Been dealing with a lot of people dying in my life lately.

My Dad passed 2/23/26. Peaceful and quiet and NO MORE PAIN!!!

My Aunt (his sister) passed the week before. She can breathe now.

My best gardening buddy down the road from me died in short order of leukemia end of last year.

I have a great friend who I am now listening to over the phone die more each time I talk to him. He has glioblastoma. A 100% fatal brain cancer.

I like to think of myself as a really tough person, but this is really pressing on my heart. I find myself breaking down just walking in the house or hoeing the garden or taking a shower. It hits very randomly and I try to deal with it as best I can.

My question is to you who have went through a lot of death of close friends and relatives in a short amount of time. How did you deal with it? What would you have done different? How long was it before you were able to catch yourself in those break down moments? What advice do you have for a person going through this now? It's not unbearable but it is like carrying a 50 lb beaver through a sticky thick swamp in a pack basket with waders on. It can be done but its not pleasant.

Thank you in advance. Your time and response are very valuable to me.

Sorry for your losses...

My father had Glioblastoma, lasted 6 months after discovery...just spoke with him normally, I have a pretty good acceptance with death, no one gets out of here alive, ...some memories hit harder than others, but most times it's a blessing , for the departed, no one wants to see prolonged suffering.

You don't forget it, but you will get through it.

Its easier said than done, but I try not to dwell on the memories of them suffering but remember the good times and find peace in knowing their suffering is over.

Ive been there. Ijust cried when it over took me. Emotions I can't keep bottled up. For months I went to work and stayed home, that was it. It took a very close friend to bring me out of it and start seeing other people again.
I stayed home because I just couldn't answer questions anymore. I felt alone and wanted to stay that way.

What would I do differently......I just don't know

Religion helped in the long run, but didn't help me immediately.

Everyone is different and handles things in their own way and in their own time.

I wish you peace within your heart and mind. And im so sorry for your loss of friends and family. Take care and God bless.

I am sorry to hear that you are dealing with these things.couple thing I try to do is Trust the lord that he will get me thru it.2nd is I think about there are many folks that are going thru what I am dealing with and they made it .3rd is when I get my day going I try to do things I enjoy to keep my mind off of what I am dealing with.I also try to think about the folks that have passed on and realize they are in a better place and not suffering.As far as how long it takes to over it .Everyone deal with things different.That will depend on you. It will get better in time.

I dealt with a blow like that too. My dad died suddenly after a fall, a month later I found out my (first) wife had secret plans to leave me for another guy, and a few weeks after that my mother showed full on Alzheimers that we hadn't known she had while caring for my dad.

I would start to tell people my dad had passed and just break down. At first I was embarrassed, but after awhile I just let the tears flow when they wanted and figured that was part of the healing. It was the roughest patch in my life probably.

I completely understand what everyone is saying. I lost my father a little over a week ago suddenly. He wasn't sick or laid up. None of us are ready for this when it happens. I have been busy helping my mother with his final arrangements. I still haven't got a grasp of any of this. He was my fishing partner and hunting partner for many many years. He will be missed greatly. Its going to be a real difficult year.

Father in law just passed nobody to argue the weather with neighbor left too no one to discuss old farm history with Good friend and the first guy I worked for after I graduated gone last week no more pulp cutting and deer hunting

I'm sorry for your losses. I went through something similar in 2018, I forgot what it felt like until this post reminded me. Hopefully there's some comfort in that, time heals.

We’ve all got it coming. This must be and it is. We are a wink in time. No one will remember us in a 150 years. Our hopes and dreams joy and pain will be forgotten and our homes and haunts belong to strangers. Live life to the fullest. Ashes to ashes dust to dust

Had a few deaths fairly recently. The ones where it was someone young from accident or health hit harder than other deathes from, like the case of my father were a relief and blessing from the so called life they had. Dementia is a terrible way to go and death is a relief compared to a kid gets killed in a car wreck that his brother was ale to walk from, or my nephew with a small kid who died the night before he was scheduled to see the doctor that next day. Or my uncle who the hosiptal dismissed aas gas and died from a blockage. Those are the ones that bother me, otherwise for me personally being terminal from kidney failure it's not as scary haveing Jesus as savior it's more like going home

Life is to short. Visit them often before it is too late.

Endure in the moment and keep reminding yourself the only thing you can control is yourself and to choose to keep getting up after each time u get knocked down. And if you have a close relationship with the Holy Spirit you can stand on the promise that he will get you through it and you will be a better person on the other side of it. I lost my dad to a heart attack when he was fifty and my two Grandparents on my mom's side to two separate car wrecks within about a year. Personally my divorce was harder on me because of my two boys and the thought of the impact it would have on them.

In the last four years I have lost the 3 most important women in my life. My mom, daughter and my wife. Grief is real. My mom was expected with cancer. Wife and daughter were totally unexpected. It sucks trying to deal with it all.

That's rough. Hang in there....

You have to come to grips with the fact that tomorrow may be no better than today .... BUT..................I guarantee you that SOME tomorrow will be better.

In the meantime get a new puppy or girlfriend. Something that needs your attention and allows you to heal. On second thought, stick with the puppy.

When my father passed, 52 years ago, I was 25. The funeral director was an old family friend. He said to me, "Don't let guilt confuse your grief. Don't dwell on things you may have said, or should of said. Things that you should of done or should of not.done. These things are just normal life". I believe this has.helped me over the years.
Grief and missing is normal and will eventually turn into just.memories. Easy to explain, hard to deal with and overcome. Best wishes.

well we can start with cancer sucks , lost too many to it

don't try not to feel it , this is where people fall into a downward spiral trying to kill their pain with substance. not saying you would but many have. you are here so keep living every day. you know how numbered they might be , you never know. so find your joys in friends , family , trapping , fishing , whatever it is.

best advice is DO feel it , it is going to hit you in the quiet times the most and hey if you cry in the shower it just goes down the drain same as the water.

there was a 6th century BC wrestler names Milo of Croton who famously won more Olympic wrestling than any other.

they say as a young man he picked up a new calf and went for a walk and he did that every day till it was a grown bull , progressive overload as they would call it now.

because he carried it every day he was what you might call impossibly strong.

Grief is going to feel like that , when my wife passed from cancer last year a very smart person was able to tell me grief doesn't go away. You get better at carrying it.

so Be Milo carry that 50 pound beaver till you could go for a jog with it.

While you are carrying that 50 pound beaver , make a new friend , reconnect with other relatives or another old friend , schedule something weekly if you can even if it is a phone call or supper.
what they may not know is while you spend time with them they are helping you carry that 50 pound beaver for a bit. then you can take it's full weight again in the next quiet time.

there isn't a time line

just a warning , you might lose patients for peoples "first world" problems , find empathy you seldom saw before, and see the world in a very different way than you were accustomed to.

figure out what you want to do with the time you have left and do it

and carry the weight of all those you have lost it gets easier to carry as you get stronger. you will trip or have a branch catch your foot , feel it , get up and keep going with the life you enjoy. one day you will be the weight someone else is carrying.

I know I have argued with many of you on this thread. But I compare it to arguing with a sibling. I may tick you off and you may tick me off but in the end we are all brothers and sisters.

I am still holding things back as I have not sobbed or wailed like I know I should. I am afraid of how it would make my kids feel. I can cry on my wife's lap when things get tough. My kids have sen me cry only a handful of times and that was not planned. And every time they came and comforted me. I just stick to the mantra of suffer in silence or alone.

I still workout and garden. I go at both pretty hard. My son stays with me doing almost all of it. He was in the garden with me til 3 today. Seeing him learn and grow and listening to what he listens to on YouTube is very entertaining. It takes my mind off of it. He actually helped me fix the electrical issue we had in the basement today. Couldn't have done it without him. When he comes and says I'm ready when you are Dad, it lifts me up because I know I can't let him down. It gets me out of my chair and doing something. He is more of a son than I deserve.

Sorry to ramble, I've just been hurting more these last couple of days more than usual. Hopefully I am about to break down. Thinking I need to spend a day with mom when I do.

I guess the hardest part is, there is no itinerary. No schedule. Lost in not knowing how I should feel. Feeling guilty for not crying more. Feeling bad for not calling or being with mom more than I am. Just not knowing what is enough or correct. Hoping I am being a good son in a different world.

Just overwhelmed.

You guys are fantastic, no matter what I may say in a heated discussion.

Death smiles at us all. All we can do is smile back.

That's deep, man.

Lost my mom and brother in 21'. Now most often their memory brings a smile to my face but even now sometimes those memories are hard.

Good catch.

To the OP. You’re not breaking down, the negative is just breaking out. Let it, it’s good for you.
I wish you well.

Osky

I stayed a stoic rock for 4 years after my son was killed becuse if I showed emotion my wife seemed to feed on it and really break down. Someone had to be able to take care of things and function. We still had my daughter 5 at the time after all.

Threw myself into working out after I got off the walker. It keep.me alive and distracted.

BUT after 4 years well something broke and I had a lot of self detrimental behavior for about 8 to 12 months and fortunately got my head out of my rear end.

Be careful holding it all in to long.

Deaths don't hit me quite the same any more after having my 16 month old son killed. Im sure it will be hard if its my mom, wife or kids and one cousin but still woth hit me hard like the death of my grandparents did before my son was killed. Just something is now permanently broken on that front.

That's a line from Gladiator.

1 Peter 5:7

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

Matthew 11:28-30

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

God gives us burdens to bear. Burdens given by God are something that are not too heavy, like raising children, loving a spouse, most of the time we even enjoy these burdens. With God's strength, we can shoulder and unshoulder them. Even the death of friends and family. Their is a time to mourn and cry, but there is also a time to rise up from mourning, let joy come again. We know we will see our loved ones again, we have hope, something to look forward to. We have a degree of control over burdens.

Cares, however, are things we have no control over: a loved on passing away, unexpected bills, burdens brought by sinful living. Mourning too long passes from being a burden that you can carry with God's help, to being overburdened with a care.

Abraham, after his wife Sarah died, cried... he didn't cry when God said to leave his family, when His nephew lot was stolen, when he was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac, when twice his wife was taken from him by kings... he only cried once, when his wife died. He loved her, and he mourned, and so he should have.

Genesis 23:1-6

And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

The important thing we learn from Abraham is, after a time of mourning, he stood up. If he had never stood up from mourning, he wouldn't have taken care of the burial details for his wife, he wouldn't have had a part in seeing his son get married to a fine lady, he wouldn't have gotten married again and had more children who started other nations. God still had a purpose for him after his wife passed, but he wouldn't have been able to fulfill that purpose if he never stood up from mourning.

Praying for you, I hope these Scriptures help

We are loosing a lot of loved ones to death as well, and we are in a bush village in Alaska, and cannot afford for our whole family to fly down to Florida for funerals. My wife was the only who flew down for her mother's funeral, and I was not able to go to my first Pastor's funeral, the man who led me to the Lord when I was a teenager, and trained me in the ministry. I mourned for a time, even complained a little to the Lord about not being able to go to the funerals of two of the most important people in my life, but eventually I saw that it had passed from being a burden I could bear, to being a care I had no control over, and was overburdening me, so I cast it upon the Lord, and he helped me stand and go on with life. I've a lot left to live for and rejoice over: my wife and children, surviving extended family, my congregation I pastor, people with addictions and trouble with sin in their lives. Not to mention marten and wolverine trapping, enjoying God's creation.

When you feel like crying, go ahead and cry. If you bottle it up, it will just fester and make you feel worse.
My wife gets mad at me when I am fixing something in the shop that isn't going my way and I start cussing and throwing tools, startling young children 4 houses over.
I explain to her that if I don't let that venom out, I am afraid that I may end up exploding and aim for one of those kids 4 houses over with one of those wrenches.
I deal with death of someone particularly close to me by saying, "I know that they are dead, but they are not gone." I then point to my chest where my heart is is and say, "They are right here." That's where I carry them and I find myself becoming more like them in the ways in which I admired them.

I prefer to spit in it's eye.

The time of passing for many of my friends young and old this last few weeks. We morn but not as the unsaved.
.

My old man died suddenly over 20 years ago. you mentioned gardening. he always had a garden we ate out of. he died right when I was getting married and having kid #1 in my 20's. that first spring I had to start gardening if I wanted anything garden related. I never had him show me anything other than helping him and had to figure it all out. so I set out to figure out tomato plants in a way that is hard to explain. our family farm and garden wasn't going to die with him. I'm the oldest. Anyway working in the garden is like a good memory / tribute that makes me feel good when I am doing it. Cant dwell on the bad things that happened. The death or our fights over the years. Other advice I can give is that if you hold everything in, its still going to come out. Its just a matter of when. It boils over at weird times if you try to hold it in. Do it now and get it over with or you will be crying like woman watching commercials for the next 20 years. Someone said something about self destruction. Its probably good to get it all out early and not to hold it in over time so things like that don't happen. Eventually you'll see something and it'll be a good memory about that something and not a bad memory about the death / loss. I couldn't listen to music for years but that's better now. Its an injury to you. Best to take care of it now and let it heal properly, or its going to fester. Good luck to you and others on here, I can't imagine some of this loss. Writing that reminds me, it can always be worse. Its hard to understand at first but once you go through something traumatic that keeps gradually getting worse over time as details emerge you soon realize that as bad as yesterday seemed like it was it could always be worse and that maybe we should have been more grateful for yesterday as bad as it seemed then. i.e. take your sick kid to the hospital as bad as it seems, there are far worse sicknesses in the hospital when you are there, or even someone grieving their loss. As bad as anything seems, It can always have been worse. It got bad, it kept getting worse, but eventually it all stopped and he was just gone. Keep your head up. Good luck everyone.

p.s. My grandma lived so long that nobody was at her funeral. She outlived everyone that knew her in a community she was heavily involved in. Anyone still alive wasn't healthy enough to make the funeral, immediate family not excluded. Its sad and lonely when you live a long time too. Godspeed.

Going through it right now with a my good fishing hunting buddy. He is in the hospital waiting for a room at a hospice hospital. Dementia or Alzheimer is also involved. He is barely alive as far as we can see. But he does recognize us and do get some logical communication form him.....SAD......jk