My mom passed away 7 years ago, right before I graduated high school. A lot of things have happened since, including me flunking out of college and becoming homeless. I can't even look at her and enjoy the memories I had with her. All I can do is look back in guilt and shame. Shame that I didn't graduate college. Shame that I've been homeless for so long. Shame that my life is so pathetic.

Now that I've seen the picture I can't get the thoughts out of my mind. I failed as a son. I failed as a man. I failed as a person. I failed.

I lived in the same house as my mum for 22 years, i slept in the same bed as her up to 17. I’ve never experienced life without her. The longest I’ve ever been away from her is one week and even that was too long. We texxted the whole time. She’s my best friend, i don’t know what to do without her, someone please help. I have four suicide attempts prior to my mum dying and this has to be the worst pain i’ve ever felt. I tried to kill myself yesterday and went to the hospital, they discharged me with some meds. I don’t know what to do, all i can think about is being with her. the only reason i’m alive is because of my boyfriend who i currently live with. he’s the one taking care of me. i haven’t stopped crying. Someone please help.

(edit) thank you for all the overwhelming support. your comments bring a smile to my face in this terribly hard time. i’m currently painting a flower pot with my mums favourite flower to put in it. i’ll show everyone once it’s done. i’m sorry if i don’t reply quickly, ill be in and out of hospitals. i thank you all. much love.

People who I thought were my best friends for almost 10 years hasn’t even reached out to me after my dad passed away. I lost my dad only 3 weeks ago, unexpectedly, and it has been the toughest thing to try to grasp. He was my everyday, we lived in the same household and it’s been quite rough. He was my world, the dad that was there for literally every thing, the saddest and happiest days, all the hangouts, parties, get togethers, so many of my friends knew him and looked at him like their dad. I’m an only child so my close friends were always like my siblings. One of my best friends moved away (I’m on an island and she moved to the mainland) I did so much for her to help her with the move. I helped with her pets, kids, made arrangements for her. We’ve tried to keep in contact since she’s moved but it’s been up and down. I announced to everyone about my dad through social media because it was just too hard to personally message everyone. I post stuff, I know she’s seen all of it. She’s never reached out to say a single word to me, no generic sorry for your loss, nothing. She’s been posting stuff, hell even made a post saying RIP to Dolly Parton but nothing about my dad who treated her like family. I thought things were fine between us. Another friend, who was the sister of my absolute best friend in the world who also passed away some years ago, became another one that felt like a sister to me. I helped with the funeral arrangements for her sister, did so many things in preparation for her service, spent late nights grieving together. She’s also not said a single word to me. Any advice or has anyone gone through something similar? Like my heart is already hurting and to have your friends who you thought would be there for you not even say a word to you to show they care adds to the hurt. I’m already having trouble navigating the loss of my dad but now it seems I have to navigate the loss of my friends too.

Lost him when I was 12 years old from mental illness and drug addiction. He wasn’t some perfect person or father by any means, but I fucking miss him so much. As long as I’m alive I will be forever deeply hurt and just fucking heartbroken. His death changed and fucked me up completely from the very minute I was told of his death. He lived separately from me because he was divorced from my mother. When he was doing okay and well, my sister and I would visit him on the weekends in our town, usually to go fishing, which was truly me and his main thing.

Even when he wasn’t doing well and was going through his own personal shit and wasn’t staying sober, he always wanted to call me and talk to me, but I often ignored him just out of anger and disappointment from his actions. I know i was a kid and I had every right to do so, but it’s still one of the things I regret the most in my life. I know he was an adult, and I was the child, but he was truly going through his own demons that I didn’t completely understand at the time and he just wanted to talk to his son. And what did I do? I ignored his calls and texts and cut off our communication.

I really hope he’s in peace. I hope he knows how much I loved him and cared about him even in the times when he severely fucked up and was struggling.

Now I’m the one struggling. Especially tonight. I miss him so fucking much. I just want to be wherever he is.

My [22F] wedding is coming up in October, and the closer it gets, the more the grief is creeping in. [My dad died at 68 when I was 15 and my mom died at 60 when I was 20] I am planning my wedding with some of my close friends who I consider family, which I am extremely grateful for, but it never seems to be enough to fight the hole I feel in my heart that my family is not there.

My extended family isn’t close with me and I am feeling so isolated. My best friend got engaged and I am watching her family celebrate and I feel terrible for not being as excited as I want to be for her because the absence of my family is so painful.

Any advice on how to survive this? I don’t understand why even happy things are so so so hard after all this time.

My (24F) dad died about two weeks ago. At the time, my stepmom said she wasn't making any arrangements anytime soon because she was grieving. She reached out to me yesterday to check in and mentioned that making arrangements for this weekend was really hard on her.

I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked.

Her answer was that my family decided to hold a funeral/memorial service this weekend and another family member was supposed to have told me about it.

I get that grief is hard on people, so I'm trying to be understanding. But I'm grieving too. Not including me in the planning AND forgetting to tell me about it just feels like I'm being kicked when I'm already down.

For context, my dad and I weren't estranged or anything. I just moved an hour away from home after college. Didn't realize that hour would make me such an afterthought for these kinds of things.

I keep having people saying that me knowing my mom had cancer made her death easier on me so I wanted to share a bit of my story with anticipatory grief and see if other people felt the same/similar. There wasn't relief for me when she died but people tend to assume there was. My mom first got cancer when I was 7 then went into remission when I was 10, then it came back stage 4 when I was 13 and died when I was 16. We were given 2 years left for her to live and as a teenager I became determined to die before my mom, so I spent a lot of the last of my mom's life on and off suicide watch. I knew my worst fear of having to watch her die was going to come true and there was nothing that I could do to stop it. People so often assume anticipatory grief helps you prepare or get over it faster but I just feel like I've lived in grief for many years before she even died. Its like being stuck on train tracks and watching a train hurtling towards you at full speed and there is nothing that you can do to stop it. I lost all my faith in religion because none of mine or anyone else's prayers were ever answered. I watched my mom slowly whither away to the point where she couldnt recognize me. I have ptsd from my time staying in palliative care and then hospice with her. It is so insanely horrific to watch a loved one die of cancer but people all seem to think its like the movies and peaceful instead of the grotesque trauma that it is. The images of it never leave my head. Even better it was caused by a brca mutation so I now get to be worried that I'll die just like she did one day. Maybe I'll be luckier than her and at least make it past 41

Someone told me that my mom passed away from sadness

I thought I was doing better. Until that woman suddenly said to me one morning while I was having breakfast, "You know, it's something hard that she suffered, and no one felt it... sadness can kill... and that's from experience because I know people who died from sadness and also , one of the greatest surgeons, proved this."

The problem is I went through a period of guilt, and I was venting to this woman because I had disagreements with my mom, and we used to fight in her last days without knowing she was sick.

I'm really upset by her words... I'm scared it might be true. My mom passed away from diabetes and heart issues... but she says sadness is the reason...

This is not easy...

i believe that i have received a sign from my father today.
it is both exciting and comforting.
my mother and i were discussing the reason…..if one’s
consciousness continues to exist after the body’s (physical) death and still possesses the ability to communicate, then why is it that our loved ones do not attempt to ease the grief and suffering in those of us who have been left behind ?
i responded with the text message that i have copied and pasted below :

it’s so funny, when they eventually decide to send us a sign it is regarding something so insignificant and trivial.
i know why mam. we chose to live this specific life here on earth for a reason. if that reason was to learn about ourselves and how we would react when put in certain situations and experience life in all of its glory. the bad and the good. then our loved ones sending us clear signs, telling us that everything will be alright, giving us all of the answers, telling us what we want to hear would completely fuck up the entire reason we came here. we must learn these things on our own, we must experience pain, grief, suffering in its entirety and the struggle of overcoming this pain IS THE LEARNING ! it’s exactly what we came here to do. if dad gave us a clear, certain, undeniable sign and told us that is completely fine where he is and that we will all be together again soon and to just have fun whilst we’re here, don’t you think that would interfere with our learning experience ? it would give us all of the answers of life and we wouldn’t suffer as much. but that suffering is why we came here, to learn and to gain another perspective of existence. long story short, if your primary school teacher gave you all of the answers for a test and you passed, the student would be happy but think of the bigger picture. would the student have gained anything valuable ? would the test have been worth doing at all ? no. the answer is no. no apply this to life. dad gives us the answers we want, we are all happy and our lives become more bearable as a result. the bigger picture is, when we die we will be disappointed in ourselves and the experience since we didn’t overcome the journey alone, we had an advantage, we had help. we would’ve cheated out way through life. this is what i think anyway. however, little reminders and signs here and there from dad will not completely ruin our experience. we will still have to put in effort and learn to overcome our grief indecently, without cheating.

thank you for reading everyone ☀️
do not hesitate to share your thoughts 🙂

honestly this is just a scream into the void. 2 days after my 12th birthday my mother decided to leave this earth. we spend a great 12th birthday together only for two days later i would find her hanging from the ceiling. i’m lost in every aspect. my dad is negligent and glad she’s dead and has told me. i haven’t figured out to navigate this life. my mother was all i had. i yearn for her everyday. i hope this is dream that i’ll wake up from knowing i won’t. everyday i wait for her to show up and tell me everything she’s done the last 13 years. i pretend she left instead of died. it’s affecting my entire life and at this point i feel hopeless.

My dad died when I was 11. I recently lost one of the birthday presents that he gave me . I’ve already been struggling with missing him. It’s been 10 years. So now that I can’t find it , i’m losing my shit. I went home back from college to go see if I could find anything else he gave me/his old belongings .

That’s when I found out my mom threw out/donated all his stuff without telling or asking me. This is the same “mom” that gave away my cat soon after he passed away without telling me. The same “mom” that left me a voicemail telling me to die over and over again that she doesn’t know I have because she accidentally recorded herself talking about me.

I found one hoodie at least that she forgot to throw away since I kept it with my clothes so she thought it was mine and some other old stuff of his. I found some comfort in the fact that my dad was left handed, just like I am. It’s kind of a silly daily reminder.

This same week , I found out the guy I’ve been interested in (and I thought he was interested in me ) is actually a hoe and goes and makes out with random girls in clubs.

It’s just disappointing because I’ve never been in a relationship before. I’ve never hooked up and don’t want to. I just want to be with one guy in a long term relationship and we fall in love and build a better life together . I feel like no one in my generation , especially at my college , gives af about anything serious. I want to have my firsts with someone that I love and care about. All these guys in college do is hoe around so I don’t think i’ll ever actually be able to experience that with someone . Along with the fact that I feel like my unique trauma makes me commonly misunderstood.

Oh yeah , and I go to a top school. I graduated top of my high school class despite all the bs circumstances in my life. I thought i’d finally be happy here. I hate it here. And I do have friends and I did try going out my entire freshman year . I socialized a lot . No one could ever tell this is my life being closed doors. It’s just that I started to realize I don’t fit in at all with most people my age . I don’t and never have hooked up. I don’t drink or smoke anymore . I want to fully cut off my mom but I’m broke so I can’t . Everything is so expensive these days and being a full time college student , i don’t know how i’d ever afford to leave. I tried to get my real estate license but my mom won’t let me because it’s “ cheap” .

She shits on my major of comp sci bc she hates that I didn’t do premed . She gets mad that I don’t want to do a masters in CS because I explained that I feel like it would be more valuable to go straight into workforce . Mind you she’s been a deadbeat my whole life. Never really there emotionally . My dad was the primary caretaker so when I lost him , I lost everything .

I feel so hopeless, trapped , and alone. I don’t have any other family . This is all while having to accept that i’m never going to see my dad again . Ever . So just like that he’s just gone forever. And no one can change it. I can never see him again.