Author Topic: It's still so hard  (Read 2100 times)

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Offline Kate3027

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It's still so hard
« on: January 15, 2018, 01:59:50 PM »
Hi all,

I haven’t posted for a while. Christmas and New Year were very hard. I think Christmas Eve may have been the saddest day of my life. I live in Germany and spent Christmas with my husband’s German family. A week at the in-laws and can anyone guess how many people asked me how I am, really asked? Nobody. The subject of my wonderful and no-longer-with-us dad didn’t come up, for a week. It broke my heart. I was in a house with what is supposedly my second family, and I felt as if not one of them cared. There was no toast at Christmas dinner and I was quite honestly simply not strong enough to give one, least of all in a house where the subject was apparently taboo. So that was dreadful. On Christmas day we went to the beach and I walked along the coast by myself and found my way onto a pier with a gale blowing and shouted out at the sea with all my lungs, and the wind shouted back at me.

New Year’s Day was hard in a way I hadn’t expected. I think the weight of a brand new year in which my dad never lived was more of a blow than I thought it would be. It was a very real realisation, as if the past three months I had just been floating along and then my feet suddenly hit solid ground and I knew that this year I would not get to speak to him. And that really hurts.

Now I am up and down. I wanted to write this post simply because the writing helps, if only a little. I have days where it seems as if I am on a kind of high, I feel energetic and light and happy. I don’t know why.  And then I have days like today, where I wake up with a weight in my chest that I can’t shake. On days like this I can hardly remember that light happy feeling and I feel as though I am nothing, and can’t do anything at all. On these days I am insecure and hardly recognise myself. Where has that confident person gone? All I want to do is listen to tragic songs and sit on the sofa feeling sorry for myself. “Who am I?” I ask, “I am nothing, I am nobody”. And I know that my dad would say, “You’re not nobody” and he’d call me my nickname. But there is nobody now to call me by that name. People keep telling me to look inside, and find him there. But he feels so far out of reach when I need him the most. Looking inside makes me feel more empty.

Mondays are always the worst. I make it to the end of a week and I am ok, but on Monday morning I don’t know how to make it to the end of the new week, not when I feel like this.

The strangest part for me of grief is that all of the things that are supposed to give me comfort, simply don’t. I am supposed to look at the faces of my children and be happy. Well of course I am happy when I see my children, who isn’t? But when I look at them in relation to my dad, all I can think is that he was robbed of being a grandfather by his illness . All I can think is that they won’t remember knowing him. Yes they’ll know from stories I tell them, but they won’t remember THEIR relationship with him, the relationship they were robbed of. So now I have to force myself to not think about my dad when I am with my kids. I would like to build a memory box one day, but I just don't think I'm ready for that yet. My nearly 4-year-old still often asks me why Grandpa died, and answering that question makes me cry.

I live abroad as I said, so I don’t have anywhere special to go and allow myself to be sad ‘near’ him when I feel like this. I’ve asked my mum for a little pot of his ashes. I don’t want to spread them anywhere, I just want to keep them, to have something tangible.

Sorry for the long post, it doesn’t really seem to have a conclusion, but then nor do I, it’s just an inexplicable rough day. Thanks for reading.

Offline Eliz

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Re: It's still so hard
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2018, 03:34:00 PM »
So sorry I too am so sad and lonely sending you :hug:

Offline Karena

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Re: It's still so hard
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2018, 06:37:50 PM »
 :hug: This is why we describe it as a rollercoaster these up and Don days.I think the lighter ones are partly a physical response of the brain to counteract the bad days. Brains react too things we perceive in our consciousness but also too their own protection systems so even though on those days we don't understand that lightness because the thing hasn't changed the brain does it anyway.Such a shame the other familly didn't make any mention some people think we get upset when there is so avoid it without understanding that it is even more upsetting when they ignore it.Maybe there are cultural differences too.
We just started a diary room here so if writing helps maybe writing your own diary so you can scroll back to former posts without having to search for older posts.
You might be surprised how much a four year old can remember and will pass on too a younger sibling who doesn't so a memory box will enhanc that.It might also help him if you do some of it together but not until you are ready.
You can get jewellery made from ashes and also jewellery containing them sealed in so maybe that's a way  they can always be with you everywhere you go.Easier perhaps than a pot.

Offline Kate3027

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Re: It's still so hard
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2018, 07:35:22 PM »
Thank you for your replies, the fact that someone out there is reading and responding is encouragement enough. Some day it just knocks me sideways with no real warning and on those days writing on here is a big help, writing it down at all.