Asklemmy

Badly, like most people who have a good relationship with their parents I imagine. My mother died in 2009 and my father in 2014. The first one was rough, she was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and only lasted a few months after that. The second one was fucking brutal though, I was the one who had to make the call to pull him off of life support (he had a DNR from pretty much the moment mom died), on the phone, from ~1500 miles away.

They hit me very different, for pretty obvious reasons, but also some not-obvious ones. Plus that was further complicated by the fact that despite loving my parents very much (they were flawed like everyone else, but honestly they were the best parents a guy could ask for) I never cried at either of their deaths. I didn't get to attend the service for either one (not that there was much of one). But it would hit me out of the blue for years. I still dream about them sometimes. But it wasn't until my best friend of ~25 years (and long-time roommate) died in 2019 (it was a rough 10 years) that it really all hit me, I felt utterly alone and rudderless in the world for a good while afterwards.

I'm doing better now thankfully. You have no choice but to keep on keeping on, but now carrying that weight. It doesn't ever go away, but it does get lighter with time.

Wait.

So, evidently and before anything, this only truly affects those who have good enough relationships with their parents to grieve their loss. Some were mistreated and didn't create strong enough links, that eventually practically vanished altogether and so didn't suffer the passing of their parents as much/at all. I guess a silver lining of childhood trauma and distance is that at least you won't miss one/both parents.

I read somewhere that grief is the truest expression of love and, yeah, sure. How will I deal with my dear mom's passing, even as a quite emotionally independent guy who advises his mom more than the other way around? How can any? You just live, and remember that your mom would've much rather you did something good with your life than drown in tears and despair, and you keep going. You talk about it with close ones when you're feeling sad (my mom for instance will tear up talking about her parents). Finally, and this is gonna be a tad unsavoury for the Westerner lemmy majority: you believe in God, that this whole thing wasn't all for nothing and that God will take good care of his (mostly observational experiment?) subjects, and so you'll meet again cause who mourns a troublemaker that even God in all His mercy rejected? And that keeps you going for yet another day. Who knows, maybe it's true? 🤷😅 I believe so, lol, and certainly am on Voltaire's side of the "religion question".

i try to learn from it and take action to mitigate the worst outcomes that i can foresee happening for myself.

the one that's still alive is hellbent on repeating the same behaviors they did before and all i can do is watch from a distance while my siblings who are close try to handle it all; in vein, is suspect.

Form a healthy relationship with death. You can understand why it happens and attend other funeral services so that by the time you lose someone that close, you can manage the emotions of personal loss without the shock of mortality.

It's hard but it's not like my mom is going to un-die