Hello Jo,
I am so sorry to hear about your father. I am glad you have an understanding partner to help support you, as I am afraid this is not a process that is quickly over.
I lost my own father to a heart attack also. He had one heart attack and a second one several months later. He did come home and did seem to be getting better, but passed away suddenly just after getting ready for bed one night. He collapsed on the bed and I just walked in to find him lying there. It is still something I can relive as if it happened yesterday and it actually happened in 1985.
I lost my mum in 2017, which is when I found my way to this website. It was only then that I came to understand that loss is not something anyone ever gets over, but instead, just slowly learns to live with. I think I cried daily for almost a year. I don't cry much anymore, but that dull flat sadness and awareness that she isn't here now is still the thing I wake up with in my head every morning and I still have to force myself out of bed to deal with another day without her. I miss them both so much and I don't expect that ever to change now, after losing my dad so long ago and still thinking of him and missing him every day.
I cherish my life and do my best to enjoy it as much as I can, because I know that's what they would want for me, but it is very hard to be without them both and to face daily life without their support and encouragement and having them to chat to. I still chat about my day to their pictures at home and can hear in my head what their answers would be and I do believe in an afterlife so also believe we will see eachother again one day, but life is hard without their being here.
As I say, the painful grief that you feel in those first few months and years does dull to an ache that you wake up with every day, but the sadness and the missing them never really goes away. You do just learn to accept that they are gone and learn to live with that.
I think you have to actively work against letting it depress you in those early years of loss. You have to find strategies that help you not to slide into depression, which I think is very easy to do when you are grieving. One of the best ways to do this is to get out of the house as much as you can. You may feel able to let others help. Just going out to a have a coffee with someone can help, but if you don't want to be around people, I find walking in the park helps a lot. It is a beautiful and calm place to sit to try to process what has happened and gradually come to terms with it. I also found making a photo album of some pictures of my mum helped too. I also kept flowers around the house and found that a comfort somehow too. Their beauty and scent seemed to help me. Others start a memory book or jar, writing down memories of times spent with the person they have lost or just character traits and then they can dip into that when they want to relive a memory. I didn't do that, but I did and do keep a diary and write down each day how I am feeling and what i am thinking about. I do find looking back at the early entries made in those first few months after I lost my mum, that I have made progress in dealing with my grief as time has gone on and hope I still am.
We talk alot about feelings and emotions when talking about loss and grief, but I think one of the most important things to be aware of is the need to ensure you eat and drink enough when you are grieving. It is so easy to be so consumed by your thoughts that you just sit and think all day and forget to eat or drink. I even forgot to get dressed some days or to wash and didn't notice time passing until it got dark and I had to go back to bed. It is important to look after your body as you will only feel worse if you make yourself ill from lack of food or water and it is very easy to forget about such things when you have no appetite and nothing seems to matter.
So you have to work at trying to feel better, but loss does change you, so it's no good expecting to get over it and get back to being who you were before it happened, because you never will. Your world has changed, your future will be different without that person in your life and you change and become a person you don't recognise and don't know and don't want to be, so you are on a journey not only of grief for the person you have lost, but for the person you used to be, the life you had before you lost them and the future you would have had if you had not lost them, so loss is a life-changing experience that has a huge impact on every area of your life and yourself. No wonder then, that finding your way into the new existence that you find yourself in, without that person in it, is so hard and takes so long to adjust to or that it is so painful and long a journey to reach acceptance and find a way forward.
There are lots of people here who understand and will be able to help offer useful advice and at very least, understand, Jo, so do keep talking to us. Sending you an understanding hug. Take care.