My heart goes out to you all as parents having to cope with something that is almost impossible for most of us to understand. I have never been in your shoes and wouldn't presume to tell you how to grieve - not even for a minute - but I do have a unique perspective in this regard that might be of some use.
When I had just turned two, my sister died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed genetic heart condition. She was eighteen and the firstborn. I am the youngest (by a wide margin) of five siblings. Prior to her death (and my birth) another child was lost during childbirth.
Needless to say my parents were devastated when Ann died. My brother (sixteen at the time) began to act out and wound up in juvenile hall for some period of time. My remaining sister has cerebral palsy and took it extremely hard, requiring hospitalization. The loss of my sister signaled the death knell for my family - culminating in my father's death from a broken heart six years later (heart attack).
I am looking at this situation now through the long tunnel of fifty years and have gained the perspective I didn't have as a two-year-old: While I can't say I felt any immediate grief at my sister's death, in fact, I barely remember her, I can say that my early years were horrifically impacted by my parents inability to reach out for help with their grief. Of course, times were different then but even today many people still feel that there is some weakness in seeking the help of a professional. In the few short years that my father lived after Ann's death, my parents dealt with their anguish by aiming it at each other. The fighting and horror that I witnessed were just awful.
After my father's death, my mother began a slow decline. Instead of effective treatment, she chose options and ways of coping with her pain that were less than healthy. I'm sure that she'd had all she could take and on some level, was really done living - if there's such a thing as a "living" suicide.... My childhood was effectively ended on the day my father died and I became the keeper of my mother's emotions.
I sensed that I couldn't do anything to upset her or rock the boat any more than it already had been so I just stopped having needs. I was nine. When I grew up (or thought I did), I married my way off one sinking boat on to another (twice).
I never got to know myself because I was too busy being worried about a grief-sick mother and a disabled sister so I made all the classic mistakes. I dealt with my problems and my depression the way I had been taught: deny them, stuff them, inebriate them, blame them on others - anything but FEEL them.
With the help of my brothers and sisters in ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), I am finding a way back to the child who was abandoned first by her parents and then by herself.
My mother's pain was immense and I don't blame her for anything as she truly didn't mean to hurt me in any way. She was an incredible person and my biggest hero in many ways. The immensity of her undealt-with-pain is what hurt me. Unfortunately whether she meant to neglect my needs or not - the end result was the same.
By relating this, by no means am I trying to admonish or chide. I am trying to present the point of view of a child of grieving parents: Especially one so young that I didn't even have a context for grief. Rest assured, I did have a context for fear of my world collapsing, which is what my parents devastation represented to me.
Please don't praise your remaining child(ren) for being "no trouble" or for being your "rock" or being "so dependable". They may need to fall apart too and if they think you're depending on them, they will make your their "job" and turn away from their own grief.
Don't go to the opposite extreme either. I often heard my mother lament "that she just couldn't take any more".... In my mind this translated to "Don't need me - I can't be a mother any more."
Talk about you grief in a healthy way. Don't try to hide your emotions, to them it will become a "mixed signal" and they might assume THEY are the reason for your sadness.
Don't over-emphasize your grief by catastrophizing everything or becoming melodramatic - your remaining child(ren) need to feel that there is still stability underneath your grief.
Encourage your children to talk about their grief without pressuring them. Keep bringing up the subject gently over time. Don't assume that they're all right just because they say they are or because they "seem" happy. Children grieve differently than adults. In some of my darkest moments, after my dad died, I clearly remember drawing, playing and laughing. It might be tempting to assume they're all right and that, in fact, may be what other people seem to want to hear, but they are not okay. How often have you heard this: "Oh, she seems to be doing so well, children are soooo resilient."
It may be convenient for everyone to believe that the grieving sibling is okay, but that just CAN'T be true. Children are often complicit in this, as they want you to be okay and they don't want to burden you with their grief AND/OR they are desperately trying to not feel their pain. They may be focusing on their biggest fear - that YOU will fall apart and they will be truly lost. They will do anything to insure that you are okay - you represent survival to them.
Please get professional help. Please Please Please. It is the responsible and most healthy thing you can do for your children whether they are here in your heart or in the flesh.
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