Well grief anyway.
Losing a loved one is always life-changing and debilitating as we relearn how we handle the day-to-day amid devastating loss.
However, experts have now recognised a difference between a ‘normal’ level of grief and when mourning becomes a disorder that impacts on your ability to function normally in life.
In March 2022, US publication the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) officially recognized Prolonged Grief Disorder PGD, which applies to anyone who is still unable to cope with their loss six to 12 months after being bereaved.
Everyone is different, of course. On the surface, I was coping almost immediately following Mrs L’s death. Yet underneath, four and a half years on, I still mourn. There are days, when I am in the pit, when everything simply reminds me that I am alone and nothing will change it. The little anniversaries come and go and remind me of the loss. Yet on the surface, I am functioning. Those around me are unaware of the gnawing ache that still pervades every single day. Grief like this never goes away. I have lost a life partner of thirty years, so expecting normality to return is naïve. It doesn’t and this never goes away. I do not have a disorder, I am not mentally ill, I am normal. I will grieve for the rest of my life.
Grief is a wicked thing.
You do well to keep this place running under the circs.
I find that it’s a helpful distraction.
Ah – another syndrome we’ve invented and can profit from . . .
I know. Hence my comment here.
Her birthday, our wedding anniversary, her death, her funeral, are all days when I just want to be alone and remember the 40 odd years we had together. I was asked, recently, by an ex colleague who had lost his wife, “When does the hurting end?” . I repeated something I was told 5 years ago, “It never does. You just learn to live with it.” .
I try to continue living a full life, because that is something I believe she would have wanted, but for most of that time, I still feel that part of me is missing.
Do I have a disorder? No, I don’t. I’m just a human being holding human feelings.
The anniversary of the diagnosis is another. Then there are the little ones – places we went, holidays and so on as the dates come and go, they trigger a memory.
I’m thankful that so far I’ve not lost anyone close enough to cause me proper, aching grief. I do experience it however as my wife lost her mother most unexpectedly a decade ago whilst we were having fun out of the country.
I was the one to deliver the news in that hotel room which is the most awful experience of my life. She’s never recovered and never will. She cares little for anniversaries though, as she says every day hurts just the same, so why make a fuss?
I’m dreading the day when this affliction knocks at my door – I still have an excellent relationship with my parents which I appreciate ever more as time goes on.
P.S. I do appreciate that losing a life long partner is usually worse than the natural order of losing a parent. @LR and all those others who have lost their life partners have my deepest sympathies.
20 years later i still grieve for my son, still miss the silly bugger.
The one thing that sticks in my mind though, is how grateful i was my father had already passed because the news would have broken his massive heart, that’s a doube edged sword too, my mother visibly aged when i broke the news to her, racked with guilt for that too, she was never the same again.
Time heals, they say, who the hell are They, however i manage not to cry my eyes out any more when i see his method of death on a film or similar, only took twenty years.
You never get over losing people you love, nor should you, speaking of Dad i still miss him and Mum every day, i’m glad he’s not around to see what’s happened to our country and our world in the last 30 years mind, he’d have been lost.
It’s been 4 and a half years since mum died, I still can’t remove her number from my phone. If I dialed it someone else will have the number. It just seems disloyal to remove it.
I have, but only this past few weeks.
Thoughts with you.
She (dead 30 years) still speaks to me, in her real voice.
Gives very good advice too. She’s alive, in my head.
So sorry to hear that. But grief is normal, and different for everyone. There’s no ‘right’ way to grieve, anymore than there’s a ‘right’ way to live.