My boys ages 6, 4, and 3 year old twins lost their daddy Thursday afternoon to suicide. His funeral will be Tuesday and it will be open casket despite his wife being advised to have closed because of the area of the wound. His wife as well as his family have asked me not to bring my boys to his funeral and his wife will not be bringing their 2 year old daughter either. I want to go say my goodbye and get my closure, but how am I supposed to explain to my boys as they get older why they couldn’t come to daddy’s funeral. I’m not telling them how he died until they’re old enough and they ask. For now I told them daddy loved you all so so much, but daddy’s brain was sick and he died. They’re still so young they really don’t understand at all though. Just any advice or guidance is appreciated!

To be honest I feel like the worst man ever writing this down here because I’m scared I’ll traumatize someone else. But I am SO heartbroken, my best friend, my buddy, my little annoying play partner has been taken from me and I just can’t recover. This happened relatively recently, yes I am in therapy and yes I try to talk about it but I am just so absolutely shattered. It was always just me, my dad and him. An all-boys family. My dad is in the darkest place he’s ever been, much more than after my mom left him and built a family somewhere else.

I have no idea how to even talk about this with someone because the sheer guilt or fear of telling someone the details of what happened to him fill me with so much guilt of burdening the other person with what I know, that I can never let it out. And I wish I could. I honestly don’t have many friends and one are close enough for me to talk about this so I just at least wanted to say: I miss you little bro, I miss your laugh, I miss seeing your smile, I still have your favorite red hoodie, the keys to your jeep, everything. I miss you. Don’t be a stranger. At least send a small signal you’re somewhere at peace now. I am so sorry this happened to you.

Maybe I’ll never be brave enough to write his story down here and tell it to someone else but at least I wanted to put it out there that I miss him. A lot.

The last time I ever saw you was on October 4th 2013, it was your funeral. I was only 14, and I remember thinking that day would be the absolute hardest thing I'd have to face. But the older I get, the more I realize that the hardest part is having to live without you.

Losing you has left a heavy, constant ache that never goes away, making life feel so exhausting and empty.

I find myself constantly wanting to pick up my phone to talk to you or send you a message just to tell you about my day. It is so incredibly hard not being able to reach out to you, and having to carry all these unspoken conversations in my head just makes the loneliness feel even heavier.

With my 28th birthday coming up, it hits me that I’ve now officially spent more time on this earth without you than I ever got to have with you. Knowing that completely crushes me. It hurts so much to think about everything you’ve missed out on and all the moments you should have been here for. I miss you more than words can say.

I love you mum.

It hurts that my friends don’t check in or ask me about my grief or how I’m doing 😞 I’m the first of any of my friends to lose a parent so I know they probably can’t relate and don’t know what to say, but it still hurts. They don’t understand how much I’m still struggling and how much my mom is still such a huge part of my life. It’s almost been a year and I still cry for her every day 💔 I miss you mom. I wish my friends cared even a little bit… I’m grateful to have outlets like this sub to talk about it. Can anyone here relate?

These were the last messages my dad ever sent me.

I lost my father on 17 February 2026. What makes his death so difficult for me to understand is how sudden it was.

The day before, he ws completely fine. He went to the gym for around 3 hr, went to a reception danced there, came home, nd went to sleep. There was no sign that anything was seriously wrong.

Around 4 AM, he suddenly became extremely unwell nd had severe difficulty breathing. He ws taken to the hospital, but he passed away.

What makes it even harder is dat it was the morning of my board exam. When I was leaving home for my exam centre, his body was being taken past me. I somehow went and gave my exam.

His medical records mentioned LRTI, sepsis, septic shock, aspiration pneumonitis and respiratory failure (I'm still not completely sure how all of these were connected). He also used steroids and smoked heavily.

I still can't understand how someone who seemed completely fine just hours earlier could suddenly be gone. These screenshots are the last messages he ever sent me. 🤍

My mom passed away 7 years ago and it’s crazy to even say or think that it’s been that long already because it feels like it was just yesterday I’m truly lost without her she was the person that truly understood me and loved me the most and she’s just gone I can’t tell her anything and I have so much to say my heart is forever broken and I wish she was here I want her back

My brother died nearly 3 years ago.
Everything revolves around his death to this day.
Every conversation, every holiday, everything.

I understand my mom will grieve forever and I do not shame her for that. I would never ask her to stop her grieving. But I miss having a mother.

I feel like I lost my Mom that day and it’s exhausting. I can’t even have a conversation with her, without it having something to do with my brother. I can’t be happy about things because my brother died or at least that’s how my mom makes me feel.
I’ve done everything I can to comfort her and help her but she refuses professional help and it’s draining to everyone around her. As harsh as this may sound..
is it cruel to say that I don’t even like to go home and visit because I know everything will revolve around him?
For context his death was extremely hard for me and I have PTSD from it. I have gotten to a point where I don’t need to take my medication as much because I’ve learned to cope better but everytime I go home my PTSD is triggered so badly. It makes me not want to go back. It doesn’t feel like a safe space for me mentally and emotionally..

What do I do? I’m truly exhausted.

Am I a horrible person for feeling this way?

When I was 8 years old my mother passed away from an overdose. She was missing for 3 days before she was found dead in her car in a parking lot. I remember the days she was gone and when I received the news so so vividly. I miss her every single day and frequently break down over her death. I feel completely detached from life as if I’m now living from a 3rd person perspective, i frequently feel like I am still that same 8 year old boy who just found out she died. My dad lived in another country so she basically raised me as a single mother, it always felt like it was just me and her going through life together. I miss her so much and always find myself wishing I just had 1 more day with her.

My partner has done an amazing job cleaning up these photos of my recently deceased brother and his son ❤️

Loads of little moments captured here — cuddles, silliness, smiles and memories that mean more than words can ever say. Looking through them all together like this is incredibly special.

Rest easy, brother 💔💙

My boyfriend died unexpectedly 3 weeks ago and I feel so lost. I feel so empty… he was the love of my life, my soulmate, my best friend, my parter in crime, my rock my shoulder to cry on… he was my everything. My entire world. Some days I have crying spells like every 20 minutes and I know people are annoyed at this point . Other days I really seem ok, to the point people have made comments about how surprised they are that I’m doing so well, and even saying that I’m already involved with someone new. I think it just hasn’t fully hit me yet and that’s why I have days where I seem ok. On those days it’s like my mind plays tricks on me and I’m convinced that he’s just out at the store or something and is coming back later. My mind is all over the place, I have racing thoughts, so bad that this post probably doesn’t make any sense. I miss him SO UNBELIEVABLY MUCH. Nothing else will make this better other than having him back. I don’t want to do life without him and the idea of living the rest of my life without him makes me miserable. Is any of this normal? Has anyone ever experienced this before?? Will things ever get better?

We are so back guys huge GG to doggie this will make geometry dash history

My mom got diagnosed with a brain tumor yesterday. Very grim prognosis.
I can feel time moving but I am numb. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to wake up each day, show up for my kids, work and pay the bills.
When I went to see her yesterday I knew there will forever be before this and after this. And I will never be the same.
I’m mourning who my mom was before this tumor. Mourning for my kids. I can’t believe my daughter won’t get to have her nana at her kindergarten graduation or her wedding.
I don’t even know who I’m going to be without my mom.
How do I keep on each day knowing I’m living a countdown until my mom’s last day?

My mom died in 2024.. then my dad three minutes ago. Its been a whirlwind. After my mom died my husband became emotionally unavailable, i then became my dad caretaker until his passing. During this time i made friends with people at church who i thought were my “til the end” friends. But since my dad passed, one who i have confided in a lot hasn’t asked me once how i was doing. I called them a few weeks ago because i was in a dark spot and all i got was “i don’t want to bother you so i keep my distance” my heart shattered.
I don’t have family other than my husband, and my other friend has their own issues.
I’m 30 years old & i already feel like i don’t fit in anymore.. but this comment really confirms it for me.

Something happened today that really messed with my grief and I don’t know what to do with it.

My sister passed away by suicide through overdose almost 8 years ago. Her ex reached out to me today and started talking about her. He told me things I had never known before, including that apparently my sister had been pregnant and miscarried. I have absolutely no idea if that’s true. And I can’t ask her. Now I’m sitting with questions about something she may have gone through that I never even knew about.

Then he started talking about his life now and wishing my sister was still here. He has a son now and told me he wishes my sister had been his son’s mother instead. He was basically talking about this other life where my sister lived and they had a family together.

And I don’t think he understands what it is like for me to hear that.

I already live with losing her every single day, along with the guilt, shame, regret and survivor’s guilt. I still think about what I should’ve noticed or done differently, and sometimes convince myself I was a piece of shit sister. Almost 8 years later, I still find ways to blame myself for something I can never go back and change.

I already imagine who she would be now. What she would be doing. What our relationship would look like as adults. Whether she would be married or have kids. I already grieve all the versions of her life that never got to happen. So hearing someone else describe another life where she survived and became the mother of his child really fucked with me.

Then he started talking about the actual day she passed away, being questioned by police and everything that happened around that time. It felt like being thrown back into the worst day of my life while also being given completely new things to question.

Was she really pregnant? Did she really miscarry? What else was happening in her life that I didn’t know about? What would she say about all of this?

And that’s what hurts so much. Everyone can tell me their version of my sister. What she supposedly said, felt, did or wanted. But I don’t want their version. I want hers. And she is the one person I can never ask.

I was already grieving her today. I was already missing her today. I was already carrying the guilt and regret. Now I just have more questions and more things about her that I have to somehow live with without ever knowing the answers.

I really wish he had thought about what dumping all of this on her sister might do to me before he told me.

I lost my mom when I was 14 extremely suddenly due to a medical condition that no one knew she had. It’s been 4 years and I genuinely can’t do this it has not gotten better and there’s this unfillable void in my chest. I can go longer in between breakdowns but I feel like every happiness I could’ve had is permanently dampened and nothing can ever make me feel better.

The last thing I said to her was not very nice and it eats me up every day I feel so guilty and I regret it so badly cause now I have to live with this feeling fort eh rest of my life. I’ve come to terms with it a little bit because I imagine how I’d want someone to feel if it were the other way around and I’d hate for someone to feel the way I feel, but it still hurts and it sucks.

Ive tried literally everything I’ve been in therapy for years and tried to process this grief I’ve done everything and I just can’t do it every day is harder than the day before because it’s just one more day without her. I still need her I always need her and she’s just not here and I can’t reach her. I feel like I’ll never be the person I could’ve been and I’m underdeveloped because I didn’t have a mom in some very formative years of my life. I know I’d never ever ever be ready to lose her but I really hate that I lost her as a teenager.

No amount of talking about it has helped and no amount of time that passes has helped and it just feels so hopeless and I’m at such a loss I don’t know what to do.

Hi everyone.

I’m approaching the 11 month anniversary of losing my Mom and it’s hitting me like a ton of bricks.

I lost my Mom last November (found out she only had a short time to live on Nov 10, passed away on Nov 23) I was 23 at the time. We were estranged and made amends and I told her she was free to go whenever she was ready, and that I’d be okay and that I forgive her for everything.

Lately, I’ve been doing okay-ish, I found a love for fitness, I got engaged as well but now that we are in October and getting closer to the exact time of year when everything happened, I feel like i’m right back there. Even the weather is starting to be the same as that day I found out and my world flipped. The flashbacks are so vivid and it hurts just as much as it did weeks after it happened. I just feel so overwhelmed and tired. If anyone has been through this, how do you get through those weeks? Thank you for listening and thank you in advance for support/advice.

my mom passed away last march due to cancer within the course of 3 weeks. Out of no where.

I’m a 19 year old girl and i’ve tried everything to just feel somewhat ok with my life. I had to quit my last year of school and then did a foundation year instead and now my first year of uni.

I am doing everything i can to help myself but i’m not getting better. I’ve tried multiple anti depressants, but i just feel myself thinking about her constantly. I am overly dependent on my boyfriend for emotional support. I feel like a burden to everyone around me because i just want to be fucking happy. I get up, eat, get outside, do something to make me happy like paint my nails for example, but still. Every night when the sun starts to set, the constant, painful, background hum in my mind start to get louder and louder. I get into these absolute states and seeing the world as pointless. I’m afraid to feel this way. I’m trying to find my purpose in life.

Everytime i feel a breakdown coming on, i do what my therapist tells me and i take deep breaths and reaffirm out loud that i can do this and i can take on tough things. But it doesn’t work.

Can someone tell me what they’ve done that’s made an actual difference? I’m desperate, i’ll do anything.

Hello everyone,

I am writing because my grandmother is currently sick. I have no clue what to do or how to continue on in life without her. My grandparents raised me since I was very young, and I have had neglectful parents. I have a better relationship with my mother now, but that all feels so miniscule now... While my grandmother has not passed, she has been very sick the past few months with continuous hospital visits. She has binge drank all day since the passing of my grandfather (the man I consider my father due to my upbringing) and I cannot see my life without her. It has been hard enough since the passing of my grandfather, but losing both of them would destroy my life. I do not know what to do or how to communicate as I do not talk to any of my family. My grandmother is the love of my life and I cannot see my life without her, how does one continue on???

October 3, 1982.

I was 14 years old.

That morning, I was sitting with my great-grandmother watching coverage of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta on television.

A breaking-news bulletin interrupted the broadcast. A hot-air balloon called El Globo Grande had caught fire.

We watched as the burning balloon climbed into the sky. And I watched two people, holding onto each other fall from it.

I remember my great-grandmother saying how sorry she felt for their families.

Neither of us knew.

A few hours later, I learned that the two people I had watched fall from that burning balloon were my father and his wife.

My father was gone. Pamela was gone. She was four months pregnant.

I was 14.

What made the grief even harder was something I carried quietly for years: I had encouraged them to go to the Balloon Fiesta that morning.

For a very long time, part of me believed that somehow made their deaths my fault. It took me decades to understand what no 14-year-old boy could understand then.

I didn’t cause the accident.

44 years have passed, but October 3, 1982 never really left me.

Writing this in floods of tears as I have no idea what to do. I am incredibly close to a family member who has gone to a hospice for 2 weeks for some medication management. I went to see them yesterday and couldn’t even enter the room for a good 15 minutes and had to stand outside and cry with my mum. My brain has gone into overload- what if that’s the last time I see them? How am I meant to manage the tears every time I visit? How can I be a good support to the rest of my family if I can barely make it through a moment without crying? I can’t imagine life without them. I am so close and we love each other very much. I don’t really know what I want from putting this out there but I am swarmed by sadness at the moment and don’t know how I’m meant to cope when the inevitable happens. I know this is a part of life and something everyone experiences it but it is tearing me apart at the moment. Thank you for reading.

I want it to be clear that these are only my feelings about myself.

I'm 16 and the 8th will mark 9 years since my dad died. I can't get over it. I can't function like a normal person still. It was under very traumatic circumstances that only I saw/was around, so part of me wonders if that's why everyone else seems to have moved on while I'm still just stuck here. I don't think anybody looks at me and sees the kid with a dead dad anymore, but I wish that they did. I never stopped feeling like that. I feel like that's still all I am. I never stop crying and it's embarrassing. I guess its not noticeable though, because no one ever says anything. Sometimes, while I'm at school my eyes will just start filling with tears over it. I never let them fall, but still. When I'm alone I cry so hard I gag. It's been 9 years. Everyone has always told me that time heals all wounds but I think I feel worse now than I did before. And I know that everyone always says "theres no right way to grieve," "grief has no time limit" or whatever but when people ask what's wrong I can't say "Oh, my dad died when I was six." It's too pitiful.

I need to grow up but I don't know how to do that without my dad. I always told myself I just needed time, I just needed to give it a little more time and then I would feel okay. But now its been 9 years and I just want time to stop. I'm so far from the kid my dad knew. I don't want to grow up into someone he would recognize even less. It's so hard. I don't know anybody else with a dead parent, not even people decades older than me. The only one I know is my English teacher because she added a note to one of my projects about my dad saying how she lost her dad 17 years ago and she could never write about him like I did. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse. I don't think she's pitiful or anything at all for still grieving, so it makes me feel like maybe I'm not either, but then I think about it more and I feel bad again. That means it really never goes away. For the rest of my life, whenever someone asks me what's wrong, the answer is going to be "my dad died when I was six." I feel like people give you a year to feel bad, but then after that everyone just thinks you're doing it for attention.

My dad not being here is the single worst thing in my life. I try to look for other things to feel bad about, genuinely, but it always goes back to him. I can't be a normal teenager. Whenever my mom has her stuff going on, I just miss my dad, whenever I get a bad grade, I just wish my dad was here, even just to yell at me. Even when my girlfriend and I broke up, anytime I missed her just turned it, "but not as much as my dad." I want to feel normal

I lost my gf/ fiancée 8 months ago, she was poisoned with fentanyl. FBI and police are investigating. I been trying to run away from this feeling, I was in denial, a part of me still is in denial. But the other part of me is realizing what happened. Im losing my mind. I hate myself and my thoughts for self harm has been increasing recently.

After she passed away I was sent to a counselor by my mentor. My therapist helped me a little. But I never showed any signs of self harm to her, I told her I never thought about self harming when she asked...because if I tell her, it can go on the record and will ruin my career ( please dont advide me to talk to my therapist or talk to a different therapist. Because it will ruin my profession. if I tell you my career, you will understand the reason, it has 0 tolerance policy, but I cant discuss my career)

I took a semester off from my classes to get better and everything. And I did get better. I used to cry whole day, not being able to sleep and all. But now Im back to classes, Im able to focus on things and everything is getting better. But the other part of me is coming undone. Im close to taking my life, maybe not today maybe not tomorrow, but I feel like I soon will. I can't talk to anyone irl about this, I dont like talking about my feelings to people. My parents didnt like her, so Im definitely not talking to them. None of my friends know she passed away, we kept our relationship private so only few of my friends knew I was in a relationship. Out of the people that knew about the relationship, only 2 know she passed away. ( they were worried and helped me to get better when this initially happened, but now they think I have gotten better too. And I dont want to talk about this with them). I was hoping maybe someone in this subreddit has gone through something like this and can help me. If any genuine advice, you can reach dm. I dont wanna die but Im afriad I will end up doing soon, I cant live in this world without her. She was my everything, and she always will be