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burlyshirley - I absolutely get what you are saying. Before I married, my parents were the most important people in my life. After I married, they moved down a little, although remained at the centre of our lives until they died (we have that kind of family fortunately). When my kids came along, more space was made for some more people to love.
The natural way of things is that the older ones die first, and losing parents is awful and shocking but kind of expected as this is how it is supposed to be. Losing a child, well that's all wrong, all out of order but we know it happens. My dad was what you might call made of 'stern stuff'. He was on the Normandy beaches in his early twenties, and was injured there. You don't get through something like that without being made of stern stuff. Never talked about it, until we went to see Les Miserables. The song empty chairs at empty tables cracked him up and I'd never seen him in tears like that before. Such resonance for him. BUT - stern stuff or not, when my mum died that was it. 3 months later he was gone, and I almost knew it would happen like that.
Death is the price we pay for love, it's said and I believe it.
All of these conversations have made me think a great deal about my current situation, and it has helped me to clarify a lot in my mind. I couldn't have kept my dad from giving up, and deep down I know that. I still have some guilt remnants that I could have done more, but as time goes by I know that's not the case. It's the same here I think. I am not the only on in this bereaved person's life, not actually the most important one either, although the closest geographically! I know that I and my husband do quite a lot, in a practical sense.
There are things about being on your own that I really get. Some I don't because I am someone who likes her own company. My relative/friend doesn't. But we are different personalities and I can't make her like me, nor can I be like her. I see little shoots of recovery in her, but of course that's when I'm with her. What I can't see is how she is when alone. Apart of course from the thing that worried me in the first place, her inclination to regularly tell people that she cries every day.
But now, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion, with help from the discussions we have had on here, that this is one of those things that a person can only do for themselves, in their own way and in their own time. With support certainly. And it's actually wrong of me to think that I can, or even should, do this for her, or believe that what's happening is not right. It would probably not be right for me, but I am me and she is her.
Sorry if I am rambling on a lot. I feel this is a bit like having a teenager living a roller coaster life, and you are having to guide or help them through it to an independent life. I've done this twice already, so I am going back to how I remember the way I dealt with that. They are both now successful and independent so something must have gone right. I don't remember ever thinking there was something wrong with them, or that I owed them my life, or I had to live their life for them. This is a bit like that. I may be better myself for getting my own head in the right place.
So thanks everybody for your thoughts. Amazing isn't it how perfect strangers can help you straighten out what your nearest and dearest, and your yourself find difficult