On Losing My Mother
It has been 3 years since my Mother died at 9:41pm on a hot August night. She was 62 and pancreatic cancer had ravaged her body in a short 7 weeks. I was there. I remember the room, the funeral home removing her body and my 45-minute drive home with my Yorkie. It was surreal and I didn’t cry.
Reflecting back on her loss and the associated grief, I didn’t start to grieve until 6 months after she passed. Immediately following her death, my siblings and I had a condominium to sell, clothing and household items to pack, and a funeral to plan. I told myself I was too busy to allow the sadness and grief in.
During this time, I often found myself comforting others about her loss. “I will be ok” or “thank you for your concern,” but in reality I was losing weight, experiencing hair loss and exhaustion. When I saw the Doctor to discuss my symptoms her response was, “Your Mom died. This is normal.”
But what is normal after loss? What does the grief process look like? What I can tell you is it is different for everyone. I read the books, reviewed the stages of grief, and scoured online journals about losing a parent as an adult. What I found is grief is a journey, and I don’t see an end. There isn’t a concrete start and end point. But what I do see is that the weight of the loss has become less with time, it has changed shape. I think of her every day and the anniversary of her death, holidays and birthdays are hard; but my life continues, as she would want it to.
I p...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Elizabeth Grasher, MS, LPC, LMFT Tags: Aging Family Grief and Loss Personal Bereavement death in the family Death Of A Parent grieving honoring memories Shock Trauma Source Type: blogs
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