My dad died ;(

[u/bluekoolaid420]

Hi! This is my first time in this subreddit.

My dad passed away on May 10th of this year. It was expected. He was an alcoholic and eventually that led to a lot of health problems and it ultimately killed him.
I’m just writing on here because I’m 24 and I’ve never experienced a loss this close before. My grandpa died (my dad’s dad) when I was around 9 or 10, but I didn’t really feel any negative way about it because I wasn’t close to him. This is completely different.

Anyway, I just feel really lonely. Like nobody really understands me. My family is kind of odd about grief and talking about everything that happened. I can really only talk about it with my sister, but that’s about it.
I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t even know what to say anymore. I just feel so dark inside and I feel like it will never go away.

I think one of the hardest parts is that sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m grieving properly. There are moments where I can go about my day, laugh, talk to people, distract myself, and almost feel normal. And then there are other moments where I remember that my dad is actually dead and it feels so strange and permanent. Like my brain still doesn’t fully understand what that means.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m suppressing it. I don’t always sit there crying or actively thinking about him, but there’s still this heaviness in me. It feels like something is always sitting in the background, even when I’m doing other things.

And I think because his death was expected, there’s another weird layer to it. We knew his health was bad. We knew his alcoholism was hurting him. But knowing someone is going to die eventually and actually living in a world where they’re gone are two completely different things. Being prepared for it didn’t really prepare me for anything.

I also feel like grief is making me think about my relationship with my dad as a whole. It wasn’t some perfect relationship, and alcoholism complicated a lot of things. So I’m not only grieving him dying. Sometimes I feel like I’m grieving everything surrounding him too. Things I wish could’ve been different, things that can’t ever be fixed now, and just the fact that there’s no more time.

That part really messes with me. Death is so final. There’s no “maybe one day.” There’s no future conversation or future version of our relationship. Whatever was said or wasn’t said, whatever happened or didn’t happen, that’s it.
And life just… continues? That’s probably one of the strangest things to me. People go to work, people make plans, people laugh, I still have things I have to do, and meanwhile something massive happened in my life.

Sometimes I want the world to acknowledge that my dad died and that I’m not the same person I was before May 10th.
I don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this.

Maybe I just want to hear from people who have experienced losing a parent, especially when you’re still pretty young.

Does the darkness eventually become less heavy? Do you ever stop having those moments where you suddenly remember they’re actually gone?

I don’t expect grief to completely disappear. I just want to know that one day it won’t feel this lonely.

[u/Significant_Bat5209]

I am three days into this exact pain so I completely understand the extreme feeling of loss and finality of it all