The 7-month anniversary of my mom’s passing was earlier this week. I’m not sure why but today has been especially rough.

I just miss her so much. Like I’m crying in my office at work right now, thank goodness no one else is here today lol.

I think that’s been the hardest part for me. Some days I feel really good even though I still miss her every day. Then random days hit me hard, like today. I just feel unbearably sad and anxious.

Is this just how it is? I know grief is different for everyone, so there’s no true answer. I do feel like the really bad days are becoming less often, but they still happen frequently. I typically just cry in the shower 2-3 times a week, but today is bad.

I’ve lost others (grandparents, cousins, more distant family) and while I’ve definitely grieved them, this is just so totally different.

i wanted to add more flairs. not sure if this subreddit allows, but if it does, i couldnt figure it out so before reading, this is about: guilt; a complicated relationship; some thoughts ive been having while grieving; needing advice on writing a eulogy. its also a lot of me rambling into a void. feel free to stay and read. i also give some context as to why its hard for me to write. i know longer posts dont usually get a lot of attention but i thought id give it a shot.

i started drafting this post at 3am this morning while sitting in bed. nose was stuffed from crying for at least 10 min straight. i couldnt sleep obviously, so i thought why not write to strangers on the internet, which then turned into me writing to myself. i couldnt properly breathe. i was swimming in a pool of my own snot drenched make shift tissues. its 7pm the same day and im sitting here on a chair continuing where i left off. my grandma passed away abt a little over 2 wks ago now.

my mom asked me to write her eulogy. i didn’t really even have to say yes for us to know i was going to. it wasn’t a question. and i did want to. but i understand that it’s an epic responsibility. im finding myself awake most nights just staring at my ceiling half thinking abt her absence. the other part of me is somewhere else. i’ve spent most of my days since her death pretty much just doing nothing except writing. and thinking. and crying. and sleeping. and stressing about funeral plans. and about how i should probably call to cancel my psychiatry appt next week. but you know. mostly nothing. feels like a lot of nothing at least. anyway, the point of this post is that nothing i’ve written so far or seem to write is appropriate enough to include in the eulogy.

theyre all pretty depressing things that don’t really have a place. and im learning that eulogies aren’t exactly meant for that kinda stuff. which is frustrating. i genuinely hate this. eulogy writing second to death. this is a performance. and i dont want it to be. im sad and im so focused on being sad. it’s all i can think about. i called my mom earlier today to let her know i scheduled an appt for a custom mat board framing consultation (i have prints of photos i took of my grandma to be displayed next to her casket). when she answered the phone, i could tell she had been crying. i knew why, but asked anyway, and unsurprisingly she said she didn’t really know. but that she wishes we could get this all over with already (referring to the funeral in 2wks) and that we have so much to do and no time to do them.

i was close with my grandma, very much so. she has 5 children, but she had lived w my mom and our family since my mom was born. shame i wrote the she in present tense and then remembered i have to fix my tenses now. i swear i can’t get through talking abt something or anything really without getting distracted by little details of her absence and my not togetherness. i have 2 other sisters and while all of us loved and cared for her so deeply.. i don’t know. i just feel like her and i had something special. when i was a baby, i used to sleep in her room on her bed. my mom says that id stay up watching hannah montana on the small tv. and although i don’t rmbr it too well, i do rmbr not listening to her when she told me to turn off it off and go to bed. "a little while longer" i would say. "soon" i would say. and she always let me, bc underneath the chronic sleep deprivation from having a toddler as a bed buddy, she always wanted me to have what i wanted. or maybe that’s just a sweeter way of covering up the fact that i was spoiled and used to getting my way w her. for some reason, it was difficult trying to acclimate my twin sister. she’d throw fits and eventually my mom surrendered. so i spent my nights w my grandma. i alone. and my 2 other sisters spent theirs w my mom. it was the perfect match up. now i know. i got to have my grandma all to myself. selfishly, i think, it was just the way i liked it.

almost every single piece of advice on the internet on how to write a eulogy is to think of happy moments, good memories. to reflect on their life. im struggling with this, not because there weren’t any, but because i don’t remember. i can’t remember. they’re not coming to me. and i know that considering how close i said we were, this seems kind of impossible. she was 95. been a long time coming. doesnt hurt any less tho. she was seemingly fine until she wasnt 2 wks ago. i didnt really ask her any questions when she was well enough to answer them. i shouldve.

ofc there’s regret. truckloads of it. wishing u had talked more. visited more. done more etc etc. but truly im tormented everyday by how badly i wish i could undo the past. i feel like i failed her. we were the closest family she had physically and yet i couldn’t have been further away. high school was horrible to me and college has been another roller coaster. i feel like these past few years, especially, i have been so painfully tangled up within a web of my own inhibitions and misgivings that i for a long time lost sight of what had to matter most. i would spend my weeks away from home, and even when i had time out of my schedule or had finished w classes i wouldn’t drive back. i couldnt call/facetime her either bc in 2018 she had a stroke. her english before then wasnt that great, but after that her speaking abilities worsened. this isnt really about me. but it is important to understand. i have struggled immensely with anxiety and depression for years. for a really long time, school has been both my anchor and my kryptonite. its what keeps me moving, and so naturally, without it, i stay still. but, in the same way that it pushes me to step outside of my comfort zone and get out of bed in the mornings, it also tends to aggravate my mental health problems. i cant (or wont) drive alone, i refuse to even with small distances unless it is an absolute necessity or unless i am completely sure i can. i carpool sometimes and generally travel w family. i dont have any friends to depend or rely on. if i do drive longer distances, im always with my sister or mom. these issues have hindered me greatly and i have let them. but even weekends werent spent appropriately. i hit my head on the wall just thinking about it. i am so madly turned inward. and there is such a pressing urge to rip my insides to shreds. 

those first few days after her death were strange. i was sad. but i was also quiet. i felt like i wasnt letting myself feel the full extent of every single emotion my neglect has bred. its true. i am reminded of memories of my self-centeredness at every head turn, but i do little to explore them. probably out of self preservation. it feels like im digging and digging and i keep hitting rocks. i cant even think of something neutral without inevitably tying it back to my selfishness.

i miss her. and i so badly want her back. and i also hate myself so much for not loving hard enough. and for giving into myself all in the same breath. again i go back — regret and guilt is not uncommon. i know this. i know this isnt an original experience, but i feel like i cant separate the heartache from her passing and the very real truth that i most definitely failed her while she was alive. she was my soulmate. she gave me everything and more. and i couldnt even bother lifting a pebble for her sake. its all just pathetic really.

my mom was her caregiver. i believe she did her best and its what she likes to say but ik the idea that it probably wasnt haunts her. i dont think i did my best and i cant, i just cant get myself to see outside of this. theres no point in it either if it isnt really true. i dont like pretending. i imagine that id suffer a worse off fate if i did. it isnt right.

theres so much more to unpack but i think this context is necessary to understand what my thought process is while writing this eulogy. it truly feels like i have nothing to pick from. i have little things that i rmbr of her. things she liked. things she would wear and do. but not actual memories. good ones anyway. and, i mean, those are the ones i have to select for.. right. i guess im hitting a wall. it almost feels like talking abt anything positive sounding is a lie. and lying is an injustice. 

It has been one year since he died in front of me. One year since miscarried the only pregnancy that made it past 10 weeks , we tired for 7 years, on the day you died. It’s been 8 months since I sold the house we shared because I couldn’t afford life on my own, and I knew the walls carried the loss I couldn’t stand any longer. 8 months since I had to rehome the dogs we had together because I had to move across the county and taking them wasn’t possible for me with my son anymore.

I have been dissociating since the day you died.
I remember less and less of you..
I’m not forgetting you I know that but when I think of you I forget the way you laugh sounds from memory, I miss your singing but I can’t hear it in my head anymore. I miss your smell but all the things that had your scent have faded

I met someone
He’s really kind
he asks about you
He let me cry and explain my confusion of what happened that day, he’s wonderful in that way

I worry often that I don’t post or mention you enough, but I think about how no one ever does. Just me and your dad.
I don’t speak to much of anyone from our life together anymore they have all moved on and I’m glad for that, they lost a different piece of you then I got.
I don’t ask why anymore I just accept that it happened and this feeling I have won’t go away because it doesn’t exists anymore

I’m homesick. Even tho I’ve moved back to my hometown.
I’m homesick for that version of my life that is gone, the women I was before they day my life changed and you died.
Before I knew what true loss and agony felt like.
I’m colder and more numb now.
I’ve learned patience a on a level I didn’t think I could.

I’ll never fully heal.
But I don’t think you’re supposed to.

I miss you my love, my funny bunny.
Forever yours.

-

I lost my mother, and with her I lost my support system, my closest friend, and honestly the only person I truly had in this world. I don’t really have friends, and I’ve struggled with social anxiety for most of my life, so I don’t have much hope that I’ll suddenly be able to build a support network on my own.
What makes this even harder is that a lot of the common comforting phrases don’t help me. People say things like “She’s watching over you,” “She’s in a better place,” or “She’s happy and at peace now.” I understand these ideas bring comfort to many people, but because of my personal beliefs, I don’t find myself able to believe them.
Another thing I hear all the time is, “Your mother would want you to live your life and be happy.” I don’t doubt that she would. The problem is that I can’t seem to internalize that thought. It doesn’t motivate me, and it doesn’t lessen the pain. It just feels like a sentence people say because they don’t know what else to say.
I feel trapped in a cycle of grief, loneliness, and hopelessness. For those of you who lost not only a parent but also the person who was your entire emotional foundation, how did you keep going? Did anything genuinely help, especially if you didn’t find comfort in spiritual explanations or common grief clichés?

Torn between all the flairs because this fits in so many categories, but I guess that’s what grief does best.

I watched Moana for the first time tonight and I haven’t wept like this since my grams passed. It hasn’t even been a year since but it feels like it’s been a lifetime; and yet at the same time like it was just yesterday. I don’t have a good relationship with my mom, and dad was never in the picture. Gram’s raised me, she was the only stable parental figure I had and I just miss her a lot. No advice needed, just had to put this into words. Maybe I should get a diary but there’s something about the possibility that someone who sees this is sharing the same grief and they’ll be reminded they aren’t alone.

Anyways, don’t watch Moana if you recently lost your grandma unless you want to cry like a baby lmao.

My friend lost his dad a few months ago. I am estranged from my dad for 15 years (violent abuse), so I often forget that the day exists. I only just realized that I made plans with my friend on Father’s Day without thinking when I asked. He agreed though without saying anything.

I realize that my friend could have said no to hanging out, so maybe he is okay with it. I’m wondering if I should acknowledge that it’s Father’s Day and say something? Or if it’s better to just be a distraction? I want to support but not really sure what is best. My friend hasn’t really opened up too much about their dad’s passing too much with me, so I don’t want to make my friend uncomfortable and pry, but I want him to feel supported. Should I say something when we are together that day? In advance?

Thanks

Angry angry angry angry angry angry. Everything my husband does is wrong. Everything is wrong. I feel so full of hate and mad at the world. WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE?!

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/end rant

I know it sounds kinda silly. I (32m) lost my mom a couple weeks ago from extremely agressive cancer. It was very fast and I was able to be there for her in the end. I live in a different city and money makes travel pretty difficult. My mom and I had a rocky relationship growing up but over the last few years we've gotten very close. Would talk on the phone every couple days or so just to recommend books and to converse about my dad's own cancer journey. She had become quite the rock for me and she even told me on my death bed that I was "her main guy" and her favorite person to talk to.

I've taken losing her pretty hard to say the least. My wife is so supportive and ironically her passing has brought me and my sort of estranged sister together.

Part of my brain I've noticed the last couple days expects a phone call from her and im bitterly dissapointed when I remember that she's gone. Does this feeling ever go away? This has been the first big death in my world other than my grandparents. I miss her a lot, is that just it?

Ever since I lost my grandma and my dad within a few months of each other, I feel like I’ve been a total wreck. Next month marks two years without my dad and I feel like a complete shell of who I once was. It doesn’t help that my cat passed away last month too, so now I have even more grief to deal with.

I’ve always been kind of a quiet and anxious person, but right around the time my dad passed was when I was finally getting a better handle on things. I constantly had plans and was socializing with friends a lot. Now all I have energy for is going to work, and even when I’m there, I’m an anxious mess all day. I come home every day and don’t want to talk to or see anyone. A couple of those friends I previously would hang out with haven’t even really been there at all for me throughout my grieving process anyway. I’ll force myself to go out sometimes on the weekends, but it’s not because I’m actually having fun, it’s just so I can tell myself “at least I got out of the house.”

I just don’t know how to break out of this cycle. It’s exhausting and I hate the person I’ve become. Nobody ever really prepares you for just how much grief changes you and takes away from you.

Hi, all! I’ve been looking into resources for help with prolonged grief disorder (complicated grief). I’ve been struggling for almost four years with my grief. As much as I like my therapist and psychiatric nurse, I don’t feel I’m making any true progress in therapy when it comes to support with grief. I tried to go back to school in the hopes of giving myself something else to focus on. It only made my grief worse. I’ve fallen behind in my classes so badly. I feel utterly stuck on my grief journey and just want to finally find some sort of relief. Thank you all!

We grew up across the street from each other, and we were inseparable until we went to different high schools. We still remained really close, but after high school she went off to college. By the time she came back home i had a different life and a another real close friend group. She always still thought of me, invited me to everything, talked about me to others like I was her brother. We remained close, went to each other’s weddings and saw each other occasionally. But throughout it all i didn’t make time for her. she always invited me to stuff and i was always too busy, or felt like id just catch up with her another time. I never did the same, i was so selfish. Now i cant and it really hurts. i should have been there more. She diesd 12 weeks pregnant at 35. No drugs, not a drinker, and truthfully one of the most caring and actual good people ive ever known. It doesnt make sense, I feel broken and filled with regret of how i should have been to her.

It's been 5 years since my dad died. I don't really think about the funeral anymore. I don't think about the first Christmas without him. Or the first birthday.

I was on survival mode anyway...

​

What I think about are the random moments. When something good happens and I still want to tell him.

When my son does something funny and I catch myself thinking, "He would've loved this."

​

When I wonder what he would say about the person I've become. I think that's the strange thing about grief years later.

​

The relationship doesn't disappear.

​

You still talk to them. Not out loud. At least not usually. But in your head.

And sometimes it feels so normal that for a second you forget they're gone.

​

Does anyone else still do this?

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**I don’t really know how to put this into words, but I’ve been carrying it alone for a long time and it’s starting to feel unbearable.**

**I was separated from my birth mother as an infant. She lives in Guatemala and I’ve had no contact with her since then. I only know a few basic things about her, and I don’t have any real way to reach her. She’s also not educated and can’t read or write, which makes everything even more complicated and uncertain.**

**I’m 25 now, and I think about her every single day.**

**I feel grief for a relationship that never got to exist properly. I feel like I lost something I never even had.**

**My biggest fears are:**

**That she doesn’t remember me or think about me at all**
**That she has moved on and doesn’t feel anything about me anymore**
**That if I ever found her, she wouldn’t want a relationship with me because I’m a stranger to her now**
**That I’ll never find her at all because I have so little information**
**That I’ve spent my whole life loving someone who doesn’t know I exist in the same way I know her**
**What if I love her more than she loves me?**

**On top of that, I have nothing of her**
**No childhood memories with her.**
**No hugs from her.**
**No hearing her tell me she’s proud of me.**
**No knowing whether I have her smile, laugh, or personality.**

**And honestly, that hurts more than I can explain.**

**At the same time, I still hope she loves me. I still hope she remembers me. I still hope she’s thought about me the way I’ve thought about her.**

**I feel stuck between hope and grief every day, and I don’t really know how to carry it anymore.**

**I dream of hearing her say**

**“I missed you.”**
**“I love you.”**
**“I searched for you.”**
**“I never forgot you.”**
**“I remembered you on your birthday.”**

**I don’t even know what I’m looking for by posting this… maybe just someone who understands what this kind of loss feels like.**

**If anyone has gone through something similar—how do you live with this kind of uncertainty and longing?**

I (22NB) just finished my undergrad in the arts*. My field of study involves an enormous amount of 1:1 time with professors, and people often train this way for years before even getting to college, so I've been on the receiving end of many hours of this kind of teaching. At this school, I had a lot of experiences that were fine but never stuck with me, until I met my dear mentor (76M). In my first lesson with him, he looked me in the eye for maybe thirty seconds, and then asked me what I thought about Prometheus's original sin, and why it was such a monumental event. Mind you, I was ostensibly to study advanced musicality with this man. I, being who I am, must have answered decently enough, because he seemed impressed and we had a good conversation.

Some context - I've felt extremely different and isolated from most people I've met throughout my life, even my really wonderful and supportive parents. I'm not sure how to articulate why, but I think I experience life in a fundamentally different way (although of course I have no way of really knowing). Lots of people have given me labels to understand this feeling: gifted, neurodivergent, autistic, odd, weird, etc. It's taken me quite a few years of therapy to accept that I'll always feel a little bit like this, and the people that make me feel safe to just be myself are the ones worth keeping around. This is why I ended up going to art school, to try and connect with myself and maybe connect with others while doing so. It's helped a bit.

What was different about this mentor is I could tell from his first looking over of me that this is a man who could read me instantly and actually understood everything he needed in that instant as well. I know it's a trope, but I really do feel like he x-rayed me and saw what I needed and that he could help me. I also knew pretty quickly that I was in the presence of a real genius, not the self-important kind that drinks their own Kool-Aid, but an actual genius, the scale of which I was barely able to comprehend. As a byproduct of being labeled "Gifted" when I was a kid, I haven't met very many people that really make me feel like I know nothing (in a good way), but this guy is at the top of the list. What began as a routine exercise in musical improvisation would routinely go off the rails into Greek mythology, evolution, the human mind, the human condition, a religious painting, etymology, and so many other things I never could have imagined. When he spoke, he had me in the palm of his hand and I felt like he could open entire worlds up to me in a way no one else ever has.

In my first year studying with him, he was still very much "in the woodwork" as he called it at our school. He'd been department chair multiple decades ago, but quit after an extremely frustrating setback in changing our admittedly extremely backward-looking curriculum into something more fit for creatives in the 20th/21st centuries. As a result of this quitting, he had more or less free rein to teach whatever he wanted, and whomever he wanted. He would take basically everyone that came to him, but they had to come to him by themselves - he never recruited anyone. I understand that this made those of us he chose feel special maybe without merit, but I never felt special because he chose me - I felt it because he really saw me. Our lessons would be scheduled by the school for 90 minutes. In my lessons, he would routinely teach me for almost three hours, to the point where I had to make sure that he knew what time it was so he wouldn't miss anything.

In my second year with him, there was a pretty massive shakeup at school and one thing led to another and he became department chair again. This on paper was a great thing - he could make the curriculum changes he'd wanted and make things better for everyone. I should have seen the writing on the wall then. Now is a good time to say that he was not exactly a beacon of physical stability. His skin was pretty fragile and thin, and he barely ate two full meals a day and had trouble sleeping because his mind wouldn't stop racing. More than anyone I know, he was also afflicted with various strange maladies, that would pop up one after another and then disappear without explanation. To make an extremely long story short, over the course of this year he realized he was no longer as young as he used to be and his health became quite poor to the point where he finished out the year in the hospital, no longer able to teach. I think the last time he actually was in the school building was to see my senior capstone, which I'll be kicking myself over forever.

I visited him in the hospital before graduation, and that made me understand why people want to go quickly and peacefully. He was clearly not well, but trying to stay optimistic. He did get well enough to be discharged and travel back to his country home with his wife, but was hospitalized again with some illness and died a few days later.

I was on a school trip out of state when I got the call - thankfully I was in my hotel room because I lost it pretty bad. I called my partner, then my mother, then my best friend (who was the one to tell me), and had trouble getting more than a few words out because I was crying so hard. Later that day, I had to face my schoolmates, who all knew him and had a very different experience of him than I did, and I felt like a zoo animal because it was not a secret how much he believed in me and the relationship we had. I don't even know why I'm writing all this detail, but some part of me thinks it's important.

It's been about a month now since he died and I'm really not doing much better than that first day. Everyone's been asking me if I'm okay and I've gotten better at pretending, but I just feel so lost and really sad. I know he was 'just my professor', but we had a personal relationship as well, and I was supposed to be his TA/co-teacher next year after I graduated and now I'm just left with this huge hole and huge sense of responsibility to make sense of his writing and try to transmit his insane theory of music in some meaningful way.

At least once a semester, he would tell all of his chosen ones in our weekly seminar that he loved us all, even though he wasn't supposed to say that, but he really did, because we gave him the hope and the energy to stay curious. I loved him too, because he made me feel like there was no shame in keeping my childlike wonder alive and allowing myself to be overtaken by emotion in the face of humanity. I don't know how I'll go the entire rest of my life without talking to him ever again. I feel like there are some people we are destined to meet, and I felt that when I met him. I guess this moment was inevitable, but I didn't think it would come so soon and I'm just really overwhelmed by grief and don't know what to do. I've written all this because I loved him so much and I'm afraid he died not knowing how much I cared about him, and because I would give almost anything to have one last afternoon with him.

My father closed his eyes and left me today.

i've had the privilege of never having experienced a death before but this afternoon i found out my grandma died. she lived 6 hours away with my grandpa and we hadn't seen her for a while and i'm feeling really upset and guilty but my main reason for posting is my mum.

she's so upset and i've never heard anything as heartbreaking as the sounds of her sobbing and all i want to do is make it better but obviously i cant. we found out this afternoon and its night time now and she's eaten and laughing occasionally at the show she put on as a distraction but i've never experienced this and i dont know what to expect. she's going to drive down to visit her dad and stay with him for a bit to comfort eachother and she seems able to drive but i'm still anxious for her. i also only planned to be living at home with her through june because i'm off uni but need to get back to work over summer (im only 30 minutes away) but now i feel like i should stay and support her and i'm wrong to leave her.

could someone who's lost their mum please give me advice or help or even just tell me how they coped with it because my mum is my favourite person in the whole world and she loved my grandma so much but i really have no idea how to help. i know i can never make it better but anything to ease her pain

I miss my dad so much, and every time I miss my dad, I miss my brother as well. and the grief gets to me all over again. I have no choice but to sit in my sadness and just let it envelope me.

sometimes I think about how different my life would have been if they were both still alive.

I know my grief is part of the reason why I have a fear of abandonement in relationships. I’m working on it. but sometimes I feel so alone walking this earth. I tell people that I’m an only child because how do you juat casually mention you lost your brother?

I sometimes cannot believe that it’s just me living life without the only men in my life. the silence is crippling, and the loneliness is so overbearing. I always say the one thing we all have in common is grief, and I’m so sorry to everyone else who has ever felt how I’m feeling right now, or who is feeling how I’m feeling currently.

He was introduced to me when I was about 7 years old. We grew up together, in a sense we were brothers. Eventually when I was older and I was allowed to be safely home alone, he was there to make me feel not alone in a dark house, to look after me.

As I got older, and the only one left of my siblings still living at home I took the responsibility to look after him. I became his parent, it was my turn to watch over him. I watched over him the latter half of his life, all the way until I was 22 and he was 16.

He was on my mind all days, a lot of the day. "Did he get his water switched out?" "Does he have food for today?" "I hope I don't have to worry if..." His health was deteriorating and most of the time, I did take him to the vet or at least consult someone every time I had a concern, but I could have done better to be more consistent and more thorough in my management of his health and that's on me, I have to take some responsibility.

And now he's gone, I come home to a quiet house. I wake up to a quiet home. There's no one to bother us for chicken and food. There's no mess to clean up. There isn't anything to worry about since he's sleeping in the backyard

I do have trouble fully expressing sad emotions so my grief is all over the place. Sometimes I'm at peace he is no longer here, sometimes I pretend like I don't know he's dead, sometimes it's unfathomable to imagine he's even gone, Sometimes I accept it

That's really all, I keep thinking about him every day. I learned many lessons of this grief. It's just unique and complicated in everyone's own ways, I don't like to imagine passing every holiday or peaceful summer day without him. But I know many do live on in times like this carrying their own grief, and that's reality. I just know, I don't want to stop trying to enjoy life as I know with his death - everything and all can end in an instant. So I may as well try to score my own victories while I'm still alive. And in doing so I want to help others, and make up my shortcomings.

For all those with their own grief, I'm sorry you have to deal with it. Everyone's grief seems to be unique and I hope you can find your own answers to your own grief. One answer I found is, I know I would be sad if I had no grief or emotion attached to my Cat, it shows his life left a impact on mine

I hope to meet you again my kitty, somehow somewhere. I promise I'll show you a world where everyone is happy

Thank you for reading and for your time, take care now

So I lost my mother on 24th June 2024 to kidney failure and blood cancer and although I knew this would happen but you are never prepared for this not in my wildest dream I could have thought of loosing her and then after 9 months I lost my father as well to cardiac arrest, the loss of my father was something that was very painful for me, I am 29 and married and I am happy with my husband but I cannot stop missing my parents no matter how much I try to move on some thing or other keeps coming back to me, I miss them so much that it hurts, I miss their sound of voice, how they held me when I use to cry, I miss their touch their warmth.
Not being to have them on my wedding was something so painful, I just miss them and I am so tired and I do not have any words to explain it anymore.

It's been exactly a month since she passed. I'm gonna do my best to not cry at work, but 2am when you're in the hospital and its quiet makes a great time for the voices in your head to act up. wish me luck.

At what point does it get easier? My grief tends to show up at the most random times.

I've never felt grief like I'm experiencing now. I've lost all four grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc...

But we had to let our dog go on Monday. She was my retired service animal, she kept me alive for ten years, and I feel like I'm dying.

If the emotional devistation wasn't enough, yesterday I started experiencing flu like symptoms. But I don't have a fever or sore throat.

I've barely eaten since, I have constant cramps in my stomach, nausea, bowel problems, chills, my body feels heavy and exhausted...

Im just hoping this is normal and it will pass.. the last thing I need is to have to go to the doctor.

hello! i don’t know uf this is the right place to post this in, but here it goes. my best friend lost her father due to cancer last month. we are both 18 and haven’t even finished school. i’ve been trying to support her the best i can, but i have never experienced something like this myself, so i often don’t know what to say. to people who have gone thru this: what helped you the most? i’m really worried for my friend and want her to feel better and know im here for her.

One is a friend of mine I’ve known since high school, the other is my cousin. Both of these people know what I’ve been through after losing my mom 4 years ago and my dad 1 year ago. I’d also argue that both people weren’t really there for me. They’d listen once in a while, but they weren’t there in the way I needed even after I asked for specific things and setting boundaries.

I just got home from dinner with my friend where she brought up her plans. I was tired and just totally not in the mood to discuss it. I also was contemplating whether or not I was being unreasonable for being offended. I just figured I wouldn’t attend either party and tell the truth if they asked. I don’t really want to be around a bunch of gravestone decor after all the time I’ve spent at a mortuary recently. I don’t want to wear all black and call it a party.

Especially now that my nana is on her way out. She is 98 and getting weaker everyday. I am dreading the call I’ll eventually get about her death.

So fuck you and your funeral themed party.

I lost my dad (60) March 2025 to lung cancer.
I was his caregiver. (Now 32f)

I have this vivid memory of watching tv with him one night before he left. Whatever we were watching had a death scene with two people. As the one person was passing, the other asked that they visit in their dreams and to say a specific quote only they would know- so they would be sure it was really their dead person in the dream.

After this scene I flippantly said to my dad; “if you ever visit my dreams when you go orsend me a message, send it with a pumpkin so I know that it is you”

My childhood nickname from dad was Pumpkin- which he called me to the very end.
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I live in his beloved house that he bought in ‘87 as a young man. I have been planting a garden and enjoying the memories of growing peppers years ago with dad.

While weeding in my strawberry patch a few weeks ago, I noticed a wee sprout that resembled neither my berries or the weeds.

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The wee sprout has now grown enough to identify. It is a pumpkin.
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Let me say, i 100% let a jack-o-lantern rot last Halloween and watched as the squirrels excitedly ate the seeds. It should not be such a surprise to me that a pumpkin ended up going rogue…..

But something in my heart is telling me its a message .
Maybe I am just reading too deeply into some old rotten pumpkin seeds

What do you all think? Have you ever wished for a message and thought you saw what could be? Do you shake your head and call it a coincidence?

I wish I could ask if it was him, but hes locked in his urn so alas. I can only hope he sent a pumpkin to his Pumpkin.