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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2244 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 5, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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At the risk of oversharing, I lost my mother over the weekend and while I give my wife the advice that she shouldn't feel guilty for not forcing herself to be somber and mournful every single moment, I myself can't escape feeling like people would think me callous or unfeeling if my actions and demeanor didn't match their perception of what someone mourning their mother should be, so I do ultimately force myself to act differently just to not cause any unease. Am I overthinking this?

I don't think I cried at all when my mother died, due to a combination of:

  1. She had been ill with a terminal neurodegenerative disease for a few years at that point, so we all saw it coming.
  2. I had moved across the country over a decade earlier, and since then had only seen her for a week or two so every year, so we'd grown apart.
  3. Honestly, I just didn't enjoy being around her much in the years leading up to her diagnosis. She wasn't mean or anything, but she was much more negative and complained a lot more than she had before. In retrospect, I think it's likely that this was a preclinical effect of the neurodegeneration.

I was sad, but in a sort of abstract, detached way, and not in a way that was deeply painful.

I'm very sorry for your loss. Everyone processes grief differently, it probably hasn't really hit you yet. Don't let anyone tell you you're doing it wrong, my cousins gave me a complex about that when I was six or seven years old and it sent me on a shame spiral for years.

I think it has hit me, it wasn't that much of a surprise that it happened so I've been preparing myself mentally for a while. She had metastasis all over and while for a year and a half medication kept it from progressing, we knew from the moment she had that diagnosis that she had years left, not decades.

I am not performatively emotional at all (that lack of outward emotion is a family trait) but I get the feeling maybe people might think I don't actually care just because I seem to be outwardly normal?

My sincere condolences, something like this would have scarred me for life. You not showing excessive emotions isn't wrong, it's ok to grieve, don't overthink it. Take care.

Thanks for your kind words. I hope something like that would not scar you for life, because ultimately burying their parents is something most people have to go through (and it would be a much sadder world if the opposite were more common).

Sorry for your loss, firstly.

Second: yes, you're overthinking it. But here's a reassuring (under-compressed) metaphor - recreational drugs differ in how fucked up you actually are versus how fucked up you feel. Some match closely (eg booze), others don't.

The first and only time I ever used a strong opioid off-label, I was surprised by how sober I felt internally versus how intoxicated those around me perceived me to be. I thought I had been essentially fine, until my wife helpfully explained in mortifying detail after how completely out of it I'd been.

This is pretty much how my experience of close bereavement went. In the days and weeks immediately afterward, I thought guiltily that I was feeling less bad than I ought to. I felt bad about indecent flashes of feeling okay.

And the funny thing is of course, with the benefit of almost a decade's hindsight, I had been a mess. I really was impacted well over the minimum decent bereavement threshold. I was by no means at all some indifferent icicle, though a diary I kept at the time is (almost) funny in how much I kept returning to that question "I'm not grieving enough, am I, why not, what's this thorn in the flesh, etc".

My experience was that it took at least 6 months before I could do my job competently and about 2 years to where I was generally at baseline. And still a decade on I think of that family member no less than 4ish times a day, often more.

And importantly, I really just had no insight into how affected I was at the time

Nominated for AAQC.

I keep thinking of this observation I once saw that when you're drunk, you don't realise how drunk you are (but it's instantly obvious to everyone else), but when you're high on weed, you become paranoid that everyone around you will notice (but in reality most people don't).

Sorry to hear about your mother. Make sure to be very kind to yourself and don't be surprised if emotions come out of nowhere.

Anyone with any mature experience of death understands that people process it in different ways. I've never seen anyone judged for not performing grief in the 'right way' (except for obvious rude or garish behaviour at the funeral/wake).

Consider at least trying to not be performative (which is to say; be yourself) and see how it goes. If you get several people disapprove then you can always change back to the 'right way'.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Everyone reacts differently, based on temperament, life circumstances, etc.. When my mother lost a parent suddenly, she was cheerful-ish and busy with funeral arrangements right up until she suddenly burst into tears. When my father, nearing old age himself, lost a parent after a long period of decline, his only particular wish was this people didn't push him to have strong emotional reactions to an event he'd known was coming for 20 years.

I think @FiveHourMarathon is right and that outwardly adopting a version of your set cultural expectations for mourning is probably a good thing and will allow you to mark the moment emotionally without constantly second-guessing yourself, but there's no gain from forcing yourself to feel otherwise than you do, or from over-analysing.

Condolences. Yes you are overthinking it. When my mother died, I was in such a shock that I was actually trying to tell jokes and cheer my friends that were grieving for her at the funeral. My grief came in full force probably two weeks after the funeral, but I was incapacitated for a couple of days. It is pretty individual.

You're probably overthinking it, but I'm familiar enough with it. The best thing you can do is find someone you respect and trust, and put them in charge. Traditions for mourning, though often ultimately excessive, were good in that they have you a set process to work on. Try and find your set process.

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