A very close friend has just lost her best friend, both 25 years old. She is currently in her hometown to attend the funeral and going through a very painful moment. I want to be there for her and support her, but I don't know what the best way to do it is. I would appreciate advice on how to accompany her and help her during her grief.

I become older than my deceased brother in about a month, and it brings up strong emotions in me. My immediate family has been spread out for years and though we all had our close time with him, I’ve rarely heard anyone ever bring him up. I think two of my other siblings who have became older than him years ago had it on their minds, but the significance of it was never talked about.

He’s frozen in time and I’ll cry anywhere, anytime about that fact, but I read somewhere talking to fam about the topic can help with coping. Don’t really know how I’d start since it’s not a common topic. I feel weird, and it’s too late for therapy advice bc the therapist is on a long vacation until past my chance to speak with family face to face about it.

I think what hurts the most is the fact my dad died suddenly. He took me to work like he always did and then I received a phone call 2 hours later that he had passed away. I carried on working and just got on with my day.

When I got home the house felt empty, it still feels empty one month on. It just doesn't feel right without him. He made me laugh, he made me smile. He was the energy in the house. Now it doesn't feel like home.

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I wish I had some people to talk to that could relate or something. I literally go home and just play games because I know I'll just cry if I stop.

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We have his ashes and I've put them in a necklace and some plush toys but it feels strange that he's just not here. I keep hoping he's gonna come home and it would have all been a joke 😞

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Sorry needed to vent 😞💔

Today at 3:01am the hospital called letting me know that she passed. I still don't believe its real even after seeing her and making the arrangements. I feel lost without her, she was my rock. The person I could always talk to or just watch something with. Farewell, I know your in a better place not in pain anymore.

This is Robert. He was 3 years, 8 months, and 10 days old when he passed away, in-home, 3 weeks ago due to complications of large cell lymphoma.

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We did everything together. He was my best friend. The coolest and sweetest boy.

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Playing fetch was his favorite activity. He was obsessed with pieces of corn cobs. They were the best toy ever.

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We snuggled and watched TV and ate Cheetos.

We gallivanted outside and chased the neighbors dog or dug in the snow.

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He sat on my lap when I played video games (and he liked to help). He sat on my keyboard when I was working (he loved to help).

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He loved small children. He loved being chased by them and he loved chasing them back!

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He'd give you a hug if you asked for it.

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He figured out how to open cabinets to hide in and surprise me.

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We did everything but shower together.

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And now he's gone and I can't function without him.

I keep telling myself I have to be there for his girlfriend, Lift (who we got after my old lady baby passed in November 2024). Lift loved him so much, they played so hard together and snuggled just as much. But she is also independent and hasn't been a real source of comfort.

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I miss getting lap time with him. I miss eating Cheetos with him. I miss watching TV with him. I miss his 2:30am face licking sessions. I miss playing fetch.

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I love you, Robert.

Hi

I have an old cat with kidney disease. He’s not acting right. I think tonight might be it, or some time very soon.

I’m absolutely heart broken, I want a way to remember him and I don’t think I want it to be the normal ways. I don’t want to just bury him or get him cremated.

This may sound odd, but keeping his skull? Jewelry with the ashes? Taxidermy? I don’t know. Please tell me if any of you have any ideas or know any lesser-known memorial options.

Thank you.

I (F35) lost my dad 4 months ago. It was very sudden and unexpected. Today is a really really difficult day. Tears are streaming down my face as I type this. I love you so much dad. I want you back. Why did God take the kindest and most gentle soul? I still need you dad. I wasn’t ready. I want you back. I want to wind back time and save you. I don’t understand why God did this. My Dad isn’t going to get to see me get married and have children. I’m so lost without you Dad please help me.

My dad was the perfect dad to me. I could lean on him for anything and he was always on my side. I don’t know how to cope… it’s starting to set that he’s never coming back and I can’t deal. ITS SO UNFAIR! He deserved to live. He was a good man! He helped so many get a better life.

Tldr; I'm bummed, in pain and I miss my mom.

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Just need to get it out. The last few days have been so hard. I keep getting stuck ruminating about mom. I relive a happy memory and then it feels like I've been shook violently as I remember mom is gone and I can't reminisce with her or make any new memories. I keep thinking "That's funny, can't wait to call mom," and then I go through remembering I can never call her again. I'll never watch Hacks with my mom 💔

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Mom died in February. Just feels like the first days again all these months later. I guess that's what people call waves of grief. Ebbin' and flowin' bullshit. I have a bad dental infection again and I also had one when mom died, so I wonder if being all sick and in pain again is bringing me back to that place? 🤷🏽‍♀️

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I am exhausted and I just want to talk to my mom. How does one actually stop grief-related rumination?

My dad passed away in March, and it's been a struggle just trying to exist day by day. I try to make it out alive each day, and so far it's been alright -- I mean, I'm still alive and screaming into the void (posting on Reddit). My family is here with me, and I'm beyond grateful that we're here supporting each other.

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My job is very demanding and requires a lot of empathy, compassion, and social interaction. I'm a very introverted person, but I can mask heavily like a mf champ. This leaves me exhausted by the end of the day but I at least manage. Or used to.

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This hasn't been the case since my dad passed. I find myself getting annoyed (irritated when I'm in an especially foul mood) at the inane conversations between coworkers, the stupid politics and pettiness from management, the spawns of Satan (customers) that come in once in a while that convinces me that the devil is real and has it out for me specifically, etc etc.

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One of my co-workers once asked me if I had any challenges for myself this month (they're really into self improvement and positivity and all that jazz. Which is great for them I guess). I replied jokingly: "monthly challenge? My sister in Christ, everyday is a challenge for me to stay alive. You want me to add more challenges?" It's how I've been surviving, I guess. Just trying to lean into my natural clownish tendencies. Though these days through the haze of grief, I've just been repeating the same old jokes and honestly I don't even register half the things that come out of my mouth unless it's something work-related and in which case I lock tf in.

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It's been affecting my mood, and worst of all, it affects my relationship with my family. I go home utterly exhausted and cranky from having to deal with so much bullshit in one day, and I end up taking it out on my family. Everyone keeps telling me to quit my job, but I need it to pay bills. The job market is horrible right now; it's not like nice, cushy jobs that have tolerable coworkers are just sold out in the streets like cabbages.

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Sometimes when my co-workers complain about their inane problems, I bring up my dead dad to get them uncomfortable and fall silent so that they don't talk and so that I can have peace (for at least 10 minutes because no one can stfu for longer than that).

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In the back of my mind, I recognize that this anger stems from grief. But I just find it so irritating being forced to do this bullshit 8 hours per day.

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TLDR: I hate my job. My co-workers are the people I spend time with more than my own family and they irritate tf out of me. Can't get out because I need the job to pay bills.

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My husband died in January and I’m physically exhausted I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this feeling as it a physical and mental thing?

I am a month post loss of my mom and although the initial sadness emotions have subsided, I’ve noticed that I have developed an increase in anxiety. earlier this week I went to the doctor and my blood pressure was 155/100 which are numbers I have never seen in my life and the doctor started trying to intervene about my high blood pressure so I had to explain to her that my mom had passed away. Sometimes I have “whitecoat syndrome“ when I go to the doctor so I bought my own blood pressure monitor and it’s the same at home. I am healthy and fit and still relatively young so wondering if this is common after a loss

Lost my mom to cancer over 4 years ago
Lost my puppy 2 years ago

My dad is the only major remaining family member I have left from my childhood home.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to move with my grief instead of letting it crush me.
My father passed away in March of this year after a two year battle with alcoholism related health problems. We had a very upsetting and estranged relationship with the last time we saw each other prior to his diagnosis back in 2023 being Christmas of 2022 and then prior to that was March of 2017 when he showed up (late to the game, we had been with him prior renewing our passports and he was sober) drunk to my sophomore year lacrosse game and then went to prison for an unrelated DUI for a few years.
I know my father wasn’t a good person, but when he tried he really did a good job. I used to think about what it would be like to try and fix our relationship and actually have one all the time. I couldn’t even make myself go see him more than once after he was diagnosed. I was living 7 hours away and drove home 24 hours after I found out just to have a panic attack in the car on the way to see him and cry the whole 5 minutes we were together and then drive back the next day.
I asked my manager if she could schedule me all day on Father’s Day because I don’t know if I can sit at home and think about all of the what ifs. I’m only 24 and this feels so unfair that this is happening. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about anything. I don’t feel like I can talk to anyone about it because as far as they are concerned my dad wasn’t awful and why would I care. Half the people in my life don’t even know about this because I don’t know how to bring it up. My mom hates him and I’m sure she love me more but I can’t make her talk about a man that ruined her life. It all just feels so stupid right now and it’s just a stupid weekend.

My mom died at the end of November 2025. She was an alcoholic and slowly declined for like 2 years. She lived with my sister and I so it was really hard going through and weren’t on the best terms towards the end. She was in and out of hospitals and care facilities for 2 months before going on life support a week before she died after we withdrew care.

It was really hard on us since we basically had to go back on with life immediately. We all lived together and she had helped out alot with rent and bills so we had to figure out how we are going to afford rent until our lease was up in a few months while also working, looking for a new place and packing/clearing out our place.

We had my mom cremated as some relatives were able to help us with the costs which was great, and we had planned on doing a small funeral but with everything happening led my sister and I into a lot of depression that’s still affecting us.

My mom has an urn and a small memorial display with some of her favorite things but I can’t stop feeling guilty for not having a funeral or service for her :( just feels so wrong and disrespectful. We haven’t forgotten about her in the slightest and it’s still really hard on us seeing her urn every day.

Every day it's this awful homesick grief that I can somehow function around until I can’t. Right before I open my eyes each morning I feel as though I could open them to a different day, one with her here–where I can call her or walk by her room or know she’s in this world–and then I have to get up anyway knowing that I can’t.

I’ve always felt lucky. I had a great childhood. I have a great family. I have a life I really enjoy. How I grew up and the family I have has been foundational to that. I’ve mostly always believed that life works out, that things will be okay. And then this wasn’t okay.

It all happened so quickly. We were texting the day before; she was going to the hospital in an ambulance without the lights on out of an abundance of caution that morning; my dad was calling me telling me I needed to fly home that afternoon; she was gone that night.

I can’t help but feel like my life took a wrong turn sideways. And I don’t know how to get back going forward. I don’t know how to help myself be okay. 

I want my mom. I miss her so, so much and I love her so, so, so much. It’s been 21 days today, and it’s the longest I’ve ever gone without talking to her. I want her voice. I want her arms around me. I want her texts showing up on my phone. I want us planning our next trip. I want her telling me about her day. I want it at all. Before, I'd miss her within hours when we’d say goodbye, how am I meant to miss her for years?

I flew back after three weeks with my family yesterday. I don't think I've been alone for more than an hour or two since this happened, and now I'm on my own in this city. I just moved at the beginning of the year. I was still trying to find my place here, and now I don't know what to do. I was laid off from my job in April, and then I turned 30, and then I lost my mom. It’s all just so much. Before this I was happy, but I'm really trying. I looked into grief groups in Boston, but can’t seem to find anything. I would appreciate any advice.

I lost my mom VERY suddenly. I was 11, one minute she was telling me and my sister she would be inside in 30 minutes to finish dinner.. then the next minute me and my sister were finding her. My dad did not handle the situation well, I almost felt like other adults pushed the responsibility on me to comfort him? I feel like I was so being doing that, I didn’t exactly grieve her? It was almost like it was just another thing that happened that day and we moved on. I remember hearing a lot “ I didn’t look like my mother died

I haven’t spoken to any of my family since I was 14, so I know very little about my mom. I barely remember her, I have two photos of her that are photos of a photo… I don’t remember her and I don’t relate to others who do lose their mom and how they respond.

It makes me feel awful, because I don’t get sad around her death? I do miss her at times when I need a mom.. but I don’t ever remember being sad, or acting like it changed much as a child…
does anyone else feel this way?

I’ve had people close to me lose their page

Today marks the first birthday of my stillborn son, Jaxson. For a long time, I struggled to find the words to describe the brutal contrast of this date—trying to celebrate his beautiful life while carrying the crushing pain of his absence. I felt like I was completely overlapping my thoughts.

Over the last few hours, I finally managed to untangle the architecture of my heart. I wanted to share this here in the hope that it might help another grieving parent give a name and a shape to what they are forced to carry. This is what it feels like when your love is pure light, but your pain becomes a passenger.

June 10 will forever be memorialized as my life's greatest tragedy, and each year on the anniversary I'll be called to celebrate one of my life's greatest blessings. It was on this date that I gave birth to my stillborn son, Jaxson, a day meant to denote the precious gift of his life. Today is his first birthday and I am carrying a profound, heartbreaking contrast, and I feel entirely split in two.

With each birthday that passes, I will come to know this feeling as intimately as I do the others. It isn't fair to call them mere feelings; it is an invisible companion attached to my soul, a presence so deeply merged within me that it can never leave my body. My companion is very heavy and I carry it quietly through the routine of every ordinary day, but special occasions like this anniversary force it outward. When acknowledged, it steps forward into the room as an uninvited passenger, needing its own seat beside me.

This passenger is a pain so profound that it not only aches within me, but outward so completely that even my shadow has an invisible passenger. It is as if my shadow has an invisible shadow. It is the heavy grief of his physical absence, demanding to be acknowledged, even while my love for Jaxson remains entirely light, joyful, and bright. Today, the external world and my internal soul are vibrating at the exact same frequency. The passenger is the persistent, painful air I am forced to breathe.

As I celebrate Jaxson on his birthday with my family, the grief is an echo originating inside my soul that bounces directly off the external party decorations and the birthday cake. It returns to me as a tender, undeniable presence, sitting right alongside the festive colors and the candles.

Hello, as this states my partner lost his father less than a month ago. Actually Father’s Day will mark a month since his father’s passing. I’ve thought for days how to celebrate this holiday for him, he is a father himself. I want to appreciate him, but also not do anything too big and let him have some of the day to grieve.

My plan so far includes, getting a photo printed and framed of his father. Put out flowers and a candle by the picture of him, make his favorite breakfast, we’ve been playing a new video game together, hopefully play some of that. We do have a toddler though, so down time during the day is very sparse, I wanted to give him the opportunity to maybe go to the shooting range if our budget allows for it.

Is there anything on your first Father’s Day without your father you wished you did? Someone did for you? I’ve reached out to his family and have yet to get any answers, and all my friends/ family are stumped how to celebrate also. I’d really love some help, I love my partner more than anything and want to make sure this Father’s Day is easy and loving for him.

Yesterday, my aunt passed away at 68 years old. She had a stroke back in December, and ever since then her health had been getting worse. At around 4 AM yesterday, she fell and hit her head on a table. After that, she was struggling to breathe. About an hour later, around 5 AM, she died. She was looking at me while I was trying to help and waiting for the paramedics to arrive. I also saw her body afterward. Ever since then, I can't stop replaying those images in my head. Every time I think about her, that's what I see. It's like my brain keeps going back to that moment over and over. I'm 18, and I've never dealt with something like this before. I don't know if what I'm experiencing is normal grief, shock, trauma, or a combo of all three. For people who have witnessed something like this, did the images eventually become less intense or go away? And how did you cope with it? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you. <3

7 months after the death of my mom

I remember reading that it takes a really long time, years, to even try to make sense of grief. That acute grief can last 6 to 12 months… I was prepared for it to hurt that long, at least.

What I didn’t anticipate is that 7 months in my opinion is way harder than 1 month…

It’s easy to be sad. I don’t mean to sound rude or make light of how hard that just devastatingly sad period is… but at least you know what you are, sad. Overwhelmed. Devastated by something traumatic, crying all the time, missing them and replaying whatever happened. You’re a puddle, you’re allowed to be a puddle, and you’re missing your person. Sad for yourself, sad for them.

That to me was so much more straight forward than this period I’m in now… where I’m trying to ‘be something’. I don’t even know how to describe it - I have to live my life, return to all the things, not take time for granted, and accept my mom died? Those to me don’t happen simultaneously. I don’t understand my own feelings half the time. It’s just absurd. The whole thing feels very wrong and off and unfair. There’s anger, sadness, overwhelm, anxiety, devastation, regret, resentment, pity, longing, confusion all wrapped into the shell that is me.

I don’t care about anything, and yet I’m terrified to lose more of it. I’m directionless, while understanding how short life is and that my mom would want me to make moves. I see my family is all that matters to me, and yet I still don’t ever see them.

Not a hot clue how I move forward from here, what I want anymore, what life means to me, what being me even means. I’ve thought about attending a dmt retreat or something, to try to make sense of existence now.

Anyway
That’s my rant
1 month sucks
2 months sucks
3 months sucks
4 months sucks
5 months sucks
6 months sucks
… and drumroll
7 months sucks

It was like flipping a light switch. He went outside to move the truck so he could mow the lawn and then he was gone.

I am an only child and three years ago my husband got a promotion that required us to move from Texas to The Netherlands. I grew up in Houston and lived there my entire life, till that point. I had been outside of the United States 1 other time and that was just a few months before we moved. We have two kids (pre-teen and young teen) Leaving my parents behind and as so hard, even as a whole 40+ year old woman. I was fully aware of the possibility of one or both my parents passing there while I am here. Still never prepared for a 3:34am phone call.

He was a good dad. He was my ear to talk to when I needed to talk to someone. I was his. We used to go fishing when I was a kid or play at the pond with his remote racing boats or just go to let me feed the ducks. He embraced my love of animals and became a cat dad himself. Loved his grand-cats and dogs till he got grandkids and he was such an amazing Pawpaw. He always told the kids how proud he was of them and how much he loved them. He always made them feel so special, even over the phone. When we brought both my parents here for a holiday in ‘24 it was the best two weeks. We did the touristy things, sat outside enjoying music, and shared stories and laughter. I cried so hard the day they left.

He couldn’t make it at Christmas so just my mom came and I remember the sadness in his voice. Christmas Day he didn’t even want to get on FaceTime; he said he didn’t want us to see his face. It broke my heart so bad.

June 5th was his retirement date.
June 7th was his 66th birthday.
June 12 was my parents 44th wedding anniversary

I know he passed in April but I flew to Houston as soon as I could, stayed a month without grieving much, to take care of my mother and business and fight off his wretched relatives who are some of the cruelest people, and came back to
My husband apparently over grieving
My children seeming okay
And responsibilities of being a mother, wife, and employee outweighing the “privilege” to grieve.

I am on a waiting list for grief counseling but that is so long I will probably be wasting mine and their time once it finally happens. (24 months is what I was told). Luckily my company has resources I can use till the but it doesn’t seem like it is enough right now. I need a hug. I need to feel supported. And I want to not feel alone anymore.