Hi there,
I have never written on a forum before, but felt I needed to do something.
I lost my Dad at the end of June after discovering he had stage 4 lung cancer and a brain tumour only 3 months earlier, at the end of March, completely out of the blue. He was only 67.
The last three months of my Dad’s life were a complete rollercoaster of emotions. My Dad bravely opted to have brain surgery to attempt to remove the tumour (they did, but it started growing back in 5 days), he completed radiotherapy, but unfortunately didn’t live long enough to start the chemo he so desperately wanted.
i have lost other family members to cancer and felt that although life was frantic with appointments, telephone calls to various health professionals, staying with and supporting my Dad, I knew when this stopped, it would be bittersweet as the end would be near. In my head, I thought my Dad would get to the point where he’d be dosed up on morphine and he’d pass away with all our family around him as he wanted. Unfortunately, my Dad passed away suddenly without any of us with him, just two care workers.
In the week that followed, the reality wouldn’t sink in. Then, I realised I was intentionally not dealing with it because I was scared of what the loss would feel like. After the funeral, I started to let my emotions go. I started back at work for the two remaining weeks of term and was so busy, I was distracted and genuinely felt ok when people asked. However, over the last 5 days I have felt completely lost. And it’s this feeling of being lost that has driven me to write on here tonight. I can function on a daily basis and get on with the day-to-day routine, but once the children are in bed, the lost feeling kicks in.
I find going to sleep very difficult and once I’m asleep, I’m dreaming about my Dad most nights. Ridiculously, I’m scared of the dark and are petrified of dying, so if/when I wake in the night, the panic following the dreams and lack of control over dying and not having my Dad here is awful.
I just don’t know how to process the concept of life anymore. I just feel so acutely aware that life is so short and that I should make changes to reduce stress and enjoy life to the maximum, but I don’t know what to change/do to ensure this. Sometimes, I just want the world to pause for a while to give me chance to process things and just think. I feel I have lost a degree of interest in doing things too, again just going through the motions or opting to just be with my immediate family at home or close by.
I suppose by posting on here, I’m just hoping for some advice and maybe that other people feel/have felt the same.
Thank you for reading.
