0 Registered (),
221
Guests and
0
Spiders online. |
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
3239 Members
63 Forums
16332 Topics
210704 Posts
Max Online: 409 @ 01/16/20 10:33 PM
|
|
|
#133107 - 01/09/08 02:38 PM
Re: Dad's & daughters...
[Re: katebcca]
|
Da Queen
Registered: 07/02/03
Posts: 12025
Loc: Alabama
|
I totally "get" about you not being able to say good-bye. Crying and grieving was the final good-bye in my eyes and I couldn't take that step. It meant I accepted in my heart and soul AND in my brain, (logically) that he was gone. I couldn't take that step. But eventually, I did. I too thought there was something wrong with ME because everyone else was grieving openingly, and I wasn't...the daughter who was closest to him in many ways, wasn't crying. I felt like in a way I was betraying his death by not mourning.
In reality, I was holding on to him the only way I knew how to do it. Subconsciously.
IT IS ALL OKAY. Whatever you do, however you do it. It is all okay. When my 98-year old grandmother died, one of my sisters said to me as I cried, "Try to cry silently." I told her point blank....Don't EVER tell me how to grieve. She never has since then.
There are no standards for grieving. Only your hearts.
And you make my heart sing when I read about your understanding and compassion for your Mother. She has her own life to live, make amends for and to, and things day in and day out she has to deal with. We cannot judge her any more than we would a total stranger who was married to a man and he died. We weren't there, didn't live it, so how could we know?
Your feelings toward her are so genuine and heartFULL. I love that. You are a very wise woman.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#133108 - 01/09/08 02:50 PM
Re: Dad's & daughters...
[Re: jawjaw]
|
Member
Registered: 12/30/05
Posts: 3027
|
Katebecca could you say "Bye... for now" I agree with everyone here.We all grieve but do so differently. Love Mountain ash
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#133110 - 01/09/08 03:50 PM
Re: Dad's & daughters...
[Re: katebcca]
|
Registered: 08/22/07
Posts: 1761
Loc: Southern Maine, USA
|
What a page of insights into grief over Dads. It has me so choked up. My Mom passed away 2 1/2 years ago and my Dad is still living. I was visiting with him just yesterday on what would have been my Mom's birthday. I am so close to him. When I've hated men (for whatever reason at the time)I've always said they're all horrible...except my Dad. He's the most honest man, full of integrity and we're so close. All that, to say that this particular page of posts has me realizing that he won't always be here. Seeing him grow older and more frail panics me inside. Thank you for a reminder to cherish him while I can.
_________________________
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane ~ Jimmy Buffett
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#133112 - 01/09/08 06:19 PM
Re: Dad's & daughters...
[Re: katebcca]
|
Registered: 12/21/07
Posts: 138
|
When Daddy's die, little Girls Grow Up. I was his little Cowgirl, now I'm just a woman with a horse. Due to circumstance I was his protector & he mine. When momma died, I was just an adult orphaned little girl who became a woman without her Very best Friend. Grief, there's no right or wrong way to feel it, deal with it & I doubt we ever really get past it, it just gets less intense with the passage of time. Cherish parents while you have them, give them the benefit of doubt, Treasure every memory it helped make us who we are. QB
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#133113 - 01/10/08 03:29 PM
Re: Dad's & daughters...
[Re: katebcca]
|
Registered: 01/21/07
Posts: 3675
Loc: British Columbia, Canada
|
Quote:
My Dad had a go with the flow attitude, my Mom tends to be bitter and gets stressed out really quickly. I had a wonderful loving relationship with my Dad, she did not. I find this quite sad but only they know what went on in their marriage and it is not for me to know.
Also she has been through this many times. With her parents, a couple of her brothers (in the war) and other close people in her life. This is my first experience with losing a loved one in my adult life (lost my grandparents as a teen) This is also the most devastating experience for me. I love my Mom but she is a prickly person. She holds on to the past and then brings it up constantly. My Dad was a real calm person and easy to talk to. If we disagreed with each other we would laugh about it and agree to disagree. My Mom gets all huffy if you disagree with her because she always has to be right.
I quite agree Kate that a child can never truly know how a parents' marriage is transformed over time.
My parents are still very much alive. In some ways the temperment of your father and mother is similar to mine. Yes, my mother does nag everyone, including father. And it truly amazes me (and siblings), that now it's just the 2 of them at home, that he has extreme patience to deal with her...and yea, just goes with the flow.
My only hope that I know my mother's resentment isn't him, and I believe my father knows this but more how she feels about herself. I do know that she knows she is extremely lucky to have been matched with a kind, patient and hardworking guy like my father. (My mother was a picture bride. My parents only wrote to each other for a few months between China and Canada.)
So I do consider their marriage and..the end result of us...as a family....not to bad in the end.
As I have said months ago, perhaps the greatest compliment to my father, is that his daughters have subconsciously selected their spouses/partners who have similar temperments as my father.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
#133116 - 01/12/08 01:01 AM
Re: Dad's & daughters...
[Re: katebcca]
|
Registered: 01/21/07
Posts: 3675
Loc: British Columbia, Canada
|
Quote:
My Mom is the type that likes to complain but not do anything about it. She has a victim type personality.
I think I know my Mom very well now and I understand her feelings of relief. I do worry about her though. I don't think she is really dealing with his death. She is actually confused by mine and others reactions and the terribly grief we are feeling. Because she is moving on she thinks we all should. I think she just shuts herself down.
I'm one to talk though. I am in a bit of denial myself. I can't go to their apartment because I don't want to face the fact that he is not there. The difference between my Mom and I is that I work at these things. She just blocks it all out which is possibly going to give her a stroke.
I learned a long time ago that you can't change anyone, only yourself.
Aside from how your mother was like in her marriage...then perhaps it might be more how she has been to you as a mother.
I guess we have to remember...who was the person that got up night after night, to give us our night feedings when we were babies.
I try to remind myself this about my mother. I recall going to the funeral for a close friend whose mother had suddenly died in a car accident. Her mother was something like my mother in terms of temperment. The euology was delivered by a neighbour of the family. I found the euology just abit too general and did not give any glimpse what the person was like who died.
Granted it was a sudden death but to me, but the lack of personal definition, spoke volumes to me, that the adult children had not quite figured the role of their mother as a person. to even provide meaningful text about their own mother for another person to deliver in a euology.
I realized afterwards, that I don't want to her die and to be left without properly articulating when she was alive, what my mother gave to us, what she was a woman in her life.
so there is a woman in my life, who if I screwed my sewing tailoring project, she was there is pick up, to fix it hours into the night...after her 6 children went to bed.
so there is a woman in my life, who trudged up the staircase to give freshly peeled fresh fruits to each child who was studying in their rooms...every evening..
so there is a woman in my life, who gives care food packages when each of her adult child visits... I am literally the walking manifestation of my mother's healthy diet that she fed to her children.
and so on....despite her bad explosive temper...I have to accept my mother. She won't allow US, her children to define her. She wants to find her way.
But yea, it takes alot more energy and time to love my mother compared to my father.
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|