Grief

How much time after a death of someone or something dear to you does it become easier to understand and deal with? Does it matter what/who died? Does it matter how the death occurred? Is one person's death more important to you than another that wasn't "as close" to you?

There's no judgement here, just an honest inquiry of when enough grievance is enough. Unfortunately, as a 30 year old mother of three, I have had my fair share of death near and far. I'll list just a few: my mother died when I was 13, my father died when I was 23, one of my high school friends died when I was 25, my aunt died three years ago, my soulmate died three years ago, uncle died last year, all of whom I loved with a deep passion... not all of the deaths I've known to happen in my life, but just a few that stick out in my head. I wonder if it would surprise you to know which ones still haunt my dreams. I'll tell you, I became a mother at 16 without a mother around to show me how to be one. I've been a single mother and two of my children are boys, and I have no one to show me how to understand important aspects of raising a boy. I was an only child, with a very large family on my mother's side and a very large side of my father's side, located all the way across the world from me. I never met any aunts and uncles but they sent me birthday cards and such, etc... When my fairly close friend from high school died, we both happened to be up on the same mountain at the same time (with different people) when he died on the other side of the mountain.

So again, I ask which death is "normal" to grieve longer than the other? I have a feeling some people might think it's my mother that I still mourn for. I guess you could imagine I'm still upset about my father dying. Honestly, I feel sort of bad saying I don't still mourn or feel sorrowful, miss, or regret unsaid feelings of love and appreciation to my family. I cared for them while they were alive, but I'm OK that my children didn't get a chance to know them. Really, what haunts me are the deaths of people whose life I wasn't born into. The people who made honest efforts to be a part of my life. It still rocks me to know my friend Justin was on the other side of the mountain the same time I was doing the same exact thing, camping, fishing, ATVing. He died and I didn't. We had good times together, not a whole lot of them, but he was one of the first kids I talked to in high school. We stayed in touch until HE died and not myself. Out of all the deaths I've seen happen, his was the first and only funeral I went to; maybe that's why it's stuck with me. My mother was cremated and there was no service, my father shipped to Israel by his family over there. I was never able to attend that, so on and so forth. So, am I weird? Am I sick in some manner? Do I lack empathy? Do I have my priorities in order? Or, do others go through the same grief process as I do? Without searching through Google for some highly uneducated information, when does it all stop, or the feelings lessen, or you stop wondering if and when you're next, and what you would say to them if they were here right now? When is it OK to let grief stop consuming you and you allow yourself to be happy? This article isn't just about me super missing my friend from high school; it's more so about me trying to understand if something fundamentally changes in your mind when the first death occurs. Did voiding out my mother's death screw me up for any other "normal" compassion or sympathy for those close to me? or at all, really? What part in your head decides to grieve for decades then not at all? Every one of those people mattered; who am I to choose whose death is more important and worth caring about more?