It really doesn't feel...

[wondermentalist]

... like it has only been a month.  It feels much longer than that, or as if my mother never really existed at all, or maybe like being told stories about ancestors I never really met or knew.  The things about that relationship that used to tear me up don't really seem relevant anymore.  It's all just sort of ... distantly sad, in the way that

Comments

[kevinbunny]

Yeah.. I remember that 'distant' sensation when my own mother passed... I think it's a natural defense against depression. It'll wear off after a bit, I think.

[wondermentalist]

Maybe. But it was sharp enough when it happened, it just went faster than I expected into more of a maintenance mode. I expected it to be different; I had a lot more angst around my dad's death, and less experience, but I thought Mom's death would be a lot more like Dad's than like my grandparents, with whom I was more distantly connected. It's disconcerting to find it otherwise. (I suspect it has to do with unfinished issues and teenagerhood, but still... it feels like I don't care enough, somehow.)

[kevinbunny]

If it hurts, then it means you care. It will always hurt a little. But let's face it, being in the 'too busy to deal with things' mode is pretty much the perfect defense against angst and depression. You have a LOT on your plate, and just because you aren't wailing and tearing your hair out in grief 24/7 doesn't mean you are a bad person who doesn't care. Even when you stop being busy, you find that the newly-defined 'normal' has settled into place when you weren't looking. It happens.

So yes. Deal with things, and you will also deal with things, as it were.

[wondermentalist]

That's probably true.

I still wish I had been a somehow more perfect daughter. Which I suspect is my brain trying to turn "I wish I had been able to make her not have cancer and die" into something more rational.