Grief

[Scattybird]

Sorry for duplicate post. When I get impatient on the iPad I just get a message telling me to slow down but only one message appears. Got the same message when using my phone, but it posts twice. Just be grateful I didn’t press the submit button 6 times! 🙂

 

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[dithl]

@scattybird, thanks x two 🙂

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[blackdog]

Sorry to hear the news. But it is good that your mom is at rest now.

Ditto what Scattybird said. Not only is it okay, it’s necessary.

I have never seen the message to slow down on the iPad. I guess I’m too slow.

 

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[Misswho23]

I haven’t been on here for a little over a year now. I finally got back on and saw the post grief. The reason for my own absence is that after one of my lasts posts back in dec 2012 My mother passed away the day before new years eve. And my life has been quite chaotic ever since.

@dithl, I’m no sorry to hear of your mother passing. My mother too had been ill and while it was not unexpected too soon for my sister and I. So I know what you are going though.

Over the last year I have thought a lot of everyone here on the forum’s. And although I couldn’t bring my self to post anything I am so grateful for the time I spent here. Simple things I learned about being organized helped me get through the funeral planning. I was the executor of the estate and I don’t think I could have done it without having some of the conversations about getting through life and getting tasks done on here. All before my mother passed on but now I can look back and see what being involved on the forums prepared me for.

Not to go on about my own stuff, I guess it goes to show just what this place has become to so many people. Not just a fun place to figure out how to live with ADD/ADHD. But a place to help us get through the really big stuff. When it really matters to know your not in this alone. I think having ADHD makes me feel things a bit more intensely. So knowing there are people like me helped me make it through one of the toughest times in my life.

I just wanted to post how this place helped me to get through it. Even though I wasn’t on here this past year. I plan on coming back.

Thanks.

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[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

As always, some beautiful thoughts. I love how great you all are.

I won’t offer any advice, @dithl. It’s just crappy.

My father passed away suddenly in 1989 and he is still in my thoughts.

What you are going through is the worst.  And I do think most ADHD people feel things more deeply that other folks.  And  because we’re working on three new videos on ADHD & Emotions, I’ve been listening to a lot of very smart ADHD experts talking about this.

One of the videos with hyper-sensitivity. Being too sensitive. Too touchy.  Over reacting. Feeling things so deeply that it takes us down. From the earliest days ADHD experts like Paul Wender, Thomas Brown, and Russell Barkley talked about ‘our sensitivity, emotionality, and depth of feeling, sometimes to where it’s a problem. ‘Emotional dis-regulation.’

Coach Barbara Luther shares some stories of her own experiences, and explains something called Empathetic Distress, which is pretty much what it sounds like. We can feel someone else’s pain so deeply, that we make it our own.

Sometimes that has happened to me. It’s why I can’t watch violent movies or programs where children are killed. They aren’t just characters on the screen. I end up caught up in thoughts of, “What if…?”

I hope you keep coming back and sharing where you are at. I can tell you Ava and I lost 7 family members over an 18 month stretch a few years back, and it’s still there for us.

I know you aren’t looking for advice. In fact, actually, just writing it out and letting others share their experiences, is a good way to get the emotions out. Keeping them held in or suppressed is exhausting. When my father died I basically put my own feelings on the back burner to be there for my mom and help cheer her up. Dumb, but hey, that was how I dealt with stuff.

Ridiculous now that I look back at it. You can’t cheer up someone who has lost their partner of 45 years!  You have to let them grieve. I didn’t get that. Being a guy, I wanted to fix it, heal it, have mom move on and climb out of the sorrow and regret and suffering.

It delayed the process. And I hate the word process, because it sounds so industrial or clinical, but had I really stopped feeling bad about my father, who was an amazing guy, my hero, and what happened? It simmered and percolated and then it came out in waves of sadness, a mild depression, and losing myself in work to try to feel good.

When I was able to just sit and talk about how much I missed my dad, and let it out, and cry, I was able to also smile. (You can only cry so much. It’s weird how much laughter there can be at funerals.) I was able to focus on all the good stuff, and see that while my Dad had died sooner than we expected, and completely out of the blue, he had a great life.

I found that as I was able to get to the good stuff, and this took years and years, my mom was able to find peace too. We could talk about dad. And not have it turn into bitter regret on her part, and me trying to put a happy face on it to cheer her up. We could actually remember what a great character my dad was and laugh at stuff he did or said.

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[sdwa]

@dithl

So sorry to hear about your mom. It’s tough in those difficult last months. But I’m glad you came and shared that.

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[dithl]

@misswho23: Thanks for sharing, and glad you’re back. Must’ve been a little eerie seeing this right off the bat.
@rick thank you for your story. I am actually much happier than I would have expected. I’ll take it at face value for now – time will tell if I’m suppressing things. I think I have worried about her for years – not just the illness, but other things as well, and now that stress is gone it’s such an enormous relief. I think also that this is a case where short term memory issues is a blessing. I can’t dwell on every little detail….because I can’t remember it all.
To bring it back to A.D.D., I have really been interested to see how 6 of us siblings have been communicating and dealing with planning funeral and estate issues. Most of us probably have some level of impairment in executive functioning. Knock on wood, so far things have gone rather well. It’s a more “organic” way of planning. Definitely not hierarchical (it can’t be – with both parents gone and no will to go by, we have to decide together how to approach things). By no means is it perfect, but it’s working in a very A.D.D. friendly way. Technology has been a boon for this. At first, we used a closed Facebook group to keep each other up to date on her illness and to coordinate when each of us would be with her. Now, for the whole daunting task of sorting through almost 40 years of accumulated “stuff”, we’ve started using an online project management program. It’s keeping lines of communication open, which would have been sheer torture though telephone alone.
Here I go being all optimistic again, finding the silver lining in everything – another A.D.D. gift. 🙂

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[blackdog]

@dithl

Glad to see things are going well. 🙂

There is a certain amount of relief that comes with the end of worry. And in our case, not having dad around anymore. Though I think mom actually misses the grumbling and complaining, cursing and swearing, yelling and screaming…… You get used to it after 50 years.

It might actually be better that all 6 of you have executive function issues. Make things flow a little more smoothly maybe.

Take each day as it comes and keep looking for those silver linings. That is a gift that I need to learn to appreciate more myself. 🙂

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