I lost my father to bone cancer in 2006, I was 17 at the time. It took about a year to stop having nightmares and crying for no reason. Even now, 8 years later sometimes I still start getting a bit weepy or have to excuse myself to the bedroom and cry a little.
I promise you it will get easier to manage, but when you lose a parent the sadness and sometime hurt never really goes away. A dear friend of mine who is like a second grandmother to me lost her mother over 25 years ago and she said even in her old age she still has moments where she cries and feels sad all over again.
I am not trying to depress you or anything, I just want to be real with you. When someone you care about dies, the people around you try to tell you "Everything will be alright" "Your loved one wouldn't want you to be sad, they would want you to carry on" ect ect, and as I am sure you already are aware of, its not really what you want to hear, and I personally found it to only make me feel more sad and alone.

Cry when you need to, be mad when you need to, no one should/no one can tell you when its time for you to heal. I was very sad and very very mad for a few quite some time before it subsided and I could start healing. You need to do what you NEED. There is no right or wrong way to mourn someone.

And though we do not know one another at all, please, feel free to toss me a note or something, it is never a bother, and I will try to help in any way that I can. Please take care

I just realized I missed some stuff you asked there, sorry. I spent a lot of time playing video games, doing dark abstract art, being alone a lot in nature, sat and talked to the dog. My mother was there, but she pretty much knew that if I wanted her I would come to her, and being the woman she is she tried her best to seek comfort for her own feelings with her friends and let me be. I took up meditating, and a very good friend of mine gave me a book called "At Hell's Gate" and it helped me to sorta get into myself and start healing. I also took off and got out of town for a while right after I picked up my father's ashes. The same friend who gave me the book took me about 4 hours away from home where he allowed me to just sit and do nothing around a cabin until decided it was time to head back. I found it helpful to not be at home, maybe it will help you too.

thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me!

haha, i've heard 'he's in a better place/his suffering has ended/it was his time to go' a million times already, and those sorts of platitudes don't alleviate my grief at all. they just tend to make me feel even worse. knowing i probably wont feel this way forever helps, though. and i've noticed that whenever i'm out of the house, it's easier for me to focus on other things. i keep thinking i'm not supposed to do anything but sit in my room and be miserable, but i guess that doesn't change what happened to my dad and it isn't going to help me either.

i know it's been several years since you lost your father, but i'm very sorry it happened :( the death of a loved one is such a horrible thing to go through.

It's been... about 6 years now. I was never entirely close to my father by choice. I try my best not to romanticize his ideal, write away his horrible flaws; and yet, having lived with him, grown up with him, most of my entire childhood... Well, to this day, the "normality" of him being gone has kicked in, and yet thinking back to it will never stop eating me up on the occasion I think too hard about it.

The truth is, though it's different for everyone, it will only ever stop being a constant agony until you can come to terms with going forward. This is how my life, your life, all our lives, are. Maybe not forever, sure, but for now. And there's no way to bring it back... Only to make peace with the memory, however you may do that.

I lost my mother back in October last year. Gosh, it's already almost been a year now. Didn't have to help my father cope since they were long since broken up, but definitely had to help out my siblings and grandparents.

You'll start feeling normal again before you know it. The more time goes by, the more time you take to come to terms with it happening, it gets easier.

It helps to cry when you need to. It helps to talk it out with those you know will understand. It helps to write down all that you would've liked to have said to him, especially since most people tend to dwell on the "If I had only said..."

Remember that it's okay to feel sad and want to take time to yourself. It's okay if you reach out and want the comfort of company. As long as you're not hurting anybody, your emotions are completely valid while you cope with this. It's a very big and sucky thing to deal with. And as long as you know that you aren't alone and you have those you can go to for a talk or helping hand, it'll be okay.

It personally helps me to keep reminders here and there, and to think back on better days, and knowing that this is all temporary and I'll see her again one day.

Find what gives you comfort and use that to your largest advantage.

It takes years, and it's not so much about getting back to the old reality as accepting the new reality. Someone who's been a permanent, almost-always-positive part of your life leaving you takes a lot of adjustment. Some of the stuff you relied on that parent for, you now have to do yourself.

I'm very heartbroken that your father died from a preventable infection that the hospital didn't take care of. My dad died of a heart attack, which was the culmination of a lifetime of hard work in unpleasant circumstances, it was a reasonable ending for the life he'd led. Your father didn't deserve what happened to him.

One thing that you shouldn't worry about is guilt. The hospital was guilty, not you.

My recommendation for coping in the short term is just try to stay busy doing absolutely anything at all, and don't spend too much time inside your own head. The pain will come in waves, but after a while you recognize what's coming and how best to deal with it. You'll always have the scars, but the bleeding will stop and you can start healing.

Losing a parent is extremely difficult. Today is actually the 2 year anniversary of my mother's passing. She went into the hospital in May with back pain, lots of tests later, they found out it was actually lung cancer that had spread to her spine. She fought for several months, but was in constant pain the entire time. She finally succumbed to the cancer after being placed into hospice care.

The thing with the funeral arrangements is that they distract the immediate family from the on-coming pain. You're so busy with the planning and arranging and getting things in order that you have no time to actually grieve. I would wake up exhausted, plan things all day, make sure my siblings and my Dad were ok, and then pass out exhausted and then repeat for several days.

It didn't really -sink- in until several days after the funeral and after I returned to work that things weren't going to be the same.

Two years later and I still have that same awful feeling in my stomach that I remember on the day she passed, the same feeling the day of the wake, the same feeling at the burial, and the same feeling when I was finally alone for the first time.

I found this piece of advise and I think it helped me understand what I was going through:

"Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gorged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."


As to how to cope in the immediate future? Spend time with your family, understand that it's ok to be sad, it's ok to cry, it's ok to be crying one moment and then smirking the next as you remember something you loved about your dad. The journey isn't easy but it certainly is doable. Rely on your family and friends for support when you need them.

I apologize if this is a bit rambly as I wrote it I began to tear up. But if you need someone to talk to, feel free to PM me.

Aw.. Sara... *hug* I'm so sorry. I know I haven't been active on here at all. But I read this recently and finally came to left a comment. My father passed around September, too. The holidays will be a bit.. weird.. without him. But the guilt and pain WILL go away, and you will certainly find happiness again. It might take a while, though. For now, focus on you. Do what you need to do to survive. Let people around you know what's going on, so they understand. I was in the same situation as you - watching someone in pain for months, years at a time, then they pass after you think things are getting better. It's such a terrible feeling. I also didn't know what to think, how to feel. You will come out of this a stronger, more compassionate person. I know this sounds cheesy, but in a while you'll be able to listen to the birds chirping and the breeze blowing and think to yourself 'Life is okay.'. It took me a couple of years, but now I'm back. Of course I feel sad sometimes, but in the end, the best feeling out of this was 'acceptance'. You will be okay.

I'm here for you if you need to talk or anything - don't hesitate to send me a note.

Thinking about you today. Please stay strong *hug*