, you never forget and you memory will force you to remember at the oddest moment for the oddest reasons.
When I was in high school, a female friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver (who was driving under a revoked license). She had long-ish brunette hair and wore glasses.
A few days after that, I could have sworn I saw her in the hallway at school. But no, every time I thought I saw her, it was just some other girl. The same one every time. It was weird, because she usually never wore glasses.
Yes, Julie, I have. I lost my only son to suicide in June of 2000. It was 2 days after my birthday.
I still burst into tears. Know what? Its okay. Grief is a long time companion. People who haven’t lost part of their very being don’t understand.
Thank God my husband does.
See, I look and act perfectly normal. Because I’m supposed to be normal by now. The problem is that grief doesn’t stop when the time is up. I think, no, I know that there are a lot of people who, after society’s time limit is up, have plastered over the hole left inside, and gone on as expected.
I’m not doing it! It will never heal. I won’t pretend it can.
You’re supposed to see your dad at the table. Its your heart’s desire.
Yes, you will come to a time you will internalize the finality, but you will still miss him like you’d miss your arm.
I don’t see and feel Michael just behind my left shoulder any more. I no longer have conversations with him in my dreams. But, in a way, its worse.
When the screaming child inside wanting my way finally quieted, I accepted his death. I even understand.
The stages of grief are real, but working through them doesn’t cure it. Grief simply falls asleep in the back of your mind. I can go for weeks without a tear, without a thought. Then a man with long dark hair, in an ankle length coat strides by, and I want to chase after to just be sure.
I’ll stop now.
I don’t want to go on and on… again and again.
I have beared my soul to the board before, its not entertaining anymore.
If you would like, feel free to e-mail [email=picunurse@comcast.net]me You can say anything.
Sometimes just being able to say out loud how you feel helps. Sometimes a stranger is easier to talk to. You won’t inflict pain the way you might with a close friend, or family member. I can listen very well.
Mary
