When my mom died after a 1.5 year battle with cancer, I was calm enough to make sure her funeral went the way she had wanted and write an obituary that honored her within the community she had been such a vital part of. If possible, harness your calm to do stuff your more visibly-grieving family can’t.
My best childhood friend invited me over one afternoon in the middle of that and with her, I let loose.
Even ten years later, seemingly random things will cause me to cry hysterically about her for a few minutes, but once I’ve cleaned up my tears and snotty nose (ugly crying!), I’m calm again. I’ve seen the term “Sudden Temporary Upwelling of Grief,” or STUG, to describe this. It helps me to have a strategy for dealing with these - at first, consciously developed for my common situations (work), now kind of in the back of my mind along with things like knowledge of where my office fire exits are.
You never really stop grieving for someone close; you just get used to the grief and learn to live with it like you would a serious injury that has mostly healed.
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When my mom died after a 1.5 year battle with cancer, I was calm enough to make sure her funeral went the way she had wanted and write an obituary that honored her within the community she had been such a vital part of. If possible, harness your calm to do stuff your more visibly-grieving family can’t.
My best childhood friend invited me over one afternoon in the middle of that and with her, I let loose.
Even ten years later, seemingly random things will cause me to cry hysterically about her for a few minutes, but once I’ve cleaned up my tears and snotty nose (ugly crying!), I’m calm again. I’ve seen the term “Sudden Temporary Upwelling of Grief,” or STUG, to describe this. It helps me to have a strategy for dealing with these - at first, consciously developed for my common situations (work), now kind of in the back of my mind along with things like knowledge of where my office fire exits are.
You never really stop grieving for someone close; you just get used to the grief and learn to live with it like you would a serious injury that has mostly healed.