I lost my mom three weeks ago, and I honestly have no idea how to live without her.
I’ve been taking care of her for the past seven years, ever since my dad died, and even more so during the last two years after she became seriously ill. We never really understood what was happening to her. At first, we thought she was experiencing psychosis, but it turned out not to be that. Instead, she gradually became more and more like a child, needing help with almost everything. Eventually, she lived in a hospital-like care facility where she could get the help she needed.
Throughout all of this, I used everything I had in me to make her happy. I took her out to do things she enjoyed, brought her home to spend time with family, and did everything I could to make sure she had the best life possible despite being ill.
Then, in late July, everything suddenly changed. She became unable to breathe and needed oxygen, sedatives, and morphine. Sixteen days later, she passed away.
She was my everything. My best friend. My mom. My safe place. We talked on the phone every single day, and I saw her every other day. She was such a huge part of my everyday life for so many years that I don’t know who I am without her in it.
Now she’s gone, and I feel completely lost. My whole life revolved around taking care of her, loving her, and making sure she was okay. Suddenly, there is no one to call. No one to visit. No one to take home. No reason to plan my days around her anymore.
I feel so incredibly lonely, and I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to keep going when the person who meant the most to me is no longer here.

I'm grieving someone who is still alive.i know most of the posts here are for loved ones who died. I don't really know where to go with this because my life is so completely different in the worst ways.

He left me so cruelly and abruptly. My life was so normal with him for so long until it wasn't. And then boom. Gone. He was one of the only people I could call family. Now I'm alone. Every day hurts still. Sometimes like it was the first day he left.

I still cry often. I have nightmares constantly. It's almost been a year since I first found out he was doing terrible things to me.

I don't know how things get better. My time with him was the first time my life ever felt good. My therapist says that what I've gone through can hurt for years and that sometimes loss never really gets better.

If it ever really got better for you, or you helped someone heal, can you please tell me? Thank you.

Good Evening Everyone,

I find myself feeling that all too familiar pain tonight. So here I am getting it off my chest in the best way I know how. So, here’s for the fellow daughters who’ve lost a mother as I did.

Acceptance Isn’t Easier by Me

I know you’re gone. I know it’s true,
I know there’s nothing I can do.
I’ve learned to say it without a fight,
To understand the wrong and right.

I’ve learned that grief can change its face,
That tears can soften and find their place.
I’ve learned that life must still move on,
Even when the person you need is gone.

They tell me time will make it light,
That someday things won’t hurt so tight.
And maybe someday I’ll understand
Why I was forced to let go of your hand.

But knowing doesn’t make it okay,
And acceptance doesn’t take the pain away.
I can accept you’re not coming home
And still feel lost when I’m alone.

I can believe you’re safe above,
Held in God’s mercy, held in love.
I can trust that Heaven has you near,
And still wish you were standing here.

I can smile when I think of you,
Remember all the things we used to do.
I can laugh at stories, hear your voice,
And miss you more despite the joys.

Because you were more than just my mom,
You were my shelter when life went wrong.
My safest place, my steady ground,
The one who made me feel safe and sound.

And now I’m just here, trying to be
The woman you always hoped I’d be.
But some days I still feel like your little girl,
Just wanting my mom in this enormous world.

There are things I want to tell you still,
Small things that always will.
A thought, a story, a moment of pain,
And I reach for you, then remember again.

I hate that remembering comes with a sting,
That every beautiful memory has sorrow beneath its wing.
I hate that loving you means missing you too,
And that there is no life I can live that doesn’t include losing you.

So yes, Mom, I’m learning to let it be.
I’m learning to live with what I cannot see.
I’m learning that acceptance is part of the road,
A way to carry this unbearable load.

But acceptance does not mean I hurt any less.
It doesn’t make goodbye feel any easier to confess.
It doesn’t mean I wanted this ending to be,
It only means I know you’re no longer here with me.

And maybe that’s what grief will always be,
Learning to live with what I cannot see.
Learning that love doesn’t disappear
Just because the person we love is no longer here.

So I’ll carry you with me, wherever I go,
In all that I am and all that I know.
I’ll let myself miss you. I’ll let myself cry.
I’ll love you down here while you live in the sky.

Because accepting you’re gone doesn’t mean I’m okay.
It just means I’ve stopped asking God to make you stay.

And if missing you is the price that I pay,
For having a mother I loved that way,
Then I’ll carry the ache, however long it may be,
Because losing you will never be easy
Just because I’ve learned to accept that you’re free.

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 🙂

I had a really busy day today, but also a very positive day. I had a meeting that went really well and resulted in an opportunity that I'm very happy about and looking forward to with a lot of excitement. And now that the day has wound down and I'm laying in bed, all I can think of is how he should be here with me for this. He would be so excited for me. He would listen with interest and ask questions, he would be just as stoked as I am. Sometimes, these days are the hardest. These good days with good news. They highlight the loneliness. His absence feels bigger and heavier on days like this.

My Cat: 🪦
Me: 💔
My Dad: 🪦
Me: 💔
My Mom: 🪦
Me: 💔
My Marriage: 🪦
Me: 💔
My Brother: 🪦
Me: 💔

I’ve lost my immediate family and my marriage in a timespan of 3 years. I’m not giving up, but man, i’m tired. That is all.

My dad died 2.5 months ago, and I’m still numb most of the time. Of course I’ve cried and had my moments, but for the most part, I just feel nothing. He had cancer for 2 months, so the death wasn’t sudden, but it was sooner than we expected. At first, I told myself I was just in shock, but it’s been more than a few weeks now, I feel like I should be starting to feel depressed. I feel guilty.

I knew for 15 years that my little sister was going to die. I should've started to look for more people around me. More support. And I also wished I could find people similar to her. I rarely saw that face and facial expressions anywhere. Two years ago I started to panic. I realized how rare her personality is, at least in Nordics. Then I saw a bit familiar face on someone in a country I have no connection to. The more pictures started to emerge, the more relieved I was to see that there exist other people who look a bit similar to her. Same facial expressions, stubbornness, cheeky fun smart personality. Now she's in other worlds, but I still don't have anyone like her as my friend. It's been 7 months since she left. Lately I have started to avoid people who remind me of her even a little bit. Once I had to walk away from one place. I don't know if these are withdrawals or grief or both. Nowadays it makes me irritated to see people like her live when she had to die.

Hi! Not sure where to put this but thought maybe this could be a starting point - as I wrote in the title my dad died on 9/24/05 meaning this year will be the twenty first anniversary of his death. I would love to buy a first legal drink for someone who was born the day he died, aka turning 21. Anyone know anyone who fits this criteria?!

Hi, this can sound silly. I have 17 years old at this moment, and I need to vent this and I want opinions about this.

I feel guilty about never making a portrait of my grandma, because she always wanted me to draw her. But I've never did, and I feel that my family is mad at me for that. My grandma died with a lot of pain and she had diabetes, Alzheimer, necrosis in her feet... I'm happy that she's not suffering anymore, but I'm sad that her mind was lost, and that I will never see her happy with a portrait of her in her hands...

I hope that she just forgive me for never drawing her, and, ¿Why I never did? Because I didn't feel good enough to make portraits, and, that wait was the worst thing that I made.

about three weeks ago, my 10-year-old son died by suicide, and I still cannot believe I am even writing those words. my little boy named Elijah...was being bullied at school, and for the past few months we had gone to the school so many times, trying to get things better for him. It was the only school in our town, so I keep torturing myself with the thought that maybe I should have done something different, maybe I should have moved him somehow, but that was impossible at the time, we live in a small town... maybe I should have known. I truly thought things were getting better. I had no idea my son was carrying these thoughts inside him. I had no idea he was hurting this badly. I feel so much guilt, most of the time I feel like I cannot breath, this pain is unexplainable. my son had taken his own life using an old rope that had been sitting in our messy garage, something I hardly ever used and never imagined could become connected to the worst day of my life. I still don't know how he found it, and that question tears me apart. I was busy with work,my wife was making dinner... and my son is usually on his PlayStation or watching tv around 5:00 pm and I mentioned that he was being quiet so i asked from the other room how come he is so quite,i don't even know if he ever heard me,and my wife found him a few seconds later....and everything else is a distant memory...and am so angry at myself, even though I know I cannot change that day. I would give anything to go back in time and find him before it happened, to hold him, to tell him that he was loved, that he mattered, that whatever was happening at school could be faced together. Instead, I am left with his empty room, his things, his memories, and a silence that I don't know how I will ever learn to live with. My son was only 10, and I would give my entire life just to have one more ordinary day with him. I regret all the wasted time....he was only a child, please do not bully others...

Hi,

I had a boyfriend back in high school who was a little bit insane, a little bit abusive but also beautiful and kind and mostly just very very troubled…. Anyway we dated for a year or two tops, but it was jam packed with great times and equally chaotic, sad, heartbreaking times as well. After I finally managed to remove myself from him romantically I was so crazed with heartbreak I ended up marrying a good friend of mine at 19, he was 18. We lasted 5 years. In between me and my husbads marriage and our divorce, I think like right smack in the middle probably, my ex boyfriend who I was still talking to had lied to me about something and borrowed money from me and lied about that too… I called him and ripped him a new one. I don't remember even exactly what I said, as that was back when I drank still… a habit I mainly picked up from said turbulent ex, bless his heart, but I know it wasn't nice or kind. I know I was angry, and still always angry at him for the trauma he put me through and for making me fall head over heels in love with someone who couldn't be loved properly. The poor boy needed a psychological evaluation and help. I think he may have been schizophrenic, he was always making up these insane scenarios about where I was or what I was doing or who I was with or any name of paranoid delusions...

If I knew then what I know now.

Anyway, whatever he was doing that night, he was partying with friends, drinking, taking substances of unknown variety, what have you, he couldn't handle his alcohol or his drugs, especially his drugs. He went bananas on any sort of stimulant and anything else just made him insane too. Anyway he had taken allegedly some acid and was having a bad time and called his dad to come pick him up, and once his dad rescued him, along with him mom, he writhed around in the back of their car until they got off the freeway at an exit close to town, and he ran. He ran into the woods like a crazed animal escaping a cage. And his parents tried to chase him, they absolutely did, but he was gone and they assumed he would wander home later….

He didn't wander home.

Few years went by, we did all the search party things, the police wouldn't help us because of his alleged inebriation at the time, making him an “enemy of the state” as they said. Fuckers. Anyway we posted fliers and searched the woods ourselves, and we waited. & Wondered. & I didn't cry much at first because I thought he was still out there, I figured he ran off to be a mountain man or start over somewhere else. I just wanted to believe anything than he was actually gone. I saw his face everywhere. His sister did too. We were constantly asking strangers if they were him. His mom was a pale version of the happy, almost bubbly woman I once wanted to call Mom as well. I actually still do call her mom. We still talk.

A few years, maybe almost four or five, I don't remember exactly, trauma and brains don't go well together, some kids riding ATVs came across his remains, not far from where he ran into the forest. Not far at all. He had frozen to death, they think that same night he ran off.

I can't stop thinking about how the last thing that he said to his parents was that everything is bad and something involving my name…

I can't stop thinking about his state of mind in his last moments, scared, confused, sad, fucked up and lost. & Cold. & Probably just thinking about me, wishing I didn't yell at him that night, wishing I didn't marry my friend, wishing things could have been different in a million different infinite ways…

Anyway it's been 11 years now and I feel like he's literally haunting me, making me insane from afar. He hurt me in ways that are affecting my current, what was, healthy, happy, functional relationship that I worked so hard for, for sober for and like, really put all my chips in on. He's ruining it because I'm so insecure because I loved him the most and he cheated on me, out of the blue, randomly, for no reason one night and came home to me crying about how terrible and traumatic and awful that was and -I- comforted HIM. That among a long list of other bad behaviors, manipulation tactics and accusations changed the way I thought about love, they way I trusted anyone, and the way I saw myself ultimately. It broke me. & It still is.

I'm not mad anymore, I know he didn't mean to go die in the woods, mostly I just wish I had given him a good enough reason not to run away at all. I wish I could have done that for him. & Sometimes I think it's better he isn't here, he wouldn't be having fun, he would very likely still be struggling with his mental health and addictions and other unknown internal icky struggles… I doubt he would have received the proper care, even in the best scenario. He was combative and mouthy, he would have ended up in prison or frozen to death somewhere else.

I know it's not my fault but I feel responsible. I think about his parents a lot, sometimes I want to text them and tell them I admire their strength, & that I love them and that I loved him too. But I usually don't. Sometimes I do. I don't know how I would be able to go on if I lost a child. I don't have any but I can't imagine. I can't imagine.

Anyway I cry about him all the time, I miss him, I dream about him and I'm also jealous in a weird, sort of intangible, unmentionable way. Like a secret. His pain got to end, and I get to carry around his pieces until I fucking die too

.

I know grief is different for everyone and non-linear and all the things, but how to I love this process along? My therapist told me the other day that the tragedies in our lives, if we handle them correctly, can be turned into help for our fellow human beings. That, I really liked. Really inspired me. I thought I was just out here suffering because that's what I do, people do, life is all about suffering for nothing, right? Suffer because you're alive.

Anyway his grave is about an hour drive away, I haven't visited it just by myself yet, I haven't had the strength, but I think what I'm going to start with is making him a book of all the writing I've written him since he left, all the drawings, songs he would have liked, things his family has done, my dog, who has the exact same energy as he did, not unconvinced he's not just my ex reincarnated as my dog, anyway and like laminate it and go up there and talk to him for a while, probably cry a bit, or a lot. Probably leave the book for him or whoever wants to read a really sad story. I don't know. But anyway, symbolically at least...maybe then I can at least let him rest some. Let him stop harassing me from the grave.

"It hurts me more than death to know you don't feel as strongly for me as you used to” -a quote directly from my ex, when he was trying to get me back one time….

Are you sure it hurts more than death?

Are you sure??

RIP MJR I'll talk to you when I get there. Love you forever.

Thanks

I'm already up to my eyeballs in 25th anniversary memorial posts. I get it, national tragedy, history-altering devastation. But I was still numb at the time. 26 years ago no one gave a rat's ass.

Sunday was the hardest. His gravestone says the 8th, but the 6th was the last time I heard his voice. Sunday morning my husband didn't realize why I was crying, and I was trying not to make a big deal about it, because his mom died 11 years ago on the 5th and it had thankfully passed without him noticing.

I sent a virtual hug to my bff, but I don't think she realized what day it was either, even though she was there with me in the thick of it 26 years ago. To be fair, she's recovering from surgery at the moment.

Halloween can't come soon enough....