how do you deal with loss?

[Guest]

My sisters partner is very sick and it seems like shes not going to make it. Theyve been together for a lifetime. Which got me thinking about loss and how we deal with it.

Who have you lost that was dear to you and how do and did you deal with it?

 

[Guest]

i've lost many but the hardest was my mother...my best friend. how did i deal with it? i choose to believe she lives in me. she shaped me for the person i am and without her, i would not have my integrity or sense of humor. she meant the world to me as i had cared for her full time while she was bed ridden for five years.

as she slipped away, i sang to her and told her that i was there... "i'm here ma... ive got you." i could feel her relax for maybe the first time in 5 years just before she died. as much pain as i felt, as much as i felt my soul had been shattered, i knew that she was no longer in pain. she was free.

i spent some time alone and cried bitterly... screamed, shouted... fought what can not be fought. i leaned on those i love and shared how i felt. most importantly, i had support of those who cared.

its been nearly two years. i talk of her often. i talk to her often. i hear her voice in the wind chimes, telling me that everything will work out just fine.

there is no easy way. there is no fast way to get over the pain of losing someone you love. there is just moving on and accepting the fact that you have been blessed by someone you hold dear.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Sorry for them. My condolences.

My grandparents. And my Uncle David. All from heart disease of some kind or another. My grandmother died in 92, my grandfather endured life without her (after 40 plus years together) for 2 and half more years until he succumbed in 94. My uncle David died in 99, I think.

 

[kendo1]

Mum died four years ago, Dad- a little over two weeks ago.
I miss them.

 

[Guest]

Mum died four years ago, Dad- a little over two weeks ago.
I miss them.

*hugs*
i hear ya honey. dad died five years ago... i miss him too.

 

[Guest]

i've lost many but the hardest was my mother...my best friend. how did i deal with it? i choose to believe she lives in me. she shaped me for the person i am and without her, i would not have my integrity or sense of humor. she meant the world to me as i had cared for her full time while she was bed ridden for five years.

as she slipped away, i sang to her and told her that i was there... "i'm here ma... ive got you." i could feel her relax for maybe the first time in 5 years just before she died. as much pain as i felt, as much as i felt my soul had been shattered, i knew that she was no longer in pain. she was free.

i spent some time alone and cried bitterly... screamed, shouted... fought what can not be fought. i leaned on those i love and shared how i felt. most importantly, i had support of those who cared.

its been nearly two years. i talk of her often. i talk to her often. i hear her voice in the wind chimes, telling me that everything will work out just fine.

there is no easy way. there is no fast way to get over the pain of losing someone you love. there is just moving on and accepting the fact that you have been blessed by someone you hold dear.

thanks for this, beautiful lady Im sure she looks at you very proudly and with much love

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Hugs to both of you. Haven't lost a parent yet, but my girl has lost both of hers. Mom when she was 15, Dad 11 years later.

 

[Guest]

Mum died four years ago, Dad- a little over two weeks ago.
I miss them.

Sorry bout both. Its hard, aint it

 

[Guest]

Sorry for them. My condolences.

My grandparents. And my Uncle David. All from heart disease of some kind or another. My grandmother died in 92, my grandfather endured life without her (after 40 plus years together) for 2 and half more years until he succumbed in 94. My uncle David died in 99, I think.

 

[cloudy]

My father's been gone 22 years...this past anniversary marked the year that he'd been gone as long as I'd had him with me. I still miss him every single day.

I don't have any advice to offer. I know he's still with me - I hear his voice at odd times, he's in my dreams often, and sometimes, very briefly, I can smell him around me.

It never gets any easier, but eventually you forget the end of their lives, and remember how they lived.

 

[neonlyte]

I'm not certain you can offer advice on what you do, it's different for each. Complex and layered. Things you're unaware you knew are trigged by some chance event, a smell, a sound, and memory floods to fill the room, overwhelms. But that is natural and the memories can be enjoyed with time. In the space of three years in the mid 80's my father in law died, a few weeks later, his wife died from cancer, we moved from UK with and eighteen month old baby to nurse them. My wife's two aunts died the following year and an uncle toward the end of that black period. This all happened a long time ago, my wife was born very late in her mothers life, the family were effectively 'grandparents' in age. Now twenty years on and our friends have parents and are beginning to face the terrible burden wrought by age and illness.

We've lost a few close friends to illness, mostly sudden, and there is no time to prepare, no time to say goodbye. That saddens deeply. And I faced this in myself last year, a diagnosis that rocked our lives and for a few short weeks that stretched to eternity we waited to see if i would be here this year. It was tougher on my wife and daughter than it was on me in some senses, and we shed tears, and held hands and focussed on the positive. I wrote about it, a sense of seperation, we lived different parallel lives for a short time. Tough. I wish you and your family well in dealing with this, I can only offer comfort.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

Loss has been a significant part of my journey. I have lost people very close to me. A parent, a child, a life partner and a close friend. Looking back now, I know this is part of who I am - part of my journey. That does not make it any easier. I want to add to your original question, Fem. I believe the reason, or the way in which a person close to us dies is very significant in how we deal with the death.

Part of this is too intimate for me to share, but I will mention that my mother died when I was a year old. It was an incredibly traumatic event - for me at a time as a baby, perhaps it was merely a case of accepting my grandmother as primary caregiver. But the circumstances involved with my mothers death has cost me years of therapy and still gives me nightmares on a good day. Emotions that I deal with often as a result of this is anger, confusion, guilt, feelings of inferiority, rejection to name but a few. How did i deal with it? I started reading up on psychology when i was still a kid - studied it after school, and continue to study it as an interest, but also as part of my career. If i know what's going in with me I might just be able to understand - forgive and forget and move on.

I think the hardest part of loosing a parent at such a young age is that you have no clear memory of what they were like and you tend to build up this image of the person. Sadly, you will never really know what they were like. I know my mother had a degree in art. I know she loved to sketch and write and I know she loved animals. The rest of what I " know" has formed in my mind over years as part of a fantasy.

I lost my first baby when I was 6 months pregnant. This is one loss I do not deal with as such - the wound is still very raw for me, and it is something I do not talk about often. He was a beautiful little baby boy, and we had a blessing ceremony for him after his birth. He would have been 6 years old soon.

I met my first partner when I was 16 and we were together for 10 years. She developed leukemia a few months after we had our commitment ceremony. We fought it with every way we knew how, and she went into remission. 9 years later the leukemia was back, and this time around she decided not to fight it. 6 months of complete hell... seeing her deal with pain that no human should suffer. Seeing her hurt and want to die. Seeing her curse the day she was born.

The rest of her story is almost identical to Vella's first post. I cared for her, as life slipped away from her. She died in my arms on a very cold April afternoon three years ago. When i read or experience this kind of emotion that I can relate to - like Vella's post, I freeze, and that familiar feeling of "something sitting in your chest" takes over. I can't breathe. I feel hollow. And i want to ask why it was necessary for her to suffer like she did. I remember what she said to me a few minutes before she died. I used to call her my gypsy girl. She had such a free spirit - dark-haired beauty. She said:" Your gypsy- girl has to go now, Love, you cant keep me here any longer" I sat with her for hours after she died. I could not move and I would not let anyone remove her from my arms. She was Muslim, and there are very specific rituals that has to be done after the death, like the washing of the body and prayers. I refused to leave her until I was physically removed from her. I could not let her go - and I still find that hard to do. I talk to her often, and she is with me every moment. Yet, there is a part of her that I still hold onto, that I am not ready to let go of just yet.

Loosing Tasneem has probably been the hardest thing for me to deal with in my life, and how i deal with it I would have to post later, as i struggle with it every single moment of my life.

A month back one of my best and oldest friends were murdered brutally.Some nights i still wake up and wonder if she really died or if it was all a bad dream.

As I said at the beginning of this post - loss has been a significant part of my journey. I am one with my loss, and i think I understand it much better than many other aspects of my life. That does not mean it is any easier for me at any given time. There are bad days when I feel like i cannot deal with any of this, and then there are beautiful days where i celebrate the fact that i am alive and i had the amazing opportunity to know these wonderful people.

After loosing Tasneem, I did not think it was possible ever to love like that again. I have had the most amazing experience over the past few months. I have met the Love of my Life. You know when you meet Her and you just know that this is it? Well, this is it. With her, I have finally found someone who understands in such a profound way. I have been given the opportunity to heal and to be cared for, nurtured and loved by my Goddess. Love heals all wounds - that I am sure of. I may never be able to heal completely, but I know that I have Her with me till the end of time. And that for me, is enough.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Thanks.

My condolences to all of you. I especially have to say that I am sorry that happened to you and your lover, Vana, but I am glad that you have found someone to love again. Must have been a pleasant surprise indeed after all of that pain.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

Thanks.

My condolences to all of you. I especially have to say that I am sorry that happened to you and your lover, Vana, but I am glad that you have found someone to love again. Must have been a pleasant surprise indeed after all of that pain.

Oh I spent the best part of this evening bringing thanks to various deities... I did not know that this existed. I thought it was a myth

 

[Guest]

. . .

i spent some time alone and cried bitterly... screamed, shouted... fought what can not be fought. i leaned on those i love and shared how i felt. most importantly, i had support of those who cared.

its been nearly two years. i talk of her often. i talk to her often. i hear her voice in the wind chimes, telling me that everything will work out just fine.

there is no easy way. there is no fast way to get over the pain of losing someone you love. there is just moving on and accepting the fact that you have been blessed by someone you hold dear.

This part of vella's post speaks volumes, especially the last paragraph.

There is no easy way.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Oh I spent the best part of this evening bringing thanks to various deities... I did not know that this existed. I thought it was a myth

I'm glad that you found out that it wasn't. Plenty of reason to thank your Gods and Goddesses, indeed.

 

[Luna_Wolf72]

Loss?

My first major loss was my little sister, the only one in my life who shared the same mother and father as myself. She died at age 12 from leukemia, I was 14. How I dealt? For the longest I didn't. I remember going to her memorial service and trying to climb into her coffin to wake her up, I remember begging for her to get up, just get up. I don't remember much else for the first year after that. I got angry: at the system that put us in foster care, at God, at myself for having genes that didn't act as stupid as hers. I was almost 18 before I cried for her, I mean really let go and lost my composure. Until then, anger and rage kept me sane. I honestly believe that it was the loss of Monza that led me to alternate religions, just trying to deal with her absence.

The second loss? My mum. March 26th, 2004. I grieved when she left this world. She was/is my best friend and I still haven't completely dealt with the knowledge that she is not here. There are nights (and times) when I pick up the phone to call her and then it hits me...she isn't going to answer.

I am grateful though, as I was trained as a CNA/HHCA and got to spend the last 2 years of her life taking care of her. The same way she used to take care of me. Not very many children can say that...that they had the chance to truly know and love thier mom or dad, even in sickness. I can say it and I am proud of myself for that.

Loss has shaped me. Loss of my family, loss of my virginity, loss of my sanity. These things have all had a hand in turning me into who I am today. There is no easy or good way to deal with loss..you just do it..until you can think of the loss with a smile instead of heart rending tears.

 

[BlackSnake]

I became a police officer because I had begun a relationship with my dad who was a cop. He couched me and I made numerous drug busts and proactive police work. I took a lot of risks. He died doing the job, so I quit soon after. I found no reason to continue doing that type of work. The imprint that I got from it is that some people don't want to be helped.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Profound sympathy to all those who have related such poignant loss stories and exposed such tender emotions here.

My mom died 16 years ago. I was a mature adult then. I have dreams all the time in which my mom is present just as vividly as people I see every day. Oddly, this often makes me think of holocaust survivors who were the only surviving person from the village they grew up in; everyone they ever knew had been killed: I imagine them having the same kind of dreams, populated by whole communities of dead people.

When my mom died I reminded myself of the fact that with each new day the pain of a loss is a little bit less, or at least less immediate. That is what I tell myself and others whenever any very sad or bad thing happens.

It is true, and it does help, at least for me.


P.S. One year ago this week I watched my S.O. drive off with a van-load of personal property to a new life. The decision was mutual and correct, but it meant the end of a dream, and for that was a very sad moment. I still mourn the loss of that dream (but am very content, otherwise).

PPS. One of the byproducts of that event was that a few weeks later I started writing smut stories I had fantasized for decades, and by a slightly surprising path that led me here!

 

[S-Des]

One way

One way is to write about it. My grandmother died a few weeks ago and I wrote a short story that helped me think about it in different terms. The story isn't really about her, but it doesn't matter. It just made me feel good to write something about the subject and make it positive and strong.

 

[yui]

I didn't. I don't. I run. I hide. I die inside. I don't recommend it. Peace to yours. Much, much peace.

 

[Guest]

This is a hard one to answer. Like many here, I feel loss has shaped me and my life. I also feel like taking everyone into my arms and holding them.

Loss comes in various ways, too. My mother had a hysterectomy when I was about 3 months old, and I spent several months in the care of relatives while she recovered. I remember (strangly enough, I do remember tiny pictures) my father leaving me behind with them.

My earliest pets were all killed -- a dog, a parakeet attacked by a visiting relative's cat. Little, tiny things, but my first experience with death was that bird. After a dignified shoebox back yard burial, I woke early the next morning, dug up the bird and took it to bed with me because Robin might be cold. I remember my father trying to explain death. I think I was 3 or 4.

My parents divorced when I was 6. Suddenly, my father wasn't home anymore. My mother's plan was to move to her home state, but for various reasons she chose not to (in part because she didn't want to separate me from my father). Still, we went from a fairly secure life to one that was not -- my home was gone, my mother had to work, and I was on my own most of the time. My mom and I were very close then, since I was her only child.

My mother died when I was 16, very suddenly, of a stroke in the living room. That's my "tragic story", which is and isn't. She didn't actually die then, but she was brain dead. I never saw her alive after the ride up the elevator to ICU. I was the one to give the assent to removing her life support -- my stepfather was unable to speak. Mom had made her wishes known to me when her mother died a few years previous. My mom and I had just gotten through the rotten part of my adolescence and were becoming friends. I was angry for years, and used her death as an excuse for everything I didn't do, or failed to do, or was too scared to do.

I was 35 when my father died -- also suddenly. I got a phone call at work. I'd just spoken to him a few days before. He died in his sleep. I'm not over it yet. It didn't have the same finality of my mother's death, since he'd been dead a couple of days before his body was discovered, and my older brothers and my husband did not want me to see him at the funeral. So, while I know his spirit is gone on (My mother lingered over me for several years, of which I am in no doubt), the feelings of aloneness don't seem to fade.

And in 2004 and 2005, I went through first a miscarriage of twins and then a second miscarriage, and learned I cannot carry a child to term. Because I bled so badly after the miscarriages (due to fibroid tumors) my husband chose to have a vasectomy rather than risk impregnating me again. So I feel sometimes as if I have lost my future, too. I feel that I have failed my father and mother by not passing on what they gave to me.

At my most maudlin, when I allowe the sadness to overcome me, I feel set adrift, unattached from family, from the past and from the future. My mothers family believes I was adopted -- one of my aunts informed me of this on the day of my mother's funeral -- and I've had no contact with them since that time. My brothers are half brothers, much older than I, and were never presences in my life, nor I in theirs.

However, when I have my rational senses with me and don't let self pity overwhelm me, when I tell myself that it isn't quite so black and awful, I write. I sing. I create art jewelry. I have friends and I try to be kind to others in the world. How much poorer my life would have been if I had not had my parents. There were lessons in these losses that I must learn, and I am trying.

And occasionally I unload my story to strangers in a virtual meeting place.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Like some of the others here, I lost my father to cancer at 16. We were kindred spirits but at the same time, he was so closed off and bitter that he pushed away everyone he loved, even his children. I try, I try so hard to remember him before he became that way and to always think of him with the sun shining down as he plowed a field. I don't want to think of how he was when the cancer was eating him up. I couldn't let go because I couldn't let myself even think of it. For years I couldn't remember his funeral. Now I do - I remember someone pushed me up to his coffin and made me look at him (and there are details here I can't share) and I started screaming. I think I couldn't stop.

But I couldn't think of it until I was about twenty. That's when he began to come to me in dreams. I must have made him come, because it was time to start letting go of my pain. It was a long process and it was very painful at first, seeing him in the dreams. At first he was very tired; he'd been on a long journey, or I had, and I was so happy to see him but I always woke up before I got to say anything to him. And it progressed through the years to where I would see him less and less.

I still do, though. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm forgetting him and then I'll see him in my dreams and I'll be so happy, and wake up with tears in my eyes. I desperately wish, want the chance to know him as adult. I want to see him again with my eyes and not just my heart.

I have had other losses in my life - suicide of a very close friend being one - but it no longer hurts to talk about my father or his death. I miss him and sometimes it will just hit me full-force like a kick in the gut, but most days I'm at peace. I have tried to learn. I changed myself, because I don't want to be closed off and bitter the way he became. When I write something, I write it from the heart. I keep my loved ones close, without reservation, and I try to say everything I need to say to them, because you never know when the chance might be taken away from you.

 

[Guest]

How do you ever get over the feeling of being sad?

It seems as if it easily becomes habit. It is necessary, of course, but then it's always there in the background - always - and it's damn near impossible to move away from those feelings.

I don't know if I'm still grieving or it has become second nature to me now and I just cannot escape it.

 

[matriarch]

The last deaths I lived through were my father in law, and then my mother in law. My pain was in watching the grief of my ex. He had been called to the hospital 180 miles away during the night by his sister to attend his father. My ex gave permission for the life support to be turned off, and sat with him, holding his hand while he slowly passed away. He stayed there with my mother in law to help her sort things out and when he returned home 9 days later, and I picked him up, he simply got in the car and broke. He'd been holding it all in all that time. We sat for some time in the car, simply crying in each other's arms. The funeral was partly a chore, partly a joy to see so very many people there to show how much he meant to them.

With my mother in law it was very different, she was a lonely, shrivelled up little lady, who I believe simply gave up living. She had nothing left. Her funeral was sad and poignant for the few people there. My enduring memory holding my ex's hand, and feeling his tears falling on them, seeing his shoulders shaking in grief, and hearing the voice of his always-in-control sister finally break and give way to her feelings.

My parents are 85 years old, still going strong, but with their bodies gradually wearing out. Every time the phone rings at an unexpected time, my heart jumps......their age and physical frailty is the one reason my mobile is never turned off.

My sister is 53, completely incapacitated through MS, she can do nothing without the offices of other people - except talk, and use her laptop. According to her neurologist when she was first diagnosed and talking about marriage, she has now lived 13 years longer than his best prognosis. Every time she gets yet another infection, we all seem to hold our breath and wait for the worst.

The morbid 'expectation' is not something I enjoy.

to each and every one of you who HAVE suffered loss and grown through it. I only hope my efforts at coping will be as successful.