As a survivor, we have all felt the pressure to “move on” after tragically losing someone we love. As a society we have created this belief that grief begins when the person dies, and ends shortly after. For starters, grief doesn’t end. It just becomes less present in our everyday life. Second, when you experience a tragic loss, you should not be expected to move on as quickly as someone who did not lose someone tragically. The unthinkable just occurred. It takes time for our brain to even comprehend what just happened. 
In my own experience, I found that reality usually hits when everyone else begins to move on, leaving you feeling even more alone than before. You are often ready to talk, when everyone else stops asking you to talk. If you have felt like this, or are currently feeling like this, you are not alone. Unfortunately, few understand the magnitude of our pain. As the quote says, “Take all the time you need.”
Time has not dulled my pain, nor filled these two holes in my heart . I lost two grandsons in 2014 eleven months apart. I’m a nurse and I know how to care for people who have lost loved ones.
I know what to say to comfort others, what to do for them, and when to do it. None of these tools have helped me.
I’m at the point now where friends think I should be “over it” well I’m not and being with these friends who I know love me just makes them feel uncomfortable . They don’t know what to say to me. One death was a homicide, the second was suicide . Oddly enough it was easier for friends to offer comfort after the homicide , my grandsons death by suicide is too much for friends to talk about.
I want to grab them and say it’s too much for me too but that’s what happened and we have to live with this pain moving on for us is not an option.
I miss my boys and the lives they should have lived . Time will never change that.
Time will never change that is right. To say that you will “get over” the loss, is like saying you no longer love the people you lost. It just doesn’t work like that. It is interesting the difference between a homicide loss and a suicide loss. Society is more accepting of a homicide. Either way, having to endure both of these types of losses is simply not fair.
I know exactly what you mean. So many people think that I should “get over it” , “let it go”, or “move on or past it”.
I am doing my best to move through it. It has been a year now. I have experienced all of the firsts and I still can find myself in my son’s home trying desperately to bring him back to me.
The trauma of losing someone to suicide doesn’t go away. My stepdaughter insisted that I see my son one last time at the funeral home before his body was sent to be cremated…because she didn’t want my last memory of him to be the one of when I found him already gone from us.
While I appreciate the gesture, it didn’t work. I am haunted by the vision of him lying on his bed, white with the color of death, but still warm. And I am reminded that I missed the opportunity to stop this from happening most likely by no more than 20 minutes.
I suffer now with a degree of PTSD, not only from the actual events of that night, but from the weeks and months before he succomed to his combat PTSD demons. It took me too long to put the pieces together….to realize he was teeterng on the edge. I was so naive.
One doesn’t get over these things. I’m learning to live with them. I’m trying to help others through my experience. But the sorrow is ever present, always just under the surface.
This will be with me for the rest of my life.
Our pain is always with us and is part of us, We just learn to deal with it on a day to day thing!! It has taken me 5 years and at times I still can not talk about it much at least not in detail of the event. When you love someone you can not turn it on and off. We do not stop loving them because they are gone we will always love them so we have to control our minds and cry when we need to and let go but that dos not mean we will ever forget them nor stop loving them!!! It is sad Ellen that you have lost two sons, but will keep you in my prayers. Take all the time you need and do not pay attention to what others say. They are not walking in your shoes!!
I’m almost 10 years in (post suicide) and was just recently diagnosed with PTSD from this incident. We store trauma differently in our brain than other memories and if the trauma is not dealt with properly, sometimes it sticks around longer than we feel it should or pops up even years after we think we have dealt with it.
I’m not even eight months in to the loss of my son, my only child. Thankfully not one person has expressed their opinion of me needing to “move on” or God forbid, “get over it” ..yet. I can sense that some may think it’s time to do so. Truth is, right now, I don’t know how to move on. I’m just here. Time moves on. Get over it? You don’t get over a love like that. It remains, ever present, ever growing.
Thank you for this. It validates my every day. She was 27 and my only daughter. I and my husband hurt every day. She left us April 23, 2010.