
I think I judge my emotions too much, rather than just letting myself feel what I feel, and when someone dies, that’s always one of the more confronting times to over-think your emotions, your reactions.
When older people die, I react more to the pain of the people around me than any overly strong emotions about the person’s death. Yes, I was sad when my grandfather died, but his gradual decline over the few years leading up to it, and spending the last 6 months in hospitals made it a matter of when. Preparedness.
Same with my uncle who we lost overnight. A stroke a year ago maybe really put him out of action. And it’s been little chips away since. And so the goodbyes were expected to happen, sometime in the near future at least. Right now the biggest feeling is guilt, around not being there for people as much as I would have liked to have been.
My aunt, back at the end of first year uni, was a different story. Her daughter, finding her 40 year old mother unresponsive, ran to our house (down the street), me mum and my father running down to hopefully help, but unfortunately not being able to. The people coming up to me at the funeral thanking me for my attempts to help made me uncomfortable. Discomfort was the biggest emotion that day. And the need to comfort and look after others.
I’m not sure if it’s that I shut down? That I don’t let myself cry? Or that I rationalised the tears away? Or I’ve already processed those emotions? I’m not sure.
The younger people, Cancer taking Amanda at 26, or the suicides of Tania and Karter within a month of each other, do they hit me harder because of my own fears around what could happen to me? Because I wasn’t close to those people. But the three deaths each really shook me. There was that sense of helplessness there. I don’t like to feel that way. Or is it just the shock?
Maybe when I’m old, when I start losing peers to age-related illnesses, maybe then those sorts of deaths will affect me more outwardly.
Or maybe by then I’ll understand my own emotional processes a little better.
Take care *hug*
lifeline – 13 11 14
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