My Support Forums - View Single Post - Death- expected vs. unexpected

nonightowl · Jun 30, 2018, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ohmydaisy

I asked this myself. From what was told to me, it's changing my lens of perspective. I had trouble with writing a letter to my brother that passed (it was an assignment of mine from my T). I got stuck on forgiveness and apology and what it entails with the living (like how could I apologize and forgive a person that passed away?).

Some people write in a journal of conversation to the deceased love one, others write letters and at some point it's supposed to bring a different type of closure. I'm still working on this myself, so I don't really have an answer of what works. But it's worth a shot?

In the grief group I've gone to most recently, they had us write down good and bad memories of the deceased. Also, we kept a "grief monitoring diary" where we were supposed to rate how we feel each day on a scale of 1-10, for both the most intense grief and the lowest grief.

Neither was required or "graded", and I found both somewhat helpful.

But it's hard to put a number on something that isn't as black and white as a number. It's to look for patterns or things that trigger the intense grief even though it varies every day.

I haven't written anything like a letter cause I don't know what to say.

I may try at one point but now I don't feel like it. I'd like to do in the "safety" of the group context but there isn't enough time. And there's just one more session left now.

A couple of days ago I finally looked at a picture of me and mom. It was taken around 40 years ago, and that feels like it was literally in another dimension or universe. That was the last time things were even remotely congenial with her.