Nothing like as tough as the experiences of grief of the good people here, but my current experience of grief is of my mother-in-law, who died last month at 87 following a decade of Alzheimers (so it's true and it isn't that we'd already 'lost' her). I recognise in your stories the disparity of what l/we feel versus what we're told we should feel, and the alienation it engenders.
We realised that she was unwell when my f-i-l died suddenly in early 2016, and amidst the shock, we were more worried about how to care for her (and 2 small children) than about the grief, even though we loved him. We were younger than most people in this position (38) and felt alone with grief and caring - not doing enough for her or the children.
Agencies always called me about her care, not her actual only son (because l'm female and have an inbuilt affinity for such things?!) and agreeing to DNR orders, hospital treatments (or not) and palliative care felt like a draining responsibility which l couldn't talk about. I kind of resented that my husband got away with it and didn't want to talk much about it, and l also felt l needed to support him because she was his actual mum, and his grief was more profound.
We're told that the anticipatory grief we felt as the Alzheimers progressed (it's not called "the longest goodbye" for nothing) and the nearly-deaths would make the actual grief easy to handle. Also, we "must feel so relieved" that she's finally died. But that's not the lived experience and it makes grief harder.
I'm so glad you shared your perspective about the untold aspects of grief. We have very similar situations. My husband also had a lot of secrets & no plan to protect me after his self inflicted demise. I've spent a lot of time cleaning up his mess after being set up for a rough time. Then losing everything I cared about both physically and emotionally. The guilt of actually feeling healthier and more peaceful after a death, while at the same time being willing to do anything to get them back, is a tough burden to carry. I'm trying to look at the positives and the good times and reframe my guilt in missing his pain and my own.
I'm so sorry you're having such a horrendous time. It's very difficult, isn't it, to negotiate the knowledge that, in some ways, going through trauma can make one a 'better person' with a clearer sense of what's important in life; but also wishing fervently that the trauma had never happened. Have you read any of Tara Brach's books? I find her idea of RAIN (recognise; allow; investigate; nurture) very helpful in dealing with complex emotions such as guilt, because her emphasis is on simply allowing the emotion to happen, and observing and investigating it, rather than actively trying to redirect or quash it. Solidarity x
Hello. I am no stranger to complicated grief, although my situation was very different because it was my mother rather than husband. I'd not lived with her since the age of seven, and she was a complicated and damaged person who coped by drinking and hoarding, so dealing with her death was very much mirrored by the process of clearing up the mess she had left behind.
But some things are very much in common - the presumptions of other people about how you should feel when your mother had died being the hardest to deal with. I also did go quite mad, and was high as a kite for a couple of months, while simultaneously feeling very guilty about being so elated. You really are not allowed to say that to anyone.
I read a lot about complex grief, and no one seemed to have a very good idea about what to do with it either. My salvation was a simple course of counselling with the local Cruse, where a lovely woman was just accepting of where I was and assumed that this mess of feelings was entirely normal. I ended up telling her lots of stories about the madness of my mother and my entire family, and somewhere towards the end of our sessions she said that I should write this all down as a book. So I did, and it got not only written but published by a mainstream publisher (its called The Life of Stuff, but I am sure you don't need anyone else's madness to add to your own). And in piecing all that together, I did find myself more able not to understand what happened (really, that will never be the case) but to live with it. But you know this.
Yes, as you say, mother-daughter relationships are especially overshadowed by myths. I'm estranged from my mother, and people who haven't experienced difficult parental relationships are so focused on ideas of reconciliation, and 'life's too short to hold a grudge' etc etc. So many people cannot imagine being in a situation in which it's healthier to *not* have a certain person in your life. But it makes it so isolating and hard to talk about. I'm so glad that you wrote it all down! x
Hello, thank you for your powerful and honest writing. Creating the spaces for challenge, discourse and a community in deviation is so important and I am grateful.
My own relationship with grief is complicated and unresolved. I'm just starting to unpick it in therapy. Much of mine relates to my father's sudden death, the subsequent breakdown with my relationship with my mother (and perhaps the grief at the loss of two parents in one moment) and what I am now starting to see as a grief at the absence of a nurturing childhood at both of their hands.
I have, since my father died in sudden/traumatic circumstances, unintentionally found myself in a career substantially involving understanding responses to traumatic death and the complexity of the relationships and processes engaged in response to that. I suspect that is no coincidence.
And yes, that strange juxtaposition that we are not meant to acknowledge whereby we can grieve a loss - partially, fully, ambivalently and sometimes think it no loss at all. And sometimes all of these simultaneously. Grief is a bit like the Cheshire Cat, I guess.
I think the analogy with how we are meant to feel about motherhood - whether at birth, or later, is a powerful one. I feel it deeply. That pressure to play along with the script for fear of being judged or patholologised is stifling.
Hello, I separated from my alcoholic partner of 40yrs last Sept when I had a significant birthday and finally ran out of hope. I've been working away from home but came home for Christmas to a dreadful mess which he had left for me to clean up so I changed the locks. After that he stayed with his Mum or in hotels for a while. In April he failed to check out of a hotel and the staff found him dead in his room. We're awaiting toxicology results but I fear it was drink and drug related. As we never married his mum is next of kin and lives quite a distance from me. He has been cremated with no ceremony, his family have his ashes and I've asked to be involved in the scattering and to have some to do something with myself but they're blanking me. In many ways I grieved for the life we had and the person he was long before we separated so now I'm just left with guilt that I didn't/couldn't do more. I had started rebuilding myself and feel much more settled in myself which I also feel guilty about. I was in complete shock when I first got the news. Now, part of me just doesn't believe it and part of me is relieved which also feels bad to say.
gosh, it's so complicated, isn't it. It's so hard when a person has multiple different personalities. In my experience, it makes you question whether it's possible to love one of those different personalities, but hate some of the other parts; or whether the destructive parts obliterate all the good sides of a person. And I'm so sorry that you're having to deal with a hostile family situation. Grief really seems to bring out families' territorial nature. Sending solidarity x
Thank you Rachel. The past 2 or 3yrs have made me question if he ever really loved me or just loved the life I helped him have. I also berate myself for all the years I tolerated his lies and lack of care. Despite everything I’m rebuilding and finding elements of me I had lost along the way. I feel lighter and more at ease. Here’s to being a strong woman x
Hello. I lost my pet two years back from cancer. He was a two and a half years old golden retriever. I hardly got to spend time with him. The week he died I had an event in office and was busy. The day after he died I went to office and spent the day being in some fog. I did not know how to cope with the grief. I had parents ant house which made things worse. I wanted to scream and wail but suppressed them and silently cried. I had severe guilt. I blamed myself that I did not spend enough time with him. That it served me right I did not have kids. I still blame myself. I have thought several times to see a counselor but have not. I read up on self help books
As I've said to a poster up-thread, I find Tara Brach's idea of RAIN (recognise; allow; investigate; nurture) very helpful in dealing with complex emotions such as guilt, because her emphasis is on simply allowing the emotion to happen, and observing and investigating it, rather than actively trying to redirect or quash it. x
I think the complicated grief discussion is so important. Nobody talks about it. In my case the father of my children ended up having dramatic facial surgery to remove a tumour when I was pregnant with my first son and then a terminal cancer diagnosis when I was pregnant with my second. The stress and anxiety and complete lack of support - both emotional and financial- was literally insufferable. He ended up leaving us when our children were still tiny (I think - if I’m being generous - owing to his stress) and then died very soon afterwards. I still find it hard to comprehend the layers of trauma; the operations, the agonising hospital waiting rooms, the chemotherapy tablets next to bottles of Calpol and the anger, resentment, and sheer overwhelm of it all. I ended up having to sell our London home, relocate back up north, leave our wonderful community, find new schools for the children and a full-time job. I look back and have no idea how I coped. I don’t think I’ve even begun to process the trauma that comes from the horror of realising that you really are completely on your own. People often praise my “resilience“ but I really have had no other choice. I love your writing Rachel. Thank you for encouraging me and others to share.
Bloody hell, Emma - I'm so sorry, I had no idea. What a horrible, traumatic, complicated situation. I imagine you might have felt that your life was stolen from you for years and years and years, by all those caring responsibilities. No wonder you felt angry and resentful!! I hate it when onlookers refer to 'resilience': it feels to me that it's one of those comments that only serves to make the commenter feel better. It feels like they're saying, 'oh, she's resilient; she's strong; she'll be OK, so I don't need to step in and help'. I'm probably being uncharitable though! xxx
So much this Rachel! I’m only just starting to have the headspace to peel back some of the layers of trauma. The ‘resilient’ trope is maddening - there was never any alternative to plodding on x
Double widowed here, breast cancer both times. I thought I had sorted my life after tragic loss, only to have that tragic loss happen again. Everything you have written is absolutely spot on x
Gosh, that is a really cruel set of circumstances. I'm so sorry. Have you written about it at all? Life must feel particularly risky and hostile, having been through such a horrible form of bereavement twice over. x
ii have signed up to one of those days for widowed and young just before i age out. Dont get me started on the inaccessibility for people that don't have anyone to be with younger grieving kids while you feel guilty about group sessions on loss. and the lack of an agenda for the day. I have made my thoughts known on this so i live in hope that future events will be clearer. they still won't be a place for those with complicated grief.
yes, in my experience, having been through loss isn't enough, on its own, to bond people together. I think the WAY community is quite divided - between those with complicated grief and those with less complicated grief; those with children and those without; those who like chatting away on social media and those who don't etc x
Nothing like as tough as the experiences of grief of the good people here, but my current experience of grief is of my mother-in-law, who died last month at 87 following a decade of Alzheimers (so it's true and it isn't that we'd already 'lost' her). I recognise in your stories the disparity of what l/we feel versus what we're told we should feel, and the alienation it engenders.
We realised that she was unwell when my f-i-l died suddenly in early 2016, and amidst the shock, we were more worried about how to care for her (and 2 small children) than about the grief, even though we loved him. We were younger than most people in this position (38) and felt alone with grief and caring - not doing enough for her or the children.
Agencies always called me about her care, not her actual only son (because l'm female and have an inbuilt affinity for such things?!) and agreeing to DNR orders, hospital treatments (or not) and palliative care felt like a draining responsibility which l couldn't talk about. I kind of resented that my husband got away with it and didn't want to talk much about it, and l also felt l needed to support him because she was his actual mum, and his grief was more profound.
We're told that the anticipatory grief we felt as the Alzheimers progressed (it's not called "the longest goodbye" for nothing) and the nearly-deaths would make the actual grief easy to handle. Also, we "must feel so relieved" that she's finally died. But that's not the lived experience and it makes grief harder.
I'm so glad you shared your perspective about the untold aspects of grief. We have very similar situations. My husband also had a lot of secrets & no plan to protect me after his self inflicted demise. I've spent a lot of time cleaning up his mess after being set up for a rough time. Then losing everything I cared about both physically and emotionally. The guilt of actually feeling healthier and more peaceful after a death, while at the same time being willing to do anything to get them back, is a tough burden to carry. I'm trying to look at the positives and the good times and reframe my guilt in missing his pain and my own.
I'm so sorry you're having such a horrendous time. It's very difficult, isn't it, to negotiate the knowledge that, in some ways, going through trauma can make one a 'better person' with a clearer sense of what's important in life; but also wishing fervently that the trauma had never happened. Have you read any of Tara Brach's books? I find her idea of RAIN (recognise; allow; investigate; nurture) very helpful in dealing with complex emotions such as guilt, because her emphasis is on simply allowing the emotion to happen, and observing and investigating it, rather than actively trying to redirect or quash it. Solidarity x
Hello. I am no stranger to complicated grief, although my situation was very different because it was my mother rather than husband. I'd not lived with her since the age of seven, and she was a complicated and damaged person who coped by drinking and hoarding, so dealing with her death was very much mirrored by the process of clearing up the mess she had left behind.
But some things are very much in common - the presumptions of other people about how you should feel when your mother had died being the hardest to deal with. I also did go quite mad, and was high as a kite for a couple of months, while simultaneously feeling very guilty about being so elated. You really are not allowed to say that to anyone.
I read a lot about complex grief, and no one seemed to have a very good idea about what to do with it either. My salvation was a simple course of counselling with the local Cruse, where a lovely woman was just accepting of where I was and assumed that this mess of feelings was entirely normal. I ended up telling her lots of stories about the madness of my mother and my entire family, and somewhere towards the end of our sessions she said that I should write this all down as a book. So I did, and it got not only written but published by a mainstream publisher (its called The Life of Stuff, but I am sure you don't need anyone else's madness to add to your own). And in piecing all that together, I did find myself more able not to understand what happened (really, that will never be the case) but to live with it. But you know this.
Yes, as you say, mother-daughter relationships are especially overshadowed by myths. I'm estranged from my mother, and people who haven't experienced difficult parental relationships are so focused on ideas of reconciliation, and 'life's too short to hold a grudge' etc etc. So many people cannot imagine being in a situation in which it's healthier to *not* have a certain person in your life. But it makes it so isolating and hard to talk about. I'm so glad that you wrote it all down! x
Hello, thank you for your powerful and honest writing. Creating the spaces for challenge, discourse and a community in deviation is so important and I am grateful.
My own relationship with grief is complicated and unresolved. I'm just starting to unpick it in therapy. Much of mine relates to my father's sudden death, the subsequent breakdown with my relationship with my mother (and perhaps the grief at the loss of two parents in one moment) and what I am now starting to see as a grief at the absence of a nurturing childhood at both of their hands.
I have, since my father died in sudden/traumatic circumstances, unintentionally found myself in a career substantially involving understanding responses to traumatic death and the complexity of the relationships and processes engaged in response to that. I suspect that is no coincidence.
And yes, that strange juxtaposition that we are not meant to acknowledge whereby we can grieve a loss - partially, fully, ambivalently and sometimes think it no loss at all. And sometimes all of these simultaneously. Grief is a bit like the Cheshire Cat, I guess.
I think the analogy with how we are meant to feel about motherhood - whether at birth, or later, is a powerful one. I feel it deeply. That pressure to play along with the script for fear of being judged or patholologised is stifling.
Thank you again.
Takes me back to a scroll line: They taught me silence tastes like gold, I swallowed dreams and did what’s told. No questions asked, just protocols. https://open.substack.com/pub/thehiddenclinic/p/scroll-of-grief-and-longing?r=5hogqp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Hello, I separated from my alcoholic partner of 40yrs last Sept when I had a significant birthday and finally ran out of hope. I've been working away from home but came home for Christmas to a dreadful mess which he had left for me to clean up so I changed the locks. After that he stayed with his Mum or in hotels for a while. In April he failed to check out of a hotel and the staff found him dead in his room. We're awaiting toxicology results but I fear it was drink and drug related. As we never married his mum is next of kin and lives quite a distance from me. He has been cremated with no ceremony, his family have his ashes and I've asked to be involved in the scattering and to have some to do something with myself but they're blanking me. In many ways I grieved for the life we had and the person he was long before we separated so now I'm just left with guilt that I didn't/couldn't do more. I had started rebuilding myself and feel much more settled in myself which I also feel guilty about. I was in complete shock when I first got the news. Now, part of me just doesn't believe it and part of me is relieved which also feels bad to say.
gosh, it's so complicated, isn't it. It's so hard when a person has multiple different personalities. In my experience, it makes you question whether it's possible to love one of those different personalities, but hate some of the other parts; or whether the destructive parts obliterate all the good sides of a person. And I'm so sorry that you're having to deal with a hostile family situation. Grief really seems to bring out families' territorial nature. Sending solidarity x
Thank you Rachel. The past 2 or 3yrs have made me question if he ever really loved me or just loved the life I helped him have. I also berate myself for all the years I tolerated his lies and lack of care. Despite everything I’m rebuilding and finding elements of me I had lost along the way. I feel lighter and more at ease. Here’s to being a strong woman x
Hello. I lost my pet two years back from cancer. He was a two and a half years old golden retriever. I hardly got to spend time with him. The week he died I had an event in office and was busy. The day after he died I went to office and spent the day being in some fog. I did not know how to cope with the grief. I had parents ant house which made things worse. I wanted to scream and wail but suppressed them and silently cried. I had severe guilt. I blamed myself that I did not spend enough time with him. That it served me right I did not have kids. I still blame myself. I have thought several times to see a counselor but have not. I read up on self help books
As I've said to a poster up-thread, I find Tara Brach's idea of RAIN (recognise; allow; investigate; nurture) very helpful in dealing with complex emotions such as guilt, because her emphasis is on simply allowing the emotion to happen, and observing and investigating it, rather than actively trying to redirect or quash it. x
I think the complicated grief discussion is so important. Nobody talks about it. In my case the father of my children ended up having dramatic facial surgery to remove a tumour when I was pregnant with my first son and then a terminal cancer diagnosis when I was pregnant with my second. The stress and anxiety and complete lack of support - both emotional and financial- was literally insufferable. He ended up leaving us when our children were still tiny (I think - if I’m being generous - owing to his stress) and then died very soon afterwards. I still find it hard to comprehend the layers of trauma; the operations, the agonising hospital waiting rooms, the chemotherapy tablets next to bottles of Calpol and the anger, resentment, and sheer overwhelm of it all. I ended up having to sell our London home, relocate back up north, leave our wonderful community, find new schools for the children and a full-time job. I look back and have no idea how I coped. I don’t think I’ve even begun to process the trauma that comes from the horror of realising that you really are completely on your own. People often praise my “resilience“ but I really have had no other choice. I love your writing Rachel. Thank you for encouraging me and others to share.
Bloody hell, Emma - I'm so sorry, I had no idea. What a horrible, traumatic, complicated situation. I imagine you might have felt that your life was stolen from you for years and years and years, by all those caring responsibilities. No wonder you felt angry and resentful!! I hate it when onlookers refer to 'resilience': it feels to me that it's one of those comments that only serves to make the commenter feel better. It feels like they're saying, 'oh, she's resilient; she's strong; she'll be OK, so I don't need to step in and help'. I'm probably being uncharitable though! xxx
So much this Rachel! I’m only just starting to have the headspace to peel back some of the layers of trauma. The ‘resilient’ trope is maddening - there was never any alternative to plodding on x
Double widowed here, breast cancer both times. I thought I had sorted my life after tragic loss, only to have that tragic loss happen again. Everything you have written is absolutely spot on x
Gosh, that is a really cruel set of circumstances. I'm so sorry. Have you written about it at all? Life must feel particularly risky and hostile, having been through such a horrible form of bereavement twice over. x
ii have signed up to one of those days for widowed and young just before i age out. Dont get me started on the inaccessibility for people that don't have anyone to be with younger grieving kids while you feel guilty about group sessions on loss. and the lack of an agenda for the day. I have made my thoughts known on this so i live in hope that future events will be clearer. they still won't be a place for those with complicated grief.
yes, in my experience, having been through loss isn't enough, on its own, to bond people together. I think the WAY community is quite divided - between those with complicated grief and those with less complicated grief; those with children and those without; those who like chatting away on social media and those who don't etc x