Thread: Dealing with death

Death and The Way We Deal.

I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, and I’ve watched a lot of other people lose their loved ones and friends. In the last 11 years I have personally lost 6 family members, and I have watched others lose many more. While my relationships with some of my family members haven’t been that close, or have been virtually non-existent there is still a sense of grief, or regret when someone you maybe should have been closer with, passes on. I’ve been to many counselors, and support groups for some of my more significant losses; namely the death of my parents. I found if anything, they made me feel more alone. Counselors tend to generalize the feelings and reactions to death, and the many books they will shove in your face do the same. But you know what? I don’t want to be told how “Many people will feel (insert grief reaction) when they lose someone� I want to hear how real people have experienced and dealt with it. I don’t need to be told what I should be feeling, and then feel awful when I feel something that’s not on the generalized list. I just want to know I’m normal and I want to know other people have had the same feelings, and I want to know their experiences. So if you’re like me, this article is for you.

Young loss

One day when I was 9, I came home from school to find my parents very somber, and my father comforting my mother. I ran to my room, bawled and refused to come out for the whole night. I knew my grandmother had died. Now we knew my Grandma was very sick, we all knew she was going to die. And at my young age I knew how permanent death was, and I wasn’t full of lies my parents had told me about what happens when you die. I knew what it meant, but boy did I have no idea how it would feel. My whole family and life as I knew it turned right upside down. I began acting out in school because I didn’t know how to properly process and deal with my feelings. I began acting out at home because I was scared. My parents, namely my mother, were a wreck. My sister was drinking and never home. No one bothered to mention that the majority of this was a temporary reaction to grief. No one bothered to tell me that in time things would go back to normal at home. I honestly thought that was the beginning of the rest of my home life. I had no friends at that point who had lost anyone, my parents were busy making funeral arrangements and coping with their own grief. Everyone just assumed that since I was so young, that it wouldn’t affect me very much. But it did. Not just the loss, but the fact that no one really talked to me about it, no one really explained anything to me that was going on. I just had to sit back and watch everything feeling confused and scared. The way young loss is dealt with can shape the way someone deals with loss for the rest of their life. Thankfully it prepared me for the bigger losses I faced after that and I was able to deal with them in my own way.

The loss of my Mother

Like my Grandma, we all knew my mother was going to die. She wasn’t sick physically, she didn’t have cancer. She was mentally ill. We knew for years she would kill herself, and up until the day she did it, I thought I was prepared for it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When my Grandma passed away my Mother became extremely withdrawn and depressed. According to family she’d always been a little unstable, and I’d witnessed a bit of it before, but it got much, much worse after my Grandmas death. She closed herself in her room most of the time, she quit cooking and didn’t really take care of me and my sister anymore. She and my father fought every time he got a chance to come home from work. And then things took an even bigger turn for the worst; my parents got a divorce. My mom went nuts. She began drinking, doing drugs, regularly attempting suicide. She’d call me and my sister to say goodbye, and then my sister would have to go rescue her and pick her life back up for her. She wouldn’t come home some nights. She couldn’t keep a job, we rarely ever had enough money to eat or pay the rent. She began sleeping around and dating men that treated her like shit and lived a very high-risk life style much like herself. She went on and off her anti-depressants regularly. Then one day she met a man and fell in love. He was nice, he treated her like she was a princess, he treated me better than my own father at that point. We finally had a normal family life - for about 8 months. Then 3 weeks after we moved in with him, he left. Well, she made him leave. His children refused to come visit him at his new home. So he decided he would still help pay the rent for us, he would still be with my mother, but that he had to get his own place until his children adjusted to this new life. At this point my mom had been off her medication for quite some time, because she thought she was happy. But it didn’t make her sane, she flew off the handle, slit her wrists and her throat and told him to get out. She took it the wrong way and gave this poor man no chance to explain. We got her to the hospital and bandaged up, her doctor put her on new medications and that was that. Two days later she pulled her car into the garage, after asking my dad to take me for a few days, and she killed herself.

There’s been some speculation that she decided a little too late not to go through with it, because the car was turned off rather than dead when she was found, but that might just be us not wanting to believe she actually went through with it this time. After that I was a mess. I internalized all my grief. I felt so guilty, I blamed myself. I hated myself. I moved in with my sister, and decided since she was grieving too that I had to deal with it on my own. I became anorexic/bulimic again, something I’d already overcome. I began cutting myself a few times a day. I got into some heavy drugs and drinking. I tried and contemplated killing myself very regularly. My mother had been my best friend, regardless of how fucked up she was. She always made sure I was okay and taken care of, she talked to me about anything and everything. I also think there was an unhealthy relationship because she depended on me to keep her happy. For a year and a half after her death I struggled with myself. I felt angry, I felt guilty, I felt resentment towards her and everyone involved. I also felt relief which made me feel even guiltier. I placed blame on anyone who had any sort of relationship with her for not doing more. I finally got put back on medications and I guess it leveled me out a bit to where I could get a better grasp of things and actually start dealing with them. I’m still not over her death. I have forgiven her, and I don’t blame her for killing herself. I can’t say for sure that I could have even made it as long as she did, knowing how tortured she was just by being alive. I’m still so fucking angry at her though. I don’t know if I’ll ever not be angry with her. What about my wedding? What about my children? What am I supposed to do when I have problems only a mother can help you with? She missed my sisters wedding. I bawled the whole way to the hospital the day my sister gave birth to my niece because I was angry at my mother. She should have been there for my sister. She should have been there to see the birth of her first grandchild, to help my sister through her pregnancy, and to calm my sisters fears when she doesn’t know what’s wrong with the baby or if she’s doing things right. But she chose not to be. I know she didn’t kill herself with any of those things on her mind, but she still, intentionally or not, chose to miss the events she should have been there for. To this day I still have nightmares where she calls me up from a hotel, to tell me she staged the whole thing, to better my life. They’re less frequent now, but they’re still as upsetting. I don’t think I will ever get over my mothers death, and I know that I don’t have to. As long as I am able to live my life day to day without it affecting every little thing I do, I’m okay with it.

The loss of my Father

I was a big-time Daddy’s girl when I was little. Anytime my dad had time off work to come home, I wanted to do everything and anything with him. I’d even get under his truck, it my little tiny cover-alls he cut up for me, and scrape mud from under his truck just to be in the garage and help him. After my parents divorced though, we grew apart. My mothers lies about him took over any good thoughts I had about him, and I also began to realise that there were definitely some things he should not have done to me. He had been a bit abusive when I was younger, and as I got older I hated him for it. He stayed away from me because he wasn’t sure how to relate to me, or help me with what my mother was putting me through. We slowly saw less and less of each other until I began to nearly hate him. After my mom died he stepped up and began mending our relationship. He became a spectacular father. I moved in with him after leaving my sisters and we became really close. He would call me every day from work to tell me he was proud of me, and he loved me. I was eventually able to talk to him about anything and everything. He’d buy me tampons and other girly-things most men won’t even talk about. He respected all the decisions I made for myself and never told me what to do. He was just there for me. Then about 2 years ago this October, he had a heart attack on thanksgiving day. He was hospitalized for a week and then released. I couldn’t stop worrying about him. If I woke up and he was still sleeping, I panicked thinking maybe he’d died. If I couldn’t find him when I woke up, I panicked even more. Eventually around Christmastime he went back to work. He came home around the beginning of January and when he left a week later, that was the last I saw of him. On January 20th of last year, he died of a massive heart attack at work. Just barely 4 years after my mothers death. So there I was, a 20 year-old orphan. This time I wasn’t able to internalize my grief, I had too many things to do. I had to go to the lawyers, deal with the estate, pay bills, plan and pay for the funeral. Most of all this I had to do completely on my own. His family was of hardly any support. The pretty much harassed me about money from day one. I think I’ve done fairly well this time around. Of course I cried, and had my break downs. I started drinking heavily for the first little while afterwards. I became a little irresponsible as far as my workplace went. But all in all, I’ve come out okay. I took care of things, I dealt with things, I admitted I needed help and someone to talk to when things got rough. His death forced me to grow up. All of a sudden I was the owner of the house, which also meant paying off large bills, incurring all the expenses of owning a house. It hasn’t been easy, and being that it has only been just over a year and a half since his death, I know I’m not completely over it. And like my mothers death, I don’t think I’ll ever be ‘over’ it. I haven’t worked a day since he died, I can blame it on the fact that I have money and don’t have to. But I know its because I’m terrified to waste my life doing something that I hate. I feel safe in my home. I have some incredible anxieties now. I’m terrified of just about everything. I worry about my sister and my boyfriend 24/7. I worry about my health 24/7. I hate being in a vehicle, I hate leaving the house for long periods of time because I worry it will be burned to the ground and my animals will be dead when I get home. If I cant get a hold of my sister I panic, because when my dad died that’s how I figured it out. He didn’t answer his phone, he didn’t call me back, and finally someone else answered his phone. I know all these fears are irrational, and I know I have to do something about them, sooner rather than later. And I’m slowly working on it. I have the same worries about not having my father around as I do my mother. Who’s going to walk me down the aisle? Who are my kids going to call grandpa? What do I do when the pipes start leaking, or the house floods?

Helping others with their losses

I have learned many tricks of dealing with other people who are grieving, by how others have helped me. If you know someone that is grieving, here is my advice;

-Be the best damn best friend/brother/sister/boyfriend/girlfriend etc that you can be
-Don’t say you’re sorry and then walk on eggshells around them. Treat them like you always did, its nice to still feel normal when everything else in your life feels anything but normal.
- Listen. And let them know you’re ALWAYS available if they need you.
- Ask if they’re okay, but don’t do it a million and one times a day.
- Help them remember if they bring it up. If I ever bring it up, my best friend always says things like “Hey, remember when your mom did this? She was the coolest mom ever� It helps me remember some of the things I might have forgotten in light of the bad things.
- Offer your own experiences, IF they don’t involve a cat/dog/bunny etc, unless the person is grieving the loss of a pet. While the attempt to relate is appreciated, relating deaths of pets to my loss only made me feel bitter and more alone.
- Don’t question anything they say or do, unless its detrimental to their well being, there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
- Don’t take things they may say or do to hurt you to heart (within reason of course) sometimes people who are grieving take it out on people they shouldn’t.
-Validate the way they feel. Tell them its okay to be angry, mad, upset. Relieved, whatever it is.
- If you notice someone is in danger of hurting themselves or possibly worse, help them. Any way you can.
- And lastly, remember you can’t fix them, they need to hurt, they need to cry..they need to do whatever it takes to help them. Don’t bare the weight of their loss on your shoulders to the point where you’re not okay yourself. For one, you’re of no use to them when you’re in as bad or worse condition than they are. But mostly, it’s not healthy to take their problems on as your own, for yourself.

My sisters father died about 6 months after my father, so I was put to the test on my own skills at helping someone else, more than I’d ever been before. We were dealing with the exact same losses, but they were completely different at the same time. Things were hard, but it’s brought us closer than ever. And I honestly believe that having to help each other has put our losses into perspective and helped us realise that it isn’t the end of the world. We’re finally to make little inside jokes, and laugh about our parents and growing up now. Even things about their death. My father died on what would have been my mothers birthday, and since everyone knew she still loved him, we decided she wanted him back for her birthday. Then when my sisters dad died, we decided that our mother hadn’t changed even in death, and was still unhappy with just one man and had to have him back too. We joke about having to keep tabs on the other men she dated to see if a pattern arises.

Two days after my sisters Father died, my boyfriends grandfather died. This was a completely new situation to me. I didn’t know his grandfather, I was dealing with a loss, I was trying to help my sister deal, and my boyfriend who was trying to be supportive of us both, lost someone too. He was close to his grandpa but hadn’t seen him in a few years due to distance. His initial reaction was regret and guilt. The only thing I knew how to do was to ask him questions when he brought it up. What did your grandpa like to do? What did you like to do with him? How did he act? Etc, etc. I was trying to take his mind off the things he didn’t get to do, and should have done, and help him remember what he did do, and the good times he did have. And it helped he’s now able to talk about his grandpa without getting angry, instead it makes him happy.

As you can see I’ve dealt with all kinds of losses, and dealt with them all in different ways. And that’s the whole point of this article. Don’t let some stupid list or book tell you how you should feel. Just feel whatever it is you’re feeling. Guilt/hate/anger/ relief/indifference. Whatever it is just feel it, and for as long as you need to. Don’t let anyone tell you that you should be ‘over’ it because I honestly don’t believe you can ever truly and fully get over a loss of someone you love. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re going about it the wrong way. Do whatever you need to do to come to terms and deal with your loss. Don’t take the words from books as the bible, while they are definitely helpful, they aren’t specific to you and your grief. If at anytime though, you feel like you are having unhealthy thoughts, or doing things harmful to yourself, please, please seek help. If I hadn’t of at the last second, I wouldn’t be here right now. And at that time, I didn’t think that was such a bad thing, but now I realise it does get easier in time. If you feel alone, don’t be afraid to seek out people with similar experiences. There are so many websites, support groups, chat lines that deal with loss. Eventually you will find someone who feels like you do. And most importantly, always remember there is no right or wrong way to grieve and that there is absolutely no time frame within which you should finish your grieving and move on.

My own way of grieving is a little simpler, and I've done it enough so that it follows the same pattern as my anger instantly (Except, unlike my anger, it's extremely rare for it to come out. Ever.):

Get it, tuck it in the back of your mind, forget the emotion, bottle it.

Yeah. You're sad. Inside you're screaming and weeping, inside you're curled up in a heap.

Outside you're fine.

Same with anger, inside you're yelling, taking it out on possessions and other people.

The first works fine for me, it goes away.

The second doesn't, it keeps bottling, and bottling, until I beat the shit into someone for something really stupid.

Guess we all have our own methods.

I think the last time I cried was about 5 months ago. The first proper time in about 5-6 years or so. And I was with my best friend, who knows more about me than my parents, the person I feel most secure with in the world. She's great.

This article is well-written, and you've coped well with hard losses. That gets a lot of respect.