New post - I lost my dad

[Helsbelles]

Hi all, I'm new to this. I lost my dad 2 weeks ago. It was very sudden and I'm massively struggling. I'm so up and down. I can't and don't want to comprehend not seeing him again. Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Helen

[Sandra61]

I'm so sorry, Helen. You must still be in shock, so must expect to be all over the place for some considerable time to come yet. Just try to eat and drink enough - it's so easy to forget to when you are hit by such a bombshell. Other than that, just do whatever helps, cry, talk, look at photos. Hopefully, you have support from family around you.

I found it helped to put together an album of favourite photos and give copies to other family members. I also found it helped to have flowers round the house. It gave me a little boost to see their beauty and smell their scent. It also helped to walk in the park. I found it (and still do find a year a half later from losing my mum) a very calming place to sit and process all that has happened and try to accept it all.

You might find it helps to write down how you feel each day or if you have unsaid things that you wish you had said to your dad, try writing him a letter. Writing it all down does give some release to your feelings and make you feel a little better. But there is no set period for how long it takes to grieve and there is no right or wrong way to do it. You will probably find, as most of us do, that you never really get over it, you just learn to accept and live with it.

This will be a long a difficult path for you and you are never the same again once you have been through the loss of someone so important in your life. Your life will never be the same either, so just take little steps. One day at a time, one hour or minute at a time, if necessary. There will be ups and downs for a long time, but, very slowly, things will start to get better. Be patient and gentle with yourself and those around you. Grief is a rollercoaster ride and there are hard climbs and sudden dips and times when you can bear it, but times also when you can't.

Sending you a hug and strength. Keep talking. Talking helps whether to us here or those around you. We are here for as long as you need us. 

[Helsbelles]

Thank you. I feel that it's also made me question everything. As in what is the point in anything really, when we almost die anyway. I'm snappy at every little thing, I feel I'm being a rubbish mum, I'm finding everything about my husband irritating. I know that things will become easier to process and that it's time. At the moment I feel completely engulfed though. X

[Helsbelles]

I just feel like screaming. The children are at school, all I am doing is crying, looking through photos and smelling my dad's tip. It's looking it's scent which I can't bear. I want to run away from everything around me. I don't want to be this person who has lost their dad, who won't ever his voice again, hear him say 'hello darling' as I walk through his front door. I can't believe I'll never watch him at with my children again or give them all the treats in the world.

I watched him die and then visited him every day in the mortuary and funeral parlour. That gave me a sense of calm however I think that's made things even harder as now knowing I can't see him every day destroys me. I'm so upset.

[Karena]

  its really early days but over time you will find ways to feel that closeness - but obviousely not in the physical sense. One of the ways to do that when you are ready would be to make a memory box to share with the kids - its a good opportunity for them and you to talk - and yes cry too and laugh too but in keeping his memory alive for them you are doing the same for yourself and in that way you start recalling his life as a whole not just the end of it. he will always be in your heart, you will always hear his voice because you know what he would have said or done in any situation you find yourself in, and thats why no life is pointless because no matter how long our short our lives are they always touch other peoples, but it really hard to see that in the early days after losing them - its ok to cry and its ok to feel as you do now and i know a lot of frustation comes from feeling that it isnt ok and we should "man up" but we were given emotions for a reason, there are the responses which are fight/fight we need to survive, and emotions which we also need to feel to survive what is thrown at us, it makes no more sense to deny or ignore them than it does to fight our responses.
That includes anger, but with that we need to find a safe outlet -i have known people here take their cars to the middle of no-where and scream, others saved bottles up so they can legitimately smash them at a bottle bank, i find a brisk walk up the hill nearby works - i am too knackered to be angry after a while and there is a decent view that calms me down when i get there as well.

It doesnt feel like it now but it will get better, you will not stop grieving for him but you will learn how to live with it, and it will remain a part of you but not the whole of you as it feels like now.
I found coming here helped, just having somewhere to write down my feeling helped me make sense of them, and everyone here is at some stage of that roller coaster journey that grief is, so people understand maybe more than those around us especiall if they havent experienced it themselves.

[green dragon]

Hi Helen, I'm really sorry about your loss. I lost my Mum 3 months ago and I found it's uncanny how what we feel is universal: lost in the world, like the rug has pulled from under the feet, like a part of you has been torn away. I too cried every day for 2 months or so. What I found intereseting is that in spite of the enormity of grief, life is extremely resilient. Somehow I find myself now, 3 months on, on a sort of plateau where the pain isn't quite as debilitating. The timing is probably different for everybody.

Before evrething else, I want to stress that whatever you feel and how you are acting is perfectly normal.

But I think it is important to find strategies to cope with the situation. You say you are struggling with not hearing his voice and not seeing him - in particular. Do you have any recordings of him? I have a couple of recent recordings of my Mum and I found it really soothing to play them on occasion. Also the pictures help, when fearing that I would forget her (although everyone says that the fear is unfounded and even I agree; I doubt I would ever forget her face as it looked the last time I saw her, both in life and in death). However, pictures make it very present, although at different ages.

I don't have children so I can only imagine that it's difficult for you to be present for them as a mother right now. I think to some degree children do understand that you're going through a hard time (I knew it was tough when my parents divorced, for instance, even though I probably had the least hard time of all of us, as far as events went; as far as emotional scars, that's another story, of course). The people who care about you will understand, though it will be difficult for them as well.

But allow yourself to be emotional and not at your usual level of togetherness at this time, even if you may be making "mistakes" in dealing with others. This is an extraordinary moment in anyone's life, when one can't be expected to behave completely reasonable. I myself acted in ways that could have been (were) construed as selfish or insensitive right around Mum's death but, you know, I wasn't at my best.

But bacl to strategies. It's really important to both continue with your normal routines and to find new routines that help you heal. For instance, you said it felt visiting your dad at the mortuary/funeral parlour gave you a sense of calm. Is it possible to continue the visits to the cemetery as well? I did that for the period of time that I spent at Mum's home and I felt very good about it, too. It also gave me the opportunity to get used to talking to her without her being there pysically, which was not the easiest thing to wrap my mind around. But when I returned to my house I had to find something else instead. Everybody says that taking walks helps calm your mind, so I started taking walks in the evening, as I am really fond of evenings. I found a pleasant, quiet spot I visit every day and that has replaced the visits to the cemetery. I also have plans to hang out again at the cemetery when I return for visits. Given that the cemetery has an amazing vista, what I want to do is bring a drawing pad and spend a pleasant couple of hours drawing. One of the things we did a lot since I was a child, Mum and I, was her doing her chores or whatever and me drawing, so she would obviously like this arrangement.

Anyway, whichever your situation is, I found it very soothing to make time during your day for talking or visiting or interacting with the memory of the parent in some way. For my part, I speak to her briefly (or longer) every morning when I wake up. There could be other times during the day when I converse with her but this one I set in stone, so to speak.

One last thing: a very good friend of mine reminded me that you need to give yourself breaks from grieving. They don't have to be long,  but you need to remember to live. I'm sure your father would want you to :-)

[green dragon]

I feel that it's also made me question everything. As in what is the point in anything really, when we almost die anyway.

That is also a normal thing. Do you hold any beliefs about the afterlife? They don't even have to make sense, I found, as someone who is very scientifically bent. The purpose of these beliefs, whichever they are (ie, you can totally make up your own), is to help us deal with this severe break from the most important people in our lives. You're not presenting a PhD thesis, you're trying to heal, so allow yourself to ponder these questions and find answers that work for you

[Sandra61]

Hello again, Helen. Sadly I recognise all the reactions and feelings you describe from October 2017, when I lost my mum. It does make you want to scream and wonder what the point of anything is anymore. 

I am sure you are not being a rubbish mum at all, just a person who has lost her dad. When you have just suffered a loss, you can’t be the person you would ordinarily be for those around you, so you feel you are letting your family down. You are not. You are just someone who is grieving and that will stop you being the person you feel you should be. But you are grieving and that makes you behave and feel differently. You can’t do much about that except be a patient with yourself whilst you work through it.

I would suspect that you are being snappy and finding everything your husband does irritating because normal life fades into the background when you are hit by grief. I suppose that’s why I reminded you to eat and drink. I forgot to most of the time after I lost my mum. As you say, nothing seems to matter anymore. It really does feel like that, but that feeling does slowly pass as you come to accept what has happened and realise that life does and must go on. You probably have some weeks and months to go before you will feel like that. I still have days when I feel like that, especially when life isn’t going very well, but most days now, I can be more interested in life again, but for me that definitely took about fourteen months and I still struggle with it now.

You feel engulfed because this loss has been so significant for you and you are trying to get your head around the fact that this terrible thing has happened. I know I found it hard to understand how the world could be going on normally around me when I felt like my world had collapsed and that nothing would ever matter again. You wonder how the world can keep going round when there has been this terrible disaster?

It does seem incomprehensible that you will never see or speak to the person you have lost again. It is very hard to grasp the fact that one moment, someone who has been there all your life suddenly isn’t anymore. You are grieving not just for the loss of your dad, but the loss of the future you would have had if he had not passed and for the way life was when he was still here.

It is a huge change to your universe and will take a lot of effort to adjust to and recover from that. That’s why I said it changes everything. Sadly it does and to me felt like I had to rebuild my life almost from scratch again. I am still struggling with that too. It’s a work in progress and I’m still finding my way. You will probably have to do that too and it takes time, thought and effort. You can’t rush it. It’s too hard.

So that would probably be why you are being snappy and impatient with your poor husband. He is probably trying to hold everything else together and trying to be there for you at the same time whilst not knowing what to say that will help and whilst wanting to help you so much. It is a very difficult time for others less affected by the loss than you. Friends and family will be hurting for you, but are probably aware that there isn’t much they can do to make you feel any better, so they just try to do what they can, which to you will feel pretty lame and ineffective, because you are feeling all the enormity of the pain of the loss of your precious dad and that will exclude everything else and make it seem small and insignificant. That is normal.

I still walk around every day with the feeling that I am crying on the inside and find the daily requirements of work and trivial bickering of colleagues completely irritating and insignificant. I still feel that in comparison to the loss of my mum, other usual daily arguments and clashes of personality are like the buzz of an irritating fly that I want brush aside.

I’m afraid wanting to scream, run away and look at photos all the time, crying uncontrollably and until it makes you feel ill are all normal reactions too. That period lasted for months for me. It made it hard to do any normal daily task. I didn’t even manage to get dressed some days.

I suspect you are looking at photos so much because it is the next best thing to visiting him in the mortuary. That probably made you feel calm because it made you feel like he was still there in some real way and now not having that, will make you feel panicky. I carried on feeling panicky that mum wasn’t there anymore for about six months, culminating in a horrible week when I basically went into complete meltdown. For me that week was a bit of a watershed and I had to make a plan to help me through the next six months and going forward from there. I am still working on and following that and it has helped.

If photos are your focus at present, why not sort them into your favourite ones and put them into an album? It would be something to give you a focus for the moment and to pick up whenever you needed to see pictures of him. You could share that the memories they conjure up with your family too and tell them about your memories of those episodes. I am sure they would enjoy that too. I am sure your children would find that helpful too. After all, they have lost their granddad and however old they are now, will want to know more about him as they grow up.

I know you say it made you feel calm to visit him in the mortuary, so I assume that was because you felt it was a way of being with him, just as smelling the scent of him on his clothes would be now, but you will come to understand that he is always with you anyway. You carry him in your heart and when you are wondering what advice he might have given you when you need it, you will find you can hear what he might have said to you in your head. He shaped who you are and shaped your life to a great extent and all that has made you the person you are, so you will always have this element of his influence with you and will carry that forward with you always.

Also, you probably have some interests that you shared and if you can carry those on in some way, that helps too. I took up some hobbies that my mum also used to enjoy, so that is a lasting connection too and makes me feel that she still has some influence on my life and I can feel I am doing these things for her too, as well as me, so she is still helping me, even though she is gone.
 
Your love for your dad will never die and you will think of him every day. My dad died in 1985, but still not a day goes past when I don’t think of him, even speak to him! I have a portrait of him on the wall in my front room that I tend to talk to every day, several photos of my mum now too.

Everything you are feeling and doing is sadly normal, Helen, but it will get very slowly better. You just have to accept that this is a long and hard time to get through and that you will not be anything like the person you were for a long time. It will get better though eventually.

As I say, it helps to put things down on paper. I did that from the first day after I lost my mum and now if I go back and look at what I wrote then, I can see progress and realise I have come some way from where I was then, so it helps in that way too, as well as giving some expression and outlet for your feelings.

Slowly, things will get a little better, Helen. I know if feels unbearable now, but that it grief. It is unbearable, painful and goes on for a long long time, but gradually you do start moving slowly forward. Little by little. For the moment, just do whatever helps. We are here for you..xx

[Helsbelles]

Thank you both xx

I've been for a really long walk today which helped.

I just feel completely lost. I think with not sleeping my emotions are even more heightened. I feel so tired but then feel as though I am putting off sleep because I know that those last minutes of Dad will come into mind and that's too much for me right now.

I have thought about the photo album and memory box but I am finding looking at photos too hard. I see his face and it is just a reminder that I won't be able to touch it again.

The week leading up to his death was perfect really, my son and o had taken him put for breakfast on the Monday then he'd cooked dinner for us on the Wednesday. My daughter saw him the morning of the day he died and they had a good chat.

 Dad called me at 1.50pm, he couldn't get me as I was in a meeting, but he was calling to tell me he was having a stroke and had called the ambulance. He called mum and told her, then mum called me and I made my way to the hospital. As I got close to the hospital I called his phone, I thought dad had answered it and said 'dad' to which a doctor replied to tell me, that no, he it wasn't dad, it was the doctor and my dad was very poorly. I arrived to be told he had had a massive bleed on the brain and they were keeping him comfortable as there was nothing else they could do. I was alone with my dad for 40 minutes where I was able to stroke his face, kiss him and tell him how much I love him. Everyone else arrived and within 2 hours he took his last breaths. Mum and I stayed with him until 11.30pm then I went and slept in his bed. I didn't sleep at all but found comfort in being in his bed, on his side, with his smell.

Thank you for your replies and I am sorry for all your losses too. I'm glad I've found this forum, it's nice to know I have somewhere to come to offload xx

[RoseWeb]

Hello Helen,
Thank you for your post on my thread.

I also lost my Dad to a stroke, but unlike you I had a few days to process that we were going to lose him. It was still a shock.
One thing that's helping me at the moment is leaving the house every day. Just simple things like having a cup of coffee in a cafe or going for a walk.

I've also researched to try and make sense of events after Dad had the stroke. This may not be right for you - I know it wouldn't help my husband if he was facing this. But it's helped me to understand why he died and that Dad's stroke was severe and he'd have had no quality of life had he survived. He'd have hated that. (The hospital doctors were also very good at explaining things).

[Sandra61]

Hello again, Helen.

I am glad the walk helped. I know all about the not sleeping. The thoughts and questions and guilt all go round in your head all the time along with the memories of all the horror of the last days to prevent you from sleeping and then you just get exhausted and that seems to make everything worse. Sleep was a huge problem for me that is only now starting to get a little better.over a year an a half later. I do at least sleep when exhausted now and for longer periods, even when I'm not, before waking up again.

I think we all tend to go through this cycle of thinking that upsets us after a loss though. It is hard to expel the bad memories from your mind and focus on the good ones, so it is good that you can still see that your dad had some good days before this happened.

You do feel lost and lonely after you lose someone. Again, it's part of the effect of loss and grief and I think is all to do with the disbelief that they can be gone so suddenly and completely. It is hard to take it in.

My mum died from a massive bleed on the brain too. In her case, it was partly due to the medicines she was taking. She was on warfarin for a heart condition and then was prescribed a regular dose of paracetamol for a knee injury. Unfortunately, these two medications combine to cause a risk of stroke if taken for more than a few days together and she was taking them for six weeks when the stroke occurred. I only worked what had happened after she died by doing research into the possible causes for the stroke as I could not understand what could have caused it. I asked the gp about it and it turned out they were unaware of the risk and so had not monitored her blood clotting rate after starting to prescribe this combination of medicines.

I did manage to persuade the provider of the clinical system to put a warning on it so that doctors prescribing for patients on warfarin in future would see a warning of the risk, so hopefully it might help other such patients in future, so you could say some good came of it, but that didn't help my mum. She survived for about six more weeks, but didn't really stand any chance of recovery. I think if this terrible thing had to happen to your dad, at least it was better that it happened quickly and he didn't have to suffer for too long. I remember when my mum died, my first feeling was one of relief that at least she wasn't suffering anymore.

I know that feeling of guilt too that you got a call from him that you didn't answer when you were in a meeting. My mum rang me at work earlier in the day to say she wasn't feeling well and was going to go and have a lie down. I asked her if she wanted me to come home, but she said she didn't and would have a rest till I got in. I did go home earlier than usual but still not for some hours and so an ambulance was not called until I found her and I still blame myself for not having gone home straightaway. I know we can't see into the future and so don't know at the time that what we do might not be the best thing, but that doesn't stop you blaming yourself. I suppose that too is something you just have to accept that, at the time, you didn't know what was happening and that's life, and you just have to learn to live with it because it's too late to change it, but it still makes you feel bad.

I don't suppose there is any 'good' way to lose a loved one, but I know it takes a long time for the awful memories of those events that led up to their death to fade and the good memories of happier times to come to the forefront again. The bad memories never leave you, but we all die of something sometime, so a certain amount of guilt and pain will always feature in that for someone. The awful memories also stay with you too, but you focus on those less as acceptance comes. You get to a point when you just have to accept that whatever happened happened and you can't change it, so you have to live with it and be grateful for all the better happier days and years your lost loved one had and that you shared with them. No matter how the end comes, it will always be painful for those who love them.

I did find that wearing myself out doing some kind of activity helped with sleep, Helen, so walking  will be good for that. I also take Nytol sometimes and find that helps too. I take the herbal one. I know it can also help to take a warm bath before bed and to drink something milky. Reading is also good. It tires you out and takes your mind off what is upsetting you and causes you to drop off after a while! You could try some of those ideas. I know how hard it is when you can't sleep. If all else fails, I just get up again and do something else until I feel tired enough to try again. I either come on here or watch TV or write poetry. I wrote the poem about my mum and losing her that I posted on this forum during one of those sleepless nights. I think it helps to release the emotions that are upsetting you to do something like that.

I hope you find something that helps. Thinking of you..xx 

[Helsbelles]

Hi all.
This week has been very up and down. I'm currently sat listening to dad's  music  I'm not sure whether it's helping or not.

I saw a Robin yesterday, I was told by the Humanist who delivered dad's funeral to look out for the Robin in the garden. I've been looking every day since his funeral and yesterday was the first time I saw it. It perched and looked straight at me. It was overwhelming. I really do believe in the afterlife, it really helps me  trying to get through this pain. Believing that my dad is trying to come back to me or show me he's here.

My daughter received my dad's IPad after he died, it had a lot of photos on, of him and the grandchildren, we've come home tonight and she's told me that somehow they've all been deleted. I'm so cross, angry and upset. O know she wouldn't have done anything on purpose but I'm so cross. And she knows it, who h us even worse. I'm praying they can be retrieved.

I just want to scream,  cry, lie down and forget everything. Just lie next to my dad, talking to him, listening to him telling me it's okay
okay

[Sandra61]

Hi Helen,

It is understandable that you are very up and down. It's still very early days for you. You will probably find that that goes on for months yet. You will have better days, but also bad ones for a long time. I think that's where keeping a diary helps. You can write down how you are feeling and what you are thinking about and it does help get it out of your system and over time, helps you see that things are slowly getting a little better.

I'm no great shakes when it comes to gadgets, but I think often when I have accidentally deleted something, I have found that a backup has been kept and it asks me if I want to restore it, so you might try that. Also, I believe nothing is ever truly deleted. It is simply that the space is relabelled as available on the disk but the file still exists, so you might be able to take it to a computer shop and ask an expert to retrieve it for you. I hope you can get the photos back.

Try not to let your daughter feel it is her fault. I am sure she is suffering too and will be very upset about this too.
You need one another's support at times like this and everyone will be walking on egg shells, so give her a cuddle and kiss, tell her it's alright and set about getting it fixed.

One day at a time, Helen. Try not to be too cross, it won't help.

I'm glad you saw the robin. I suspect you will see other signs from time to time, especially in these first few months. I am no expert, but in my experience, I have the impression that in those first few months, the person we have lost is adjusting to the change also and stays around for a while to make sure we are alright and then moves on to whatever comes next and, in my case, let me know they were going in dreams. This may all be rubbish, but each time I have suffered a close personal loss, it has been this way. Little odd things happening soon after the loss, finding feathers that appeared inexplicably, seeing a robin, dreaming of them talking to me to tell me they were ok or that it was time for them to leave. Perhaps it was all in my head and my imagination was working overtime, but perhaps not. Who knows. I believe it anyway.

I hope you find things to do that help and try to spare a thought for those around you. They will be suffering too.

Sending you a hug, Helen.