Clematis

I found this card that my dad gave me for my birthday a few years ago.

Thank you, Marty!

One thing about having lost a parent is that no one suggests that you should work on finding a replacement; everyone knows that you can never replace your mother or your father. But when you lose your spouse, people have all kinds of suggestions. After my mother died and my dad moved to AZ, people were always telling me that I should help him find a girlfriend to keep him company. He really didn't want anyone else-for him, it had always been her since they were kids. He said he was too tired to put in the time and work it would require for a new relationship, and he wasn't interested anyway because no one could ever replace his Patty. I'm sure he heard some of this as well. I know he really missed her for the rest of his life, but he wasn't alone or in lack of support because he had me. We both had that person that you come to at the end of the day and tell all the little things that went on during the day-someone who always cared and was interested...

Yeah, me too! I hope it goes ok for you today...

Good luck tomorrow, Marg! I'll be looking forward to hearing how it went. Having help is great! Tomorrow we are supposed to be prepping to paint, or getting ready to prep for paint, or something. Tuesday the Persian rug gets picked up by the cleaner. Then we paint, then the carpet comes in, the Persian rug comes back-but to my house-and then the moving truck will come, assuming I arrange for it, but how am I going to figure out when that will be? The day after the rug comes back? I am totally lost, and it sounds like you feel that way as well, but the ball is in motion and you'll get through tomorrow somehow...

Sometimes I think I am saying the same thing over and over. My dad died and then my aunt died, and my sisters are not speaking to me, which is probably for the best since they are narcissistic and functionally like adolescents. My head is scrambled by a car accident and I am mostly being held together by my cat, Lena. When my mother died 11 years ago, I was looking through boxes and boxes of photos while I stayed at my dad's house. I found about 8 that I really wanted, and asked my sisters if I could have them. They said, "Oh no, that just wouldn't be right - then we would never be able to see them again". Of course they had thousands and thousands of other photos, but they said no, and I left without them. My older sister said she would scan them all and then they would be divided into three sets, but she did nothing for 11 years. I would ask something every now and then like how is it that when the younger sister moved to Baltimore from PA, a bunch of pictures went with her although both sisters denied splitting them up. What, did the dogs divide the photos? But then in March when we were at our aunt's funeral, my older sister presented me with a small suitcase of random photos-just dumped it on me, and said all the pictures were in a hopeless mess. That's not what I saw when I was there-there were logical collections, but not the hodgepodge bunch I got. Many are out of focus, or they are very old and who are they anyway? It seems like they gave me a bunch of "the dregs"-whatever they didn't want, in no particular order. I try to look at them every now and then, and it's so hard-I have so many conflicted feelings; confusion, loss, anger at my mother (and then my sisters) for hoarding them until they were almost meaningless. Anyway, it's all gone now-my parents, my sisters (since they don't talk to me now), everyone who went before...And I have this little suitcase full of pictures with no explanations and no one to ask questions. It's just too much. I wonder sometimes what my sisters are thinking and why they decided that it was really ok to just leave me alone with all of this while they sit back and wait for their money.

Yeah-I know what you mean. She is definitely not much of a help at this point...

They seem to be working again...

The hardest pet loss I ever had was my cat Mitten, and she didn't die. I was forced to give her up because of escalating asthma and allergies. Mitten was fine and ended up with a family with two heartbroken little girls who had lost their cat "Mittens" who looked a lot like Mitten. But I was not ok at all. I didn't have any pet at all for 15 years while I worked on my allergies. The most devastating thing was the idea that I would never again in my life have another cat-or even a dog. I would have taken any cat of any color and personality and age, blind, three-legged, whatever-any cat! I still have some small amount of cat allergy, and it keeps me from getting a second cat, because I am afraid that it might push me over the limit again. If I had to endure life with no cat again, I really don't think I could take it. But Lena is happy being the only cat, and although I hope that by some miracle she lives as long as I do, if she does not there will be another cat for me. Having Lena in my life is such a miracle...

Thank you, Kay. It was sad when I lost Aunt Bee and then Helen, but really heartbreaking when I was mature enough to really understand what happened. I think it has been even more painful (after my dad died) to realize that my younger sister, her daughters, and possibly even my older sister are so much like my mother. Nothing has changed. I did manage to snatch out of thin air (as well as my love and enduring efforts) a decade's worth of a special and loving relationship with my dad. But nothing else has changed, and I don't think it will. I spent a huge chunk of my life doing psychotherapy and trying to share what I had gained with my siblings, and then coaxed my dad out here to be with me, giving him a clean slate and a chance to put the past behind and move on in a future without the mire of the past being drug through everything. Truly, this has been by far the biggest thing I have done in my life is to help the family move on with a reduction in the psychodynamic garbage that ruined everyone's relationships. I was sure that I could change the family dynamics and everyone would have a better future. Nevertheless, I would have to say it has been a total failure. I would have been better off spending my time and money collecting Swarovski crystal animal figurines or something, rather than doing all that therapy. Well, that's probably not true--I went from being a dysfunctional and timid creature who could not complete a sentence or function in the world in any capacity to being a force to be reckoned with, a competent artist and musician, and a professional who is able to support myself with two advanced degrees. But my sisters and at least part of the next generation is as narcissistic as my mother was...

I found the article I was looking for by Googling it (it was on Facebook somewhere), but the link function on the computer continues to be problematic...

Oh-I feel SO badly for you! Your kitty is beautiful and looks very sweet. I live alone with my cat and if I lost Lena it would be like the floor totally was yanked out from under my world! It is horrible to lose a pet, and when that pet is your best friend and primary companion, it is just dreadful. I lost my dad in January...we had a little family of three-me, my dad, and Lena. My dad was 88 and had Parkinson's; I cared for him during his last ten years, and now it's just Lena and me. I have lost other cats before, but none that I have been as attached to as Lena-she really is special-smart, affectionate, and brave. She is a therapy cat and goes to visit seniors and children in a variety of settings. If I lost Lena, it would be horrible. No one knows exactly what you are going through, but anyone who has ever been really bonded to a pet could imagine. Grief is a process and it takes time. No other pet can replace the cat that you just lost, but another cat might keep you company while you navigate the loss of the cat you lost, and there are so many cats that need homes-you might think about it. If you did decide to do that, you might think about getting an adult cat, whose personality is already apparent. It would probably be better for you to have a "lap-cat" that would be affectionate and snuggly than a "standoffish" one. It might help, even though you can never ever replace any person or pet that you lost. You'll need to grieve your loss no matter what happens, and if anyone says anything that includes the words "just a cat" or 'just a pet", put your fingers in your ears and run! Unfortunately, there are many people who don't understand how heart-wrenching the loss of a pet can be, but I am very glad that you found this site, where you will find many gentle loving people who really understand what you are going through because they are on the same path, even though it may not be their cat that is gone... Take good care of yourself and keep us posted on how you are doing, ok?

Gin, I am so sorry about your son-that is so sad. It sounds really awful worrying about him and having him not respond to any contact, especially after having lost Al. It would seem like the two of you could be of some comfort to each other, but it's not happening. It seems like my sisters and I ought to be able to help each other as well, but that's not happening either. I don't think they are really grieving-just waiting for me to hurry it up so they can get their money. Why can't people treat their family like family? I don't get it. I worked in a prison for five years and knew inmates who had done terrible things to their families, who still treated them like family-although probably with some caution (lock the medicine cabinet, don't loan them money-just give it to them if you have it because you'll never see it again, etc). But so many people have family members who act like they aren't related. I just don't get it.

Kay, I really feel for you and your worries about your daughter. I really don't understand people acting this way with their families. I have a long history in my family cutting people out, and I don't understand it. My father had a very interesting aunt, Queenie, who married a cool guy named Lou. They never had children and after Lou retired they traveled the world and we grew up receiving exotic Christmas presents from the two. But when Queenie died, Lou totally stopped contact with everyone. As a young adult, I went to LA, and was in Venice, where he lived, and I tried desperately to get hold of him so I could see him. No luck. My mother tried to explain it to me-that it wasn't me-he did that with everyone. But how do you explain that? And he was a great uncle I really barely knew. I can't imagine it being my daughter. Well, I guess I have the same thing going with my sisters. For ten years most of their contact with me was related to getting money from my father, and I never figured it out until he died and the money potential stopped.

My dad also had a lot of flashlights, and battery operated lanterns...a lot of them were actually given to him by me! I kept giving him flashlights until I stopped hearing stories about little accidents in his house in the dark and picking him up to go to dinner and he had no flashlight in his coat pocket. It gets really dark at night here. Also, where we live the electricity does go off periodically. Yeah, right... I just wrote, "where we live"; one of us is not actually "living" any longer. I don't seem to be getting it into my head very well. Marg, I think you and I both have rearranged our lists and timing by moving six months or so after the death of our loved one and not waiting for a year, because for different reasons, that would be impossible. I have a similar family story. My great aunt Bee who lived with another woman, Helen, for forty years. Neither ever married or had children. Helen had a brother who never had children and died fairly young with no children. Having no family of her own, she took on Bee's family-us! It was like having a third set of grandparents-the best set. When I was growing up and told Helen how much I loved her, Helen used to always point out that she was not a blood relative. I always told her that I didn't care-she was family to me. Helen was great-she did what she wanted regardless what anyone told her. Skated after work-as a math teacher-and came to school the next day with skinned knees. She ate whatever she wanted in spite of diabetes and almost entirely lost her vision. She had trouble walking and had a lot of other medical problems, but was tough. Bee was doing great, but died first, and they had lived in a two-story row house with no bathroom on the first floor. Someone stayed with Helen for a few days because she couldn't be in the house alone. I wasn't able to get there by Bee's funeral, but arrived soon after and stayed with Helen for a week. I was just enjoying my time with Helen helping her, and grieving together, but the rest of the family was frantically searching for a place for Helen to go after I left. Since Helen and Bee had taught two generations of the small city's kids math and science in high school, they knew everybody. A former student of both invited Helen to live in a guest house on his property at no cost. The day after I left, the family starting moving Helen out of the house they had shared for forty years. So Helen had less than two weeks after her life partner's death before she had to move. The house was in Bee's name only even though they had obviously both paid for it from their teachers' salaries, and was left to my mother and her sister. My mother was very eager to get that house on the market and get her part of it. She was also irritated with Helen because Helen had given a few small things of theirs to long-time friends. Legally, all of Bee & Helen's personal property and real estate belonged to my mother and her sister. Helen had her clothes and a bedroom set. The older I get and think about what happened to Helen, the more it hurts my heart. They sent her off with what she needed for a tiny house, and almost everything else the two of them owned went to Bee's family-us. It was obvious that they thought Helen with all her health problems would go first, and Bee would not have wanted Helen shuffled off, but she was... Grieving sucks, and I think the rules and generalities may not apply to an individual. Marg, you are on your path too soon, and feeling rushed about it. So am I, being pushed along too fast by the reality that I work on a school schedule and am off for the summer, and the sooner I can stop paying mortgages/utilities - and doing all the work on two houses, the better it will be for my sisters - but also for me in the long run, because there is not a lot of money in my dad's trust account and I would be better off keeping whatever is my part in the end for my retirement. I have no idea what "respecting your pain" means, other than realizing that it's going to impact you and so you should slow down and be careful so you don't get injured. Moving through pain? Well, I do think that time does lessen pain...if you think about someone you lost decades ago, it's not the same as when you first lost them. I think in a way I really lost Helen when Bee died, because the rest of the family did not treat her like she was a "blood relative", and she was sort of removed from the family configuration after Bee was gone. Helen died a year or so after Bee and it was treated as a minor incident compared to Bee. I wasn't able to go to either of their services because I lived across the country and worked 3-4 months a year. But Helen has stuck with me...I have always felt like she was a guardian angel of sorts, encouraging me to be tough-like she was. I still feel her around and it's been 30 years.

I can't say for sure how much my dad is currently aware of, but I hope that he got the memo that we--he and I both--are moving out of his house and into mine in the next few weeks...

Sounds good to me. I wish I had more videos of my dad. The only ones I know of are the ones on YouTube (Sedona Pets) of Lena the Therapy Cat. Due to confidentiality reasons, the only person whose face you can see is my dad. The others are cropped out... I don't see anything delusional about anything you've said. I think we all color our memories in different ways, at different times, and for different reasons. Memories change over time and even immediately. Memory studies clearly show that. Memories are reinforced by what is around us. They did some memory studies of people who lost everything in Katrina, and no longer had photos and other items that reinforce memories. They were a mess; not only did they have trouble remembering things from the past (that the memories were helping them store), they had serious trouble storing new memories. When my sisters were here for my dad's Celebration of Life, my sisters and I had different memories of my dad and his history, and it made them angry that I didn't just accept their version, even though they were remembering what they had been told in childhood by my dad, and I got it from the horse's mouth (my dad) in his last years. My dad told me recently that his dad came here from the UK when he was 12 and he started working and making money right away, even as an adolescent. My sisters said no, our dad's dad came here at the age of three and his parents were dressing him in Little Lord Fauntleroy clothing, and he was so picked on in school for wearing strange European clothing that he made his parents buy him new clothes. There are a few odd things about this story of my sisters. For starters, my grandfather would not have been going to school at the age of three. He was born in 1899 and at that time no one was sending their kids to school at the age of three. Also at that time I don't think many three-year old boys were directing their parents' clothing purchases for themselves. Maybe he was really six and that turned into sixth grade in my dad's memory, which turned into 12 years old. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1895, and the clothing ended up being more popular in the US than in the UK. At the time my grandfather was three-or six, that style would have been popular in the US for boys, but by 1911, when my grandfather was 12, it would have been passé, and he might have been picked on because his clothing was out-of-date, and not because it was it was foreign. Who could ever know? Not even my dad had a clear and accurate memory by the time he was old. I just changed the remark in the eulogy to exactly what my sisters said in an attempt to make them feel better and more a part of things - since I had written the eulogy alone - they refused to contribute to it, but were eager to criticize what I had written. Whatever... I think coloring things in a way that makes one feel better is ok...it's certainly better than coloring one's memories to justify one's anger, which a lot of people certainly do. And when you get together with family and talk about events from ages ago, does it ever happen that everyone agrees? Only when there is a family (or other) historian that everyone has decided is right. Then everyone remembers their version.

I know what you mean, Marg. we are both moving too fast. I don't think either of us is really in a position to lead right now. Having put the ball into motion we are now being pushed by people who are trying to help carry out what we started by the date implied by that. You have a sale date. I have a return to school and work date and I feel compelled to be back in my own house with my dad's stuff and my own by then. His house will still have to be disposed of...sold, foreclosed, something. I have two friends helping me; I am paying them and begging them to come and work as much as possible. When they are not around I don't seem to be able to do anything. When they are here they push me and ask me questions constantly about what I want done with this and that. My dad's house (where I am staying) is getting more cluttered as I stash stuff there I don't want to lose. My dad's house is getting more cluttered as I move stuff down there I don't want to lose in the move. The move has seemed so distant and vague, and now it is coming up really fast and the nitty gritty details getting worked out. I think I should feel relieved but I feel panicked, scared, and can hardly sleep. You probably know what I mean, Marg

I keep finding bundles of cards and pictures at my dad's house and at mine. I take a box, look at a few pictures, throw away any obvious trash, and tuck the rest away to look at later. A lot of it is stuff I haven't seen in years-even many years-and not only am I not ready to relive all that by poring over the photos and stuff, I am saving some of it for later. Seems better to have a trickle last longer than a flood that might wipe me out. I am already moving through this too fast.

I don't seem to be able to click on these links to articles anymore to read the articles...I can't figure out what's wrong

I don't need a medium to talk to my dad or to hear him talking to me. When he was alive I worried about him-a lot! I did everything humanly possible to help him live as long and well as possible. I'm not worried about him-I think he's fine. I'm worried about me-I don't think I'm fine at all and I don't know that I ever will be fine again... I really think at this point that I'm much more afraid of living than of dying. I believe that everyone I loved who has passed is fine, including my cats Mitten and Freya. I hear my dad talking and feel his presence all the time. (I also believe that the spirit of someone else from my past has taken up residence in Mister Cello. My other cellos are just cellos, but not him). Maybe I'm a selfish pig to feel this way and try so desperately to keep him with me. I sometimes felt the same way when he was alive, but then I could figure out that was crazy. He lived a minute and a half from my door because he wanted to-not just because I wanted him there. And probably he is lingering around me because he wants to, not because I am holding him with me against his will. Maybe he is worried about me as much as I am. Maybe that's how it works, and he doesn't stop worrying about me because he happens to be dead.

I just watched the movie The Lovely Bones...I had read the book years ago, but in today's context it really struck me. The story of a father and daughter separated by death (when the daughter was 14). I think they both really realized after the separation how much they had loved each other. The father went berserk, looking for his daughter's killer and just could not give it up-or give her up. The daughter hovered in a limbo space between heaven and the world of the living, where some people-and the dog-could sense her. She wouldn't let go either. I think this is me...I feel my dad around me so much of the time, feel his presence and hear him talking to me. I miss him so much, and it is so frightening to be going into an uncertain future without his love and reassurance alongside me. It is reassuring to have his spirit around me, I fear losing him again. I am afraid he will go away and leave me totally alone and go wherever it is that other people are who have passed. Nevertheless, I feel guilty-that my terror and desperation is keeping him with me when I'm supposed to be letting him go. Am I? Sometimes I think it would be better if I just went with him, but he always tells me no, that I need to stay where I am. Then he throws in that Lena needs me. He's right-she does. We used to be a family of three-me, my dad, and a black pussycat. And now it's just the two of us...

Celona, I'm sorry to hear about your dad and that everything is in such a mess. I think everyone is a mixed bag and some are more than others. Like you, I adored my dad when I was little and then there were a number of years when I was very angry about somethings he had done. Fortunately, I had plenty of years to work things out with him - years of psychotherapy, telling him how angry I was with him, hearing what he had to say about his own childhood, working at rebuilding a relationship with him, and ultimately coaxing him into moving across the country to live very close to me, like you and your dad did. My sisters never dealt with what happened when we were younger or my mother's death or anything else, as far as I can tell. When my sisters came out west to his memorial, my older sister became very agitated and angry with me, telling me over and over that she was not going to be forced to lie at his Celebration of Life, and didn't want to have to listen to anyone else lie about him either. I think she was worried about the same thing you are talking about. No one had anything bad to say about him at the memorial, or anywhere else. My dad and I became very close during his last ten years when I took care of him - he had Parkinson's Disease - I have grieved him a lot more than my sisters did, because they were not so close and also they hadn't been around him much for ten years. I think when you lose a parent who has not been a good parent, you grieve the person you lost and you also grieve the fantasy of the parent you wished you had, but never will since they are gone. For me, I lost the very cool and fun and interesting dad I had when I was little, the dad who taught me stuff when I was an adolescent but also had a rash temper and was sometimes inappropriate, the guy I barely saw for years but tried to make friends with for years, and also the sweet old man who struggled to get around for his last ten years. When he moved to AZ, people all told me the same thing - "Oh, I just love your dad-he is the sweetest man!" I had coaxed him out west since I saw good things I had never seen in him, but I kept thinking, "Sweet man? My dad-sweet? Are we talking about the same person?" Eventually I came to see him as all of those people rolled into one, and rolled with the punches as they came. And now that he is gone-I focus on what was in the present. Yeah, he sometimes drank too much. He had a short fuse, which he got over. But he was a brilliant man with many skills. We had so much in common and is loss is profound to me. It will be six months on July 13, and I am staggering with the effects of grief. Nevertheless, I do know with all of my being that he absolutely loved me, he was proud of me, respected me, had my back, looked after me, and was there to pick up the pieces when I stumbled. He was not perfect, but I miss him so much I can hardly believe I will ever be ok without him.

Thank you, Angel! I loved the post and the picture! I have felt like I had my dad in my heart, but feared that somehow it wouldn't last and he would be gone - no longer with me. A lot of people have reassured me that he wasn't going to leave me, but sometimes I worry...

I have had a lot of ups and downs since my dad died in mid January. The last week or so has been the very worst since the very beginning - probably because the move is coming up - consolidating our possessions into one condo (we had two of the same size and both were overstuffed). So I am saying goodbye to almost all of my furniture - and a lot of other stuff, as well as saying goodbye to the home he lived in for 10 years and the place where I have grieved and clung to him for the last six months since his passing. Lately I am also back to not being able to sleep. It is hard to walk this road...