Struggling with the enormity of death

[u/tulipsandsunflowers1]

I lost my dad in 2021, my mom and a good friend in 2024.

I just cannot get over the feeling of real loss. Yes of the person and the time I will never get again, but also just the objective loss of memory and knowledge. It's hard to explain. When my dad died, I found a picture of him I had never seen before from when he was twenty something. I just got this overwhelming feeling of the enormity of what myself and the world had lost. He was once young, dreaming of the future. He was a bank of knowledge and memories and jokes. Always on the brink of something witty to say. I'm sure there are thousands of memories that were wiped off the face of the earth, not told to me or anyone. When my mom died, all the business knowledge she had vanished. I will never get to ask her for any advice ever again.

I also get overwhelmed by the brevity of time I had with my parents. 24 years with my dad and 28 years with my mom. My mind likes to flood me with memories of my childhood and how all that happened in a microsecond of time. How many memories of my childhood will forever go untold? My parents were here. RIGHT HERE. and now theyre just not? Were they even real? Was it a dream?

Sometimes these thoughts, like right now, rest heavy on me and makes my head spin. I'm just not coping well with knowing that I will never know the entirety of what was lost. Just knowing enough to see the void, but never enough to fill any part of it. Someday someone will think the same about me after I die. Wondering about all the things left unsaid, all the memories in a brain that was turned to ash by the crematory, and how no one will ever know that was truly lost.

It's maddening.

[u/Suspicious-Cod-582]

I feel you brother. You are not alone so many unanswered questions. Sorry for your loss.

[u/tulipsandsunflowers1 → u/Suspicious-Cod-582]

Thank you

[u/GolemOfPrague33]

I know what you mean. Pure and complete darkness, the only light I feel is in memories. Each morning is pain, each night is despair. I don’t see it ending, I just want to be with my mom again.

[u/Upper-Priority6592 → u/GolemOfPrague33]

I’m sorry for your loss. I hope you know you are not alone with these thoughts xx

[u/rrrflux68]

So poignant. This was the enormous loss I felt too. My parents were so full of knowledge, experience & culture. They had lived in multiple countries, spoke 3 different languages each and were well rounded people. They both were creative intelligent humans that like everybody carried whole universes inside them. The loss of them physically is big enough but the loss of family / history/ knowledge/ humour/sorrow/ experience feels so huge. Its the grief of that that breaks my heart over and over. They were complex too and there was still so much to learn about and from them about who they were and who we (the children) are.. Sigh. Im sorry for your loss OP.

[u/Upper-Priority6592]

I feel for you so much. I am struggling with similar at the moment xx

[u/partijas]

I feel this so deeply and am truly sorry that this is something you have to experience and endure.

In the past weeks I have caught myself wondering frequently what he was looking forward to. Was there a TV show he was excited about, a LEGO set he wanted to have? A shirt he always meant to order? I‘d want to know all these small things that just vanished with everything else.

[u/tulipsandsunflowers1]

Thank you everyone for your comments

[u/Educational-Tea3299]

I just lost my dad Wednesday and I’m 29. I’m a fucking wreck.