Lost my mom January 14th, broken.

[tkinok74]

Hello all, I'm new here, just looking for a place to find out if what I'm feeling and going through is normal.
I lost my mother January 14th. I didn't expect to lose her, she had been doing normal things the day before she died. She was elderly and she had normal complaints for her age but she was still feisty.

I've been her main caregiver since my dad died of cancer 2 years ago, because she has dementia. She's been my best friend all my life and we were very close. I have an anxiety disorder and she was always my main source of comfort when I struggled with that. So I took care of the things her memory rendered her unable to manage, and she kept me calm and safe. We were both broken in our own ways but together we were a team.

I am completely overcome with regrets of things I wish I'd done with her, that I thought I had plenty of time to still do, and I was stupid and didn't realize time was so short.
I'm broken to pieces that I was unable to save her.
I am also very conflicted that since I did lose her anyway, I didn't give her a more peaceful death. I wish I'd stayed calm and held her and let her slip peacefully away instead of fighting to keep her here and letting the EMT's do such violent measures (they used an automatic CPR machine for 40 minutes, among other things) to her body to try and bring her back. 
I hope she didn't hurt or suffer because of that.
I worry that maybe she'd been in her room suffering through the night and I didn't know it because I was in my room asleep and didn't hear her (since she called out for me about half an hour before I woke up that morning, and she was gone just minutes later).
I hope that it was sudden, and that prior to her calling out my name, she had felt perfectly normal.
I will never know the answer to that, and it haunts me. I hope the cause of death when it comes, will maybe give me an indication of whether it was sudden, or she'd had a long night waiting for me to wake up. 

I'm just broken to pieces. I see her everywhere. I go in her room and can still smell her perfume and lotion, etc. 

I miss her so much and I don't know what to do with myself now. 
I'm sorry this is so long.

[BEQUET93]

There is no need to apologize for the length of your post. My mother came to live with me, in 2014, and I know how it feels to no longer have a mother in the home. I remember the first day I came home from work, the week after her death, and the house was so quiet. It felt like I was trapped in a bad dream.

How you are feeling and what you are going through is completely normal. While grieving, people experience regret and guilt. They miss their lost loved one and almost everything is a reminder of them. They see them and hear their voices. Yesterday marked 3 months since my own mother's passing and I still see and hear her. Given that it has only been a few weeks since you lost your mother and that it was unexpected, you are likely still in shock and emotionally raw. It is definitely hard and I am sorry you are going through this. Take it one day at a time and please keep coming to the forum, whenever you need to share your feelings. I joined in December and, at least for me, it has been helpful.

[Jim B]

I had the same feelings your going through.  I was dad's full time caregiver and when he died of dementia I had a big dose of guilt over how I treated him. Because of his dementia I could never tell how he felt or what he wanted but I did my best. The guilt was overwhelming, constantly thinking that if I did things differently he'd still be around. Over time I've realized that the disease progresses and that nothing I did, or didn't do would make any different. Yelling at him because he would not eat made no difference, nothing was going to change things. His passing left a big void. I would see him everywhere. Going to church or shopping or dinner was not the same without him. Again over time these feelings moderated. While I still miss him the feelings are not overwhelming and I'm good with that. At least for me part of the grieving process was replacing old habits [taking dad everywhere, meals, etc] with different habits. Give it time, look after yourself.