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Managing thoughts of suicide & self-harm

Grieving my fathers passing

Pussycat25New Contributor23 Apr 2025, 5:00 pm AEST

Grieving my fathers passing

First post here 👋

my dad passed away early October 2024.

I live here in Aus and my immediate family who I was raised with still all live in the UK, so he passed away there. I had to fly over for the funeral in November.
it was all quite traumatising because he wasn’t very well when he passed. He’d just turned 70 but he let his health decline two years prior and struggled with alcoholism and behaviours connected with so for about 3 years we have all been worrying about him and trying to help him when he wanted no help.

His funeral was amazing and I helped carry the coffin, so many people were there. He was a popular guy. Many people cared about him.

I still have traumatic thoughts about when I visited him in the chapel of rest and seeing him in an open casket.
I still struggle with him not being here and have to go easy on myself when I start having a hard time. It’s so sad and I have felt really low and up and down recently. It feels like only our family now who have to deal with it. Like the fuss has calmed down now and it’s all quiet.

i get so overwhelmed about no longer seeing him again. I know it’s a process but it’s really hard and I like to cry it out to help me feel better.

1 reply

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In response to: Grieving my fathers passing

Ru-beeModerator23 Apr 2025, 5:49 pm AEST

Re: Grieving my fathers passing

Hello @Pussycat25 and welcome to the forums

I'm so sorry to hear of your loss.

It sounds as though the funeral had both positive elements in that you were able to see how loved your father has been, while also being extremely difficult and upsetting in viewing the open casket. Seeing someone you love that way can be extremely confronting.

It is such a strange feeling isn't it, once all of the fuss dies down and others go back to the rhythm of their regular lives like nothing has changed.

I think that sometimes when we think of grief being a process we think of there being a steady line from being bereft to eventually being okay, but it is completely normal to have okay days or hours, followed by horrible ones. There's no right way to experience your grief. It's hard, and it sucks and I'm really sorry that you're going through this right now, but I'm glad that you have felt able to reach out and talk about it and I hope that you're able to keep on reaching out

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