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My mum died this morning

Everybody deals with their grief differently but one of the things that helped me a lot was that I found a thing to keep me busy, while also remembering. I got all my grandma's, great grandma's, and great great grandma's boxes of pictures and went through hundreds of them. I scanned them and uploaded them onto my mom's Facebook. It took me hours and hours! When I was finally done I felt exhausted and not as heartbroken. I got to remember all those happy times. How fun she was, how tough she was, how sweet, how mean, all the things that made her a person. I still miss her, I still get a little teary about her now and then, but it's not as strong an emotion anymore. I can look at some of her things that I still have and say into the air that I miss you grandma, but it's much less painful now. ALSO, just hanging out with you guys during that hard time made me feel better, even if I didn't want to talk about it or didn't when I thought I was making other people depressed.
 
It's a lot to cope with and often feels overwhelming. Sleep was difficult for me in the beginning with so many things racing around my mind. I think I also spent the better part of a year feeling completely disconnected from reality, like some weird nearly continuous out of body experience.

It's a cliche, but the only thing that really helps is time. Treat yourself well, remember to eat and keep your strength up and rest when you can. If you need grief counseling, seek it out, there are plenty of people who understand what you're going through. It will take time, but eventually the pain will lessen. It never completely goes away, but as Eggs said you become more capable of dealing with it. The stress and pain fade and good memories will come to bring comfort.
 
Take the time you need. Grieve while grieving is necessary, and when it's healthy for you to come back, we'll be here.

Feel whole again as soon as you're able.

And remember:

 
Eggs Mayonnaise said:
Ultimately, the most comforting thing someone said to me is, "It's not something you get over. It's something you learn to live with." That sounds a little gloom & doom on the surface, but it's a life truth that actually helped me understand the grieving process. You grieve when it happens, but it's not out of your system. I can remember suddenly crying out of nowhere a year later, but then I understood why, and when I was done, I went on with the day. (This was all pre-TrekBBS so I only had an Elvis Costello mailing list to pour my heart out to on the internet, lol).

Don't forget to take care of yourself through all this. Let yourself feel everything you need to feel. And once in while, just sit and take a few deep breaths for a minute or two. It really does help the mind & body.
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This is very true. You have some good friends here CaptainWacky who love you very much. I hope you are able to sleep.
 
Again, it sucks for you, not getting to say goodbye, but going in your sleep has to be right up there on ways to go.

I lost my Dad, Aunt I was very fond of, and Mom to variously shitty forms of cancer--in that order. My Aunt died fairly gracefully while I was out of state. My Dad didn't let go easily, and my Mom was even worse. On a related note, I don't really remember having dreams with my Dad in them until after my Mom died, but after she went, I had tons of dreams where I was back on the farm for the weekend or whatever. And it was very odd. I was like "You're dead. I was at your funeral." But she was so clearly alive in the dream that I had to put the facts aside. And now Dad is in the dreams too. It's very odd.
 
Oh, and since this was unexpected, you didn't get the hospice book. This poem is at the back. I found it comforting:
Gone From My Sight
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I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...
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I watch Twin Peaks on Tuesday's so maybe I'll watch tomorrow depending on how I feel.

I did get a couple of hours of sleep last night. I don't really know how I'm going to feel in the future. I feel selfish thinking about myself when I remember that she should still be here. I'm never going to accept it as her "time" or anything like that. I mean if you think about it as her being six years younger than Patrick Stewart (that's the kind of way I think about things) and he doesn't exactly act like an old man, that's the kind of thing that makes it feel staggerlingly unfair. She was upset about Bruce Forsyth dying the day before it happened for fuck's sake. Sorry for ranting about this I know it's not going to make it better or bring her back. Thanks everyone for your help and thoughts.
 
CaptainWacky said:
I haven't slept since it happened and every time I lie down thinking I'll get some sleep I can feel my chest start pounding or pain in my arm or stomach. I haven't taken any medication for my anxiety for years (which is probably stupid since it causes me major problems) and I'm finding it hard to imagine how I'm going to get to sleep again. I guess this is something I'll just have to wait out. (There's also the stupid selfish kind of ocd fear now that I won't wake up again if I fall asleep because it's what happened to her.)
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OCD fears arnt stupid ( they are what they are), so try to not feel bad about that. I have some ocd, so I can relate a bit.
 
Tell me at least you have some other family to be with you at her funeral, because if you say you are going to that on your own, I am tempted to get the train up there and stand by you, I am at work the rest of this week, but if its the week after I am already off, and I'm not kidding, you have been in my life longer than my wife and son Wacky, and at least geographically, I might be the closest TKer to where you live.
 
The funeral is tomorrow. I'm still at the "she should still be here" stage so I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this.
 
Its going to be rough, there is a finality to those last moments, when you know in your heart that now you don't even have the body, and they truly are gone, but you will always have your memories of her, and no ceremony can take those away from you, and you will be surrounded by people who are remembering her too, and I know its trite, but a person isn't really gone until the last person who remembers them is gone.

Time will heal you, but there is no definitive length of it where you can say, you will be happy by this date, there may even be times you laugh tomorrow, and don't be afraid to.

I remember at my brothers funeral the man doing the ceremony mangled the name of the company my brother worked for, and somehow turned BA Atch, into biatch.

Which made a few of us chuckle, and noone would have loved that cock up more than my brother.

Just get through the day as best you can, and then get through the next, and you keep on going.

Just don't do the klingon warrior yell, most people wont get the reference.
 
I'm sorry I didn't see this until just now. Love you, Wacky.

Tomorrow is definitely going to be a hard day. It's not easy saying goodbye.
 
I don't feel like I even said goodbye. I don't know what I feel. It was nice that so many people came and they were all very nice. Like Jerry Seinfeld I'm not a hugger but I didn't reject any today.

It will still never feel right not having her here.
 
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