Hello, I am so sorry to hear about the pain you find yourself in over the traumatic loss of your mum. Sending you a welcome hug.
I understand why you feel as you do. Even when the passing is a painless and calm event, you still keep reliving those moments in your mind for months, even years afterwards. I still remember my dad's passing and he died over 30 years ago. Mercifully for him, it was quick. His heart failed suddenly following two heart attacks in previous months. It was less sufferable for my mum, who I lost in October 2017. She suffered a massive bleed on the brain due to her medication not having been monitored when it should have been. The drugs interacted and the doctors had not expected that to happen and it caused the bleed, effectively a massive stroke. That happened in September. She spent the following six weeks or so in hospital and died there. It was six weeks of hell and there was nothing I could do to help her. Towards the end I stayed with her in the hospital over night as well as during the day, only going home for a few hours to sleep while my brother took over staying with her. What upset me was that she would develop fluid in her throat that had to be cleared for her and the nurses did not check on her often enough to notice when she was struggling with this herself, so I had to stay to be able to call someone when she needed help. Also they did another nasty test on her when they already knew she was dying. I couldn't see the point. She finally passed away shortly after I had left to go home exhausted after an 18 hour stint at her bedside. I intended to sleep for a couple of hours and then go back, but received a call to say I should go back, but she passed away just before I got there. So I understand a little of what you are going through.
The memory of those awful weeks are what I tend to think of as the hospital horror and I remember my instinctive feeling when I got back to the hospital just after she had passed away was one of relief for her. At least she wasn't suffering anymore. That made me feel better. I had hoped to get her home before she died, so that she could be in her own bed, as she had wanted and not in a hospital, but that wasn't to be. I still feel guilty about that, because it was what she wanted, but I couldn't make it happen for her. She was too weak and ill. Like you, I could see no other image in my mind for months after except the images of all that happened in the hospital and even now, I avoid driving past it or along any road where I can see it. I never want to go there again and hope I never have to.
I am so sorry that counselling did not work out for you. I would have thought that would have been something that might help you, but as it has not, then I will tell you instead what has helped me the most and perhaps you can try some of those things. I made an album of photos of my mum, so that I could look at images of her in happier times and visited places we had spent happy times in together. That did make me sad as I was revisiting them without her, but it also brought back happier memories of her and it made me smile to think of the times we spent together. I made sure I had flowers around for a long time at home, as they somehow helped me. They were something lovely to look at when I was sad or seeing the horrid memories in my mind. Their beauty and scent also reminded me that there were still good things in the world. I took walks in the park for similar reasons. and found that a calming and peaceful place to sit to try to absorb and come to terms with all that had happened and time spent there, sitting on a bench, looking at the grass and the trees and just thinking helped me too. It also helped to see all the benches others had placed there with inscriptions in memory of those they had lost and of whom they had memories of having spent time with there. It reminded me that love never dies and I found many of them had flowers left on them at Christmas, presumably by those who still remembered them and thought of them at that time of year.
What helped me most perhaps was to write down an account of what happened to my mum and how I felt about it and all the things that had upset me about it and how I felt about it all. I also wrote some poems about her and about how I was feeling and that seemed to somehow help me get those feelings out of my system. The sadness and the pain have not left me, but they have dulled over time and I have come to accept that what happened happened and I can't change it, but also, I have come to understand that those weeks, horrible and painful and so full of tears, were really only a short spell in my mum's life and made up only a tiny part of it, with the majority having been so much happier and having contained hard times and better times, and so much laughter and love too. That's what you have to focus on; the fact that your lost loved one's life was much more than just the end of it and however hard and terrible that was, they are at peace now and will be somewhere where they are no longer in pain or distress and that when we see them again, we will need to have new experiences to have to talk about with them and happier times.
I cried and despaired for months after I lost my mum and a big part of that was due to the fact that I found it hard to dispel those hospital horror weeks from my consciousness, but that was driving me into depression and about six months after I lost her, I hit rock bottom and was aware that I was sliding into depression and had to help myself try to avoid that or I might never find my way out of it again. I found grief overwhelming and exhausting and felt I needed to find a way to take a break from it in order to survive it. I decided to join a class in a subject both my mum and I had been interested in and that helped enormously. It made me get out of the house and focus on something else for a couple of hours a week and engage with life and with others again. I made some lovely new friends there and they have been a huge help to me too. Two years on, I still look forward to going each week and still find it is helping me alot and because it was something my mum enjoyed too, I feel she would be pleased and that I am doing it for both of us. I have also made a little list of things I would like to do before I have to leave too and that gives me a few goals to aim for and something to look forward to.
It took me a while, but I realised that my mum would want me to be happy and to enjoy my life. She did her best to do that when she was here and she was fighter and never gave up, so I strive now to be like that. I Know it is what she would want for me, but she isn't here to make that happen for me anymore, so now i have to do it for her and for myself and hopefully, when we do meet again, I will have lots of happy things to tell her about. She was a great one for making life the best it can be, so I feel I owe it to her to try to do that for myself too and so do you.
In my experience, grief is a monster that will eat you up and make you a slave to it, if you let it. Combatting its horrible effects is a matter of self-help. No one will help you like yourself. It isn't easy or quick and takes a long time before it starts to feel any better, but it does start to feel better and slowly, you find that although there may still be bad days, there are better ones as well. You have to keep trying to find things that help you, little strategies that you can use to help yourself feel better and use to replace the nightmare memories with better ones. Your mum's life was more than the end of it and that is what you have to cling to. My mum had ill health all her life and went through a lot of suffering, but strove to inject a lot of happiness into it as well and so must we. Life is for living and in her memory, I am trying to make it as good as I can and you should too. It is hard to move forward from such terrible events, but move forward we all must and we don't leave our loved ones behind. We are who we are because of them and we still hear them in our hearts and minds when we need their advice. They never leave us because we carry them and our love and memories of them in our hearts always and always will. The good and the bad memories stay with us, yes, but we have to learn to adapt to this new life without them and can only be grateful for the gift of their presence for the time they were with us and learn to accept that they have moved on to the next phase of their existence now without us and we must rebuild our lives anew now too. Our love for them will always be there, but we have to accept their passing and learn to focus on the happy memories they left us. After all, we can't change what happened towards the end, only take comfort from the fact that they are not suffering anymore.
Try to find those strategies that help you and find ways to bring back the good memories and find new things to do to distract you from the bad memories and help you focus on the future and slowly, you will find your way forward. Wishing you well.