Tammy, I am deeply sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences on behalf of your daughter and family and yourself. Try and think of some special things to do for yourself and your daughter that will bring a little pleasure - a new rose bush, for sure and maybe a nice pic-me-up new outfit or something personal. One cannot change this very sad event, but a little indulgence sometimes helps. This may sound like an odd suggestion, but somebody I knew who had been to grief counselling was advised to do this and I remembered. When my mum passed away in England a few years' ago as an only child, I had to look after all her assets and sell up her home etc. It was very difficult but I remembered this from my friend and one day I took myself over to Liverpool saw a most gorgeous pink jacket made from silk and linen, more money than I had ever spent on anything like that - I fell in love with it, it fitted my small frame perfectly, and it was my mum's favourite company that made the jacket, but I knew she would never pay full price, I did, as I knew I would never see it again. I felt good in it, I can dress it up or dress it down, I wear it a lot, though it is dry-cleanable, it does not matter, I get a lot of pleasure out of it, and I thank my mum. :smile All the very best, Hugs Pauline - Vancouver Island.

For me it's only been a little over 3 weeks. Lost my mother to a sudden massive heart attack. We (my dad, younger sister and I) didn't see it coming. Any how, for me I haven't had sudden burst of tears yet. Not since the first week. Though, while standing in the basement looking at the picture of her sweet face next to her urn...I have lost it 2x. Thinking of the past, the good times...etc. As one of the members said "...it is only natural". What I at the moment can't and don't want to consider is how it will be when I loose my father as well. As I am presently a single male. So I would only have my younger sister to rely on when that day comes. Assuming I haven't found some one, gotten married and have started a family of my own. We all know our parents will eventually leave us. But till it actually happens to you... My 2 cents...

I've enjoyed the words of wisdom here, especially for those who have suffered loss. I have always cried or teared-up at weddings, sad movies, and of course, really let it go at funerals. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara! I too found that as I got into middle age and the kids were moving on with their own families, I seemed to become more melancholy about life in general. Especially with the loss of our own parents, it seemed to bring our own mortality into play. Now nearly 20 years after his parents death, my DH saw the death of his youngest brother due to cancer, which really affected him. He is also a very sentimental guy and occasionally will bring up 'John' and how senseless his death was at an early age. And his dear childhood friend suffered a massive stroke last year. Many of our childhood friends have passed away in the past 5-10 years, so we both have been reflecting on the past, but also seeing how a healthy lifestyle is paying off. And trying to spare our own family the grief that we know eventually will come.

Such things as telling off a mentally ill person do no good. They create negative karma and don't impact the negative person in any way other than to reflect back at them the negative energy they are giving out, which is how their life is going anyway, most of the time. I have already tried that strategy to the max and long-ago abandoned it. There are two issues for me. One is handling an aging parent with mental difficulties. The key is compassionate detachment. It would be the same if you had a younger relative who refused help for something like addiction, etc. Some people can't handle it and completely cut off all contact with the sick person. I have seen that play out in many families. Others get completely caught up in their family's dysfunction. I am treading a middle path, and I think I do that quite well . . . most of the time. My father's sickness frustrates and saddens me, but that is not the source of grief for my mother. It is occasionally painfully ironic, but that is just the tip of the iceberg with him. Mentally ill people do not learn from their mistakes or learn from advice given by other people. If they did, they would not be sick. Sometimes there is no fix, just accept and detach. You know, the old "let go and let god" of AA. I think I was not clear that I am already pretty much in that space as far as self-care goes. That isn't really the source of my grief. It's not just when I'm with my father that this grief for my mother hits me, so I probably shouldn't even have brought up his presence at the dinner. It is just that I so often do or see things I could have done with my mother so easily which would have made her happy, and it pains me to try and still do them, and find it difficult to find anyone ELSE who actually enjoys them the way my mother would. My husband does not, my father does not, and I have few relatives to share old memories with. I do tea parties for work also, and other things for work my mother would have enjoyed. Not the same thing. No one else in my social circle is knocking themselves out to carry on family niceties that include me. So yes, I can do it and I do, but I don't really have a partner in crime and my energy is limited. There are only so many tea parties I can plan. BTW, my whole wedding reception last summer was a tea party in honor of my mother. My cousins helped me do that. Then my cousin died six weeks later. But I still have a lot in common with her daughter and we do whatever we can when we can, but she lives quite far away. It's rare when I can get a friend or family member to visit, most are tied up with kids or grandkids. As a side note, the last time I saw my mother I came over for Sunday dinner, helped her cook and serve and cleaned up from it and left her with a batch of muffins for that next week's tea or breakfast. So I did what I could when she was alive. She never got to finish the muffins, she died from a fall while unloading groceries later that week, she had gotten home at tea time but didn't get that last tea break which would have come after the groceries had been put away. It pained me so to go to a church function at Christmas, one I had attended as a child, and see zero home-made food at the reception, and all paper plates even though the church had a full set of nice dishes--no one volunteering to wash them in the full kitchen that goes unused most of the time now. In their defense, the older ladies who were there were working hard to pull it off, the same group that I see almost everywhere and the ranks are thinning. So it's not just an issue of my mother passing on, that whole genteel way of life is fading away. I belong to some of the social and charity groups my mother belonged to, the ranks get thinner and thinner and older and older, with no young (we're talking 40's or early 50's) people to take their place. Not to mention the professional and community clubs that have just left town already, like AAUW, for example. I can't hardly get a friend to have the time to come over for a nice dinner, even if I could pull one off, most are sandwiching just like us.