Yes absolutely its normal they don't call it a roller coaster for nothing,And absolutely its exhausting - I,m not a physician but it think its because we constantly live on standby mode - the emotions do this too us - we don't know how they will make us act at any given time, and they're connected to Adrenaline and dopamine and all that stuff so our bodies are working harder physically all the time. Even though we are not really swimming through a crocodile infested river, the message from out brain means our bodies are reacting as though we are.
Looking after the dogs before would have been a piece of cake you wouldn't have thought twice about it but now its adding more too your exhaustion - anything extra - even making a phone call to sort out a bill or something becomes a mountain where before it was just something we got on with.
Same with work -constantly having to put this face on and constantly on our guard to keep it that way - i,m lucky my job isn't public facing but the person who was in the same office as me was used to seeing me hiding tears or leaving the room suddenly but she left and the new person has no idea about my life and i don't want to start explaining it now because it sounds pathetic its so long ago - and yep it was nine years on Sunday but still last week stupidly listening too a song i should have avoided set me off crying again - i just leave the room - no public to see me and frankly i think if i turned up here in my PJ,s no-one else would notice.
But i have learned to live with that, its who i am now and its become just a case of knowing how to deal with it when it happens - finding a place or a way to take a breather from it all.
I remember when i first went back to work one of the bosses telling me about him and his wife falling out over the color of kitchen units i just wanted to scream at him - it doesnt matter -its not relevant in life - let her chose because tomorrow she might not be here. - i didn't do it but i really wanted too - and once i had to leave a shop pretty quickly because two old ladies were talking about their husbands - the conversation went something like "you managed to leave him at home then" "yes" -"ooo lucky you, mines in the bakers but they're such a nuisance when you are shopping" "well they are arn,t they, getting under your feet always looking for the cheapest brand" - and just as i was thinking you will regret saying that if you get home and he is on the floor look how lucky you are you got to your age together -when the other ones husband came in from the bakers with a cake he,d brought her for a treat - that was the kind of thing Keith used to do - unexpected treats - i put my stuff down and left, i just couldn't bear it.
But the truth is - arguing over the color of kitchen units is normal its stuff we do and he wasn't trying to hurt me he was trying to make conversation because he didn't know what else to say - he isn't normally one to make conversation at all i cant remember a single other non work related conversation in all the years we have worked here -but he was making an effort - just a misguided one - but sometimes as well when we are in so much pain that kind of trivia can be welcome - because we don't actually want to talk about how we are feeling all the time -sometimes we want to escape it and think about trivial things just to get a break.
- and the two ladies - they were not doing or saying anything i might not have said myself - husbands can be pain when you're shopping they undoubtedly say the same about us - if we went in a DIY shop i cared about the color of the paint and the time i spent choosing probably drove him mad, but he cared about the size of the paintbrush or some new tool he spotted or the type of screws to use and staring at rows of screws drove me mad - so girly shopping was a treat - and they didn't say anything i might not have said myself. Its just at this time while you're on the roller coaster you take everything and relate it too your grief because normal doesn't exist any more.
You don't really want this to happen too your friends you wouldn't wish it on anyone, and it wont make you feel more "normal" if it does - it isn't a case of when its their turn because it has happened to you twice - yes it has and that's awful , but your relationship with your parents is different to theirs with their parents.
maybe try and think of it differently - You were blessed to have two loving parents in your life for the time you did have them try and focus on that rather than this idea that you were somehow singled out punished even, because look at all of them, having their parents for longer.
But how much do you know about their relationship with their parents - some of them might have been estranged for other reasons, whether that's where they live - so they don't see them often enough, For the last ten years i have seen my elder daughter once a year twice at most occasionally - because she lives in Africa - that is about to change she is coming back, but are your friends parents just around the corner and even if they are, how much time do they actually spend with them or maybe its whether they are still together, was their childhood blighted by arguing - does their dad get mad because they spend more time visiting their mum than him so the friction continues along with the stress that the friction causes which one do we spend Xmas with this year the sort of stress that lasts their lifetime because the family falls out over it - or perhaps they were raised by single parents so they didn't have chance to be close to the other one. They might never have that quality of that time you did.
I had two memory's of my dad when i was small and then i didn't see him again until i was in my twenties - then i saw him 3 times and he went and died - i don't regret the three times at all i was still shocked and still grieved when it happened and grieved for for the time we couldn't now ever have. Five times five memory's, when it should have been a lifetime of memory's even if that was only my 20 year lifetime -
MY mum was there for me all the time -but between me being 16 and 30 or so she didn't live nearby and again we saw each other just a few times a year the rest was phone calls so we had few quality years in terms of time spent together than we should have during her lifetime as well as the early end too her life.
I, not judging or comparing so please don't think that, your grief is yours and how it affects your thinking is not some kind of fault its how grief is - i,m just trying to help you see your friends parents may be in the world for longer in terms of years, but if you are going to measure this in timed units then you have to consider are those extra numbers of years as valuable in terms of the quality and the amount of time within those years you got to actually spend with yours in the fewer years you had.?
