Aspies & bereavement

[peachykeen]

Sorry for the mega morbid thread on a Friday evening!!

But the ‘what makes you feel loved’ thread was an interesting read for me, because it’s usually the NT half of the relationship talking about how they struggle to feel loved or heard by their aspie. So hearing some aspie viewpoints on what makes them feel loved was an interesting comparison.

So I wanted to have a similar conversation about death. Not so much what people think about death and whether they fear it, but how they process the emotions surrounding the death of another. I know a few NTs who say that their aspie partners struggle to support them after close family/friend bereavements, but I’ve also known aspies who breakdown at seeing someone they love grieve.

What about first hand grief? How does everyone process those emotions? Do you call upon others for support or push them away during these times?

 

[kay]

Most of my opportunities to grief were after prolonged periods of stress and so I unfortunately never really get to do it properly. Or maybe I am lucky and am spared. Don't know. Do know I don't cry at funerals because I am just trying to get through the whole thing and am in survival mode with no time to grieve. Came close to tears once at a neighbors funeral during a slide show of her life because at least that time I wasn't stressed before hand. Of course I barely knew her having moved in after she became ill and there was still all those people around at the funeral. But at least I know I'm capable of pretty much typical reactions if given the right conditions. I'm sure if something sudden happened to someone I'm close to I'd be a mess, because I have been with pets, though I would still freeze up at the funeral. With the long illness things I tend to get all my crying out when they first get sick. That of course means crying for people who hopefully are going to stay well for awhile. Being prone to severe anxiety I do a lot of unnecessary preemptive grieving now that I am thinking about it. And I want a hug when I do get started crying. Though I only have one person I really like to have hug me.

 

[Judge]

I'm inclined to believe everyone processes grief on their own terms. That there is no one- or "right" way to grieve.

 

[kay]

I'm inclined to believe everyone processes grief on their own terms. That there is no one- or "right" way to grieve.

Yea, that's something we forget, certainly I do. Don't think my mom has really ever forgiven me for not crying at my dad's funeral. But I couldn't. It was sad but not as sad as the events leading up to it.

 

[Major Tom]

I don't really get attached to people other than a few in my life. As a result I haven't had to greive other than in a few rare occasions. Those occasions however I an still holding onto the grief. For example my grandmother and my two best friends, I still think of every day. I still dream of them. Etc.

 

[Aelita]

I've never had much of a response to death. I might miss people some after the fact, but besides that, I've never felt much of anything in response to death. It made working in a retirement home easy. You lose residents all the time, and I've never felt anything upon seeing the death notices except 'Oh, well they're gone now.'...So I have absolutely no idea what my grieving process is, because I've never experienced one.

 

[Gritches]

I doubt there's a strictly Aspie (or strictly NT) way to grieve.

That said, I tend to fly through the stages of grieving at a sickeningly fast past. So fast I'll actually be able to "watch" them play out. So if three days later at the funeral I don't blubber like a fool, it's because I've already dealt with it and come to terms.

Doesn't mean I won't remember the person later and feel grief. But that's different than what happens when I actually get the news.

 

[Sozdatelniza]

While bereavement period or after someone died I don't feel any sorrow like NT people. I had only two situations when one of relatives died and I didn't feel any sorrow for them either. Of course I loved them, I liked to talk with them both in my childhood. But I didn't feel any emotions after they died.
I don't know why. Even my friend from St. Petersburg with Asperger's got way more emotions such as sorrow when one of his relatives died.

 

[Bolletje]

I tend to grieve privately, and a bit later than others. When informed of a death, I don’t cry immediately: I tend to take care of my grieving loved ones first, I try to support them to the best of my abilities. I cry later, either on my own, or at the funeral.

Funerals always make me cry, even if I didn’t really care for the deceased. Seeing the pain and sense of loss of other people affects me very strongly.

An example: when I was in my late teens, a family friend committed suicide in his own home. I found him, so it was my job to inform his wife, his children, my sister and my parents, who were very close to him as well. Since their house was a no-go, I invited everyone over to my parents’ house. I was in take-charge mode, providing a place to go and a place to stay for the late friend’s four children and my sister. I made sure everyone was fed, I made sure they had someone to talk to. I put my own grief on the back-burner because I felt it was more important for me to be strong for the others. I didn’t cry until everyone had left the house, and then I cried for over an hour.

My little sister screamed at me later, calling me cold and heartless, because I hadn’t shown my grief in a “proper” way. I was very much hurt by this, and over a decade later it still hurts. My sister is the one who has the most problems with how I grieve. Even as a 6-year old she screamed at me because I hadn’t paid our dead cat proper respect according to her. Some people can’t understand that my way is legitimate too.

My parents respect that I am supportive first, and grieve privately later (until the funeral that is, then I cry uncontrollably)

 

[SusanLR]

I don't really get attached to people other than a few in my life. As a result I haven't had to greive other than in a few rare occasions. Those occasions however I an still holding onto the grief. For example my grandmother and my two best friends, I still think of every day. I still dream of them. Etc.

This fits me totally.
I've never been that attached to anyone except my parents.
The grief hasn't passed even after 12 yrs. for my Dad and
5 yrs. for my Mom.
It is on my mind everyday and every night whatever
I may dream about, they are in the dream with me like
it was in real life.

Several aspies I've known grieve for their lifetimes.

I think it is because we tend to only attach closely to so
few, when we lose one of them or all, then we feel so
totally alone.
I know my grief will always be a part of me the rest of my life.
I have two people I feel a closeness with, but, they do not afford the same comfort.

 

[Progster]

When someone dies, I just feel numb... I hardly get emotional at all. I was more emotional on first learning that my dad had cancer, than when he died of it. I suppose it was because I was expecting it, I wasn't hit by the sudden shock of it, I had time to absorb and process it. It's not that I don't feel emotions or grief, I do, I just internalise them and don't show them outwardly in the same way as other people do - I can't produce them on demand like some people can.

 

[WereBear]

When I was widowed in a sudden way, I grieved a lot, but eventually realized I had to "get through it" because I was in so much pain I just couldn't stand it. I also didn't have the luxury of dwelling on it, because this upended my life and I was struggling to remake it in a new place; our business collapsed, had to let the house go, rehome almost everyone in my rescue, including my own dogs and cats.

To the outside world it may have looked "too fast" but I had to function or die. I didn't see anyone willing to take me in like a stray cat, either. So I didn't care what society thought, and I knew how much I grieved.

 

[Mia]

Some people can’t understand that my way is legitimate too.

I do exactly the same thing, if it's a crisis of some sort I deal with that first. I delay the emotional response until I can be alone.

 

[onlything]

Every instance is different while similar at the same time. At times, it's like a full understanding. A kind of deep rooted sadness, yes, but acceptance above all. This is what happens. People come. People leave. It was expected and long coming. It means 'seeing' a ghost of a person in places they attended the most. Remembering the way they called you and smiled at you. Feeling the texture of their skin or the smell of their favourite soap. A sweet, sad kind of grief after the initial pain. When it happens, most of the time is filled with getting lost in thoughts about what was.

Other times, it's like a literal bludger to the head, especially while not expected and sudden. A cutting pain you cannot express at all. Cannot cry. Cannot move on. Just a type of despair, suffering of a searing, invisible wound. A bit like everything stops - there's only this pain that makes you want to claw it out of your chest, the kind that cannot find release and that either pushes you into a bout of cold indifference towards everything, numbs you - or forces you to understand and move quickly so as not to shatter into pieces. It can cause you to hate people, those judging eyes, mouths telling you of how unfeeling you are.

Most of the time, it's long-lasting. You can think that it's done but then suddenly, years after it happened, you see the place they were so often at, and the pain hits anew and the only thing you can do is to concentrate on who they were to you, on the good time you spent with them, on the smiles, laughs, calls, smells, feels. It can also be regret that you didn't spend with them enough time, that you didn't call enough, that you didn't show them enough how much you loved them.

It's kind of ridiculous when you're going through another sad moment like this and people accuse you of being(looking) bored/cold/annoyed/indifferent.

I'm trying to be supportive of those that have also experienced the loss as well as me but it can simply be too hard. My mind can focus on things so much that I won't see or I won't be able to react. From my experience, when the loss happens, people often start talking about what ifs, or sharing embraces, being so physical it hurts to look, or even accusing each other as if there is a point to that. But what ifs seem so pointless, accusing so sad when you think how the deceased would react to this pettiness and physicality so painful and overbearing.

When someone close to me dies, I hurt, and when I hurt I want to just hide myself from the world and lick my wounds in peace, not go through meetings with other family members. I want to gather flowers like I used to and put them in a place they used to love, thinking of people we both had.

But the most painful for me is always to see the corpse. They are always so cold and stiff, lying like a wax doll in a coffin, with this artificial pose and fake beauty. I hate seeing these corpses. I don't want to remember them like this but whenever I'm forced to see it, it seems to root in my brain and grow like a tumor.

I also remember the only time I openly cried during a funeral. It's kind of funny in a slightly bitter way how people changed the way they behaved towards me afterwards. As if they suddenly saw me as a human.

 

[Thinx]

Thanks for posting the article @Mia, I thought it was very interesting, and explored a constructive approach to helping someone who was in a complex grieving situation.

I recall being upset when each grandparent died, and additionally so because a parent was distressed in each case. As with most things relating to emotions, my experience was of seeming to get a direct download of the emotions of others, that's how I d describe it now, but then I didn't distinguish between my emotions and their's so in retrospect I m not sure how upset I was or how much was the parent's distress.

Similarly when my father's younger brother died suddenly when I was about 13. The most grief I recall that was my own in childhood was when my best friend moved to Scotland. I cried for days and missed her such a lot. I was about 15 then.

I tend to find sudden deaths disturbing and upsetting and think about the person a lot, even if I didn't know them well. However I d be very unlikely to go to a funeral, I tend to talk to the person in my head, and tell them about my shock and grief for them, often as I m walking in quiet places like parks or rivers or by the sea. That's how I ve grieved for my cats too, especially one who died suddenly, I spoke to him and pictured him as with me a lot for a year or so, and still do sometimes, in a yearning but no longer quite grieving way, and his brother too who died more recently; I remind myself they had happy lives, plus I have an idea they come back as kittens, cyclically, based on no facts of course.

There's an article I like by Michael White an Australian Narrative therapist, called, Saying Hello Again, about working with loss through supporting people to engage with the lost person rather than disengage. Why do we have to disengage? We don't have to, we can keep who they were to us, always. In a glad though yearning way, is how I experience it.

I didn't grieve for my father so much at first, except remembering him when I was young, as I didn't feel close to him over many years, however I later visited his grave over a couple of years, talking to him and leaving flowers. Grieving does seem complex and related to the relationship one has had with the person or creature.

 

[Judge]

I try to keep my grief somewhat private as well.

I suppose it may have something to do with my being bullied as a child. When I learned to hide my feelings strictly to protect myself. No matter what kind of beating I took, I never let them see me cry. And equally on occasion in real time it pays for me to keep a level head about things. It's just what I do, anyways.

 

[Mr Allen]

We lost my Nan in September 2016, she was 97, on the day Mum told me she'd gone, it was a Wednesday afternoon so all I said, bearing in mind her son, my Uncle's grief, was "Are we still going to t'pub then?", it wasn't till the day of the Funeral that I cried for her.

Same in August 1997 when we lost my Granddad, I was already sad because it was the same week as Princess Diana died, but I was very close to the old lad, and cried buckets as his Funeral, especially because Mum was heartbroken, and it broke my heart to see her so upset.

 

[LiberationBattle]

“Death is terrible for anyone. Young or old, good or evil, it’s all the same. Death is impartial. There is no especially terrible death. That’s why death is so fearsome. Your deeds, your age, your personality, your wealth, your beauty: they are all meaningless in the face of death”
Sunako Kirishiki from “Shiki”

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

The skin grows over the wound but the wound is still there.

I remember making the people in the funeral car cry with laughter.

Note we were driving back after the funeral. Not before.

Tough audience

Seems the release of laughter is close to tears, maybe.

Something a chiropractor understands.

 

[Puppywings49]

Personally, I tend to not be able to handle other people's grief. I usually end up hiding away someplace right after someone's death, or act unnaturally cheerful in the dim hope of cheering them up, which I know is impossible. The first one is a lot more healthy though.

As for my own feelings, I'm kind of alexithymic and usually end up confused, and I definitely experience it a lot differently than people around me seem to? I don't feel especially sad until something feels out of whack because they're not there, at which point I hide until I'm ok again. Honestly, I spend most od the time hiding.