The following is “Part 3” of a 3 part series I received from a grieving dads that faced the loss of his mom and daughter over a two-week time frame. This one is appropriately called “The Aftermath” due to his attempt to get back to “normal”.
In about a month-and-a-half, I cremated my mother and buried my daughter. My life will certainly never be the same. Things that once seemed so important couldn’t be more trivial to me. All my other problems seem very small next to what my family has gone through. For a while, I turned all my attention to supporting my wife. Once she seemed to be getting significantly better, I turned inward and have gone through a great bout of depression. I am starting to come out of it, but I am still always either very sad or on the edge of going off on whoever says just the wrong thing to me. I find I am productive at work, but I don’t care about it. I maintain a semblance of productivity to support my family. I’ve never been a workaholic, but now it all seems that work is very trivial to me. I have a lot of anger for the person I have chosen to blame for the death of our daughter, though it may be misdirected. I’ll probably never tell her anyway, so I don’t suppose any harm is done as long as I can also get past it somehow, someday. Mostly, I am just sad and miss my mother who I knew very well and my daughter who I never got to know, but love just as much as if she were here with me.
We have begun the process of healing, but I have come to realize that waiting for things to get back to normal is futile. Things will never be “normal” again.
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