Dear
@GillP
Having read your post I felt the need to respond. No two people experience grief in exactly the same way. I lost mum just over three years ago after seven years of caring. Her Dementia developed steadily and COVID lockdowns accelerated the process. I lived with her as an adult for many years, we use to joke we were the odd couple who were not married but got on so well. Soul mates, confidants, fellow travellers, etc. Please accept the following observations are well intentioned. I can emphasise with your feelings but that does not guarantee my observations will help.
Before I go any further let’s look at guilty feelings. I think most ex carers experience it, replaying perceived failings in their caring role. Please accept you were part of the solution not the problem. Accept the positive judgement of other loved ones close to the situation. Any minor failings you might regret are very tiny compared to all the good you did. Those failings I suggest in reality are not real in the most part, they are just the guilt monster talking. It is hard to do but please let go of any guilt feelings. You did your very best, in circumstances most people do not have to face. Challenge that voice of guilt by remembering all the positive and practical things you did as a carer. As our American cousins would say cut yourself some slack.
1) You are still in the earliest period of grief. Your own is compounded by the loss of two loved ones close together. I see grief of an emotional storm. The initial waves are huge, you literally drown in the feelings. They fill your every waking moment. You shared a life with a loving partner, did most things together, the hole in your life covers every part of it. Please just accept the intense grief is natural but clearly deeply unpleasant. The price we pay for having loved deeply. Overtime the waves reduce in size, but an event or memory or experience might suddenly without warning throw you back again into that initial overwhelming situation. Grief is not a linear experience.
2) Unfortunately in your early days of grief reality does not help. I was the executor of my mum’s estate and that really hurt. Removing her from council tax, utility, insurance, records, etc, just felt like personally I was erasing her memory. It felt oddly like I was making mum a non person, like she never existed. If you reflect for a moment is that a feeling you are having? Sometimes identifying the triggers of our emotions can help us deal with them.
3) You are correct that grief never leaves us. We just become better at living with it, slowly build a new life, find new meaning and purpose. A holiday might help but I found all I had done was to change my location to experience my grief in. It took me time to realise I was avoiding the grief emotion which was dominating my life, if that does not sound like a contradiction. Only when I sat down, let the grief wash completely over me, accepted the fact my life had changed and it was waiting for me to re engage with it. I feared reaching for the future would mean I would forget the past, even betray it in an odd way I never fully grasped. Now I realise the grief process in some strange way allows us time to process and make that transition. Hard to put any better into words.
4) Finally please accept your decision making will get better. I read that grief is also a protective state. You have suffered a profound loss. Your mind knows you are not at your best so it shuts down major decision making. Not today it thinks to itself. No leave that until we are in a better place emotionally. The brain operates at different levels, even where thoughts and emotions are concerned. We are aware of part of the process but not all of it. In grief I suggest we are aware of even less than normal.
You said it yourself. Grief never fully leaves us. The intensity eases, we function better over time, but the sense of being incomplete, of loss, of gaps in our life never fully departs. It comforts me to think mI’m is now free from Dementia and the ravages of a failing physical body. Yes it hurts still to have lost her. However far better to have loved, known and lost than never to have done so. My life was enriched by her presence. The same is true for your loved ones and your life experienced with them having been in it. My best wishes for the future.
