She had taken care of my stepfather for 35 years. My mom died in July 2020 after a brief, but fierce battle with a rare cancer. I’ve struggled with trying to keep the family from becoming 2 separate families again, and have pretty much given up. We were literally 2 different families though, who came together as one while he was having rough times with his illnesses and more so when he died. He died while in the hospital for what we believed was pneumonia.Īfter he and my mom divorced, he stopped drinking, straightened out some things in life and was close to celebrating his 25th anniversary with my stepmother when he died. I lost my dad unexpectedly in August 2019. – I wish someone had told me how complicated relationships with stepparents can be. – As the strong one, who has to take care of notifying people, companies, closing businesses, etc your grief is on the back burner. – I wish someone had told me how much “work” there is to do when someone dies and how many people need your support and the stress involved in keeping family units together. – I wish someone had told me that the first year sucks and the second year sucks more! The practice of sending thank you notes after a funeral is a cruel and unusual tradition.Ĥ6.“People love to judge how you are doing. But eventually it can be nice to “introduce” them through stories and photographs.Ĥ5. Meeting new people, who never knew the person who died, can be hard and sad. Grief can make you feel selfish and entitled, and that’s okay (at least for a while).Ĥ4. “It is normal to feel numb after it happens. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.Ĥ2. There is no normal when it comes to grieving.Ĥ1. “The grief process is about not only mourning the loss, but getting to know yourself as a different person”.Ĥ0. People will tell you what you should and shouldn’t feel and how you should and shouldn’t grieve.
Holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays will be hard forever.ģ8. “You lose yourself, your identity, meaning, purpose, values, your trust”.ģ7. Grief triggers are everywhere – you will see things that remind you of your loved one all over the place, and it may lead to sudden outbursts of emotion.ģ6. When people offer support, take them up on it.ģ5. If you aren’t happy with the funeral you had, have another memorial service later.ġ1. You will plan the funeral while in a haze. Death and grief make people uncomfortable, so be prepared for awkward encounters.ġ0. “Death is not an emergency – there is always time to step back and take a moment to say goodbye”ĩ.
“There will be pressure from others to move on, even minutes or hours after a death, and this can lead to regrets”.Ĩ.
A home death/hospice death is not always a good death.ħ. It’s too real”.ĥ. A hospital death is not always a bad death.Ħ. You may not have a spiritual or meaningful moment.
“Dying is not like you see on TV or in the movies. You can plan for death, but death does not always comply with our wishes or plans.Ĥ. ġ.No matter how prepared you think you are for a death, you can never be fully prepared for the loss and the grief.Ģ. If you finish this post and you’re annoyed about all the things we forgot, leave a comment to keep the list going. If it’s in quotes, it is something one of our fabulous readers shared with us on Twitter or Facebook. So, with your help, that is what we have today - a quick and dirty list of the things we wish we had known about grief before we knew anything about grief.
Not the theory stuff, not the ideas about how to cope - just the really basic things that people never tell you about grief.
But there are some days that all seems like a lot to take in. We think about grief a lot around here – we write about types of grief, grief theory, personal reflections, creative expression for coping with grief, practical ideas for managing grief, and on and on and on.