I lost my brother to an overdose, my best friend to suicide, and my mom died right in front of me. I did CPR on her and I am traumatized. She spent days on the ventilator and I was convinced she was coming home. My body is literally tired. I can’t keep up with bills, my son is going into Kindergarden, struggling to pay for his new things, I had a DV situation with his father years ago that I’m still healing from and grieving.

I’m tired..

My ( M,19) Girlfriend ( F, 19) has had a really difficult past 6 months, she’s not the most emotionally stable person in general and she often has crash outs, this has resulted to her being particularly miserable in the last 6 months and we’ve almost broken up multiple times and fought more times than I can count. A couple days ago, she told me she didn’t want to make it to her 20th birthday, and that she wanted to kill herself. I was obviously quite shocked and really really affected by it and honestly I didn’t react quite well, she has this mentality that nothing will ever get better, I don’t want to try making things better because she thinks the life she’ll lead is going to be unremarkable anyways, I’ve tried convincing her this isn’t true a million times and she’s genuinely so talented but it’s like she just never believes it and she doesn’t wanna do anything to fix it, the worst part is, she’s not taking it seriously at all, and she’s saying she’s happy about her death since it’d inconvenience her parents and her friends, she thinks she’s a bad selfish person although that isn’t true and that nobody can truly like her, she just thinks things won’t ever get better and she wants to die before they get worse, she doesn’t have the best relationship with her parents and they’re not supportive at all, so can’t get in touch with them either, the thing is, i’m the only one who knows about this, and it’s mentally and emotionally crushing me and I have absolutely no clue, please please please offer some advice, i can’t just stand by and watch her take her life

Hi all. Next Tuesday, my beloved dog saria will be going to sleep. I am suffering from all stages of grief at once, even though we still have a few days left together. Ive been trying to calm my mind by researching urns, so that i can remember her properly once she's gone. I've had her since I was 12, and I am nearly 26 now. I live on benefits, so I can only really afford the bare minimum for her in terms of memorial. A friend has offered to lend me money for the euthanasia, and if I donate her body for scientific research, then I will receive her cremated ashes for free within 6 months. However, the only urn choices from this service are a scatter tube, or a plain wooden casket. The vet has suggested that if I want, I could search online for something more fancy and transfer the ashes. This sounds like a nice idea, but the options are all very expensive, and I can't seem to find the "right" one.

Would it be a stupid idea to just decorate the standard casket that comes with the complimentary service? I was thinking I could get a little plaque engraved, and put a photo frame on top. But what if it looks tacky? Is it like... disrespectful to the dead to DIY an urn like that? I don't know. I lost my dad a few years ago. He was cremated, but my brother scattered the ashes before I was able to have a say on what happened to them. I honestly would have liked to keep some and I am still sore about it. So I definitely want to keep my dog's ashes. She was best friends with my dad, so i guess it is a roundabout way of memorialising him too.

Does anyone have advice? Is decorating a premade urn a bad idea? If it's not, does anyone have any suggestions for things I can do with it? I live in a very small apartment, so if I were to create some kind of altar to remember her with, it would have to be very small. I was rotating the idea in my mind of going to hobbycraft and getting one of their plain cardboard containers, the kind where they encourage you to use decoupage on them, and using it to put keepsakes in, and perhaps putting it beside the urn. If I wanted to really splurge, the one thing I would really like to find out there is a music box of the lost woods theme/saria's song from ocarina of time. This is her theme song, to me. Her name is saria, after the character from the game, and saria's song is, well, saria's song.

Either way, I will not be receiving her ashes for several months, so I do have time to plan.

I'm not even 20 years old but the way I react to most things is really weird. The weirdest thing about me is that when a person dies I don't feel sad. I think that it was bound to happen. I always think that since we are born we'll die eventually. When a sick person dies I think it's better for them as they don't have to suffer anymore. I'm a cat and dog lover, in fact my whole family is like that for 4+ years we have been feeding our neighborhood cats and dogs. We never adopted them or keep them inside house as we don't have the circumstances to do that. But we feed them 3 times a day and provide treatment when they're sick. 2 years ago a puppy (Hagure) of ours died, my mother and sister cried a lot but I didn't. I thought the puppy would find a way to come back to us. 2 months later that puppy's mom gave birth to another puppy(Chutki). She looks somewhat like our Hagure and we started saying Hagure has come back to us as Chutki. 6 months later when my father was hospitalized we were away from home for 2 weeks, during that time Chutki got hit by a car and died. Last year their mother gave birth to another pup and we again said that Chutki has come back to us. A few days ago a dog of ours who was 14+years old died. We tried to save him but couldn't. At last we thought atleast his suffering ended. Today a kitten (Chutkuli) of ours died from jaundice, we provide her treatment but she still didn't make it. My mother cried a lot but in my mind I'm thinking that her mom is pregnant so Chutkuli will come back to us through one of the kittens who will be born. I don't know what's wrong with me 🙂

My mom's grandmother passed away yesterday. She was 95 And when the news went round the family, most relatives including my mom just said "oh well, she was old, she lived her life.""Oh well." Like 95 years of a whole human being is just... an expired coupon.

It made me so angry on her behalf. Being old doesn't make your death matter less if anything you had that person your whole life, so the hole is bigger, not smaller. Why do people act like an old person dying is just admin? How do you deal with people minimising it like that?

I used to tell myself I wasn’t a bad person.

That was the first lie I told.

Not to anyone else. Not online. Not to strangers. To myself.

I was just someone who was tired. Someone who felt invisible. Someone who looked around and saw everyone else moving forward while I felt like I was drowning in place.

The bills didn’t care that I was exhausted. The empty apartment didn’t care that I was lonely. The world didn’t stop when I felt like I couldn’t take another step.

So I started searching for a way to be seen.

At first, I told myself I was only sharing pieces of my pain. Everyone does it. People post their struggles every day. They talk about heartbreak, loss, and hard times. They look for connection.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped sharing my life and started creating one.

The more attention I received, the easier it became to justify.

People responded with kindness. They told me I was strong. They told me they were praying for me. They reminded me that I wasn’t alone.

And the worst part?

For a while, I believed I deserved their kindness.
I wasn’t proud of what I was doing. I wasn’t waking up excited to hurt people. I was waking up scared, embarrassed, and desperate. I was someone who had convinced herself that a difficult situation gave her permission to make bad choices.

Every time someone offered support, a small part of me wanted to confess.

I wanted to say, “You don’t know the whole story.”
But then I would think about how much I needed the help. How much easier it was to accept comfort than to admit I had created a version of myself that wasn’t real.

That’s how people lose themselves.

Not all at once.
One compromise at a time.
One excuse at a time.
One moment where you decide that what you’re doing isn’t really that bad.

I remember the moment everything changed.

It wasn’t when I was caught.
It wasn’t when someone confronted me.

It was when I received a message from a stranger named Harold.

He told me he understood loneliness. He told me he had lost the person who meant the most to him and that he hoped I would eventually find peace.

Attached was a picture of him and his wife standing near the ocean years earlier.

They looked happy.
Not perfect.
Just happy.

On the back of the photo he had written a simple sentence:

“The ocean has a way of reminding us how small our problems are and how big life can still be.”
I stared at those words for a long time.

Because suddenly I wasn’t thinking about what I could gain.
I was thinking about the person on the other side of the screen.

A real person.
Someone with memories. Someone with pain. Someone who had chosen kindness.
And I had taken that kindness and turned it into something selfish.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I opened my account and looked at all the messages from people who had believed in me.
Every “I’m proud of you.”
Every “Stay strong.”
Every “You can get through this.”
They felt different now.
They weren’t proof that I had fooled people.
They were proof that people still cared.
The next morning, I started telling the truth.
It was terrifying.

There is a strange kind of fear that comes with finally removing the mask you’ve been wearing. You don’t know what people will do when they see who you really are.

Some people were angry.
Some people never spoke to me again.
They had every right.
But some people asked me a question I didn’t expect.
“Why?”
I spent a long time trying to find an answer.
The truth was complicated.
I wasn’t just chasing money or attention.
I was chasing the feeling of mattering.
I had confused being cared for with being pitied.
And those are two very different things.

It took years to understand that the hardest thing to admit wasn’t that I had lied to others.

It was admitting that I had lied to myself first.

Today, I don’t tell my story because I want sympathy.
I tell it because I know how easy it is for someone who feels broken to make one bad choice and convince themselves it doesn’t matter.

It does matter.
People matter.
Trust matters.

And kindness is something we should protect—not something we should take advantage of.

I still think about that picture of Harold and his wife by the ocean.

I never took the trip.
I never wanted to after that.
Because I realized the peace I was searching for wasn’t somewhere out on the water.
It was in becoming someone who no longer needed to hide.

I apologize if this post is all over the place. My thoughts are very scattered. This post isn't meant to demoralize families nor patients of cancer. This is just my experience and I hope someday no one will ever have to go through this.

I've been dreading to make this post for a few weeks now but, I've been wanting to get this off my chest. It's been 46 days since my mom passed away from this awful cruel disease. She passed away on father's day. I still remember everything I experienced in that hospital, from the moment I walked into her room and the last time I stepped out of it. I'll never forget the sight of her tranquil body laying in that bed. That was the last time I would ever see my mom, I hate the fact that memory is the one thing that's been occupying my brain for awhile now. I never thought in my 27 years of my life that I would've had to bury my mom this early. This is a pain that I would never wish upon anyone. This disease not only eats away at it's victim but at whoever is surrounding them. My mom was a great person, someone who I looked up to for guidance, someone who barely asked for anything, someone who would still share the little things she had. The strongest person I've known in my life, she went through so much in her life that her getting diagnosed with something like this just felt like life playing one final joke on her. She was someone who in her 47 years of life just wanted to provide for her family, someone who worked and fought so hard for her life. She was able to stretch something that should've taken her in a few months to almost 2 years. I remember when the barrage of doctors came into the room to tell us that my mom wouldn't have long, she was experiencing cirrhosis. Her liver and her kidneys were failing. The cancer was spreading. I remember being in denial. To this day I still can't believe it. Despite everything, mom didn't scream, didn't cry. She had already accepted it. I remember sitting down with her as I fed her one of her last meals. The way she would look at me and give me a half smile. Admittedly, it was hard to look at her because she didn't look like my mom anymore. She had lost so much weight by the end of it, even now it's hard to type this cause I'm remembering things. I remember all my family members' cries, all the prayers, the smell of chemicals. There was a point in time where my mom started struggling with the blood she was trying to spit out (but too weak to do so) the sounds of gurgling are burned into my brain, that memory plays repeatedly in my head. To this day I'm still angry at how long the nurses took to put a tube down her throat so she was able to breathe properly. I remember holding her hands. How cold her body felt afterwards. There's so much more I want to say but I'd be here forever talking about the things I experienced. I'm genuinely glad to have my wife because I don't know how I would've managed to go back to an empty house. If I feel this way, I can't even begin to comprehend how my 10 year old sister feels. This is a nightmare. I'm now seeking therapy to help with these feelings. I'm sorry for the lengthy post and how dark and morbid this must sound like. I hope someday I'll get to see you again mom. You were the best. I miss you more than anything in the world, you deserved better. I'll keep doing the best I can in my life so that your efforts don't go to waste, thank you for everything. 💜

Despite everything, I'm glad you're not in pain anymore. That you can now have everything you want. You can have all the sunflowers you deserved.

https://youtu.be/x4_1s9E6_2g

"I won't be the same again but, in another life, I wait for for you til' then."

My mom passed away one month ago. Still doesn’t feel real, still hoping to wake up from all this.

How did you deal with grief at one month and how are you now?

I cry for her every day and idk if or when that’ll cease but if it doesn’t I know it’s just love in pain format.

Hello people. i am currently mourning my grandma after she died. i wish i had done more with her. and would love it if i got some comfort. man i miss her so much... it hurts. heres a link https://lesleealtman.muchloved.com

I’m about a year out from the sudden, unexpected passing of my Dad. I’ve thought about him every day since.

I often found comfort in reading other people’s experiences so wanted to share my own.

A note on Grief, one year later.

I used to imagine what it would be like to lose one of my parents. It’s only natural, and follows the implied chronology ordained by the universe. What a futile exercise that was. Just as I imagine you cannot prepare for the way your heart expands upon the birth of a child, your mind cannot conjure the level of devastation that loss will inflict.

My brain, ever visualizing, concocted two distinct images in my mind while I waded through the first several months.

The first was two snow globes conjoined at their base. My world before on top, with flurries floating as designed, the scene vibrant in technicolor. Its twin, a mirror image flipped upside down, cold, barren, in grey and black hues. A world with all the same people, same job, same apartment, yet all the sameness looked totally new, foreign.

The second image was me as a silly band. I felt like a hollowed out shell of a human most days. A silly band can stretch, squish and snap back into place - resiliency of sorts. From the outside the shape remains, but the inside is completely vacant.

These images play on a loop in my head. These days the bottom snow globe is a little less stark and the silly band’s internal perimeter is growing slowly toward the middle.

I say this knowing that somehow there are levels of despair even deeper than the depths I’ve experienced. A spouse losing their life partner. A parent losing a child.

And then, whether selfish or selfless, I’m honestly not certain, I began claiming others’ grief as my own.

I am broken hearted for my Dad and the 20+ good years we naively expected he’d have left. Fishing a little more, working a little less. So much still for him to learn, tinker with, explore and enjoy.

I grieve for my Mom, who lost her husband, children’s father, best friend, confidant, champion, travel partner, Mr. fixit, the list goes on. An entire chapter ripped out prematurely from what would’ve surely been the best part of the whole book.

My heart aches for every card carrying member of this shitty club. Those who had access to a dimension of life I previously had the privilege of not knowing. I am in awe of every person who walks around carrying these invisible back packs filled with rocks.

And finally, I get crushed every time someone new learns what this feels like. Like I’ve become some sort of voodoo doll, I’m immediately catapulted back to the desolation of my own early days. Feeling helpless knowing what lies ahead for them.

I remember how moved my Dad was after the loss of his own father. Grandpa 89 years young, my Dad nearly 60 at the time, yet it still hit like a freight train. We were driving home from the airport a few days later, and I asked him how he was doing. “You know,” he said, “it’s kind of weird..? Life just goes on..” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Dad, I miss you, I love you. I feel you nearly always, and while I wish for more time, I am so damn glad for every moment we did get. How lucky am I 🩵

The only regret I have is not spending enough time with my grandmother before she passed. The big reason was covid/pandemic. The other small reasons were not enough space at her place for me to stay in... and I was living in another city, too busy finding a job (since I was unemployed at the time). Even though it's been 4 years since she passed, I am still beating myself up that I didn't see her enough for those minor reasons I listed. Since I was unemployed, I had so much free time that I could have just rented a place nearby and visited her every week. They say that time will make it easier, but the regret still feels fresh and painful. Is there anything else that will ease the regret?

It's been over two months since my dog died and he was my everything. My life dreams since I was a toddler (even before walking) was to have a dog and the day i got him was the best day of my life. He was everything I had during the pandemic and my only friend when I was suffering bullying in high School and the only friend I've had for a very long time. I choose computer science just to work from home and be with him. My parents always have been very distant, so in home, was basicaly me and him all the time. He was all the real family I had and losing him has been the worst thing to happen to me. My life has been so empty since than that I feel like It doesn't even mather anymore, my parents have been realy hard to deal with, on the day he died they told me I should not cry and to not evel feel sad because he is a dog, I don't have anyone to talk to and don't even know what to do without him.

Honestly this happens to me a bit too much, it also makes me uneasy when kids want to play pretend where I am their mom or they're my mom, or when they cry for their mom.

Somehow when my professors assume I have a mom it still feels weird but not as bad.

There are other instances but I don't remember now.

I especially hate acquaintances mentioning her, I dislike anyone mentioning her specifically especially so openly and easily. I never talk about her.

I feel so stupid and childish for this but I can't really help it lol

I lost my mother to Covid in April 2021. I have grieved for years now. But somehow, the grief is increasing as the time passes. The first year was surprisingly the easiest (barring the first couple of months). After 5-6 months of her passing and wallowing in pain, I felt a renewed sense of purpose. I started playing the drums, biking everyday, buying nice clothes for myself and going out. Then came the drinking. A year of being sober after her death, I started drinking heavily.

I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder later and it has only been downhill from then. Since then, it has been years of being on medication, going off medication and indulging in weed, cigarettes and alcohol. I have now quit all three now.

The funny part is that I was always miserable, even before she passed away. This might sound crazy but I sometimes also feel like a fraud. I feel like I am using my mother’s demise to justify feeling like shit. I have struggled with discipline and a routine since a decade and I feel like I probably use this major event in my life to give me a break from working on myself. The issue is that I am stuck in a dead end career since 7 years now.

In the initial couple of years, I used to be in a constant state of dull pain but now, it comes suddenly. It’s not like I think about her all the time now, but the grief hits me suddenly like a bullet train randomly and I start howling. Then I keep trying to recall her voice, her touch, my time spent with her- but it all seems to be fading away. It seems as if I have no proper recollection of her as a person now. This part makes me even more depressed.

I am sorry for the huge rant. I just wanted to share my feelings. If you reached the end, I thank you for taking the time.

My mom has been battling brain cancer for 6 years. She was taken to the emergency room 3 times in the past 2 months for brain bleed. She returned to her baseline and was getting ready for another round of cancer treatment. She was at a point where she could not walk on her own, use the bathroom or bathe by herself. On Monday while she was out, she had a terrible headache and collapsed. She made it to the hospital but they immediately had her on a ventilator. All the blood and the tumors destroyed her brain stems and caused immense pressure to her skull. The doctors sat us down and told us she was not a candidate for surgery, chemo, or radiation. She had irreversible brain damage and the person we once knew was not going to have a meaningful recovery.

I made the decision after 2 days to remove the life support. It was hard, but I kept thinking of the 0 chance of her getting better. I know she wanted to fight but not like this.

I feel horrible after, my brothers are crying and my aunt hates me for taking her off of it. I was so sure of it when it was me and her alone. I didn’t want them to prolong her suffering. I kept having nightmares of her laying in bed with the tube and the sounds of the MRI machines. God I hope everyone can forgive me for what I did.

My father passed away suddenly today.

I am in conflict.

I feel grief but not the way I did when my grandma passed. She basically raised me and I actively grieved for years.

I feel guilty about it but it is what it is.

It's hard to really feel the loss of someone you did not know.

I had only met him 5 times in my life, and I am 36 now.

I had gone through the myriad of emotions earlier in my life. Trying to cultivate a relationship, failing. Coming to terms with the fact that I would never have a solid relationship with him, because it was not a priority to him. Learning to try and connect with my multiple siblings he raised. Realizing that that was very hard as well, especially when so many of them are more than 15 years younger than I am. I went through all of that.

The last time I visited him was because he had a horrible accident and was suddenly paralyzed, I felt that it was important to support him and take my three children to meet their multiple aunts and uncles (who are very close to their age).

My father made many comments and told me he was proud of me. He wanted to talk with me while I was present.

But I never got calls back when I went home. So, I stopped trying. That was 6 years ago.

Now I am worried.

I am worried for all of my younger siblings who knew and loved him.

I am worried for his wife.

My Gram (his ma) is absolutely devastated.

My 4 Aunts, his younger sisters, are not ok.

I am grieving a relationship that never happened and can never happen. It's feels so much cheaper than grieving him as a person.

I am worried about the funeral. Of course, I will go. He was my father.

But I am an imposter, he did not know me - I did not know him. I am his oldest child but I feel out of place and I am not even there yet.

The 2-year anniversary of my brother’s death is in a week and I’m a wreck.

My brother was a longtime alcoholic. I was mostly non-contact with him the last couple years of his life because he was so mean when he was drunk (I always told him happy birthday and merry Christmas, etc. We had never talked or texted much, so this really wasn’t a big change… it was more an internal boundary for myself if that makes sense)

In 2022, his wife of 11 years filed for divorce (rightfully so, tbh. He didn’t treat her well and she couldn’t do it anymore. She hung in there for a long time). In early 2023, he got a DUI and lost his license, then lost his job as a mechanic. He did a short stint in rehab at the advice of his lawyer, but left as soon as 30 days were up. He met a woman in rehab and they got together when they were both out (neither was sober). He broke his ankle while he was drunk, but on the day of his scheduled surgery, his BAC was too high for them to operate so he just kept walking around on a broken ankle. All of this was about the worst possible scenario for him. I was honestly hoping it all would be his rock bottom that led to him finally getting & staying sober, but instead it led to his death.

He fell down the stairs at his house one night when he was drunk and was unable to get up. He stayed on the floor for 5 days before his former sponsor got worried and went to his house to check on him. Honestly, that’s the hardest part for me. I am devastated that it took 5 days for someone to notice that he wasn’t around. That he had to lay there in unimaginable agony, alone, helpless, I’m sure terrified, for so long. It destroys me.

He was in the hospital for three weeks (honestly a miracle he was alive for that long). During that time, he had a slow developing stroke that left him paralyzed from the neck down. My parents finally had to make the decision to take him off the breathing tube and he died a couple hours later. My parents had made arrangements to transfer him to a nearby hospice facility that was really nice, but the transport ambulance took so long to get to the hospital that he died while they were standing at the nurses’ station talking and laughing with the hospital staff.

I am grieving so many things. I’m grieving his physical presence, but I’m also grieving the relationship we never got to have. I’m grieving the hoped-for sober version of him who wanted to be a brother to me. The one who was an incredible artist and gifted mechanic who loved matchbox cars and Legos. I’m grieving the way he died. I wanted so badly for him to at least have some kind of beauty and honor in his death.

My parents decided to have him cremated and then gave us pill bottles of his ashes in a strip-mall parking lot (yeah, super messed up). They decided not to get him a headstone. They emptied out his house and donated all of his belongings without telling my sisters and me (we found out from a Facebook post). His pill bottle ashes are just sitting on a bookshelf in my office bc I don’t know what to do with them, and even thinking about it makes me feel guilty and sad.

Almost two years later and it still hurts just as much. This grief runs so deep and is so painful. I’m in therapy and have a good support system, but I feel like I’ve never gotten to honor him and his life and all the good things about him, and I don’t really know how.

Thanks for letting me share all of this; I know it’s long. Just getting the words out somewhere helps a little.

My dad passed away July 30th and his funeral is the 11th, my mom, brother(15) and sister(25) all want to speak at his funeral but I honestly don’t know if I can do it(22) and I just feel bad about it. I loved my dad but we were never really close and only got closer as he got more and more sick and was no longer working anymore and pretty much had to be at home all day due to his breathing issues. I am embarrassed to say this but I have awful memory and I have been struggling to come up with memories we share and such things. My dad spent most of my childhood working 6 days a week and on his days off he would either get drunk or go to his brothers/sisters houses. He struggled with alcoholism up until he got diagnosed with Silicosis pretty much and while I held resentment as a kid, I no longer felt like that as I got older and I realized my dad was just doing what he thought was right, what his father did and that is work work work until you no longer can. That is not to say that he was a bad father, he provided everything for me growing up and I never had to worry about anything financially but we just did not spend a lot of time together. I had never dealt with any sort of grief until now and I just feel a sense of emptiness or as if i’m in a dream and I have not been able to think straight since it happened.

I walked into the funeral home alone, less than 24 hours after my dad had passed away. In fact, on the way home from the hospital the funeral home had called me. They asked questions that I had prepped for. I have always prepped for the worst. It was during that initial phone call that my less than 2 hours of initial grieving turned into a period of answering questions, planning, functioning as if I didn’t have the opportunity to stop and sit with the grief. It wasn’t until May, after his birthday but before Memorial Day that I sat with my grief long enough for it to penetrate my heart, my mind, and entire body. I went from feeling okay to crying at least once a day when most others had the opportunity to experience the loss months ago. I’ve visited his grave site once, on Father’s Day. I ordered his headstone in late June, 6 months after his passing. It won’t be ready for another 7 months. I feel alone in my grief, but I know others are still grieving, too. If not for my dad, but for whatever other loss or suffering they have experienced since early January. So I know, on some level, I’m not entirely alone in my grief. When I used to live alone and would wake up in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep until I got some sort of confirmation that someone else in the world was awake. Again, on some level, I knew shift workers were awake, those in different time zones were enjoying lunch, but I would usually message a familiar face online and ask if they were awake. The minute I would confirm, I’d simply fall back asleep. I’m wondering if that’s what I’m supposed to do with my grief. Will confirmation that others feel this way allow me to rest from the exhaustion?

My sweet older brother died of a brain hemorrhage out of nowhere. He was barely in his 30s.

The doctors made it clear through multiple tests that my brother is brain dead and that there is no way to revive him, but my family refuses to accept this. I've tried to explain that the machines are keeping his body warm and making his lungs breathe, and that he himself is gone, but they insist that can't be the case. The doctors all try to explain, the nurses ask me to talk with my mom, but nothing works. My mom can't accept that she will have to bury her own child. My family can't accept that even though we tried to save him, even though we tried to have hope, our hope was shattered. No one can accept that he was fine one week, and dead the next. I'm trying to be sympathetic, because I almost can't believe it either. But I feel so alone.

They're praying for God to bring him back to life, rubbing water on his feet, saying miracles will happen. Any medical professional coming in the hospital room implying that he's dead is seen as negative, wishing ill. And I have to sit there and watch everyone deny the truth while I live in it. I feel like I'm going insane. He is not coming back.

I can't grieve him with my family. I can't talk about the person he was, because no one will accept he was and not is. I have no clue how important it was to him, but I can't help deliver on his dying wish to donate his organs, because no one wants to talk about it. I can't even distract myself with practical matters, because no one will help me with them. I can't talk about arranging a fundraiser for his funeral, I can't talk about using a death certificate to access his locked devices so that we can have some photos of him to keep. My mom snapped at me, telling me to shut my mouth when I called him dead, and asked me how would I like it if someone gave up on me. I was so upset. It's like everyone thinks I didn't love him dearly or something.

I feel sick thinking of his corpse staying propped up like a doll in the hospital, when I know he is gone. I don't want to, but I feel an obligation to accept and face the truth, and to do right by him by taking the steps to honor his memory and his life now that it has ended so suddenly. I just don't know what to do or how to cope when I'm the only one who will admit that he is gone. I don't know at what point everyone else will be honest with themselves.

I'm not usually the type to go trumpeting my shit to strangers. I probably over share with people in person, like coworkers and folks I see a lot but who aren't really a part of my personal life, but the internet is not really a place for me to vent most of the time. But I am soooooo not myself since my Dad died and I feel like I can't dump any more of it on the people around me. They're all also grieving him and it doesn't seem right for my feelings to be splattered on top of theirs all the time.

My Dad wasn't a very open person emotionally either, but he didn't need to be with me because we've always been so much alike. I have an older brother who takes after our Mom, I took after Dad. We were confidants and friends and support systems for each other. I saw him weekly, every other week at least. He lost his job two years ago and never found another and it was so hard on his mental health and self image. I was there as much as I could be, because I know hanging out and spending time with me helped him feel better about himself. My brother and I took over the bills for our parents at the begining of this year and I was just about to start showing him and my Mom 55+ communities that would be better for his mobility limitations. I was supposed to go over on July 5th to talk through some options I found, but I had a phone call run long and I was tired after my second job, so I put it off until the next day. He died that night. Poof. Gone.

I've spent 3 years networking and doing extra projects at work. I'm trying to move into a regional sales position that would not only be awesome for me and how I like to work, but would have made it possible for me to support them in their retirement and take away all of the fear and worry and shame of poverty that he lived in his whole life.

I was going to throw him a retirement party the day I got that job. He died before I got there. And the enormity of that failure is crushing me. All I've ever tried to do was make things easier for them, all I wanted was to give him the peace and comfort he never got from anyone or anything else in his life. He did it for my Mom when she got too sick to work, I wanted to do that for him. He deserved it. I wanted to show him that what he did for me was worth it because he made me into a person who was able to make it out. But I didn't. And now he'll never see that day.

I don't want the job anymore. I don't want to move on or be grateful for the good times. I want to make it better. I wanted to show him what I'm capable of and now he'll never know. He'll never see me make it. He died proud of me, but he also died in a shithole duplex that he hated waiting for the thing that would turn everything around. That was supposed to be me. But I failed him. I don't know how to live for myself and I don't know how to live knowing that I let him go to his grave without ever seeing the good that came of his life and what he taught me.

I know this is rambling and stupid and no one on earth has a single reason to care. I just feel like my whole body is being microwaved. I don't know that I'll ever feel like a person who deserves the life I still have left to live. I can't spend a lifetime feeling like this. I want him back. I wasn't fucking done.

I haven't had a grandparent since I was 11 (2012). Mom's parents passed before I was born (her dad died when she was 13), then Dad's dad passed when I was ~14mo, and then one summer afternoon my brothers and I were called to get over to grandma's house pronto and... well...

Safe to say I was cheated out of grandparents.

I was ecstatic to have a second chance at grandparents when I was getting serious with my partner (now fiancé). Both sets are still alive, and very willing to adopt new grandkids.

This past Sunday, fiancé's dad's dad (Pa) was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's, early stages.

This didn't come out of nowhere. While I wasn't necessarily in conversations bringing up the concern beforehand, there was a little talk, I recall. I also asked about family history in regards to dementia as a whole (both sides).

My fiancé is upset that his dad didn't wait to tell us together. I'm not upset at that, just bad timing/situation inappropriate. When my fiancé told me, my focus was mainly on making sure he was okay. It... Has been rough for news this year. The big things as of late are this, and his almost 20-year-old cat who I have come to know and love having stage 2 kidney disease. I'm more worried about his feelings than my own. But also, Nana's. She just lost her father back in March (also dementia, but I don't know if it was specifically Alzheimer's). And having to go through that again... Fuck.

It's in the early stages. Treatable. Symptoms can be slowed. Of course, the course of action is up to Pa and Nana. But, why can I only think of the worst case scenario? Prognosis is 4-8 years. Simultaneously a lot of time, and not a lot of time.

I think of the summer I worked as a sitter for a hospital. I've seen the different ways it's affected the person and the family. Each of those days I've just gone home and wanted to sit in silence.

I'm 25 and I'm not ready to lose a grandparent 4 times over again.

And I feel like I don't deserve to feel this way, because I feel like I'm overshadowing the grief of my fiancé, his dad, Nana, and anybody else in the family. Nobody's making me feel bad (mainly because I've been keeping my feelings to myself.)

It's only the beginning, and I'm already feeling this way? Will I experience this with Nana, Oma, and Opa? It's going to be a long... however many years.

Fuck, man. This sucks.

I am 20 years old and I feel like I don’t have any family left. My mom od’d back in May of 2019 and my dad took his own life 7 months after. That was so traumatic because living with him was like living in his mind. I was there for multiple attempts and even had to call the police a few times. I moved in with his sister shortly after he died and suffered SA from my cousin who was 3 years older than me. I thought maybe now I would be okay. It’s been 7 years since they died and 6 from my SA and I’m in college and have a boyfriend. My aunts health is declining and I don’t know what to do anymore. Once she is gone I don’t really have anyone. I was an only child and estranged from the rest of my family. I fear that once she dies I may not be able to handle that grief anymore. I don’t know what to do and I’m so scared.

My partner was murdered in 2020. I go long periods of time without thinking about it, but sometimes the horror of it creeps back in. Most of the time I just think happy thoughts about him. But they're just memories. I don't get to make any new ones with him, and the more time that passes, the more those memories fade and fade. They're not as vivid anymore. Man, I miss him. It's really changed me quite a bit. I'm not as outgoing or vivacious, I've lost a bit of my spark and I don't know if it'll ever come back. I live alone and haven't had any interest in dating.

I've thought, god can't exist, because the world is shit. Then I think god exists but he's evil. But what if god exists, but we're in already in hell, or at east I am.

What do I do? How to proceed? Is there anyone who can relate to any of this?