Great question, great discussion.

I don't "do" grief. It's complicated. Maybe It's complicated grief, though I was never diagnosed or treated for that. Mostly I think I turned that emotion off, like others, when I was a kid and it got me punished. Kind of like the swat and the saying, "Stop that or I'll give you something to cry about!" Ironically, the swat stopped the whole thing. Go figure.

So anyway, when my soul mate late husband died, I didn't move on. I knew I "should", I knew it was the thing to do, I tried but I didn't want to at some core level and I couldn't overcome that so I have stayed stuck, just ever so slowly deteriorating. Yuck. Knew 18 years ago it would have been better for me and everybody still engaged in the world for me to but "they say" it would be bad for the ones I left to do that, so I didn't. I'm not at all sure that what "they say" is right in this case but my daughter would have glommed onto that as another thing to blame and deprecate me for, so I didn't. That wasn't so much for me and my ego, though it may sound like it, as because I didn't think that feeling and thinking of her mother as "all bad" or "one down" would serve her well in the long run. So, yeah, I didn't want to be a bad mother. But having this walking corpse still around? I'm not at all sure that's done her much good either. But can't know that for sure either.

Maybe I don't attach exactly either. Did with my late husband but that's about it. Dug around in the swamp with therapists for years trying to find the core of the trauma and "recover" or "change" from that but It's apparently not just not available any more. Last therapist terminated me after 6 years because she "didn't have the emotional resources" to continue.

So, no grief, no connecting with anyone else again, just years and years of walking misery, "doing my best" as that gets worse and worse as I slowly, physically deteriorate.

I think "they" should reconsider what "they say" and allow a walk-in clinic at the funeral home. What's the point in continuing the torture if you're stuck and can't move on? But still, I don't want to "hurt" my kids and can't know for sure that I won't, so. . .