How do you handle death in the family?

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I mean how do you handle it, what do you do and how do you feel when their is a death in the family?

Thanks.

-Catherine

Well it's rather inconvenient, but nothing that a warlock with a resurrection spell wouldn't fix for a generous fee...

__

Ok, serious response: horribly.

I have a nervous breakdown. I have never handled deaths well.

both my parents died within 2 years of one another. that was sort-of a one-two punch to my psyche. my whole life changed in that period of time, turned upside-down. took another 2 years to come to terms with it. luckily they both had "good" deaths, IOW they were not too uncomfortable, or about as comfortable as one could be in one's deathbed.

when my father took ill with pancreatic cancer, he really wanted to die in his own bed at home, but the VA would not pay for home hospice care, so he was forced to die in a VA hospital hospice center, which was relatively comfortable but not home. i worked 12 hours daily at my civil service job and my mother had her hands full, ailing herself but still taking care of her hubby as best she could. so when i drove him to the VA hospice center, she breathed a sigh of relief. i just felt like it was left to me to be my elderly parents' caretaker and i was doing it by the skin of my teeth. my sister helped out on many a long day after her own fulltime job 50 miles away from my parents' home. she would just get in the car at work and drive all the way over- through 4 counties- to help out mom and dad as best she could as well, and often would drive me another 70 miles up to the seattle VA hospice center as well, so we could visit our dying dad together. all that driving would have fried my brain.

then my mother took ill a year later, with blood cancer [also not a good way to die]- for most of a year i was arranging her medical appointments and transporting her back and forth to the hospital for treatment. at the times she was an inpatient [for complex chemo] i was left at home alone, pondering what was to happen when both my parents were gone. lots of mixed emotions swirled in my head.
my mother's last words to me, hours before she died, were "do you think i am going to die soon?" and my weak response back to her was "only god knows that." if i were a better son i would have been able to come up with something comforting to her instead of my usual legalistic crap. i suppose my punishment for being a mediocre human is to be a hermit. so i guess that is how i handle death in my family- poorly. but i did the best i knew how to do.

I spiral into a depressive episode.

I'm rather emotion-less for a year after a funeral (no crying/feeling depressed). After a year I realise how little time I've spent with the deceased and wonder myself why I didn't cry, then I get depressed for a week and cry almost all day long.

Call me insensitive, but rather easily. At a certain point in time I sat down and imagined what would happen if any member of my family would die. That made things easier.


I guess you could say I have a very strong sense of people's mortality, so its hard for me to be shocked when anyone dies. If that makes any sense. Sometimes I wish I could be caught up in the tide of emotions others feel, if only so I could prove to myself that the person mattered to me.

I was raised by my grandparents and they both passed away within two years of each other back in 2006-2008. I'm so out of touch with my emotions I'm not really sure how it effected me. I felt abandoned and cheated at first, and maybe still a little of both, but like I said, its hard for me to tell, the emotional world is a blur that doesn't make sense like the concrete logical one.

I push the emotions away from myself and try to help others in my family. After a couple of years the hurt goes down to a reasonable level.

Thank you.

Because my pops just died a week ago exactly, and I never was ever close to him. But I have talked to him, and recently saw him 2 months ago. So I think that really hit me, and now in my head have videos playing in my head of all the times I saw him. I hate it. I didn't go to the wake or funeral, because I couldn't get myself too. For one I am not close to that family, and I don't know I just couldn't do it. But I am going to send my Nani a sympathy card. And I been just feeling all out of sorts and weird. That's why I felt like asking, because I never had a death in the family before.

Death doesn't affect me that much, but again it depends on the person who passed and how they passed.

I always argue with my family about open casket funerals. I find this to be a morbid and repulsive ritual. I would much rather remember a person for who they were, than to see a dolled up body on display for the world to see. Part of this has to do with the fact that my faith tradition is different from the rest of my family, the tradition I belong to has these celebrations of life, where as my family sees death as a more religious ceremony.

Yeah, I don't really like seeing them then, but remember them how they were all the years I have know them, that is a good way to put it. And I def agree with that 100%. I think it affected me so much more for the fact I just saw him.

Thanks for that reply passionatebach. That has totally had my mind set, very nicely.

It depends. I usually deal with death fairly well. Things were different when my maternal grandfather died a couple of years ago, but that was because there was never anything "wrong with me" in his eyes. He gave me unconditional love without lables. I was deeply depressed after we lost him. I felt like an orphan.

I'm sorry to hear that, even though you weren't close.

With the first 2 family members of mine that died, I went to the funerals and there were open caskets... and years later I'm still dreaming about their corpses coming back. When my grandmother started her final downward slide, I made it clear; under no circumstances would I go anywhere near her corpse. This is horrifying to some people, but you have to do whatever it takes to cope, and you never know how you'll react so it's hard to brace yourself.

Whatever you're feeling is what's right for you; whatever it is, even the deepest grief, it does pass eventually.

very personally

I think because I had two friends loose their Mom when we were teenagers I learned how to comfort someone when they have a loss. I did not really grieve when I lost my Grandfathers but I felt bad for my parents...again the comforting thing. When my older brothers first child died of a heart defect I stayed at the hospital while he had surgery to help my sister in law and sit with the baby in the NICU. The night after his surgery he had a lot of complications and I knew he was going to die. I went home and the grief hit me the next day. Dont know how I would handle the loss of my Mother or if any of my children died. I worry a lot about my oldest son....dont think I could handle it very well. I can only imagine how my brother and my sister in law feel...and felt.
Im sorry about your loss...after my grandfathers died (I was also not close to either of them) I tried to remember some good memories about them and I was happy that they each had lived a long life.