Now I'm afraid I'll lose anyone at any time. I have OCD and all my rituals are focused around keeping my mom, sister, husband and current cats safe and alive. I text my mom constantly, and if she doesn't answer for a few hours, I panic. I've started crying and hyperventilating if she didn't send her usual I'm OK morning text by the time she always does; I'm ready to drive to her apartment, prepared to find her body.
I am in constant contact with my college friends; we all talk almost daily. One of them disclosed that she just went through a miscarriage. I am at a loss. I want to be there for her while going through my own process to have kids. I can't begin to imagine her feelings of loss and the physical pain. I lay down and cried after she told me, grieving for her and her baby and her husband.
"My ex-boyfriend killed himself. My friend who goes to the same college called to tell me. I knew he was feeling depressed when I broke up with him last month, but he never mentioned wanting to kill himself. He was seeing a psychiatrist and said he was starting to feel better. What if the breakup triggered this? I feel like it's my fault."
It was your mother's job to prepare your sister for your eventual departure. I'm sorry she did not do that. Part of having children and getting them to maturity is making sure they will be OK on their own and that anyone still in the home will be fine when they leave. Clearly, that didn't happen. What you can do now is stay in contact with your sister on a regular basis.
Disenfranchised loss refers to grief that isn't acknowledged or validated by society, which makes it harder for people to openly express their pain. For me, that definition hit home. My wife, Jane, died of leukemia in 2017. In my memoir Ride or Die: Loving Through Tragedy, A Husband's Memoir, I chronicled our ordeal and my own isolation. Being "Jane's husband" became my identity during her illness.
Wouldn't it be great if there was something like this for grieving parents who feel like they're drowning? Well, there is, and it starts with you. Once you've been through what you've been through, you're as much of an "expert" on how to cope with your grief as I am. You've learned so much and now it's time for the final lesson: paying it forward and helping other bereaved parents navigate the long road ahead of them. Who knows this rocky terrain better than you?
Yvonne Miller experienced deep grief after the loss of her son, Christopher B Kelly, to gun violence in 2020. She found solace through the Trauma & Resilience Initiative.
Around one in four pregnancies in the UK end in some form of baby loss - including miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death - according to pregnancy and baby charity Tommy's.
Every week, the Your Local Guardian publishes death notices and funeral announcements from the families of loved ones who have passed away. This serves as a lasting tribute to the memory of those we've lost.