FireSprite

I know what you mean. It's the strangest slice of perception, because we generally KNOW this long before we emotionally deal with it.

It really hit for me when one of the kids from my mommy's group that I joined when I was pregnant with DD passed away when they were all in elementary school. Watching the rest of our kids grow & him stuck in time forever like that was a little surreal. Time seemed fractured in a way I hadn't experienced before.

I also battle this dynamic a bit with my FOO - since my RAF died a few years into his sobriety & for all intents & purposes seemed to be on the track to staying quit, they have this heroic image of him as a person after death. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for celebrating the positivity & not dwelling on the negative but they also use it as a free pass to ignore the rest of the picture that is there if they would just widen the frame a bit. There still had been many, many hard years that required healing for all of us which hadn't even been approached yet. None of has an Oracle to consult to know if he would've been able to hold onto that halo they've placed on his head, but he remains forever perfect in their memories regardless. (sidenote: I know this can easily be taken the wrong way, like I'm still simmering in resentments. Really it's that until *I* faced this stuff, I wasn't able to start my own healing. How can I heal what I deny or ignore?)

The car stuff is hard because you're right & at the same time, she seems to be emotionally attaching to her last happy memories with him. That makes it more delicate in that you can't give in on something as important as her safety, but you also want to mitigate any future wound/trigger she might be developing as a response to this whole thing.

Is there anything legal or insurance related that can make your point for you & take you out of the Bad Guy role a bit? Things you can point out like, just knowing the rake/gas pedal difference doesn't teach you how to make a 3-point turn, etc? Or some insurance companies offer small discounts for new drivers who complete safety courses - something like that?

Many, many ongoing hugs & positive thoughts for you & DD Sasha. Don't forget that grief works on it's own timeline & it's alchemized through the transmutation of other, attached emotions.

AlwaysGrowing

This happened to me as well. For the next year I gathered up every picture, every writing, any old birthday card for the kids and kept it in a safe place. Cloud backup for all the pictures etc. Knowing there will never be another video/picture memory is heartbreaking.

Sasha1972

And today's update: second-guessing myself.

Background: ex was living with a girlfriend/fiancee when he died. They hooked up at rehab about a year and a half ago; he dumped his second wife for her. Girlfriend is much younger and she's a relapsing meth and cocaine addict with a phenomenally long criminal record (mainly "stupid crime" like shoplifting and breaching conditions rather than violence, but she does have convictions for distributing meth). She's unemployed and probably unemployable, has been active on adult-escort websites, has no education, has a daughter who is being raised by her parents - your basic train wreck.

Girlfriend disappeared after ex's death (along with his wallet and keys). She didn't come to the memorial service and didn't respond to outreach from ex's sister or me. (She did surface long enough to give me a bag of ex's belongings for Kid, but nothing since then).

My instinct is to let her stay disappeared. She is bad news, and I don't want Kid bonding with her because of their shared love for ex. (I've also established that she and ex didn't live together long enough to meet the criteria for common-law spouses, so she has no role in winding up his debt-ridden estate).

However, now I am thinking - at some point, she is likely to get evicted from ex's apartment (he paid the rent, it's expensive). There's a lot of Kid's things there, clothes and books and toys (dating from a few years ago when Kid divided her time between ex's place and mine, before he completely decompensated), plus various gifts he bought Kid. She has all of ex's possessions, which in law at least should go to Kid. She also has ex's pets that Kid was attached to - a dog and two cats.

So now part of me is thinking - maybe I should follow up on this, try to get back some of what belongs to Kid. Maybe I shouldn't just write the whole thing off. Maybe the responsible thing to do is to try to step in, find out what is going on with the girlfriend and obtain what I can for Kid, rather than have everything to do with her father vanish if/when the girlfriend gets evicted.

The perhaps more realistic part of me says - what am I going to do, have a giant garage sale with the debris of ex's life? rent a storage unit for it? get into negotiations with a meth addict over Kid's Hello Kitty collection from when she was nine and/or the keys to his Mercedes?

Even just writing this out, I see that the urge to intervene with ex's belongings on Kid's behalf is an instance of what Al Anon calls "distorted thinking caused by close association with an alcoholic". The stuff is just stuff, and it is not worth risking the opening of contact with an active addict.

More profoundly, the urge to manage, organize and handle the aftermath of ex's death is another manifestation of the (futile and unhealthy) urge to try to manage or control his drinking while he was alive. I need to stop thinking like an overfunctioning codependent and start thinking like someone who has achieved a little bit of detachment in her life. Let it all go. I can't fix the mess that ex made of his life and therefore also of his death.

Anyway, that's what's been rattling around in my head today.

mamabear26

velma929

When what passes for his estate is probated, would that be an opportunity to retrieve DD's things?

hearthealth

Has Kid talked about anything from the apartment? If no let it be. If yes maybe you could contact the landlord. Maybe he's met Kid.

AnvilheadII

There's a lot of Kid's things there, clothes and books and toys (dating from a few years ago

this is the part that jumped out at me.
clothes from a few years ago will no longer fit.
books from a few years ago are no longer at kid's reading level - or of much interest.
toys - same deal.

it is probably best for everyone involved to just let it go. if the ex's place has been the child's ONLY place of residence and the items were ALL she had, that might be different - except that it is all stuff from years ago and not current and therefore really of no use.

but i get it. in my garage right now i have a box of stuff that came from my 1st ex's office - he passed away when my daughter had graduated college and living in LA so i sort of became the holder. i don't mind but i am not even sure she remembers i have his office dart board and other things. i also have brian's very last fishing license taped up on a shelf in my work office. my daughter passed her dad's tackle box to hank and it was in there. now that i have the damn thing it seems sacrilegious to throw it away?? so there sits a 17 year old fishing license.

i also have my mother's prized brass fishing reel. in a box so you can't even SEE the thing. it's probably worth something, maybe, but it's one of those things i just am not willing to part with.

Sasha1972

Today's update: triggers are a real thing. I was feeling really exhausted today, weighted down by the world and everything seemed like too much effort to keep straight. This comes after a couple of weeks of feeling in general pretty good. What is going on?

I thought about the last few days and here is what (I think) happened:

Kid and I spent part of the weekend at a friend's family's cabin. This is all good stuff - these are people we've known forever, the oldest child is one of Kid's best friends, it was good to get out of the city. However while we were there the grandfather of the family we were visiting had an episode of syncope (fainting), probably brought on by a drop in blood pressure (beta blockers) plus being out in the sun all day. I was there when it happened - looked over and there he was unconscious on the ground. Two of his adult children have medical training and they were right on it - checked breathing and pulse while I called 911, but fortunately after less than a minute, he came to and regained consciousness. He went inside for a nap and got scolded by his wife.
Apparently he has a growing aneurysm which is being "watched" - and this means that every time he falls, which has happened several times, everyone freaks out momentarily because it could be the aneurysm bursting. His family wants him to have it treated surgically but he doesn't want an operation and prefers to act like it's not there.

Then in the afternoon one of the older children showed up unexpected - this child is an indiscriminate substance abuser (anything he can get his hands on) who cycles in and out of homelessness and violence. I've known him since he was a kid and he is, as they say in the south, just plain mean as a snake. Like sociopath level of mean, mixed with intelligent and charisma, which is a bad combination. He's in a pretty good phase right now - has somewhere stable to live, is working, is not actively using (or is willing to refrain from using around his family).

He makes me nervous as heck, because see above re sociopathic. And given that I have an attractive teenage daughter, there's extra nervousness. His parents know exactly what he's like, but are willing to allow his presence as long as he behaves himself (which he did while I was there). He was also trying to impress everyone with long stories about his success at work and how much his boss loves him, which are very unlikely to be true.

What these two events have in common (grandfather fainting plus mean-as-snake showing up) is that they remind me in different ways of ex. I wasn't conscious of this at the time, but taken together - falling over unconscious is exactly the way ex died. He fell over from a massive cardiac event involving cardiomyopathy, not just low blood pressure, and there was no one around to call 911 or check on him, but his death probably happened just the way grandfather fainted - he was (apparently) walking down the street, then boom, down, and never got up again.

And someone who is mean as a snake, indiscriminate substance abuser, superficially charming when he wants to be, constantly dishonest and not to be trusted anywhere near Kid - gosh, that rings a bell of some kind.

So I think what happened is that my hypervigilant fight-or-flight high-adrenaline danger reaction mode got triggered. The front of my brain knows that ex is dead and that neither grandfather nor mean-as-snake are him, but the news hasn't gotten to the lizard brain yet, and anything that resembles ex will still set off a cascade of response that are below the level of consciousness. And when I am out of the situation that triggered the cascade and my internal red-alert fades away - I experience the fatigue and exhaustion of maintaining that state of alertness. And I think that is why I am really tired and feel like crap today.

Thank you to anyone who's read this far. I hope I am not trying people's patience with these updates - but I guess anyone who doesn't want to read them can just scroll past. I'm hoping this might be useful or at least interesting for anyone who imagines themself in the position I'm in, working on recovery when the addict is gone for good.

Ariesagain

hopeful4

Sasha, I think how you are reacting is completely understandable. Of course you were triggered. I think the good part (besides that the dad is ok, that is super), is that you are analyzing and recognizing your feelings. This is a huge part of the process.

Sending you a tight hug friend. Hang in there!

SmallButMighty

Sasha, I love your shares. I'm glad you are willing to take us along for the ride. I for one learn so much, and end up connecting so many of my own dots, when you (and posters like you) open up about your self analysis. I had at least two "Ooooohhh Ah-ha!" moments of my own in just this latest post alone. So thank you for that.

I am glad that despite the "weirdness", nothing horrible actually happened, and that you and Kid were able to get away.

hearthealth

Sasha, thank you for writing. It helps me see the stress I experience repeatedly when having to live with Q. Imagining some peace when it isn't a daily experience.

Sasha1972

Today's update: I need to remind myself that getting the eye-rolls and silent treatment from a teenage girl for no apparent reason at all is not unusual for this age group, which includes kids whose fathers have not recently died. And that grief shows up in all kinds of forms, and one of those forms may be an exaggerated bad mood.

At the same time I am worried about Kid because she is so adamant that she does not feel anything about her father's death and she is totally fine. When I ask how she's doing with it, she says "it was bound to happen sometime", and it's no big deal, stop bugging me about my feelings. I understand this as teenage bravado - I'm tough, I'm impervious, nothing can get to me. I also get that there may be more complex feelings than just being sad because she won't see her father again. But I can't believe the death of a parent really does not produce a lasting emotional impact. Both Kid's counsellor and the youth pastor at our church have commented on how not-grieving Kid seems.

Ariesagain

Sasha1972

This makes a whole lot of sense. She's not expressing acute sobbing grief because it isn't there (at the moment).

And I need to remember - she only knew ex as an erratic, sometimes crazy-making figure, even though he was her father. She doesn't have the memories that I do of ex as a decent person, and therefore doesn't have the sadness that I feel over the reality that he is now never going to recover and never going to be that person again. I feel sad because I know what an enormous deterioration ex underwent because of his alcoholism, but Kid doesn't have the same historical experience.

trailmix

I could be off base here but as a child that grew up with an alcoholic in the house (Father), you learn a lot of defenses. Blocking out emotions can be one of them (not necessarily a "blanket" defense). It seems cold hearted to some I'm sure and maybe those emotions are lurking below the surface never to be looked at in any depth - or retrieved at will.

hopeful4

Yes, yes. What trailmix just said! Those emotions just don't lead as the forefront of your life. They are there, just not guiding your life. Teens get involved in other things. And yes definitely, as the mom of two teen girls, the eye rolls and attitude are VERY normal! My one daughter is 6 years older than her sister. It does improve, I promise!

SmallButMighty

I could be a lot of things, or all those things, rolled into one.

I for one deal with death a little less emotionally than most others I know. It's weird and a bit unsettling to some people, how I process the death of a loved one. I've been this way since I was a child. People die. It's very sad, often heart breaking, but life goes on and falling into a sobbing, wretched, heap of goo for days or weeks on end has always seemed pointless to me. I certainly don't fault other people who DO grieve that way! I've spent a lot of time caring for people lost in their grief and I understand they had to go through their own process. We all have to deal with death and loss our own way and on our own timelines. My heart does go out to Kid for having lost her dad so young. I hate that she has to go through this, no matter what her way through it actually is.

I can also attest to the joys of the female teenage attitude. There is nothing quite like that mother/ teenage daughter dynamic, it's very much it's own kind of chaos. Growing pains for mother and child. Ouch. The good news is, they don't stay that way for ever! My daughter is 25 now and we are like besties... I could NOT have said that 10years ago...

velma929

I worked with a woman who had a difficult marriage and nine children. The older offspring had memories of a functional normal father. The younger ones remember leaving one night when he threatened to kill everyone in the house.

LovePeaceSushi

My daughter just turned 16. She's really tough about her father - - until she's not. Just keep being the great mom that you are and acknowledge the teen behavior for what it is....and then be there when she needs a soft place to fall and cry. ((hugs))