Not everyone grieves the same .. my dad passed away when I was 16 .. I cried the first day and decided I had to be there for my mom and sister more.. when I lost my dog , I cried for 3 days straight ..
I managed to mostly hold it together when my mom died. I cried in private, but not in public or in front of people. I never cry in front of people. About ten months later, I got Covid. Five weeks after that, I got appendicitis. Missed Thanksgiving and Christmas, spent a week in the hospital, but I wasn't even that mad about it because I didn't want to face my first holidays without my mom anyway, so it was better to miss them. Got to go home from the hospital just in time for new years, and spent a few days recovering at home and taking antibiotics and dealing with a surgical drain.
Then my rabbit got sick. He was lethargic, wouldn't eat or move, just sat with his head in the corner. I still couldn't wear real pants because of my surgical drain but I got him packed up and took him to the emergency vet, where they told me he had no movement in his bowels (very bad for rabbits) and they detected a mass that they suspected was cancer. He was an older bunny and they couldn't guarantee he was even strong enough to survive the anesthesia required to get good imaging done, much less the surgery. I decided to put him down and the stress of everything piling up just hit me all at once. I was just openly sobbing in the vet clinic, holding him for the last time and trying to say goodbye, the night before the first anniversary of my mom's death. I cried way harder that day than I did when my mom died, and in front of complete strangers. I still start crying sometimes when I think about that day. Grief is weird.
I feel like it's a matter of 1 who's around you constantly, and 2 how it actually hits you.
After a while it just starts to feel numb, you aren't crying because you're at a level of sadness where you don't really feel it for a while. It'll catch up to you at the worst times though.
Trauma in general. I had a horrific drowning accident about six years ago, and felt, mentally, right as rain (no pun intended) right after I’d left the ICU and physically recovered. But the second I got into a hot tub for the first time in awhile a few months ago, I started having a full-blown panic attack, just by being submerged in water in any capacity. Trauma is so unpredictable like that.
After a bad car accident, I went back to driving without any issue... For about a month.
Then I couldn't touch the wheel without some preparation.
The man who diagnosed me with (minor) ptsd said it was probably because the "rush" had passed. The moment I got back to seeing driving as routine, I also became vulnerable
I had a near-drowning incident several years ago and thought I was fine until we got a house with a pool and I had to take my kids swimming all summer because the other two adults in the house couldn’t be bothered and I didn’t want to disappoint my kiddos. It was NOT fun and multiple panic attacks were had.
I’m really proud of you for sticking it out for the kids, despite the fear. Sincerely, that’s strength, growth, and love right there. I’m so sorry for your experience, like, obviously, but that tells me so much positively about you as a person that you’d deal with it for the kids’ benefit. I’m on very little sleep and that almost made me cry ngl
It’s a big step, not to be understated! A friend of mine has a kid, and if she invited me to help teach that kid to swim, well, damnit, I’d find it within myself to nut up myself. After all, that kid helped me stop being irrationally afraid of butterflies when we were at the zoo last year lmao
Less serious, but I accidentally put my hand through the window on our front door (which is not the one we usually use to get in and out) and needed stitches, and recovery was a PITA and I still have slightly altered sensation on my palm from that. I didn't think it'd really affected me mentally until I tried to help dad replace that door months later and had a panic attack from touching that door.
My grandparents passed away both within a week of each other. My grandad fell down some stairs (my grandmother had dementia and forgot about him on her way to call someone). The dementia got my grandma the next week, her decline was awful to watch. I loved both of them, they basically raised me while my parents were in college. Many good memories, smells, flavors, and locations always bring me back to them.
I grieved for a few weeks, but I didn’t shed a single tear until 4 years later where something reminded me of them and I cried for hours. Wildest thing. My mourning period was long over and yet something ticked a certain way and that was it
I was like this with my husband's grandpa. When he died I needed to be strong for my husband, who was absolutely devastated. I teared up a little a few times. I privately cried for a few minutes watching my husband curl up into his grandma on the couch, like a little boy. But that was it.
Then a couple years later I was on the car with my husband and his mom, who had finally reached the point where she could tell funny stories about him. We were talking about this time when we were all out for thw WORST dinner, and the waitress asked him how everything was and he just very bluntly said "Terrible." And I just started sobbing.
I think a huge part of it was that he had the same cancer as my own grandfather has had for 15 years. He died, and my racist, homophobic, abusive grandfather is still alive and fine. I was so angry at how unfair the universe was, taking someone wonderful instead of someone awful, that if I had let myself really grieve I think I would have just felt rage.
I don't grieve. At least not in a way that seems human, I just sort of accept they're dead and move on. Makes me feel insanely guilty and inhuman, but it's not like I can induce sorrow.
It just depends on how much death you've been subjected to and how close that person was to you.
The first death I experienced was a friend who committed suicide when I was 15. I only knew her for a year but I had a crush on her but I was always too nervous to ask her out (this is irrespective of if she would have even been interested in me).
Being my first major death in my life and at a young age plus feeling regret like I didn't do enough made her death really impactful on me. I spent weeks blaming myself and thinking foolishly that I could have "saved her" if I just had said something earlier (this is also something that is a common grief from suicide).
On the other hand later one of my biological cousins died of a fentanyl overdose last year and I didn't really experience anything more than a "oh shoot, Billy Bob died? That's crazy". Now "Billy Bob" and I (name has been changed) did not have the greatest experience growing up together so we were never really that close. We'd see each other every few years at family get togethers and he was always animated. He was a "juggalo" with a tattoo of the hatchet man on one of his arms and would sing snippets of ICP a lot. One time he and I even got into a physical fight over the dumbest thing (he was also absolutely blasted at the time).
TL;DR: Grief affects us differently. I literally lost a friend in high school and was more distraught over that than when one of my cousins died about 15 years later.
My sister died when I was ten. I saw her corpse on the road and didn't feel anything besides maybe a mild disgust at the body? I went and made a mindless comment a few hours later to the effect of "Number Three just died!" My aunt called us by the number of our birth and I was watching the movie '9'
While in hindsight that sounds careless, with the context of your aunt referring to y'all by your "birth number" and having watched a movie called "9", it doesn't seem that strange.
How about religion? Were you raised pretty religious and around the age of 10 would you say your religious beliefs were as strong or stronger than now? It's also possible if your 10 year old brain didn't really think of death as "the end" then perhaps that also made your brain not process the grief quite as strongly.
For instance you might see that some people while they may cry will also at times smile thinking of the deceased with the context that they will see them again soon (when we die).
I've always been atheist. And I fully understood her death. I just didn't feel anything. Even now, I've forgotten her face and voice. When she died, I knew she was gone permanently. She was even the closest to me of my family.
This person grieved their father for one day before pushing their feelings aside in order to support family members in their own grief. Some people become caretakers in these situations. It’s pragmatic. Then, when this person lost their dog, I believe they were free to grieve because there wasn’t anyone who needed their support more this time.
778
u/GuyFromLI747 8d ago
Not everyone grieves the same .. my dad passed away when I was 16 .. I cried the first day and decided I had to be there for my mom and sister more.. when I lost my dog , I cried for 3 days straight ..