Does Anybody Have This Reaction To A Death?

[Forgetful]

Hello everybody.

I haven't posted anything here for awhile. due to severe memory issues and to a lesser degree problems with reading comprehension. I will try to keep this fluid and understandable.

First a little background info. I have always been very shy so making friends has always been tough. When I was 12 my dad took a job for an American firm in England for 4 years so we moved there.

On my first day of school my teacher assigned 2 girls to help me adjust to the new school and rules. On my 3rd day I was invited to join with a different small group of girls. Within the next 2 weeks we had all become friends. This all happened 38 years ago. One of those girls became my best friend. We have stayed good friends even though I moved back to the USA and haven't seen each other for 35 years.

Now, my problem. Whenever I have a death in my family (regardless of whether I was close to them or not) I have to force myself to cry just so I seem to be mourning the loss appropriately. 2 days later my mind acts as if they never even existed and i rarely think of them anymore. When I do think of them I have no emotion to the memory.

My best friend (mentioned above) has terminal cancer and a few months ago was told she only has about a year to live. Yesterday she told me that she is tired of fighting it and is ready to die. I understand what she said but I'm having a problem accepting it. I'm now afraid that I will have that same reaction and I don't want to.

Anyway, thank you for reading this. I'm sorry it is so long and I hope it makes sense. Any feedback and suggestions are welcome.

 

[lux.]

I've had the same exact issue! I never understood why. I'm 32 now and haven't had a close relative die since I was a kid.

When my grandfather died when I was 12, I was able to make myself cry. I think I would think about something else that made me sad, probably when I was 8 and my mother would yell at me when I wanted her to tuck me in or sing me a lullaby. She always said that I acted like a baby. So I would think about that and it could make me cry.

I also just couldn't convince myself that he was dead. When he went into the hospital for cancer, my parents said that he looked so terrible that they didn't want us kids to see him like that. When I had last seen him, he looked and acted fine. Then they said he died and I just couldn't really believe it because it had happened so quickly and I never saw the proof. Everyone in my family just thought he was the most amazing man forever, but I think I had bad attachment issues that kept me from feeling close to people. Everyone was so sad and crying so much that I was really worried that someone would notice how numb I was.

When my grandmother died when I was 16, I had the same thing. I saw her the day before she died and she was completely fine. She had a brain aneurysm the next day and within a few hours she was dead. Then she was cremated, so I had no proof that she was really dead.

I couldn't even make myself cry that time. My sister, who was 8, yelled at me, saying something like "Are you even sad about this?"

I didn't know that I had PTSD at the time and haven't thought about it for a while. Your post just made me realize it might be a PTSD symptom. Dissociation can make you numb and detached from your feelings. And maybe there's some derealization involved, too. I think I'm going to ask my therapist about it.

 

[Forgetful]

Thank you lux for your reply. I will bring this up to my T next time I talk to her. I never connected the dots before but these people all passed after my trauma but my diagnosis of PTSD didn't come until 6 years ago. All these years I thought I was the only one with this reaction and there must be something fundamentally wrong with me

 

[Fadeaway]

Yup, but it hits me many years later. I felt zero emotion when my mom killed herself. It took 13 years before I broke down and cried over it.

I have lost a lot of people in my life. Pets too. My step-grandfather, the person who raised me died a year ago this month and it is the only death that has really shook my world.

 

[Forgetful]

So this might hit me years from now? I hope not all at once - I'll be a basket case. LOL

 

[Ocean5]

This song was written by singer who had cancer, and she didn't think she would survive. But she did. I normally don't cry, but this song randomly started playing on smart phone 2 day after my mom passed away. I cried in public for like an hour just listening to it...over and over....

This Is Not Goodbye by Melissa Ethridge

Not sure if will help you...but before I was age 7 lost most of my grandparents. Then some uncles, then cousins. I stopped going to wakes and funerals by the time I was a teenager. Prefer to remember them alive.

 

[Forgetful]

Thank you for the song Ocean5. I found it on YouTube. Beautiful. Balling like a baby now. I saved it for stronger days.

There's no chance for me to go to the wake because she is 3000 miles away and I can't afford a plane ticket as my husband and I are both on disability. Every time we chat on FB I wonder if that will be the last time. I have a hard time talking to her (some times even avoiding her) as I'm afraid I will say something that upsets her and I don't want to talk about how I'm feeling because it is petty compared to how she's feeling.

 

[Friday]

Does I have that reaction to death? Not exactly, no. Similarities in some areas, however:

I don't cry. Can't force myself either. In fact, until this past year I could individually list out all the times I have cried. I think it was 7? I kind of forget. I've cried a lot -for me- this past year.

For quite a long period in my life, and periodically still, anyone I don't have "eyes on" I assume to be dead. Not in a blithe way. If I can't actually see or hear someone? They're dead. It makes it a great deal easier when that happens to be the case, and all very exciting when I see someone I haven't had eyes on for any significant period of time. (Hours, days).

Conversely, but related, no one dies in my mind. In my head, everyone is simply elsewhere. Going about their lives. I know this isn't true, ghosts in spades, but that doesn't change the fact that I've got the Elysian Fields between my ears. Most of my life has been spent at great distance between myself and the people I love, like, & admire. It feels no different from that.

Not death related... But compartment related, & fear of forgetting.... I've got a helluva compartment system and a highly trained forgettery (like memory in reverse). Whether specific things, or whole chapters of my life, I have a long history of locking away in vaults. Some I'm in and out of on a regular basis, some I haven't opened for years. It's not an entirely conscious thing, which is where the fear of forgetting comes into place. Compartmentalizing works... Until it doesn't.... And everything starts coming undone. The last time everything's me undone my sole focus was in locking everything away again. In the process I lost a love of things that were very dear to me. In addition to just a helluva lot of useful things. This go round I'm trying to not just box it all up, again. It's fiendishly difficult. To the point where I'm having to use memory tricks (like repetition/rehearsing, to keep some things in the forefront of my mind) in order to avoid it. That in and of itself is annoying. Repeating myself over and over irritates me. But if I don't? Last week,last month, last year... I just start losing them. I have to remind myself, over and over what I'm doing, what I've done... Or I forget. Not just the memories, but what I learned from the experiences. Journaling helps. It's not easy. But I am determined to make my mind my own, again.