Comments on: Bereavement and Depression

By: zania

zania — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:23:19 +0000

I’ve just left you a comment.
Thanks for sharing Andy.

By: Andy Alt

Andy Alt — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:56:24 +0000

Yeah, I had to think twice before writing all that. Glad it helped though, thanks for letting me know.
May I recommend Damned Tears?

By: zania

zania — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:50:25 +0000

My Father died when I was just into my teens. He had always been my ´favourite parent´, but when he died I was going through the ´terrible teen´ years, and for months we hadn´t had a nice word to say to each other. He died suddenly and it was a shock, but it left me numb for years. I simply could not grieve for him. It messed me up quite a bit emotionally I think.
When you lose a parent as a child, it´s in many ways a different experience. As you said, it´s a new experience dealing with grief as an adult.
I´ve done quite a bit of therapy over the years and only fairly recently discovered that my Dad´s death is one of the main things which has made me so screwed up emotionally. So I knew it would be hard when Mum died (especially the guilt factor. I loved (love) her a lot, but we had definitely had our differences! I was hoping that I would be able to grieve ´properly´ for Mum and not get more screwed up. Only time will tell.
I´m sorry for your recent loss (and I mean that without cliches). Just reading your comment shows me just how much the elderly guy meant to you. It makes me sad, for you, for him and for his wife. But that´s ok. It´s as it should be.
Thank you for commenting on this particular post. It would have been easy to avoid it.
Your words helped.
Thank You

By: Andy Alt

Andy Alt — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:55:56 +0000

My father committed suicide when I was 8 years old. Now, more recently, I met an older couple in their late seventies, almost three years ago. Me and the guy got along real well, he agreed with me on a lot of stuff, so basically I realized I’m not so screwed up as to my outlook on things and life as I thought. We weren’t extremely close, but he did fill in some gaps from not having a father. He died early this year; my first real experience dealing with death since my father died. I”m currently learning more about the stages of grief, from the perspective of an adult. Crying all the sudden, and I’d never cry for long, just little spurts here and there, probably lasting for less than a minute. Sometimes more than once a day. I still talk to his wife. I burst out crying in front of her a few days ago, talked about him a little. I noticed since then, so far, it’s becoming easier to remember him. I talked about him for over a minute last night with his wife and a friend of mine without tearing up even a little. Well, can’t say otherwise I know what you’re going through, but interesting to read some of the parallels in your post. Take care.

By: At the Razor’s Edge :: Procrastination Again! :: July :: 2008

At the Razor’s Edge :: Procrastination Again! :: July :: 2008 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:53:07 +0000

[...] I typed my last post, I said I had Nothing To Write. At that time it was true. My family had just suffered a loss and we were all feeling shitty, so it’s not surprising that, despite usually being able [...]