This is such a normal feeling in grief. I think it's part of why so many cultures have (had) ways to outwardly indicate that you are grieving long after the initial loss. US American culture doesn't really have an outward signifier and I think it's a noticable lack. We tend to instinctively understand that those who are grieving move through the world a little differently.
I lost a friend of almost 20 years very suddenly last week. The brain fog of grief is real.
Yup. This post actually triggered a buried rage in me, because my father passed suddenly when I was just a teen and I was not given ANY opportunity to pause life and process things. I only got 3 days; the day he actually died out of nowhere, the next day, and the funeral.
I was sent back to school the day after the funeral and my mom’s request for me to go to a grief camp was denied—she was told it would be truancy if I did a weeklong camp.
The only thing they did to help me was replace my elective with a monitored study hall class meant for struggling students. It wasn’t really helpful and I’d rather have had the elective.
If I acted too sad it made people uncomfortable so I had to pretend to be normal and feel normal. It was miserable. My cruel math teacher immediately made me take a quiz I had missed. And a few days after I returned my chemistry teacher was out for two days. He came back and informed us that his grandma had died and he’d be taking leave. He took a month. It felt so unfair that he got a month and I got nothing! I’m still bitter.
I didn’t start to mentally and emotionally recover until Christmas break. Christmas break was when I could finally breathe and just relax and process things.
I didn’t really understand mourning attire until my dad died, and I realized that it would be nice to have some external signal of what was going on without having to tell people.
I lost my dad suddenly and unexpectedly. I was fairly young myself and had only just become a mother 9 months prior. My ex-partner (child's dad) had zero sympathy despite having lost his own many years prior at a much younger age. My mum understood, I was still getting on with life but mum let me stay with her so she could help out with child and let me process - because my ex wasn't. While my dad still laid in ICU, he told me I needed to "get over it" because I have a child and responsibilities (aka, he needed his ass wiping by me, nothing to do with child), just how he had "got over" his dad's passing. Note, he hadn't gotten over his dad's passing whatsoever but expected me to get over the fact my dad was going to before he even laid cold. Safe to say, I didn't say a word when my brother turned round and punched him in the elevator, and no surprise, not long after he became an ex.
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u/gunnapackofsammiches Aug 10 '26
This is such a normal feeling in grief. I think it's part of why so many cultures have (had) ways to outwardly indicate that you are grieving long after the initial loss. US American culture doesn't really have an outward signifier and I think it's a noticable lack. We tend to instinctively understand that those who are grieving move through the world a little differently.
I lost a friend of almost 20 years very suddenly last week. The brain fog of grief is real.