I saw my father dead in my living room

[the_darkness_inme]

This is my first post and I just joined.  even though its been a while since my dad passed away.  I still feel sadness, anger, loneliness, and doubt.  I feel like there's no one that can possibly understand what I'm going through.  Yes family was there for everything from the funeral and part of the grieving, but they don't understand what I saw or what went through and still goes through my mind everyday.  My marriage is not good because of what happened and it seems to get worse as time goes and not better.  I want to think that it's getting better in my marriage, but it's not I just get angry for no reason at her and I feel terrible when I do that.  I have only one friend where I'm at.  It feels like when left my home town things just are not the same.  I'm only 25 my dad was 47 when he passed away.  It's been so hard for me to handle this burden I have been caring around with me.  It's hard enough to talk to a stranger and it's more hard to do this.  I just don't what to do anymore i'm lost in this darkness of mine and i need to talk to someone about this so I can make things better not only with me, but in my marriage as well.  If someone could help me with this thank you so much.

[cindyjane]

Hi

 

I am so sorry for your loss.  The passing of a parent is about the hardest thing that I've ever gone through, and still going through.  I don't think that a person really understands unless they've lost a parent also.  I am not sure if this will help but after my mom passed away 7 months ago, someone said to me, "we don't get over it ... we get on with it."  It took a few weeks for me to understand what that meant and when I did understand it, this helped me a lot.  I know in my heart that I will always miss my mom, that won't go away.  But I also know that she would want me to carry on with my life and not allow this to cripple me.  I believe that all parents would want that for their children.  I keep that thought in my mind any time my heart gets heavy.  I don't know what your faith is, but that is also what gets me through this and every other difficult thing that goes on in life.  That is my main source of comfort.  Please take care and keep coming back here because the support from others helps a lot.

Cindy

[Heartlight]

Hi the_darkness_inme,

 

(and warm wishes cj)

 

I'm sorry for the loss of your dad.

 

When we learned my dad was dying, I decided to make it my goal to understand the purpose of death within this life.  I know this is an unreasonable and unattainable goal that I set for myself, but I knew that I was not going to be able to live through another death (my sister had already died) and the future deaths that life predicts unless I started to find some meaning in everything.

 

Of course, I haven't been able to solve this riddle of the universe, but I have faced my loss and through my and other people's understanding, I have learned some very helpful things (in my opinion).

 

The one that sparked for me when reading your post is that when someone dies, the person left behind can have a fierce experience of self-protection: protecting the validity of their relationship with the person they lost, protecting their experience of the loss; experiencing but without conscious understanding that no one else has the relationship you had or had the experience you had and, because of that, no one on this earth can understand how you feel.

 

And it is true.  Although each of us on this website have experienced loss and can tell you that you're not alone or give you, hopefully, the comfort of our words, what you have lost was a precious part of you and it is very understandable to feel that no one else can understand.

 

Be ok with that.  You are right.

 

It sometimes sets up a short-circuit too, because part of grieving is mourning - the expression of grief, the expression of your sorrow and the expression of your relationship - but when you don't feel like people will understand and you hold that mourning in, the energy of that expression gets held in and you have a harder time moving forward in your process.  This can create the feeling of being stuck and having emotions, attitudes and actions that are less healthy and less controllable - because the emotion, attitude or action that is causing the problem is not the one that needs to be dealt with.

 

You are so very young to have to live through such grief, please be gentle with yourself during it.  It is ok that it is messy and mixed-up and it is ok.  It's hard for people who have lived for 40, 50 and more years with their own emotions so please understand that you are being forced into two positions at the same time: grieving and learning about your own psyche.

 

I am a big believer in communication so, even though she won't understand, you may want to start to ask your wife to listen to your stories about your dad.  Listen to you express your relationship or your pain.  Many times, the people who love us and want to be helpful need to know what we need from them because they haven't been there themselves, so it may both help you in your grief and also help you in your marriage if you can, slowly if necessary, start to open up to her.

 

I know it's difficult, it is the hardest thing sometimes to allow ourselves to feel the emotion that needs to be felt and it hard to allow someone else to see that depth of emotion.

 

But I promise you, it is helpful.

 

Allow yourself to mourn, no matter how you decide to do it, even if you just decide to post here, expressing the emotions allows us to process them and they not affect our life in an even more difficult way.

 

<3