A big list of surprising things about grief
POV: my mom died almost seven years ago
There are things you expect to happen after losing a loved one.
You expect to be sad. Really sad at first and then less sad over time. (This is false. You’ll always be sad, but with a whole lot of other emotions in the mix, and they’re on these dials that get turned up and down over time at seemingly random intervals.)
You expect your life to change.
But there are way more unexpected and surprising things, in my experience.
Since Mom died in 2019, I’ve been surprised that:
It’s really complex and awkward to tell people that she died. Who do you tell? How? What do you say?
There are a lot of logistics and paperwork involved in dying.
I enjoyed the funeral. I don’t know if that’s quite the right word, for obvious reasons, but I remember feeling so incredibly surrounded by love AND being in an almost manic-extrovert mode where I wanted to talk to everyone. It’s why I’m a big advocate to always go to the funeral as it truly meant the world to me.
I could go back to work three weeks after and function there.
I would need to then quit that job another year later because, actually, it probably wasn’t wise to go back so soon and not take enough time to process my emotions.
People really do bring your family casserole-type food, just like in the movies. That was really nice.
You can actually experience great joy in the middle of deep grief… Like going bungee jumping two months after or becoming an auntie six years later. This joy-grief combo is now your life.
Traveling is hyper emotional because I think about how she would be so excited for me. It feels inconceivable that I would do something so big, like travel to Morocco or Croatia or El Salvador, and she has no clue.
I think about Mom so little some days, and other days she’s the only thing I think about.
I feel so guilty when I don’t think about her.
You sort of become a mom when you lose your mom. Mothering my sisters (e.g., wedding dress shopping), my dad (e.g., helping with the family finances), and myself (e.g., talking myself down instead of calling her).
Any time I hear her name, I choke up.
Any time I see a woman her age, I want to know her.
Any time I catch a glimpse of curly grey hair, I do a double-take.
I will connect immediately with other people in the DMC (dead mom club).
I’m both more and less empathetic at the same time. Because I’ve experienced the loss of a close loved one, my heart goes out to people in similar scenarios. I get it now. And, I’m also sometimes less compassionate toward other people’s losses that I deem lesser - e.g., pets or grandparents who are already old. It’s not that I don’t think it’s sad or feel for them or think they shouldn’t be sad, but I just sometimes think “well, at least your mom is alive.” I’m working on this attitude
I’m more pessimistic than before. When someone tells me about a diagnosis, my mind jumps to the worst. I’m working on this attitude, too. I believe there is a lot of hope still.
Every Hallmark movie features a dead mom storyline.
And it’s always cancer.
It’s really annoying.
But I’m less triggered by it now.
I’m pre-grieving milestones I haven’t hit yet, like marriage or having kids, because I know it will be so hard to face without her.
I only want to become more like my mom, and whenever someone tells me I remind them of her, it’s the biggest compliment.
I sometimes find it hard to make new friends who never met Mom because I feel like they might never really know me, since they didn’t know her. OR they didn’t know me when she was alive, so she never existed to them. This one really sucks.
A lot of people don’t know how to talk about grief, including myself. We’re all just so awkward and actually very bad at it as a society. I’m trying to learn, and writing about it helps. I know most people really mean well, but there’s a long way to go to normalize talking about it and knowing how to support your grieving friends.
Death clarifies priorities. (That doesn’t seem so surprising, actually.)
And it makes you count your blessings.
I feel like I aged more quickly because of my grief. Lost the ages of 27-31 because of it. Not lost, exactly, but sped through them. Didn’t help that COVID was in there, too. 31-34 has been different somehow. I might overanalyze this in another article sometime.
I tend to put Mom up on a pedestal and only remember the good. (It was really mostly good.) I find it hard to think anything negatively about her or how she raised me, even though I know she was also a flawed human doing her best, sometimes making mistakes.
Grief made me so freaking tired all the time. I’ve always struggled with low energy, but boy oh boy did it get worse. I believe that the emotions of sadness, depression, grief, etc., manifest physically as tiredness for me.
Family dynamics change in good and bad ways. There have been lots of tough things to navigate that I never expected would come up.
And, at the same time, family is more important than ever before; you must cling together, or you will break apart.
I got a tattoo of my mom’s handwriting. Didn’t expect that.
I sometimes forget Mom is gone.
And remembering she is is the worst thing.
That feels like a good place to stop. I’d love to know in the comments—what surprised you about grief?
This gives me all the feels. I love reading your writing and hearing your mom/grief thoughts
All I can say is, yes, yes, and yes! You’ve captured the minutia of grief so well in this. I wrote a piece reflecting on the feeling of meeting someone who has also lost a parent, and your post surfaces those same emotions.