How did the loss of a family member affect your relationship?

[princessa]

What was your attitude/thoughts when you've lost a close family member, how did you cope with the loss and how did it affect your relationship? Did you feel like your SO understood what you were going through? What were some of the things that they did or could have done to help you? Did the relationship survive? What were you feeling and how did you survive? How long did it take before you found interest/effort in living a normal life again?? Care to share your painful stories?

[dropdeadlegs]

What was your attitude/thoughts when you've lost a close family member, how did you cope with the loss and how did it affect your relationship? Did you feel like your SO understood what you were going through? What were some of the things that they did or could have done to help you? Did the relationship survive? What were you feeling and how did you survive? How long did it take before you found interest/effort in living a normal life again?? Care to share your painful stories?

I'm not sure if this counts. My BF's father died last May. I often spend weekends at his home, which was next door to his father (two mobile homes on 2 1/2 acres.) This happened Memorial Day weekend and school had just let out for my elementary school children. I went to his home that weekend like usual and didn't leave until mid-August, the night before school started again. I think that was the single most important way I helped him, being there.

 

My Bf wasn't seemingly close to his Dad in thought and actions. They had the kind of interaction where they would both get loud and curse quite a bit. Underneath it all, there was much love, but BF's mother had died (asthma) over 30 years before and the family dynamics changed abruptly. His sister had died (leukemia) about 18 years ago, too. That left a family of men/boys and there wasn't much nurturing. Because of these events my BF craves quite a bit of physical and verbal affection and is very attentive in these areas in return. He doesn't treat me like a mother, but certainly appreciates the feminine aspects of what I do for him, like cooking and cleaning up and nurturing.

 

Our relationship was very good already, but I think Dad's death brought us closer. Death makes us realize how a loved one can be gone in an instant and to cherish every moment with that person.

 

My BF could only take one week off from work (a vacation week, at that) and he was very happy to come home to our makeshift family at the end of the day to alleviate the perception of being alone. He didn't dwell on the loss of Dad because he had us to take his mind off things. At one point during the summer I felt it was difficult to be at his home when all my "stuff" was at my home and told him I thought I should be going home, but he looked so sad that I didn't go. I'm glad that I didn't, it was a minor inconvenience. My home is less than 10 miles away and I just kept hauling over more stuff for myself and my kids each time I would go to get my mail.

 

He was over the initial shock in a bout two weeks, but since he was the one to find his Dad he was unable to enter his home until several weeks ago. His youngest brother lives next door, but had been working out of town for a good while so I'm glad that he was finally able to enter the residence again. Brother and I took great pains to change the look of the home by rearranging some furniture and deleting and adding pieces as well. It doesn't look like the same place in many ways; it is much nicer.

 

The hardest part for me was seeing the man I love cry at night. He had such a hard time getting the picture of his dead father out of his head when he closed his eyes. I didn't look at Dad, but it wasn't a pretty sight as there was some internal bleeding in the area of his face and neck, maybe subarachnoid hemorrhaging. His mouth was wide open and his eyes were bulging. I can clearly picture this without having seen it due to my BF's description. The casket had to remain closed so that is the last memory he had of his father's physical being. Of course I had never seen my BF cry, and the crying isn't what bothered me, it was the inability to take away his pain and make him feel better. I just wanted to wave a magic wand and make it all better.

 

Oh hell, now I'm crying! That's my story if it counts.

[dropdeadlegs]

Not to go off topic, but now your "Wheres' my Jesus thread?" is gone too!

[princessa]

Not to go off topic, but now your "Wheres' my Jesus thread?" is gone too!

 

LOL! PM'd you about this...

[princessa]

Oh hell, now I'm crying! That's my story if it counts.

 

Sorry for making you cry And thanks for sharing your story.. Your guy is very lucky to have you around to support him, and it seems that he's managing well.. Best of luck to both of you.

[quankanne]

I think that every response is based on how well you were prepared for death of a loved one – what your family influences were, what your faith influences were, where you mentally were at that point in your life. Even within the same small family, those responses are going to be wildly different …*

 

three years ago, we had a double whammy in that both our moms died within a six month period of each other. Mine was a severe diabetic, so in reality, my family had the last 5-10 years of our lives to "prepare," while my husband's mom had been diagnosed with lung cancer 8-9 months before she died.

 

What was your attitude/thoughts when you've lost a close family member

 

mostly, I tried to keep the hurt and grieving of my mom dying, then dying, from my husband, because I didn't want him to see it because we were going through a very similar situation with his mom.

 

how did you cope with the loss and how did it affect your relationship?Did you feel like your SO understood what you were going through? What were some of the things that they did or could have done to help you? What were you feeling and how did you survive?

 

this is where I was really, really lucky to have the faith background that I did, and a tight relationship with my mother. Death itself wasn't the scary thing, but the loss that it represented it was. My mother and I talked about her dying, about how she wasn't afraid of that, but that she didn't want to leave us and Daddy behind hurting and crying. And I think she hung on a lot longer than she needed to because of that.

 

mostly, I found consolation in my faith and in my relationship with my mother. And there was one particular book that I kept reading over and over, it dealt with the themes of death and loss, as well as a certain song I'd play on my car stereo whenever I was alone – both of those were very cathartic in that I wasn't a bundle of emotions while trying to deal with DH.

 

if I was the fatalist, then he was the optimist. This is mean, but I would tell him that they were dying, that from now on out, that today was the healthiest they'd be … it made me angry that he was trying to sugarcoat things when we both knew they were dying. In retrospect, that was not my finest hour, because I didn't look at it from his POV, that he was losing two mothers, as well ...

 

otherwise, he was as supportive as he knew how to be while they were dying – he'd listen to my concerns, he supported my decision to travel across the state 2-3 times a month so that I could be with my mom as often as I could, as well as to take care of my dad. And when she died, the best gift he gave me was to help me keep alive memories of her, letting me know that she was still very much a part of his life.

 

with his mom, it was a bit different, because she lived across the country so we didn't see her as often. To be honest, they didn't have as close a relationship as I did with my mom, or as he did with his own dad. He loved her, but if they talked to each other once or twice a month, that was doing good. Kinda like they were acquaintances, rather than parent and child.

 

again, when his mom was going through her treatments for cancer, he had a Pollyanna-ish attitude about her illness, and again, I did the cruel thing by telling him to snap out of it, she was dying ... I honestly don't know how that made him feel because he never really gave an indication of his closeness to her, if that makes sense. Unless he thought to distance himself because he'd already lost his dad – the guy he was really close to – 20-something years before, and he didn't want to go through that pain again? hmmmm ....

 

Did the relationship survive?

 

yes, though, again, I think that was due to how well we each were prepared to deal with death earlier on in our lives

 

How long did it take before you found interest/effort in living a normal life again??

 

for me personally, the grief comes and goes, though it doesn't mess with my life (or my health) the way it initially did. I've got a chronic illness that was impacted by the stress of traveling so my, by the grieving process, then having to repeat that with my MiL. Fortunately, my very astute doctor put me on anti-depressants and told me to take B12 to help get my energy levels back up. At this point, I can step back from the grief a great deal of the time, though sometimes, missing my mom can make me a crying mess for a couple of hours. The difference between then, when it first happened, and now is that I know I will bounce back, that the grief isn't so overwhelming.

 

my guess is that your guy hasn't reached that point where he can see a light in the tunnel, and that's why it's been so rough dealing with him and his reaction to his mom's death.

[princessa]

It must have really been though for both of you to have this happening at the same time.. I'm not religious so I can't really understand the depth of the role that it played in your coping.. But it seems like you've definitely been accomodating and very understanding of eachother.. That's good to hear and I'm glad that your relationship made it through..

 

As for my guy.. yes he obviously sees no light at the end of the tunnel.. And it's been two years and I'm worried whether he ever will....

 

In any case, thank you for sharing.