Losing a loved one (2 Viewers)

[Chand]

A cousin, mid last year...same age as me, finished his HSC and was doing tafe in '04. I think all my younger cousins looked up to him, he was great with kids..but we don't talk about it.

I don't know how much younger teenage cousins are coping (even though I'd like to know they're ok)...but I think the general motion taken was to acknowledge it and forget about it in the sense they don't remind others of what happened. I think everyone's coping their individual way.

Another was when I was in 3/4 in primary and a year 5/6 student passed away. We had a small and close school, and I remember he was really nice and helpful/kind to the younger students...like a big brother.

 

[spiny norman]

I've had a lot of death in my life. I've had several cats die, some of which were fairly tragic. The ones that stick out in my memory was this cat I adored called Mozart. Earlier that day we had found a brown snake in the backyard and killed it. Both the cat and the dog looked fine, but then at about two that night I remembered hearing some noises in the laundry and walked out to see it groaning lying across the ironing board, absolutely paralysed. We had to have it put down. I also had another cat who I'd had for six years or so who was absolutely gorgeous, and one day was going out. I walked out, sat down in the car and saw my cat suddenly bolt onto the street and get hit by a car. The third most tragic one, and most recent one, was a cat who I came home from school to find it sleeping on the driveway. As I approached it and found it unanswering, I slowly came to the realisation that it was dead.

As for friends or family, I can't recall ever having a friend, or anyone from school really, die. I know in Primary School a friend of mine had his father die which was incredibly tragic. The closest people to me to have died were my grandmothers. My mother's mother had a stroke, but appeared to be getting better. Then she became comatose, and so we went to visit her. I remember sitting by her bed as her breaths came at differing intervals, and knew at some stage soon she would not breathe again. She died about five hours after I left her.

My father's mother had often babysat me when I was young. I was always extremely close to her, as she had been a drug addict manic depressive who was a terrible mother, and so she saw me as a second chance kind of thing. But I was born the day before her birthday, and so she always called me her birthday present. Anyway, due to the years of drug abuse and chain smoking, she had poor circulation and as a result an infected toenail led to her toe being amputated, then her foot, then her leg, then her other leg. I remember the last time I saw her she was looking optomistic about being able to learn to walk again, but she killed herself not too long after, on the two-year anniversary of her mother's death.

Both of those hit me really hard. My father never properly coped with his mother's death, and has basically been suffering from depression ever since, but refuses to do anything about it. He won't even look at photographs of her or of his childhood.

 

[mmm_sofay]

my best friends dad died on the 04/04/04. the day before my legal studies trial.
my friend came over at about 10.30pm that sunday night, with her aunt and her nan. i had a feeling that is was because he had died, as at the time they said he passed away, i was thinking about him, and he was a pilot, and i knew he was going to die, so i just thinking 'fly high' at the time he passed away.
but i stayed up all night with my best friend and her family. i cried a bit that night, but the nextmorning when i got home, i went inside and went into my mums bed and just layed down next her and burst into tears, i cried so much that day. i went to school that day and i cried so much, whenever someone asked me what was wrong, i just started crying all over again.
and at his funeral, i cried so much when they took his coffin out of the church and and just looking at the faces of my best friend and her younger sister and her mum just made me cry so much.
but i think all that crying did me good, as now when i think about him, i dont cry. but i didnt know him long, about a year. but he treated me like another daughter as me my friend were so close and he knew that i never really had a dad around. he was just a really nice caring person.

 

[Shuter]

To those talking about pet deaths. Stop, you don't have anything.

 

[soha]

yeah i know iw a sthinking that b4
even tho i love my cats and would hate to see them die
but still..they just animals compared to human life

but still..its sad...eitehr way

 

[_muse_]

i nearly lost my dad when i was 5, i had no idea what was wrong with him, all i remember is him sitting in a office with me and my sister on the floor (it was my sisters 4th birthday) and he was holding my mums hand crying saying 'oh my god im going to die'.. thats the first and only time i have seen my dad cry.. we visited him in hospital every day, he gave us snickers bars from out of the mini bar beside his hospital bed ... this went on for 9 or so years, every now and then he would be re-admitted, it was so scary. you never realise how much you love someone until you see them in a hospital bed or see them in some kind of situation where you might lose them. Thankfully, someone up there answered our prayers and now my dad is in remission (he had leukemia)...

as for losing people: my uncle committed suicide... his brother committed suicide and their son (my second cousin) committed suicide also.. (these were all at different times). My great aunts partner died of cancer only a few months ago and im pretty sure my other aunt isnt far off.

i think the best way to deal with it is to take a few days off whatever you do (school, work etc) and just.. grieve. i believe there is no other thing you can do, for me, this is what works best. just crying. i cant talk to people when im upset... i feel like im asking for sympathy if i cry on someones shoulder so i dont do it. ive never wanted anyones sympathy when anyone in my family has died.. i just needed to be alone, i need to remember them and to cry.

anyway thats my story.. thats how i get over the grieving stage.. and they are who i have lost/nearly lost in my life


rant over.

 

[spiny norman]

To those talking about pet deaths. Stop, you don't have anything.

I don't think you understand what it can be like. They become part of the family. Though maybe it would be better if there were a separate pet thread.

 

[Cape]

When i was in year 6 a really close friend of mine died of an asthma attack in the school grounds - he literally died right infront of everyone, it was so sad.

But being such a young 6 - well not really young and not having dealt with anything like it before, i just ignored it.

But now when i look but i realised that cause of this guys death it really provented me from becoming close to anyone and i also pushed it to the side and i had a tough time from then onwards and i ended up on anti depressents and in hospital numerous times.

Its really difficult to cope with, i don't want to ever go through it again.

 

[Shuter]

But being such a young 6 - well not really young and not having dealt with anything like it before, i just ignored it.

But now when i look but i realised that cause of this guys death it really provented me from becoming close to anyone and i also pushed it to the side

That's like what I did, except I was able to ignore it for ages untill about a year ago, but now I'm fine. Never was hospitalised or anti-depressents though, I don't believe in that crap, I tihnk you have to deal with it yourself.

 

[Cape]

I didn't actually think that i was that bad enough to be hospitalised ... it was only over night ... but oh well. I forced my self off anti depressents - believe it or not it was cause of the hsc that i stopped taking them.

we only turn out to be stronger people from the troubled times that we go through in our life.

 

[sugaryblue]

it's really hard at first because there's always so many regrets- that I haven't been a good enough friend. i suppose that agonising over it has been the hardest part. it does take a while, but time just makes things a little easier. you just have to learn to take each step at a time ~hug~

 

[_muse_]

this is a very depressing thread.... *sigh*

 

[Ranger Stacie]

we've had heaps of deaths in our family of elderly people and as awful as it sounds, i think it is for the better cos they all had dementia or were in pain and didnt have a good quality of life.

 

[Yarg]

my grandfather died when i was in year 6 i think, i cried for one night. I never went to the hospital to see him, and i didnt go to his funeral or wake or anything. I find it easier to just block it out, i was pretty close to him, or i had started to get close to him at least. Denying it all works wonders i recon. The hospital was treating him and they accidentally put too much of something in him and it filled his lungs and he drowned...

 

[pinkblinkbarbie]

we had a really close family friend of ours die year before last. she was like an aunt and even a mum to us at times. she was sick for ages but i never expected her to die. she died exactly 2 weeks before my birthday, and the day of my birthday i had an english exam and we had to write an eulogy. i just burst into tears in the middle of the exam because i missed her so much.
i went to the funeral and i balled my eyes the whole way through. afterwards her husband came out and hugged me for ages telling me it would be ok. and i belived him, i mean if he could be that strong then so could i. i havent cried since, but everytime i see her husband i always wonder how he copes, and i miss her so much, there is just this big empty gap, but its easier for me to believe that god decided it was her time to leave this world, and he thought he had lived her life to the fullest and she had done what he put her on this earth to do.
she was like an angel to us...so i miss her heaps.
coping is the hardest thing, but each person finds there own way of coping with a death. and it takes time to realise that sometimes, i was lucky that i realised it straight away.

 

[demosthenes]

I lost my cousin on Sunday. He was my age, and my best mate.
I need to talk about this so much, but i just cant...i am still coming to terms with it. Like, I have lost people before, but this is different...i cant explain why.
Is there somewhere you can talk about this kinda thing?

 

[Shuter]

Kids Help line, but I don't have the number offhand.

 

[azzie]

1800 55 1800 i think
demosthenes, im really sorry

 

[bubz :D]

hmm... i usually never talk about this with people unless they bring it up first, coz i feel really bad if they didn't already know about it and they'll be like "omg i'm so sorry for bringing it up, i didn't know" and depending on who they are, sometmes i'm uncomfortable with it so i can't exactly agree with jumb about dealing with it by talking about it a lot... but everyone deals with things differently.

my mum died just before i started high school, a few months before that a close family friend died from drugs... and 2004 was horrible, one of my best friends committed suicide, aunty died from cancer, sister's friend from primary school (who i also knew) was murdered.

i guess the way i deal with it is just... occupying myself. when i started high school, hardly anyone knew, or could tell, that my mum'd just died, coz i was acting exactly the same. when my friend asked, she was like "omg... i'm so sorry.. if it was my dad i'd be bawling my eyes out in every class"

i regret a lot of things - things i did or didn't do. and it's something that i'll just have to live with. a lot of things remind me of my mum, and sometimes something'll trigger me and i'll cry my head off. for a few months, every time i went past my high school, i'd get teary (my sister's friend had just started there when she was murdered). whne i went back to HK recently, i couldn't look at my aunty for the first few days because she looks and acts like my mum so much.

time does help, though.

 

[Shuter]

when i started high school, hardly anyone knew, or could tell, that my mum'd just died, coz i was acting exactly the same. when my friend asked, she was like "omg... i'm so sorry.. if it was my dad i'd be bawling my eyes out in every class"

Oh yes, it's so awkward isn't it. Like I would say I'm fine with it now, but they'd still feel bad and a bit awkward. Luckaly most people knew because someone had told them at some point. Even more awkward was when people would kind of start saying something then catch themselves and remember and try to cover up what they were originally going to say. Ya mum jokes took a bit of getting used to too.