The calls have been made and the arrangements are done. People have told you how well you are handling it. You went back to work on the day you said you would. Some evenings it arrives all at once, and some evenings nothing arrives, and both worry you. I tell people I'm not okay and it's like they don't hear it. Everybody expects me to be fine by now.
Nothing here is a schedule for grief, and nothing here says how you ought to feel about the person who died.
Grief can sit close to something heavier. If that is where you are, licensed mental-health care is the right door.If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
01
What you do in the months after
Most of it is what loss asks of a person.
You handle the paperwork. You take care of the other people who are grieving. You find their handwriting on something and have to sit down. You reach for the phone to tell them some news before you remember.
Some of it may be more than that. You may finish something you had been working on and feel it has nowhere to go. You may be the one everyone in the family leans on, and notice that nobody has seen you cry.
People say time helps, or that they are at peace now. Either may be so.
What it can cost is help. The one who organizes everything tends to be thanked, and tends not to be asked.
02
What may be here beside the grief
Grief comes first, and it does not need a rule to explain it.
Beside it there may be something else.
"I'm still working for someone who may not even be watching anymore."
The person whose opinion mattered most may be the person who died. Under Approval, the work can go on being done for them, with no reply possible.
Read about Approval →"Strong is the only version of me they know."
You may be the one holding everyone else up. Under Strong, this is the season when being seen to struggle seems least allowed. I'm the one taking care of everybody else, and none of them know I was up half the night crying.
Read about Strong →There may be other things here, and there may be only grief.
03
What is under the rule
Under Approval, the fear may be that without their verdict you don't know what you are worth. What would answer it is an internal measure that doesn't require ratification.
Under Strong, the fear may be that if they see you struggle, you lose the only standing you have. What would answer it is being seen at less than full capacity and still being held.
Neither is something to solve while you are mourning. It may be enough for now to know which one is present, if either is.
04
One question that separates them
Is it one person seeing you struggle that you can't bear, or anyone?
One person is the Approval answer. Anyone is the Strong answer.
If the one person is the parent who died, the question may not fit, and then there is not enough to tell from it. If it is too soon to ask it at all, leave it. Not enough to tell is a result, and so is finding only grief.
Missing a parent is not a rule, and neither is wishing they could have seen something. If your relationship with them was a painful one, what you feel may be mixed, and licensed mental-health care is the right door for that.
This library works by subtraction, which here means only this: grief is counted as grief and not as a rule, and anything else can wait until you are ready to look.
05
One thing to try this week
When someone asks how you are doing this week, notice the answer you give.
That evening, write it down. Under it, write the answer that was true, even if it is the same one.
You don't have to tell anyone the second one.
What the longer pattern can look like is on I'm Still Trying to Earn My Parents' Approval.