lam9132's comments

The experience of losing a parent - Blog Entry

01 Mar 2009 03:50 PM

I lost my mother in December 2008 to liver failure. She'd never been a drinker, and the cause of the liver failure is unclear. It was so hard to watch her slowly fail and harder to have to put her in a nursing home. My sister quit her job to attend to my mom and my stepdad. Mom was the rock in our family, our "go-to" person, the only one you felt REALLY understood who you were. Her death has been devastating. Since she died, my stepdad has gone progressively downhill. I live four hours from him and my sister, so we moved him just recently to a nursing home by me and my sister is moving in with me. The stress of packing up the home and moving him, and having my sister move in with me has been pretty intense. I work a lot of hours, so my days have been really long. My stepdad is still grieving hard over my mom. He cries everyday and we cry with him. I think I could even deal with all of that -- it's brought my sister and me closer than we've ever been, it's brought out kids closer to each other. However, ever since my mom died, things with my boyfriend of 6 years have been tanking. I didn't want him to come to the funeral (7 hours from his house) because I had so many other people to take care of and I didn't trust him to be there for me. I felt like he would be one more person for me to care for. He hasn't been understanding. I told him that I was feeling emotionally pretty fragile and that for a little while he would need to treat me with extra care and compassion. He hasn't. He's pretty much acted like nothing happened. He hasn't asked how I'm doing. He hasn't hugged me. He gets frustrated when I get teary. I don't understand this reaction from him, but it's making it more difficult to deal with grieving for my mom, caring for my stepdad and moving my sister in. I just really expected a little extra love and care in this situation, but haven't had it. Has anyone else experienced relationship problems with significant others who are not understanding? What do you do about it?