1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, Grief- Discussion.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

We shall begin with the following disclaimer: this is not a discussion with the purpose of diagnosing grief, or mental illnesses. It’s not about advice on dealing with grief. It’s about discussing your experiences in regards to grief. Or your points of view regarding its place in the human experience. Grief can be all encompassing and not necessarily tied to the death of a loved one. It’s felt differently, as unique as every person is unique. So let’s keep it in line.

Prefacing: on December 30th, 2023, I was asleep and didn’t hear a call from my father at 6am. At 8am my eldest cousin calls. I received the news that my 65 yo father had passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack. His mom found him dead outside the bathroom. He had been dealing with a blood pressure issue for several years but under no circumstance was I thinking he’d die so suddenly and so quickly. We had spoken the day before (he had had a first attack at a grocery store that afternoon and he said nothing- he refused first responders assistance). As far as I was concerned, he was handling his condition with medical help. Yet he died.

I had to fly down to his home on the 31st and meet the new year, 2024, at a funeral home preparing his cremation and memorial, choosing an urn, setting dates for interment at his family mausoleum, all that interesting stuff. Not to mention encountering his family, who was hostile at such a hard time. Let’s just say it was a clusterfuck and I hated every minute of it.

Nana lost her dad. The hard part is not the funeral, or even hearing the news of his passing through a phone line. No. The hard part came immediately after, with a huge hole in my chest, and thousands of questions. It was realizing that he was gone. That I will never hear his voice again. That there won’t be anymore Father’s Day call. Or for his birthday. Or mine. That I could’ve done more. That I was to blame. That I wasn’t to blame. That I’m now an orphan. A lot of mental garbage. Hard, unexpected, raw, angry, and incredibly painful.

What was I feeling? I was feeling everything and nothing at once. I was experiencing the tornado that is grief. And what is grief? Grief, according to the American Psychological Association is:

…the anguish experienced after significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person.
Grief often includes physiological distress, separation anxiety, confusion, yearning, obsessive dwelling on the past, and apprehension about the future. Intense grief can become life-threatening through disruption of the immune system, self-neglect, and suicidal thoughts.
Grief may also take the form of regret for something lost, remorse for something done, or sorrow for a mishap to oneself.

How is grief treated: with counseling-

What Is Grief Counseling?
Coming to terms with feelings of loss and making sense of it can be a painful process. Grief is a common emotional and sometimes physical response that you feel when you experience loss after a disaster or a traumatic event. Bereavement is a type of grief you experience when you lose a loved one.

Grief occurs across all ages, but adults, adolescents, and children may process it differently. Feelings can range from deep sadness to bursts of anger. Everyone grieves in their own way and time frame depending on the personal attachment to what was lost.

If the loss is too overwhelming to perform your day-to-day tasks, it can take a significant toll on your mental health. You may need to reach out to a professional therapist, psychologist, or a counselor to help you work through the grief.

Understanding Grief Counseling
Grief counseling is a type of professional therapy designed to help you work through the various stages and range of emotions you may feel after a loss.

How you experience grief can vary from person to person. People commonly refer to the five familiar stages of grief, initially coined in 1969 by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. They are:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

When you’re grieving, you may go through at least two of the five stages. But it is important to note that there is no common pathway for grief. Everyone experiences it differently. Your grief reactions and signs may include:
Shock
Disbelief and denial
Anxiety
Distress
Anger
Periods of sadness
Loss of sleep
Loss of appetite

Counseling will help you address some of the reactions as you process your new reality. Some people recover from grief usually within 6 months, but for some others, it may take up to a year or longer.

This thread is about exchanging thoughts on your own experiences with grief. What role has it played in your life? How deeply was it felt? Did you go through it availing yourself of your will power? Or did you choose therapy? Was it ever chronic? What did grief taught you? Did you blame anyone, anything? Or did you accept it fully? All your thoughts are welcome.

Please please please, due to the nature of the subject and what it could evince, keep it civil, be compassionate. Thanks.

Note: will fix quotes and tags in a second. Must go to PC. Also, if the mod team must weigh in, I’ll be more than happy to edit the OP so we stay inline with site rules.

[Page]

The biggest loss of my life so far was my grandma on my mom's side, colon cancer, when I was 11. Around the same time, my parents had our dog put down because of unmanageable seizures, and a little later on, my cousin died at the age of 13 from leukemia. And while all that was going on, I was in puberty with bad acne, I was being bullied, I was on my way out of the Catholic Church and belief in God, and I had a secret thing with an older boy that I was absolutely terrified of my parents finding out about.

Basically, I was 10 year old who happily lived on Goldeneye and Pokemon, and a year later, life was miserable and terrifying, and my grandma dying was the main thing. All throughout elementary school, she would stay with me every single day of summer break while my parents worked. What I am saying here is that she did raise me to a pretty meaningful extent. I wasn't super braced for it because my mom tried to shelter me from the certainty of her being terminal. My dad told me the truth like 2 months before she died, at which point she was more often in the hospital than home.

My mom and her had an unimpeachably perfect mother-daughter relationship. My mom's dad was an abusive alcoholic, but they divorced when my mom was a kid and he died when I was 5. My mom and my grandma never fought, they had nothing but good times together. They were like Lorelai and Rory in Gilmore Girls (I think, I never really attentively watched the show so much as half listened to it while I worked and my wife watched it). Point is, as hurt as I was to lose her, my mom was fucking devastated to the fullest extent.

And in the weeks, months, and years following, my mom became absolutely toxic. The grief really turned her from a really good mom into an abuser. I was abused. And it was never the same.

It's been more than 20 years since then. These days, I'm on good terms with my mom - turns out it's really easy to have a good relationship with your parents when you live on different continents - but not since my childhood have I ever confided in her about anything serious or turned to her for help. And I won't. But we get to see each other and be happy when we do.

I don't know what I'm gonna do when she dies, or when my dad dies. I have no fucking idea how I'll handle it, if it'll be just fine or if I'll self-destruct. But I must admit that I'm terrified of grief for people I will lose in the future one day turning me into the same thing my mom did. I don't have kids and thank God because I'm terrified of what kind of monster grief would make of me and how they would suffer for it.

But I do have a wife who I love infinitely, and I can't distance myself from her if I lose somebody else. So when the day comes that my parents die or if a close friend of mine dies young, I'm going to do whatever it takes to not make my wife suffer for it.

[Ethel mermania]

"...The hard part came immediately after, with a huge hole...".

The hole never goes completely away. During the process you have to take care of the details, shipping the body, arranging the funeral, the sitting Shiva ( for us jews). I was numb though it. It's when that is all done the grief hit.

The edges of the hole heal, but that loss is always there. It is over twenty years since mom passed, I may not think of her everyday, but I do think of her several times a week

[Glorious Freedonia]

Nanatsu,

I am sorry for your loss. 65 is too young. It is not your fault that your Dad died! You have no reason to feel guilty about his death. Feely guilty is an emotion and it can be an irrational emotion. Feeling guilty does not necessarily mean that you are guilty of anything.

Sincerely,
Glorious Freedonia

[Merien]

My sister Adara died of a overdose a while back. She was finally getting off and at the time I didn't really know her much as she was my dads child, which my dad left when I was 2. I think more of her years after she died because it makes me think more about the events in my life and made me put attention to what matters most.

I a while ago was a pretty bad person (even at my younger age) and deeply was in love with someone (moreso some things) who didn't love me truly, and a while ago decided I would change that, to make a difference and right some wrong. I converted to Islam and while thats been a rocky road, I have changed my life around a bit.

I sincerely hope shes in Jannah right now, she didn't do nothing to harm others, she was not given a chance to live her life and she genuinely never had a chance to even consider something like Islam or any religion in general.

My suggestion is don't wait for someone to leave for you to make good changes and better yourself and their life.

[Glorious Freedonia]

When someone dies I often have dreams about a few months later about them. In these dreams I meet with them and interact with them. My first such dream was when I was a kid and our dog died. Then I had dreams like this of my uncle a few times. It does not happen for everyone who died who I was close with but it is a thing that happens. Do any of you guys also kinda deal with grief through dreams?

[Ankuran]

So I used to have this friend named Brook. I knew him since high school. We rarely saw eye to eye on anything, but that didn't matter, because somehow we ended up respecting one another more for our disagreements.

After high school, I eventually ended up living across the cul-de-sac from Brook. We didn't talk much, but that was more because of me avoiding him for reasons I won't get into. They weren't personal, or the result of bad blood between me and him. I still respected the hell out of him.

Well, about four years ago, I woke up one morning to the news that Brook had shot himself. He had three housemates and it was as much a shock to them as it was to me. I felt like a bastard, not just because I didn't do anything, but because I was so quick to rationalize and accept that there was nothing I could do. I wasn't in a place to help him; I wasn't even in a place to help myself with the stuff I was going through. I knew that, and I accepted it, and I felt all the more guilty for accepting my powerlessness so easily.

Now, I'm no stranger to death. My grandma owned and operated a cemetery/crematorium/funeral home until about 2014. I've buried and burned people's loved ones. I've seen them grieving at the funerals. I thought I knew what grief looked like. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do. Of course, I had to go through a lot of it by myself. Most of my family hated Brook, so I had to put up with everyone badmouthing my gunshot-suicide-longtime-friend. I talked to my mom a bit about it, since she knew Brook -- her called her his mother from another brother -- but my stepdad was dealing with a lot of major health issues at the time, so she had enough on her plate. My sister didn't hate Brook, but she'd lost one of her longtime friends just the year before, and I didn't want to drag her through all that again. In retrospect, I probably should've talked to my sister about it. I did talk to my doctor though; that helped a bit.

Anyway, I somehow made it through. I still felt guilty about how quick I was to accept my own powerlessness in the situation, but I stopped beating myself up over it. I couldn't change it. I made my peace and moved on.

Well, last year, my friend and his brother convinced me to reactivate my old RuneScape account. I hadn't played since high school, and I thought it might be fun. It was neat going through my inventory and seeing all my old stuff again. They even added a boomer UI option for old fucks like me. But I saw the stack of iron arrows in my inventory and... something in me broke.

See, back in high school, I played RS with Brook. I had membership, and he got fixated on making 1.5k iron arrows. He got the raw materials. I took them over to a member world and turned them into arrows. We split them down the middle. Brook burned through his pretty quick, but I had that undead chicken backpack so I was able to keep most of that stack. I think I had like 700 or so. Seeing that stack of iron arrows broke a wall I didn't know was holding anything back. I spent the day basically crying nonstop; after awhile, the tears stopped, but the sobbing didn't. When I wasn't crying, I was numb; I'd alternate between the two states sporadically.

But it felt good. That pressure had been building up unnoticed for so long that I felt relieved to let it it out. And you know what the weird thing was? I was able to process all of this happening thanks to a Cracked article (of all things) I'd read years before about a woman who was abducted, raped, and almost murdered by Ted Bundy. She was able to compartmentalize her run-in with a serial killer for 37 years before her PTSD got triggered by an asshole boss at a pharmacy. Naturally, what I was going through wasn't anywhere in the same ballpark as what happened to that woman; my experience wasn't even in the same league. But somehow I'd retained that knowledge from years before in the back of my mind, and it came to the fore at just the right time to help me pull through.

Make no mistake: thinking about all this still brings me to the verge of tears. It still hurts. The grief lessens, but it never goes away completely. And that's okay; the grief is how I know I still care.

I guess what that experience taught me is that grief is a funny thing; we all have to deal with it, in our own ways, at the right time. How that grief manifests and how it's dealt with can catch us completely off-guard. After all, I worked (and, for a short time, lived) in a cemetery; by the time of the above events, I'd lost three of my four grandparents and even had one of my frequent acquaintances actually murdered.

I don't know what I'm gonna do when she dies, or when my dad dies. I have no fucking idea how I'll handle it, if it'll be just fine or if I'll self-destruct. But I must admit that I'm terrified of grief for people I will lose in the future one day turning me into the same thing my mom did. I don't have kids and thank God because I'm terrified of what kind of monster grief would make of me and how they would suffer for it.

I'm right there with you. My dad was also abusive due to bullshit in his own life, a lot of which I'm not allowed to talk about on the forums. Well, I say "was," but I have to assume he still is; I haven't talked to him since I was 16. My younger brother, saint that he is, deals with him so my sister and I don't have to. But when he told us our dad had a heart attack? I was... stunned. For most of my life, I'd just assumed I wouldn't care when he died, or maybe that I'd even be a little happy. But... I wasn't. I was scared. He's had several more since then, each one worst than the last; the last one put him in the ICU for four days. He won't make any changes unless they're forced upon him, and honestly? I hate him for making me watch him die, even if it's by proxy, and I hate him for making my siblings watch, because they definitely don't deserve it. (My brother's only 19, for fuck's sake. Even if I weren't completely incapable as an older brother, he shouldn't have to deal with this shit.)

I've tried to talk to my siblings about this, but it's hard. My parents divorced when my sister was young, so all her memories of my dad are conflict; she doesn't have any of the good ones that I do. Our brother is actually our half-brother, but his experience with our dad isn't that much different than my sister's. I'm basically alone in all this and... man, when my dad finally has that heart attack he doesn't wake up from, I don't know what the fuck's going to happen.

[Distruzio]

When I was 12, I watched my Uncle drown.

We were on his houseboat, docked, celebrating his and my aunts anniversary. My Uncle and I were diving off the roof of the boat. Wrestling. Splashing. Goofing off while the ladies gossiped and my dad played some music. Just having some fun.

I don't know where they came from, but two random dogs must've gotten excited by all the splashing. They made their way to the end of the dock and jumped in the water with us.... and tried to climb on me. I still have some scarring on my back from their nails. My Uncle got their attention so I could catch my breath, but I knew he would struggle with them. So, I grabbed their collars, slapped the water at them for attention, and swam. I led them to the shore and ran as fast as I could. I can still smell the water if I think about it. I counted 4 boats between myself and ours. There was a shoreside restaurant filled with people so I shouted as loudly as I could, "Hey! Drowning! Get down here!" Time has never moved so slowly. I got back to the boat just as my uncle was slipping beneath the water, back pointed toward the sky, not moving.

My dad can't swim. My aunt can't swim. My mother can but she was trying to stop my aunt from diving in after him in her panic.

So, it was up to me. And I wasn't strong enough to pull him back up.

Rescue workers arrived fairly quickly afterwards. They trawled the bottom with nets and hooks. They had divers. I went in again and again - no one was going to stop me from trying - I didn't care. It took 6 hours before Uncle Kellys body was found.

I can't say that I've actually spent any time trying to digest that grief. Therapy is, to my mind, a waste of time. I've tried it for other things and every session only ever ended up in a, "tell me how this is your mothers fault," kind of probing. But that isn't to say that there can't be some value there, somewhere. It just isn't something I'm interested in. But the grief of failing my uncle isn't something that I can honestly say I have tried, or am even interested in, dealing with. To me, the pain is... fuel? Inspiration? A fact of life?

I don't know.

I do know, that I have two sons who I have made sure know how to swim. They know to watch for animal behavior. They know to mind their surroundings. They know to remain aloof to a degree, so as to be able to react as quickly as possible. They know that the crowd (my aunt) is likely as much a danger to them as itself and must be accounted for. I require they think as they act. Raw emotion, like panic or anger, blinds you to the available options - in my experience. And, I know what it did to my aunt.

She can't swim. She was helpless. The only word she muttered for hours afterwards was "Useless." She held her body pillow close. Held me close. Moved in with us for a while. She would just cry and cry and cry. No sleep. No food. Nothing. She did nothing. My aunt was broken. Except when the news reported on the accident. At that she responded with absolute rage that the journalist falsely said the dogs belonged to my uncle and her. She threatened them. She broke lamps. Our lamps. She was inconsolable. What did it matter whose dogs they were? This was an accident, right? Not to her. It was a tragedy and something, someone, needed to pay. Who can blame her? This had been done to HER!! That was what she was feeling. That was how her grief was manifesting. She didn't calm down until I sat with her, holding her hand.

That was years ago. Life moves on.

Since then, tragedy seems a recuring thing. And, with tragedy, comes opportunity for more grief: I've been homeless, I've endured a severe back injury at work requiring I relearn to walk, I've been on fire, I've been shot at, blah blah blah. Broken bones, robberies, I've even cleaned the blood off the hands of an attempted murderer I worked with while police interviewed witnesses before they led him away... and then I had to clean the blood off the walls. Plenty of opportunity for grief. And I can't say I'm remotely qualified to speak on "dealing" with the emotion. I don't know that I've ever done that. Maybe that means I just accepted it?

These memories are just as clear to me as the moment I first laid eyes upon each of my boys. Or when I was baptized. Or when my wife leaned in for our first kiss as a married couple. They are just as visceral.

My aunt relived her final moments of anguish and terror with my uncle for days. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Nanatsu,

I am sorry for your loss. 65 is too young. It is not your fault that your Dad died! You have no reason to feel guilty about his death. Feely guilty is an emotion and it can be an irrational emotion. Feeling guilty does not necessarily mean that you are guilty of anything.

Sincerely,
Glorious Freedonia

I know, intellectually, that I had nothing to do with his passing. But grief can be such a strange thing. I’m taking therapy, and I know I’ll be the better for it. Grief is a backpack you learn to carry. Some days, in my experience, it feels too heavy to shoulder. Other days, not so much.

One doesn’t move on, one moves forward with the grief.

CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is unpleasant but necessary in my case.

However, thank you for your words. Thank you.

[Kyrusia]

I haven't posted in NSG often. I imagine if you went back and trawled through my posts, what I have posted in NSG would, by majority, likely have been in an official capacity; add to that maybe a handful of TET posts over the years. But when I saw discussion of this topic being opened in Moderation, admittedly, I looked forward to seeing it posted. So, thank you for this, Nana. Sincerely.

What follows is my experience with grief. Many of my friends offsite have been told about what I've been through recently, or at least seen me hint at it. I'm not entirely sure why I want to post it here and not just a big spiel in a Discord channel somewhere, but regardless, here we go.

While I doubt anyone coming into this thread really needs a trigger/content warning/heads up, but off the top of my head: suicidal ideation, depression, cancer, hospice, terminal anguish. If you want to avoid the background, jump to here.

My mother herniated her back in high school, and finally broke it when she was 29, not long after having me. She went and had the surgery, and what was meant to take two hours took… significantly longer. As she was a smoker, I'm not sure at the time if they knew the specific risks for that, but regardless: if you're a smoker and go and have back surgery, it's very likely to ultimately fail. This was true for my mother as well.

What followed were years of necessary pain medication just to function, to work in order to provide for me as a child. My parents divorced when I was a six, and after that, it was largely up to my mom. At her height, she was taking up to ten 7.5mg Norcos a day just to keep going, and was able to do that without it significantly impacting her personality or behavior: she was, in a word, functioning. Taking that amount of opioids, on a scale of one-to-ten, she often sat at a three or a four; keep this in mind, as it will become increasingly pertinent.

Fast forward until just after I graduated high school. My mother had gotten re-married, but lost her job. She'd worked at the same place since she was 16, working up from a simple screen printer to a graphic artist to a plant manager. She was 44 and had just found out it was very, very likely she would need surgery again to keep her back from completely collapsing. Over the years, more discs had herniated and others had begun to disintegrate entirely. Despite never claiming workman's compensation, despite never missing work for an extended period, despite planning on using her own private insurance, when her boss found out, she fired my mother. This would have been right at the beginning of the financial crisis.

When her husband at the time found out, he filed for divorce, as pretty much the only reason he wanted her around was she was a paycheck. My mom moved in with me and my on-again off-again roommates soon thereafter, rather than move back in with her sister. My roommates all loved her, to be clear, they just all went on to different routes, spare one who stuck around until the end. At the time I was trying to attend school. Ultimately, my time became consumed with work and caring for my mother. My mother went from ten Norcos a day, to four methadone.

I should note here: paradoxical reactions to medication run in my family. In my mother's case, the methadone did very little for her pain, but between the medication and the circumstances, it did send her spiraling into depression (something exacerbated by un-treated bipolar disorder). The methadone also ruined her teeth, leading to medical professionals making certain assumptions which only exacerbated her depression and resulted in her being denied treatment for chronic pain.

Eventually, my mother met back up with her high school sweetheart and they got married. By now, my mother was fighting the Social Security Administration for disability - something they ultimately denied until she turned fifty, despite the SSA's own doctors saying she could not work (no standing for more than ten minutes, no sitting for more than ten minutes). Despite this, my savings had been drained helping her and helping keep her from taking a permanent solution to a temporary problem, as they say. When my mother's new husband found this out, he helped me financially get out of state and rebuild my finances to a point I could be stable, something for which I can ultimately never thank him enough. The years that followed this, if nothing else, made it clear I have a father, even if not by blood - something which I discover later on means much less than I initially assumed.

Once my mother did turn fifty, she finally was granted disability, and was able to find both a surgeon and a pain management doctor that treated her like a human. One that didn't look at her and assume she was an addict. One that didn't presume she was an addict just because she didn't want to sit in pain every hour of every day for the rest of her life. She was prescribed four 7.5mg Norcos a day, with gabapentin to supplement eventually; she refused to take any medication stronger than this until later.

For over ten years, my mother was ultimately happy, even though a "good day" for pain was a six on the scale, but at least it wasn't a ten. She and my (step-)father went through a lot of hurdles, but they were happy together. I'm glad, more than anything else, she got at least a decade of that, with a man she loved, in a place she loved, with pets she loved, doing what she loved - which often amounted to antiquing, gardening, and keeping up her lawn. Oh, and Farmville for anyone who remembers that; she loved Farmville, and any of the countless copycats that followed it. LOL.

For years, on top of the failed back surgery syndrome, subsequent chronic pain syndrome, kidney disease from all the painkillers, carpal tunnel syndrome (both hands) from years of silk screening and graphic art, and severe arthritis in both shoulders and all along her spine, my mother had suffered from something since childhood that was ultimately never able to be fully diagnosed: hives, and a related unknown autoimmune disorder.

A few years ago now, they found a spot in her bladder. Her parents had suffered from bladder cancer (they're still alive as of posting this), but looking into it ultimately turned up nothing (possibly). Succeeding that, however, her doctors started to concentrate on her unknown autoimmune disorder. She tested negative for lupus, but positive for anti-nuclear antibodies. I think she had the cancer at this point, but because her doctors only saw arthritis in her back and I presume her persistent "white coat anxiety," she never pushed much to look for it. As the years went on, I didn't see it, but in hindsight…? I think she may have known.

In 2022 she was diagnosed with diabetes. It wasn't severe, so they prescribed medication for it. About six months later, she started losing weight. Her doctors assured her it was her medication; she was over-weight by a bit, unsurprisingly for her age, so it wasn't considered a big deal. Then she had a bout of what we assumed was COVID or bronchitis - something she has occasionally had throughout her adult life. By mid-2023, she was down to the weight she was in high school, but at this point, she'd also started to lose her sense of taste and appetite. We all assumed it was a consequence of COVID, bronchitis, or just aging. But my mother, as a part of her pain management, got six month blood tests, chiefly for her kidneys: by this point, she was putting them off, something her doctor allowed due to her age.

She went for her last pain management appointment in September of 2023. By now, she went from walking fine, to needing a cane over the years, to needing a walker with muscular atrophy in her legs and becoming increasingly prone to falls, to where she couldn't walk for more than about ten minutes without being out of breath. She had been controlling a "persistent bronchitis" with OTC cough medication. The week after her last pain management appointment (and finally relenting to a blood test), her favorite little nurse - they always gossiped and kidded with eachother - called: "You need to go to the ER right now. Your blood calcium is 14."

She had hypercalcaemia, to an emergency level.

What followed was her first major hospital stay, the better part of two weeks. They did all manner of tests and diagnostics. We knew she had cancer qucikly, but it looked like it was in her colon. The hospital ultimately released her with an appointment for initial follow-up at a cancer clinic nearby.

On September 28th she was diagnosed with Stage 4 osteolytic non-small cell lung cancer. The mass was roughly 7x9cm and primarily on the back of her left lung, involving T9. This explained the increasingly severe back pain, going from 6-7 to 7-8 then 8-9 on the 1-10 pain scale. Her oncologist, for all her best work, didn't entirely explain what this meant - especially the prognosis of hypercalcaemia due to malignancy. I don't blame her for this; I just don't think she could find the words to explain it.

What followed was a round of radiation that my mother handled well. Despite the severity of the prognosis, there was a brief period where things looked up. The radiation, we believe, impacted her ability to swallow, but the pain in her back had lessened. For the first time, she was prescribed controlled release morphine and oxycontin. Over the next three months, though, she would end-up spending more and more time in the hospital, always due to the hypercalcaemia returning.

For anyone who is not aware: hypercalcaemia is a calcium imbalance that leads to all manner of symptoms, from pain and inability to eat, to loss of muscle control, and eventually delirium and hallucinations and, if untreated, coma. To make a comparison: imagine being diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, and within three weeks you're in the late stages of the disease, but it can (temporarily) be reverted and you now have the opportunity to partially explain how terrified you were, locked in a dream-like state, unable to properly convey your emotions to those around you. This was a consequence of the malignancy dissolving her vertebrae and dumping the subsequent calcium into her blood stream. What doctors thought was "arthritis" for years was likely an occluded mass, slowly growing.

The hospital experiences were not pleasant. She ended-up needing to be restrained due both to the hypercalcaemia and a paradoxical reaction to Ativan. The nurses kept implying she was an alcoholic or drug addict, both due to that reaction and due to her teeth; my mother never drank more than a beer every few months, and certainly wasn't an alcoholic. The worst episode, that ultimately resulted in her being restrained, was because she sneaked an old pack of smokes from her purse one of the few times neither my (step-)father nor I were there (keeping in mind, she couldn't walk before this point), getting caught (the night nurses didn't make a big deal of that, they were sweet), and eventually walking entirely across her ward and, when cornered, ended-up cold-cocking a security guard and plopping him outright on his ass.

I will never not find that somewhat funny. Sorry, mom.

He was fine. The guards didn't hurt my mother; she actually ended-up befriending the one she cold-cocked. And the night nurses weren't concerned, spare that she kept saying she was going to walk out of the hospital against advisement - something she'd done a few times over the years. When we got the call, at this point I'm staying with my (step-)father to be close to the hospital, we race to get there. She ultimately stayed, but due to her fear, spare the day before she left the hospital the last time, I never left her side for more than a few minutes again.

Until the week before Christmas, I had to physically hold my own mother down when her delirium became violent (it was better than restraining her), had to aggressively advocate for her to receive pain medication when nurses followed floor protocol and not her oncologist's orders, had to fight with doctors and nurses, and had to tolerate delirium-based verbal abuse from my mother even as she withered away. I knew this wasn't really her, not truly, but once I did have to tap out and just go out to clear my head and be silent while my (step-)father took my place for the night; I didn't leave the hospital, however.

It eventually became clear that nothing was going to work. She went through a round of chemo in her last hospital stay, and while it did seem to help somewhat with her pain, her overall condition wasn't going to improve. She'd made it clear to us beforehand that she wished to file a DNR, but when that moment came, as you can imagine, it was difficult. The discussion about hospice was even more so.

I live in what was intended to be my mother and (step-)father's retirement home. I've rented from them for years, helped improve the property, etc. It was always a good arrangement, and was never something I was pressured over throughout the years. When my mother was released to hospice, that's where she wanted to go, rather than back to her actual home. She wanted to enjoy the rural locality, the beautiful forest, and the freedom being out of the suburbs could provide. I had already promised my mother, in her first hospital stay, that I would not let her pass in a hospital; my (step-)father made it clear this was my decision. More than anything I think she just wanted to spend time with me, wanted me to be the one to care for her. I think she would have considered that selfish herself, but in my opinion, she earned it; she cared for me when there was no one else, the least I could do was care for her just 'cause she wanted me to.

She got to experience Christmas 2023 with a tree, lights, and somehow managed to order me a present despite everything. (It's a beanie cap; one I still can't wear to this day.) She was still up and about, albeit with a wheelchair, and tooling around. This was due to the calcium-control medication. Her oncologist told us it only lasted about three weeks, and told me that, ultimately, she'd go into a coma.

The trauma from the hospital was initially worse than the trauma of hospice. We celebrated Christmas together, and on her birthday, the whole world threw her a party: New Years Eve. She made that joke every year. By then, she was pretty much only moving with her wheelchair, and mostly just by me pushing. While my (step-)father helped, I was my mother's primary caregiver once more. First it was little things: prepping her meals, emptying her catheter, helping her get around, helping her move from chair to her bed (it'd been positioned in my great room). Then it became helping her get dressed, bathing, etc. Then she started getting delirious for the last time.

For those not aware, some experience a period known as "terminal lucidity" when the end approaches. It's a seemingly unexplained turn-around in their condition: if they weren't hungry, now they are; if they were delirious, now they're not. This happened on Tuesday, January 2, 2024. My (step-)father was staying with us at night, working during the day, and my mother in her bed starts crying, and explains that she thinks her time is that night. We call her best friend for her, who lived the better part of ten hours away; they talked. Her best friend had already planned to visit that Friday.

For the next few days, she was a bit better. For Friday, she was happy. She got to see her best friend since college. She talked. They never said goodbye, but both knew that's what it was.

Over the next few days, my mother stopped being able to swallow pills at all. Terminal anguish followed. Agitation, fighting, begging for me to stop the pain, and - bluntly - her begging to die. I told her I would take care of my (step-)father; that she didn't need to stay on my account. She was my mother, no matter what; she'd done enough for me, and suffered enough overall.

By Sunday night (the 7th), she began to sleep more. I began administering medication as instructed by the nurse: one dose liquid morphine every 2 hours at first, Xanax every 4. By Monday morning, it was clear, despite this, it wasn't enough. Her nurses called in a fentanyl patch. I was told to up her dose to one and a half doses of morphine every 2 hours, Xanax every four. Then every hour, and every two respectively - with hyoscine. By this point, she was in a hypercalcaemic coma.

Her final measurements of pain were consistently 8, 9, or 10. With the fentanyl patch factored in, prescribed pain medicine was in the equianalgesic range of >1000 mg morphine equivalent, I believe. She didn't wear the patch long; less than a full 24 hours.

At around 1:45am on Tuesday, January 9, 2024, at the age of sixty, my mother passed away. Her pain was finally controlled. And she let go. She was officially pronounced at 2:30am by the on-call nurse.

At 2pm that afternoon, we made arrangements. She was cremated. There was no formal funeral. Why? For one, because that wasn't my mother's way. For two: throughout all of this, her mother, her father, her niece (whom was like a daughter to her), and her sister (who my mother was with for repeated bouts of ovarian cancer), never even called her. We'd informed them, they just didn't care. I lost my mother, and her side of my family. (I already had disconnected from my biological father's family.) I promised myself I'd hold out for the chance for them to make that right, up until the day my mother passed. When they didn't, they became unwelcome in my life.

In the weeks that followed, I experienced symptoms of depersonalization, derealization, dissociation, depression, intrusive memories, and one flashback. These have, thankfully, subsided. I am still grieving, and I think I always will be. I read somewhere that "the pain doesn't go away, we just grow around it." In even this short span of time, I can see some degree of truth in that. My (step-)father and I have become exceedingly close through this, as noted by the inclusion of "step-" only for clarity's sake. I know it is likely I have some form of Acute Stress Disorder, possibly even what they call "caregivers' PTSD" due to what I saw, was forced to do, and was forced to handle through this. Friends and my (step-)father have helped, and helped make it easier. I can never thank them enough for that.

I'm starting to be able to laugh again, and not just express laughter with the absence of the actual emotion of joy. Even so, I now know why they describe death in such poetic terminology; by my assessment, it is nothing like the flowery language we use to protect ourselves from the looming anxiety death seems to inevitably cause.

Love you, mom.

[Saiwana]

I'm not someone to boohoo about anything, I don't personally understand it and might not be capable of all emotions. Being as heartless as it comes does have some upside.

[The Great Lakes and St Lawrence River]

Nana lost her dad. The hard part is not the funeral, or even hearing the news of his passing through a phone line. No. The hard part came immediately after, with a huge hole in my chest, and thousands of questions. It was realizing that he was gone. That I will never hear his voice again. That there won’t be anymore Father’s Day call. Or for his birthday. Or mine. That I could’ve done more. That I was to blame. That I wasn’t to blame. That I’m now an orphan. A lot of mental garbage. Hard, unexpected, raw, angry, and incredibly painful.

I'm sorry for your loss.

A few people in my extended family have had heart attacks or sudden attacks of angina pains. Sometimes they seem to come out of nowhere. Someone is healthy and active, just living their life, and then the next day they're in the hospital in critical condition.

And it is a total crapshoot if they live or die. We've seen it go both ways.

My grandma had a heart attack just a few days before our family reunion to celebrate her 50th anniversary, and we were so grateful that she survived and was cleared to travel in time for the reunion. But then a few years later she had another heart attack, got rushed to the hospital, and died a day or two later. We never thought she'd die before my grandpa because she was always the one who took care of herself, seemed to be in good health, and even looked after him. But then out of the blue she was gone.

But the real reason why I felt the need to come and reply to this thread is because quite recently my dad was rushed to the ER with chest pains. No warning whatsoever. And it is sheer dumb luck that I'm not in the same boat with you right now.

When I have lost people I cared about, I didn't try to make a big thing about it, but I was still sad for a while. There's not much you can do about the sadness except just... be sad for a while.

[Luziyca]

In most of the cases where my close relatives have died, I do feel a bit of sadness, and I do sometimes wish that they were there to see who I have become, but I usually get over it relatively quickly.

However, my paternal grandma was an exception: when she died on August 3rd, 2014 from pancreatic cancer, I felt a massive hole and fell into a depression for several months. Perhaps it was because despite her illness, she maintained her wit, her optimism (she held a one-year survival party in November 2013), and she continued to help me and my family. Perhaps it was because although I was told some information about it, and did visit her at the hospital when she needed to go there, I assumed that she was going to recover from the cancer. Perhaps it was the shock of someone who seemed to have done everything right die before my maternal grandma who had a host of health problems. Perhaps it was because I visited her the day prior, and then went into their condo to help clean things out from her condo that she and my grandpa were going to move out of and to a retirement community because he was suffering from Alzheimer's and she could no longer take care of him. I think I went from "denial" to "depression" to "acceptance" here. Long story short, I needed therapy to get me through over this, and I also needed the support of my maternal aunt.

If it weren't for my maternal aunt (who lived and took care of my maternal grandma after my maternal grandpa died in 2004 until my maternal grandma died the same day that Paris saw its second terrorist attack in 2015), I'm not sure how I would've gotten through this. Just over seven years later, she went to the ER (her doctor did not take her health problems seriously), and ended up in the ICU. Of course, she didn't tell anyone that she was going to the hospital (probably because she thought it'd be a routine visit), and we only found out that she was in the ICU when my other maternal aunt who happened to work at the hospital doing intake contacted my mom to tell her that my maternal aunt was in the ICU on the 25th of October. The next day, as I was attending my French class (on Zoom), I receive a call from my mom asking me if I wanted to say my last goodbyes: unfortunately, I was fighting a cold so I decided not to say my goodbyes. Had I said my goodbyes at the ICU, and had I went to her apartment to help clean things out, I think it would've caused me more grief than if I had stayed out of things until the funeral/burial. As it was, I found it easier to accept her passing (although I do wish that I did say my goodbyes to her regardless).

I find that it's a lot easier to accept death when it's "out of sight, out of mind." And as an only child, I'm not looking forward to the day that my parents die, because I would want to keep them company and to say my goodbyes to them.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I haven't posted in NSG often. I imagine if you went back and trawled through my posts, what I have posted in NSG would, by majority, likely have been in an official capacity; add to that maybe a handful of TET posts over the years. But when I saw discussion of this topic being opened in Moderation, admittedly, I looked forward to seeing it posted. So, thank you for this, Nana. Sincerely.

What follows is my experience with grief. Many of my friends offsite have been told about what I've been through recently, or at least seen me hint at it. I'm not entirely sure why I want to post it here and not just a big spiel in a Discord channel somewhere, but regardless, here we go.

While I doubt anyone coming into this thread really needs a trigger/content warning/heads up, but off the top of my head: suicidal ideation, depression, cancer, hospice, terminal anguish. If you want to avoid the background, jump to here.

My mother herniated her back in high school, and finally broke it when she was 29, not long after having me. She went and had the surgery, and what was meant to take two hours took… significantly longer. As she was a smoker, I'm not sure at the time if they knew the specific risks for that, but regardless: if you're a smoker and go and have back surgery, it's very likely to ultimately fail. This was true for my mother as well.

What followed were years of necessary pain medication just to function, to work in order to provide for me as a child. My parents divorced when I was a six, and after that, it was largely up to my mom. At her height, she was taking up to ten 7.5mg Norcos a day just to keep going, and was able to do that without it significantly impacting her personality or behavior: she was, in a word, functioning. Taking that amount of opioids, on a scale of one-to-ten, she often sat at a three or a four; keep this in mind, as it will become increasingly pertinent.

Fast forward until just after I graduated high school. My mother had gotten re-married, but lost her job. She'd worked at the same place since she was 16, working up from a simple screen printer to a graphic artist to a plant manager. She was 44 and had just found out it was very, very likely she would need surgery again to keep her back from completely collapsing. Over the years, more discs had herniated and others had begun to disintegrate entirely. Despite never claiming workman's compensation, despite never missing work for an extended period, despite planning on using her own private insurance, when her boss found out, she fired my mother. This would have been right at the beginning of the financial crisis.

When her husband at the time found out, he filed for divorce, as pretty much the only reason he wanted her around was she was a paycheck. My mom moved in with me and my on-again off-again roommates soon thereafter, rather than move back in with her sister. My roommates all loved her, to be clear, they just all went on to different routes, spare one who stuck around until the end. At the time I was trying to attend school. Ultimately, my time became consumed with work and caring for my mother. My mother went from ten Norcos a day, to four methadone.

I should note here: paradoxical reactions to medication run in my family. In my mother's case, the methadone did very little for her pain, but between the medication and the circumstances, it did send her spiraling into depression (something exacerbated by un-treated bipolar disorder). The methadone also ruined her teeth, leading to medical professionals making certain assumptions which only exacerbated her depression and resulted in her being denied treatment for chronic pain.

Eventually, my mother met back up with her high school sweetheart and they got married. By now, my mother was fighting the Social Security Administration for disability - something they ultimately denied until she turned fifty, despite the SSA's own doctors saying she could not work (no standing for more than ten minutes, no sitting for more than ten minutes). Despite this, my savings had been drained helping her and helping keep her from taking a permanent solution to a temporary problem, as they say. When my mother's new husband found this out, he helped me financially get out of state and rebuild my finances to a point I could be stable, something for which I can ultimately never thank him enough. The years that followed this, if nothing else, made it clear I have a father, even if not by blood - something which I discover later on means much less than I initially assumed.

Once my mother did turn fifty, she finally was granted disability, and was able to find both a surgeon and a pain management doctor that treated her like a human. One that didn't look at her and assume she was an addict. One that didn't presume she was an addict just because she didn't want to sit in pain every hour of every day for the rest of her life. She was prescribed four 7.5mg Norcos a day, with gabapentin to supplement eventually; she refused to take any medication stronger than this until later.

For over ten years, my mother was ultimately happy, even though a "good day" for pain was a six on the scale, but at least it wasn't a ten. She and my (step-)father went through a lot of hurdles, but they were happy together. I'm glad, more than anything else, she got at least a decade of that, with a man she loved, in a place she loved, with pets she loved, doing what she loved - which often amounted to antiquing, gardening, and keeping up her lawn. Oh, and Farmville for anyone who remembers that; she loved Farmville, and any of the countless copycats that followed it. LOL.

For years, on top of the failed back surgery syndrome, subsequent chronic pain syndrome, kidney disease from all the painkillers, carpal tunnel syndrome (both hands) from years of silk screening and graphic art, and severe arthritis in both shoulders and all along her spine, my mother had suffered from something since childhood that was ultimately never able to be fully diagnosed: hives, and a related unknown autoimmune disorder.

A few years ago now, they found a spot in her bladder. Her parents had suffered from bladder cancer (they're still alive as of posting this), but looking into it ultimately turned up nothing (possibly). Succeeding that, however, her doctors started to concentrate on her unknown autoimmune disorder. She tested negative for lupus, but positive for anti-nuclear antibodies. I think she had the cancer at this point, but because her doctors only saw arthritis in her back and I presume her persistent "white coat anxiety," she never pushed much to look for it. As the years went on, I didn't see it, but in hindsight…? I think she may have known.

In 2022 she was diagnosed with diabetes. It wasn't severe, so they prescribed medication for it. About six months later, she started losing weight. Her doctors assured her it was her medication; she was over-weight by a bit, unsurprisingly for her age, so it wasn't considered a big deal. Then she had a bout of what we assumed was COVID or bronchitis - something she has occasionally had throughout her adult life. By mid-2023, she was down to the weight she was in high school, but at this point, she'd also started to lose her sense of taste and appetite. We all assumed it was a consequence of COVID, bronchitis, or just aging. But my mother, as a part of her pain management, got six month blood tests, chiefly for her kidneys: by this point, she was putting them off, something her doctor allowed due to her age.

She went for her last pain management appointment in September of 2023. By now, she went from walking fine, to needing a cane over the years, to needing a walker with muscular atrophy in her legs and becoming increasingly prone to falls, to where she couldn't walk for more than about ten minutes without being out of breath. She had been controlling a "persistent bronchitis" with OTC cough medication. The week after her last pain management appointment (and finally relenting to a blood test), her favorite little nurse - they always gossiped and kidded with eachother - called: "You need to go to the ER right now. Your blood calcium is 14."

She had hypercalcaemia, to an emergency level.

What followed was her first major hospital stay, the better part of two weeks. They did all manner of tests and diagnostics. We knew she had cancer qucikly, but it looked like it was in her colon. The hospital ultimately released her with an appointment for initial follow-up at a cancer clinic nearby.

On September 28th she was diagnosed with Stage 4 osteolytic non-small cell lung cancer. The mass was roughly 7x9cm and primarily on the back of her left lung, involving T9. This explained the increasingly severe back pain, going from 6-7 to 7-8 then 8-9 on the 1-10 pain scale. Her oncologist, for all her best work, didn't entirely explain what this meant - especially the prognosis of hypercalcaemia due to malignancy. I don't blame her for this; I just don't think she could find the words to explain it.

What followed was a round of radiation that my mother handled well. Despite the severity of the prognosis, there was a brief period where things looked up. The radiation, we believe, impacted her ability to swallow, but the pain in her back had lessened. For the first time, she was prescribed controlled release morphine and oxycontin. Over the next three months, though, she would end-up spending more and more time in the hospital, always due to the hypercalcaemia returning.

For anyone who is not aware: hypercalcaemia is a calcium imbalance that leads to all manner of symptoms, from pain and inability to eat, to loss of muscle control, and eventually delirium and hallucinations and, if untreated, coma. To make a comparison: imagine being diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, and within three weeks you're in the late stages of the disease, but it can (temporarily) be reverted and you now have the opportunity to partially explain how terrified you were, locked in a dream-like state, unable to properly convey your emotions to those around you. This was a consequence of the malignancy dissolving her vertebrae and dumping the subsequent calcium into her blood stream. What doctors thought was "arthritis" for years was likely an occluded mass, slowly growing.

The hospital experiences were not pleasant. She ended-up needing to be restrained due both to the hypercalcaemia and a paradoxical reaction to Ativan. The nurses kept implying she was an alcoholic or drug addict, both due to that reaction and due to her teeth; my mother never drank more than a beer every few months, and certainly wasn't an alcoholic. The worst episode, that ultimately resulted in her being restrained, was because she sneaked an old pack of smokes from her purse one of the few times neither my (step-)father nor I were there (keeping in mind, she couldn't walk before this point), getting caught (the night nurses didn't make a big deal of that, they were sweet), and eventually walking entirely across her ward and, when cornered, ended-up cold-cocking a security guard and plopping him outright on his ass.

I will never not find that somewhat funny. Sorry, mom.

He was fine. The guards didn't hurt my mother; she actually ended-up befriending the one she cold-cocked. And the night nurses weren't concerned, spare that she kept saying she was going to walk out of the hospital against advisement - something she'd done a few times over the years. When we got the call, at this point I'm staying with my (step-)father to be close to the hospital, we race to get there. She ultimately stayed, but due to her fear, spare the day before she left the hospital the last time, I never left her side for more than a few minutes again.

Until the week before Christmas, I had to physically hold my own mother down when her delirium became violent (it was better than restraining her), had to aggressively advocate for her to receive pain medication when nurses followed floor protocol and not her oncologist's orders, had to fight with doctors and nurses, and had to tolerate delirium-based verbal abuse from my mother even as she withered away. I knew this wasn't really her, not truly, but once I did have to tap out and just go out to clear my head and be silent while my (step-)father took my place for the night; I didn't leave the hospital, however.

It eventually became clear that nothing was going to work. She went through a round of chemo in her last hospital stay, and while it did seem to help somewhat with her pain, her overall condition wasn't going to improve. She'd made it clear to us beforehand that she wished to file a DNR, but when that moment came, as you can imagine, it was difficult. The discussion about hospice was even more so.

I live in what was intended to be my mother and (step-)father's retirement home. I've rented from them for years, helped improve the property, etc. It was always a good arrangement, and was never something I was pressured over throughout the years. When my mother was released to hospice, that's where she wanted to go, rather than back to her actual home. She wanted to enjoy the rural locality, the beautiful forest, and the freedom being out of the suburbs could provide. I had already promised my mother, in her first hospital stay, that I would not let her pass in a hospital; my (step-)father made it clear this was my decision. More than anything I think she just wanted to spend time with me, wanted me to be the one to care for her. I think she would have considered that selfish herself, but in my opinion, she earned it; she cared for me when there was no one else, the least I could do was care for her just 'cause she wanted me to.

She got to experience Christmas 2023 with a tree, lights, and somehow managed to order me a present despite everything. (It's a beanie cap; one I still can't wear to this day.) She was still up and about, albeit with a wheelchair, and tooling around. This was due to the calcium-control medication. Her oncologist told us it only lasted about three weeks, and told me that, ultimately, she'd go into a coma.

The trauma from the hospital was initially worse than the trauma of hospice. We celebrated Christmas together, and on her birthday, the whole world threw her a party: New Years Eve. She made that joke every year. By then, she was pretty much only moving with her wheelchair, and mostly just by me pushing. While my (step-)father helped, I was my mother's primary caregiver once more. First it was little things: prepping her meals, emptying her catheter, helping her get around, helping her move from chair to her bed (it'd been positioned in my great room). Then it became helping her get dressed, bathing, etc. Then she started getting delirious for the last time.

For those not aware, some experience a period known as "terminal lucidity" when the end approaches. It's a seemingly unexplained turn-around in their condition: if they weren't hungry, now they are; if they were delirious, now they're not. This happened on Tuesday, January 2, 2024. My (step-)father was staying with us at night, working during the day, and my mother in her bed starts crying, and explains that she thinks her time is that night. We call her best friend for her, who lived the better part of ten hours away; they talked. Her best friend had already planned to visit that Friday.

For the next few days, she was a bit better. For Friday, she was happy. She got to see her best friend since college. She talked. They never said goodbye, but both knew that's what it was.

Over the next few days, my mother stopped being able to swallow pills at all. Terminal anguish followed. Agitation, fighting, begging for me to stop the pain, and - bluntly - her begging to die. I told her I would take care of my (step-)father; that she didn't need to stay on my account. She was my mother, no matter what; she'd done enough for me, and suffered enough overall.

By Sunday night (the 7th), she began to sleep more. I began administering medication as instructed by the nurse: one dose liquid morphine every 2 hours at first, Xanax every 4. By Monday morning, it was clear, despite this, it wasn't enough. Her nurses called in a fentanyl patch. I was told to up her dose to one and a half doses of morphine every 2 hours, Xanax every four. Then every hour, and every two respectively - with hyoscine. By this point, she was in a hypercalcaemic coma.

Her final measurements of pain were consistently 8, 9, or 10. With the fentanyl patch factored in, prescribed pain medicine was in the equianalgesic range of >1000 mg morphine equivalent, I believe. She didn't wear the patch long; less than a full 24 hours.

At around 1:45am on Tuesday, January 9, 2024, at the age of sixty, my mother passed away. Her pain was finally controlled. And she let go. She was officially pronounced at 2:30am by the on-call nurse.

At 2pm that afternoon, we made arrangements. She was cremated. There was no formal funeral. Why? For one, because that wasn't my mother's way. For two: throughout all of this, her mother, her father, her niece (whom was like a daughter to her), and her sister (who my mother was with for repeated bouts of ovarian cancer), never even called her. We'd informed them, they just didn't care. I lost my mother, and her side of my family. (I already had disconnected from my biological father's family.) I promised myself I'd hold out for the chance for them to make that right, up until the day my mother passed. When they didn't, they became unwelcome in my life.

In the weeks that followed, I experienced symptoms of depersonalization, derealization, dissociation, depression, intrusive memories, and one flashback. These have, thankfully, subsided. I am still grieving, and I think I always will be. I read somewhere that "the pain doesn't go away, we just grow around it." In even this short span of time, I can see some degree of truth in that. My (step-)father and I have become exceedingly close through this, as noted by the inclusion of "step-" only for clarity's sake. I know it is likely I have some form of Acute Stress Disorder, possibly even what they call "caregivers' PTSD" due to what I saw, was forced to do, and was forced to handle through this. Friends and my (step-)father have helped, and helped make it easier. I can never thank them enough for that.

I'm starting to be able to laugh again, and not just express laughter with the absence of the actual emotion of joy. Even so, I now know why they describe death in such poetic terminology; by my assessment, it is nothing like the flowery language we use to protect ourselves from the looming anxiety death seems to inevitably cause.

Love you, mom.

You’re more than welcome, Kyru. Deepest condolences on your mom’s passing. Truthfully. Let me send you all the best vibes as you continue embarking on this journey. It’s not easy.

[Kyrusia]

You’re more than welcome, Kyru. Deepest condolences on your mom’s passing. Truthfully. Let me send you all the best vibes as you continue embarking on this journey. It’s not easy.

Thanks, Nana. And my condolences for your father, and condolences for all those who have lost someone. It's not been easy, no, but it's odd the... things that come to mind through it all.

I didn't expect to handle the unique modes and levels of stress throughout this the way I did, much less have medical professionals commenting on it. I had to explain more than a handful of times while in the hospital with mom that "I'd much prefer to be breaking apart; that feels like it'd be more natural," even though that sort of emotion didn't present itself until after her passing. I'm also not entirely sure if knowing anticipatory grief was a thing helped or hindered the actual experience of it: that was most acute when she was discharged for the last time, seeing her happy for the first time in months, and yet looking at her, being with her, and feeling "This isn't my mom. There are parts of her. Her love is there, but this doesn't feel like her."

I know grieving takes innumerable forms, not just varying from person to person, but even with the same person at different times. And it has helped reading testimonials from people in similar situations - the "I don't want to feel alone" thing, as they say. Just there are moments where logically, rationally, I know the way I've handled, been handling it are the "norm" in that there is no norm, yet also simultaneously can't shake a "wrongness" in the way it feels.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

You’re more than welcome, Kyru. Deepest condolences on your mom’s passing. Truthfully. Let me send you all the best vibes as you continue embarking on this journey. It’s not easy.

Thanks, Nana. And my condolences for your father, and condolences for all those who have lost someone. It's not been easy, no, but it's odd the... things that come to mind through it all.

I didn't expect to handle the unique modes and levels of stress throughout this the way I did, much less have medical professionals commenting on it. I had to explain more than a handful of times while in the hospital with mom that "I'd much prefer to be breaking apart; that feels like it'd be more natural," even though that sort of emotion didn't present itself until after her passing. I'm also not entirely sure if knowing anticipatory grief was a thing helped or hindered the actual experience of it: that was most acute when she was discharged for the last time, seeing her happy for the first time in months, and yet looking at her, being with her, and feeling "This isn't my mom. There are parts of her. Her love is there, but this doesn't feel like her."

I know grieving takes innumerable forms, not just varying from person to person, but even with the same person at different times. And it has helped reading testimonials from people in similar situations - the "I don't want to feel alone" thing, as they say. Just there are moments where logically, rationally, I know the way I've handled, been handling it are the "norm" in that there is no norm, yet also simultaneously can't shake a "wrongness" in the way it feels.

Much appreciated, Kyru.

Our minds are capable of some weird behaviors in order to protect us. Grief is such a strange beast, and never in the stages it is presented as happening. Some days you’re great. Some days you just feel crushed by it. And since we’re all individuals, it varies in presentation and strength. Just because we can have a good life right now doesn’t mean we’re doing it wrong. It just is. But societal pressures and expectations always sneak in to make us feel like we’re monstrous for not being sobbing 24/7.

It’s a strange beast.

[Ineva]

I am debating if I should post this. Here goes.

My wife--we will call her V--and I met at the university. We, at that time, were pursuing the same degree, both not knowing what kinds of careers we wanted. I know the "love at first sight" cliché is often exaggerated or used hyperbolically, but that is really the only way to describe it. We glowed when we were together; we had little clue what we were going to do, but we knew we were going to do it together.

We met in January 2020 and were engaged and making wedding plans by March. Then COVID happened. All of our plans were going to either have to be put on hold or completely scrapped and redrafted. We settled on the latter, and, against both of our parents' wishes, we did a very untraditional, unorthodox wedding and ceremony--if you can even call it that--in October 2020. Our parents did not even find out until February the next year. This was incredibly tough for us.

For some back story, V's father was emotionally and verbally abusive with a quick fuse, short temper, and shameless alcohol problem. He had cheated on V's mother thrice, and eventually, they did divorce. Attempts at cutting him out of V's life were futile; he was a master manipulator. So, over the phone in March 2021, he did what he was best at and chewed her out. This time, though, it was for marrying me. I got called all sorts of names. He said I did not support him and his ex-wife enough, which is hilarious, in retrospect, considering what he did to that poor woman.

What you have to understand about V is that she was very soft-spoken and reserved; she only opened up to you if you opened up to her. She had a lot of distrust and resentment build up in her because of the relationship she had with her father. Another thing about V: You never wanted to be on her bad side. After saying what I can only assume to be some horrible things about me being a worthless false Jew and bum, I guess something got to her, and the tables turned. V held nothing back, and she did it all while whispering. I just sat and watched in awe as she reprimanded him over the phone; I had never seen her like that before. And so it was, after she hung up with him, she blocked his number and never spoke to him again. Mind you, she was only 21 when doing this all. My heart still breaks for her, considering how much strength and courage that must have taken.

Fast forward to 23 September, 2022. Our daughter--we will call her E--is born. She is our pride and joy and looks just like her mother. E got my personality for sure, though, Lol.

Fast forward again, to about 1350 on 14 August, 2023. This is when it happens. I get a call from an unknown number. I pick up. I am told my wife has been in a car wreck and that I should go to the hospital to see her. I ask about E, and they say she is perfectly fine in their company. Long story short, I make a 15-minute commute five. I am lucky I did not get into a wreck of my own.

I arrive at the hospital, still in shock. Eventually, I am directed to her room, but a doctor stops me from entering and tells me that she has already passed. He tells me there is nothing more to be done, but that my baby is safe.

I go numb. He is telling me things and I do not hear them. My gaze slowly drifts downward until it is clear that I am not looking at him, but through him. I just sit in a nearby chair and put my hands on my forehead for what feels like an eternity. My second half has been ripped from me. I did not even have the chance to say goodbye. That is maybe what hurts the most.

After what feels like forever, I slowly get up and enter the room. The bed where she lay is empty. I go over to it and sprawl my upper body upon it. My arms make snow angels in the sheets. I inhale deeply to try to pick up a scent. I cry, silently.

I collect myself--momentarily--and go to the adjacent crib. Sure enough, there is E, without a single scratch. You would not know she was in any wreck at all; she looked completely and utterly fine. I pick her up and look into her eyes. They are just like V's. To this day, every time I look into her eyes, I feel like I am looking at my wife. It is surreal.

I go find the doctor and ask him what had happened. He informs me very factually that, while V had a green light, her little white Focus had been hit by a drunk driver, blasting through a red light at the upwards of 80 M/H. V's car is impacted on the right rear side--the wheel just behind E. The car flipped to its side, he said, and V's head must have hit the steering wheel or A-pillar. E was absolutely fine. The drunk driver stayed on scene and was arrested by authorities.

For that month, I was absolutely crushed. I thought about quitting my job, quitting university--I even thought about adopting out E, because I was not sure how I would parent without V by my side. The only phone calls I made were to my parents and mother-in-law; I did not tell a single friend about the incident. I did not tell V's father.

A little over a month after V's death, I celebrate E's first birthday. I did not even buy a cake. I do not have any regrets in my life, because I find regrets wasteful--but that one comes close. E deserved a birthday, and I dishonored that reward out of my own selfishness.

By November 2023, things get somewhat better for me, save for some developments in October. I start doing things I enjoy again. I call my parents more regularly. V's mother and I bond over the experience in some twisted fashion. I reconnect with my friends and tell them why I was so absent. I begin to enjoy work again. I begin showing up for work again, for starters. And, I begin to drive again. Before this, I could not drive through an intersection without being terrified. I get a little better--not all the way there, but still better.

I learn, in February 2024, from V's mother that her ex-husband--V's father--had passed. He passed on 16 August, 2023 of a painkiller overdose. That is two days after V's death. We are not sure what caused it, or if he knew of her passing, but I have a strong feeling that is what compelled him to do so. I like to believe that, at least.

Now, fast forward to today: April. I have successfully spent my first Valentine's Day without V. I am doing considerably better in social and work-related capacities. V's mother and I speak on the regular.

I now recognize that, in light of how horrible that situation was, I was lucky in more ways than one, the most obvious one being about my daughter, E. I still do not know how she was able to come out of the wreck uninjured, let alone alive. I struggle thinking about how I am going to explain her mother's passing. I do not know if she has or will have flashbacks. In truth, I am still struggling to parent properly without V here. But, I am managing far better than I was just a month or two after the wreck. As the doctor that day--whom I am now good friends with--described it, it was as if G-d picked E up from the car and placed her back.

This also forced me to get my affairs in order; V was very care-free when it came to the more serious things, like her will and rights to property. This made legal things a hassle. In fact, it still is a hassle. It is one of the main factors restricting me from truly finishing the grieving process: It is hard to do so when you are bombarded with questions by lawyers about V's legal assets weekly. I understand why the red tape exists, but I simply wish this case was an exception.

Other than that, I have been doing well. I have not cried in over a month. That feels like a drug addict being one month sober. I feel great about it. I know it is natural, but you have to understand, that I cried so much after this incident that I could not do basic parental duties without breaking down in tears. I feel like I have grown for that, that the trauma is penetrating me less. It still gets to me, but it is not provoking such an uncontrollable reaction. I am happy about that.

I never plan to remarry. I will never meet a woman like V again--that is not me being a pessimist; that is me accepting the truth. Unless I adopt, E will thus likely be my only child. She is more than enough for me.

Enough about me. I suppose I would like to conclude by saying that I am very sorry for all of the loss that anyone reading this has endured. It does get better, though, even when the wound is fresh. It does get better.

Edit: grammar.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I am debating if I should post this. Here goes.

My wife--we will call her V--and I met at the university. We, at that time, were pursuing the same degree, both not knowing what kinds of careers we wanted. I know the "love at first sight" cliché is often exaggerated or used hyperbolically, but that is really the only way to describe it. We glowed when we were together; we had little clue what we were going to do, but we knew we were going to do it together.

We met in January 2020 and were engaged and making wedding plans by March. Then COVID happened. All of our plans were going to either have to be put on hold or completely scrapped and redrafted. We settled on the latter, and, against both of our parents' wishes, we did a very untraditional, unorthodox wedding and ceremony--if you can even call it that--in October 2020. Our parents did not even find out until February the next year. This was incredibly tough for us.

For some back story, V's father was emotionally and verbally abusive with a quick fuse, short temper, and shameless alcohol problem. He had cheated on V's mother thrice, and eventually, they did divorce. Attempts at cutting him out of V's life were futile; he was a master manipulator. So, over the phone in March 2021, he did what he was best at and chewed her out. This time, though, it was for marrying me. I got called all sorts of names. He said I did not support him and his ex-wife enough, which is hilarious, in retrospect, considering what he did to that poor woman.

What you have to understand about V is that she was very soft-spoken and reserved; she only opened up to you if you opened up to her. She had a lot of distrust and resentment build up in her because of the relationship she had with her father. Another thing about V: You never wanted to be on her bad side. After saying what I can only assume to be some horrible things about me being a worthless false Jew and bum, I guess something got to her, and the tables turned. V held nothing back, and she did it all while whispering. I just sat and watched in awe as she reprimanded him over the phone; I had never seen her like that before. And so it was, after she hung up with him, she blocked his number and never spoke to him again. Mind you, she was only 21 when doing this all. My heart still breaks for her, considering how much strength and courage that must have taken.

Fast forward to 23 September, 2022. Our daughter--we will call her E--is born. She is our pride and joy and looks just like her mother. E got my personality for sure, though, Lol.

Fast forward again, to about 1350 on 14 August, 2023. This is when it happens. I get a call from an unknown number. I pick up. I am told my wife has been in a car wreck and that I should go to the hospital to see her. I ask about E, and they say she is perfectly fine in their company. Long story short, I make a 15-minute commute five. I am lucky I did not get into a wreck of my own.

I arrive at the hospital, still in shock. Eventually, I am directed to her room, but a doctor stops me from entering and tells me that she has already passed. He tells me there is nothing more to be done, but that my baby is safe.

I go numb. He is telling me things and I do not hear them. My gaze slowly drifts downward until it is clear that I am not looking at him, but through him. I just sit in a nearby chair and put my hands on my forehead for what feels like an eternity. My second half has been ripped from me. I did not even have the chance to say goodbye. That is maybe what hurts the most.

After what feels like forever, I slowly get up and enter the room. The bed where she lay is empty. I go over to it and sprawl my upper body upon it. My arms make snow angels in the sheets. I inhale deeply to try to pick up a scent. I cry, silently.

I collect myself--momentarily--and go to the adjacent crib. Sure enough, there is E, without a single scratch. You would not know she was in any wreck at all; she looked completely and utterly fine. I pick her up and look into her eyes. They are just like V's. To this day, every time I look into her eyes, I feel like I am looking at my wife. It is surreal.

I go find the doctor and ask him what had happened. He informs me very factually that, while V had a green light, her little white Focus had been hit by a drunk driver, blasting through a red light at the upwards of 80 M/H. V's car is impacted on the right rear side--the wheelwheel just behind E. The car flipped to its side, he said, and E's head must have hit the steering wheel or A-pillar. E was absolutely fine. The drunk driver stayed on scene and was arrested by authorities.

For that month, I was absolutely crushed. I thought about quitting my job, quitting university--I even thought about adopting out E, because I was not sure how I would parent without V by my side. The only phone calls I made were to my parents and mother-in-law; I did not tell a single friend about the incident. I did not tell V's father.

A little over a month after V's death, I celebrate E's first birthday. I did not even buy a cake. I do not have any regrets in my life, because I find regrets wasteful--but that one comes close. E deserved a birthday, and I dishonored that reward out of my own selfishness.

By November 2023, things get somewhat better for me, save for some developments in October. I start doing things I enjoy again. I call my parents more regularly. V's mother and I bond over the experience in some twisted fashion. I reconnect with my friends and tell them why I was so absent. I begin to enjoy work again. I begin showing up for work again, for starters. And, I begin to drive again. Before this, I could not drive through an intersection without being terrified. I get a little better--not all the way there, but still better.

I learn, in February 2024, from V's mother that her ex-husband--V's father--had passed. He passed on 16 August, 2023 of a painkiller overdose. That is two days after V's death. We are not sure what caused it, or if he knew of her passing, but I have a strong feeling that is what compelled him to do so. I like to believe that, at least.

Now, fast forward to today: April. I have successfully spent my first Valentine's Day without V. I am doing considerably better in social and work-related capacities. V's mother and I speak on the regular.

I now recognize that, in light of how horrible that situation was, I was lucky in more ways than one, the most obvious one being about my daughter, E. I still do not know how she was able to come out of the wreck uninjured, let alone alive. I struggle thinking about how I am going to explain her mother's passing. I do not know if she has or will have flashbacks. In truth, I am still struggling to parent properly without V here. But, I am managing far better than I was just a month or two after the wreck. As the doctor that day--whom I am now good friends with--described it, it was as if G-d picked E up from the car and placed her back.

This also forced me to get my affairs in order; V was very care-free when it came to the more serious things, like her will and rights to property. This made legal things a hassle. In fact, it still is a hassle. It is one of the main factors restricting me from truly finishing the grieving process: It is hard to do so when you are bombarded with questions by lawyers about V's legal assets weekly. I understand why the red tape exists, but I simply wish this case was an exception.

Other than that, I have been doing well. I have not cried in over a month. That feels like a drug addict being one month sober. I feel great about it. I know it is natural, but you have to understand, that I cried so much after this incident that I could not do basic parental duties without breaking down in tears. I feel like I have grown for that, that the trauma is penetrating me less. It still gets to me, but it is not provoking such an uncontrollable reaction. I am happy about that.

I never plan to remarry. I will never meet a woman like V again--that is not me being a pessimist; that is me accepting the truth. Unless I adopt, E will thus likely be my only child. She is more than enough for me.

Enough about me. I suppose I would like to conclude by saying that I am very sorry for all of the loss that anyone reading this has endured. It does get better, though, even when the wound is fresh. It does get better.

Glad you’re rediscovering your zest for things after such a horrible experience. My heart goes out to you, to V’s memory and your daughter. You’re brave.

[Ineva]

I am debating if I should post this. Here goes.

My wife--we will call her V--and I met at the university. We, at that time, were pursuing the same degree, both not knowing what kinds of careers we wanted. I know the "love at first sight" cliché is often exaggerated or used hyperbolically, but that is really the only way to describe it. We glowed when we were together; we had little clue what we were going to do, but we knew we were going to do it together.

We met in January 2020 and were engaged and making wedding plans by March. Then COVID happened. All of our plans were going to either have to be put on hold or completely scrapped and redrafted. We settled on the latter, and, against both of our parents' wishes, we did a very untraditional, unorthodox wedding and ceremony--if you can even call it that--in October 2020. Our parents did not even find out until February the next year. This was incredibly tough for us.

For some back story, V's father was emotionally and verbally abusive with a quick fuse, short temper, and shameless alcohol problem. He had cheated on V's mother thrice, and eventually, they did divorce. Attempts at cutting him out of V's life were futile; he was a master manipulator. So, over the phone in March 2021, he did what he was best at and chewed her out. This time, though, it was for marrying me. I got called all sorts of names. He said I did not support him and his ex-wife enough, which is hilarious, in retrospect, considering what he did to that poor woman.

What you have to understand about V is that she was very soft-spoken and reserved; she only opened up to you if you opened up to her. She had a lot of distrust and resentment build up in her because of the relationship she had with her father. Another thing about V: You never wanted to be on her bad side. After saying what I can only assume to be some horrible things about me being a worthless false Jew and bum, I guess something got to her, and the tables turned. V held nothing back, and she did it all while whispering. I just sat and watched in awe as she reprimanded him over the phone; I had never seen her like that before. And so it was, after she hung up with him, she blocked his number and never spoke to him again. Mind you, she was only 21 when doing this all. My heart still breaks for her, considering how much strength and courage that must have taken.

Fast forward to 23 September, 2022. Our daughter--we will call her E--is born. She is our pride and joy and looks just like her mother. E got my personality for sure, though, Lol.

Fast forward again, to about 1350 on 14 August, 2023. This is when it happens. I get a call from an unknown number. I pick up. I am told my wife has been in a car wreck and that I should go to the hospital to see her. I ask about E, and they say she is perfectly fine in their company. Long story short, I make a 15-minute commute five. I am lucky I did not get into a wreck of my own.

I arrive at the hospital, still in shock. Eventually, I am directed to her room, but a doctor stops me from entering and tells me that she has already passed. He tells me there is nothing more to be done, but that my baby is safe.

I go numb. He is telling me things and I do not hear them. My gaze slowly drifts downward until it is clear that I am not looking at him, but through him. I just sit in a nearby chair and put my hands on my forehead for what feels like an eternity. My second half has been ripped from me. I did not even have the chance to say goodbye. That is maybe what hurts the most.

After what feels like forever, I slowly get up and enter the room. The bed where she lay is empty. I go over to it and sprawl my upper body upon it. My arms make snow angels in the sheets. I inhale deeply to try to pick up a scent. I cry, silently.

I collect myself--momentarily--and go to the adjacent crib. Sure enough, there is E, without a single scratch. You would not know she was in any wreck at all; she looked completely and utterly fine. I pick her up and look into her eyes. They are just like V's. To this day, every time I look into her eyes, I feel like I am looking at my wife. It is surreal.

I go find the doctor and ask him what had happened. He informs me very factually that, while V had a green light, her little white Focus had been hit by a drunk driver, blasting through a red light at the upwards of 80 M/H. V's car is impacted on the right rear side--the wheelwheel just behind E. The car flipped to its side, he said, and E's head must have hit the steering wheel or A-pillar. E was absolutely fine. The drunk driver stayed on scene and was arrested by authorities.

For that month, I was absolutely crushed. I thought about quitting my job, quitting university--I even thought about adopting out E, because I was not sure how I would parent without V by my side. The only phone calls I made were to my parents and mother-in-law; I did not tell a single friend about the incident. I did not tell V's father.

A little over a month after V's death, I celebrate E's first birthday. I did not even buy a cake. I do not have any regrets in my life, because I find regrets wasteful--but that one comes close. E deserved a birthday, and I dishonored that reward out of my own selfishness.

By November 2023, things get somewhat better for me, save for some developments in October. I start doing things I enjoy again. I call my parents more regularly. V's mother and I bond over the experience in some twisted fashion. I reconnect with my friends and tell them why I was so absent. I begin to enjoy work again. I begin showing up for work again, for starters. And, I begin to drive again. Before this, I could not drive through an intersection without being terrified. I get a little better--not all the way there, but still better.

I learn, in February 2024, from V's mother that her ex-husband--V's father--had passed. He passed on 16 August, 2023 of a painkiller overdose. That is two days after V's death. We are not sure what caused it, or if he knew of her passing, but I have a strong feeling that is what compelled him to do so. I like to believe that, at least.

Now, fast forward to today: April. I have successfully spent my first Valentine's Day without V. I am doing considerably better in social and work-related capacities. V's mother and I speak on the regular.

I now recognize that, in light of how horrible that situation was, I was lucky in more ways than one, the most obvious one being about my daughter, E. I still do not know how she was able to come out of the wreck uninjured, let alone alive. I struggle thinking about how I am going to explain her mother's passing. I do not know if she has or will have flashbacks. In truth, I am still struggling to parent properly without V here. But, I am managing far better than I was just a month or two after the wreck. As the doctor that day--whom I am now good friends with--described it, it was as if G-d picked E up from the car and placed her back.

This also forced me to get my affairs in order; V was very care-free when it came to the more serious things, like her will and rights to property. This made legal things a hassle. In fact, it still is a hassle. It is one of the main factors restricting me from truly finishing the grieving process: It is hard to do so when you are bombarded with questions by lawyers about V's legal assets weekly. I understand why the red tape exists, but I simply wish this case was an exception.

Other than that, I have been doing well. I have not cried in over a month. That feels like a drug addict being one month sober. I feel great about it. I know it is natural, but you have to understand, that I cried so much after this incident that I could not do basic parental duties without breaking down in tears. I feel like I have grown for that, that the trauma is penetrating me less. It still gets to me, but it is not provoking such an uncontrollable reaction. I am happy about that.

I never plan to remarry. I will never meet a woman like V again--that is not me being a pessimist; that is me accepting the truth. Unless I adopt, E will thus likely be my only child. She is more than enough for me.

Enough about me. I suppose I would like to conclude by saying that I am very sorry for all of the loss that anyone reading this has endured. It does get better, though, even when the wound is fresh. It does get better.

Glad you’re rediscovering your zest for things after such a horrible experience. My heart goes out to you, to V’s memory and your daughter. You’re brave.

It has, admittedly, been the worst few months of my life. But, I suppose that is a reason to keep trudging forward: It can only get better from here. Thank you kindly. And, likewise, your courage during your recent loss is admired by us all.

[Tiami]

I apologize in advanced. This is going to be lengthy. My post will detail my relationship with my grandma and ultimately serve as my testimony to God, whom I found during the most trying times of my life.


EDIT: I would also like to thank everyone who has shared and will share their grief. Reading through all of this really instilled in me that I needed to share mine as well. I offer condolences to everyone who has and will experience grief in their lives. You are not alone. We are all here for one another.

I remember the free-spirit my grandma was. Riding motorcycles, hair and skin greeting the wind as she tore through the corners, straightening the roads as she went. I remember the countless hours growing up, baking no bake cookies. Parchment spread out, spoons in hand since we could not wait for the cookies to harden. I remember seeing her face covered in chocolate as I am my sister laughed profusely as young kids. On my own account, my grandma was the person I was closest to growing up. She was and remains "my person." Not to take away from my parents or my wonderful wife. We share a special connection, but the grandma-grandson connection we had was something for the history books.

We knew what each other was thinking. It was natural for us. We could formulate toy gun pranks on my parents at the drop of a hat. Hell, the old lady would climb trees with me to the powerlines and we would both stupidly swing off of them. A free soul she was. These, of course, were my childhood memories back when she was still relatively young (my grandma was only 37 when my mom had me at 18).

Fast forward several years, we drifted apart. It's natural for many people. But during high school I met my future wife. High school sweet hearts you could say. At my wedding, my grandma and I started to reconcile and we grew closer than ever. I still remember the first thing she said to Michelle when I introduced them. "Where's my grandchild?" That old lady had no filter and spoke whatever was on her mind. While embarrassing, I could without a doubt say I respected it. And from that day on until her last, she was back in my life no matter what.

I think one of the few things we ever disagreed on was religion. She was very religious despite her personality. I was not religious. I did not grow up in a Christian house. My parents always wanted me to make that decision for myself. Grandma had different ideas. Approaching my teens, I noticed more and more how religion was being pushed on me, and I reacted distastefully, driving away the one person that knew me best. It is one of only two regrets I have to this day (the other I will touch on briefly).

But my marriage brought us back together. While she still quoted scriptures and I still pushed back, I knew our relationship was secured this time around. The birth of my son was the greatest joy in my life. Outside of Michelle and I holding him first, my grandma was next. It had to be that way. Man, she loved this kid. A parents love knows no limits, but I would argue that my grandma might just have loved my son just as much as we did. Approaching her 60s though, we could tell something was wrong.

We welcomed the birth of our daughter a few years later. She was and is a spoiled princess because of my grandma. All the jewely, clothes, kids nail designer stuff. All of it came from Grandma. By this time, grandma was growing weaker and it was starting to be noticeable. She could no longer ride her motorcycle, currently an '07 Road Glide. This caged her in. Her personality became more meek, though she remained quite the loving and doting grandparent.

Fast forward a few more years and her husband, who I'll say is my grandad (remarriage, but he's grandad regardless), grew rapidly sick. I still remember being there the night before he passed, talking to my grandma. He was still hanging on waiting for her to say it was okay. Heck, he could pull himself up hours before he passed. The man was so feeble, a shadow of the 6'3 frame he had. But I talked for hours with my grandma about letting him go. Played Christian songs, talked about God with her (I still educated myself despite not being religious at the time.) I remember holding my grandma in my arms, staring out at the lake as the funeral home took his body away. She could not watch. She just stared out into the lake the two spent countless hours on. Grandad was her soulmate. Her true love and the man she only spent 15 years with. My kids, younger, tenderly referred to him as Pappy or Pap pap. Man I loved him.

His death marked a resounding change in my grandma. Her health issues rose to the surface quickly. Everything she'd been hiding burst open. Her heart disease was the most prominent. It was at this point I realized she was dying from a broken heart. She would pass away 6 months following grandads death. She spent the remaining months of her life in my care. Michelle and I took care of her every need. Feeding, bathing, exercises, reading, and so much more. We did everything we could to make her comfortable. I took a LoA from teaching the last two months of her life. By the time, she could no longer walk without assistance from a walker. She'd lost a quarter of her body weight, and basis tasks were no longer easy for her. Yet in all this time, this woman never stopped preaching about God. It was during this time that I finally realized that she never forced her beliefs on me. She only shared what drove her everyday.

I started reading Bible verses to her during the last two weeks of life. Every morning and everyday day was a new verse. We chose by flipping the pages and where our finger landed, was what we would read. The final 3 days, it would be me doing all the verse choosing. By this time, she was sleeping almost all day. We knew it was almost time. She stopped eating, using the bathroom, or even noticing us if I'm honest. I would spend every waking moment with her up to the end.

My Grandma would pass away on January 1, 2021, just hours after welcoming the New Year. I bore witness to her last breath. I do carry my emotions on my sleeves, but until that point, I had never cried in the manner that I did in that moment. I simply lost it. Nothing else mattered in the moment. The one person that knew me best was gone. I remember Michelle consoling me, the kids waking up and seeing their father bawl his out. I remember gaining my composure about an hour later when the coroner arrived. I aided in helping them remove her body from our house. I remember the van pulling out of our driveway with my gran. At that point, I collapsed.

Over the next few months, I struggled. I started therapy for depression. I had suicidal thoughts. I sort of secluded myself. My family did their best to help me and I know they were suffering to. At points, I even neglected my kids and wife. It culminated in a chance encounter with God. I took a drive one night up the Blue Ridge Mountains. Approaching a curve, I started accelerating, fully intending to kill myself. At the last possible second, I felt something in me say "stop". I slammed the brakes, stopping right before plummeting to my death. One wheel was inches from the guardrail. At that point, I remember bawling my eyes out, calling Michelle to come get me.

Getting home, I remember Michelle reading parts of Matthew and Romans, my gran's favorite, to me as we went to bed. The following morning, I told Michelle that I was going to start going to church again. As a family, we have attended church regularly since, helping out in the Church and my community. My grandma left an indelible mark on me. Through her free-spirt and her love, I was able to find God. I still struggle with processing her death, and I still imagine waking up to find her sitting in her favorite rocking chair, sipping on her tea and watching the kids playing outside when they were supposed to get ready for school. She's gone but not forgotten. To this day, I still have crying bouts. I still sometimes refuse to accept what happened. Intrusive memories, dissociation, they all haunt me to this day; however, I am managing it the best I can with the best support system I could have: My family. Oh, therapy helps too.

I will never stop grieving and that's personally okay. I will never get over her passing, but I will get through it. Grief is entirely normal and acceptable for people to feel. It's what makes us human. Do I miss my grandma? More than anyone could know. She will never see my kids graduate and marry, but that's okay. The time we did have with her is memorable and filled with untold amounts of love. It hurts everyday, but just remembering who she was brings a smile to my face. Finding faith, I know she is watching over us up there. I have know doubt about it.

[Valentine Z]

As for myself, I don't really have anything too lengthy, but I have definitely lost quite a lot of people.

- My grandaunt slowly wasted away from cancer. We went back at the end of 2011 to see and visit her, and that was with me and my brother still having not finished our exams. But it was time-critical, and as it turns out, she was saving up the last of her energy and will to see us. After seeing us right next to her hospital bed, she gave us a nice and cute eyebrow raise, and that was the last we could ever get any response out of her. She wasn't yelling in agony or pain, just meditating as she often did.

- My grandmother (dad's mom) dropped and passed away suddenly in 2014. I couldn't remember if it was stroke or cardiac arrest, but that one was very sudden.

- My grandfather (dad's dad) and one of my uncles (dad's brother) passed away nearly together in 2021, I think it was a few weeks away from one another. COVID complications.

Those are from my family, my own blood. I missed them, please don't get me wrong. On the other hand, I don't want to be callous and I have been on good terms with all of them. It's more of the fact that, you know, I have lived decades with these people, so I believed that great memories were had and I didn't really have a lot to tell them, regrets I have had for things I have said, not said, the like. I definitely dreamed of them a lot, and I wished I could just go back to Burma pre-war and spend some good time with them. I should have treasured the time I had in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016... (when I went back to Burma).

There was, however, one person outside of family that I still miss very much, and I suppose I am still grieving to this day.

- My English teacher from my secondary school days. She was an absolute sweetheart, and she takes no favorites in the classes that she taught. It did NOT matter to her on if you get an A or a F. In fact, if you are the sort of student that was struggling (like me with English and Social Studies), she would do everything in her power to give us all remedial classes. Do you have a problem or a question for her that you could not work out? See her at a Starbucks/McDonalds/whatever that she would be at some timing, no questions asked.

Come GCE O Level, I passed both subjects - B3 (B+ of sorts) for English, and B4 for Combined Humanities (B-, for Social Studies and Geography). Now, this is NOT some backhanded show-off of how well I did; rather, you have to understand that I was constantly failing in both subjects, getting maybe a D at best and consistent E, all of them fail grades. She really was one of a kind to me, and no offense to my other teachers too, of course; she was just that one that was really, really special. She helped me and every single one who needed it, and she did it for every single cohort and classes that she taught, no exceptions. There is no favorites or avoidance with her; she is very neutral with grading your work and she will be brutally honest, BUT you could talk to her casually and she was approachable.

It was December 2014. It has been 2 years since the O Levels and I have went to Junior College, 2 years since she last taught me and my ex-classmates. I just finished my A Levels and was vacationing back in Burma. Imagine my surprise when I got hit with messages on Facebook that she has sadly passed; while it was a non-violent death, I will keep it personal out of respect on what happened to her.

It's been a decade at this point. I still missed her very dearly. Very often, I have had dreams of myself being back in her class, teaching me, some of my ex-classmates, and other people that did not exactly fit in (from other walks of life, but again, details). While I am happy to say that she and I never had any bad blood between us, I wished that I talked to her more. That is why I am still grieving to this day, having dreams about being in her class for some relaxed lesson.

I am not overly obsessed, at least I don't believe I am. I have more or less moved on and accepted the fact that she was gone, that is not something I find it hard to believe. My difficulty was believing that she was gone too soon. I wished I visited and see her more often, just talk about life and all, you know? She would definitely have A LOT (in a good lighthearted way) to say about the happenings all over the world now.

No words in the languages of the world can describe how much I missed her.

-----

To everyone who has grieved and lost your loved ones, I am terribly sorry to hear, and my sincere condolences go out to all of you. I wish I can say more than just words and I am far from being a professional therapist, but if someone really just wants to talk it out (you have my absolute reassurance that I will keep it private), I often offer my TG box to anyone who needs it. Again, not a professional, but I do want to, often times, have a deep conversation with people who needs or wants it. ♥

[Glorious Freedonia]

I think that it can not be overstated how important it is to have your grief get channeled in a positive way. Do something good to honor the memory of your loved one. Do not do bad stuff to cope with the sadness.

[Vonum]

I haven't seen much in my life, being only a teenager, but one I do remember is my cat dying. Right in front of me. I was only 8. And I mistook it for him playing and being the idiot we'd always knew and loved. I was just laughing. Until he stopped moving. Then I thought, "Is he ok? Was he ok? Is he dead." He was. I'm still really guilty because his last moments would have been listening to me laugh at him. I just can't get over it, he was only 4 years old.