Brief summary of my situation: I’m 52, my dad was 75 when he died on April 11 of this year. My mom is still with us, he and I had a good relationship, he had been in a decline for years. He had been at the point where he probably should have been in a facility that could give him 24-hour care, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it so we 4 kids tried to support her in caregiving as much as we could. Weeks would go by where he got little to no sleep, he’d hallucinate all night and do things like wake my mom and tell her they needed to leave because the house was on fire. He had bladder cancer a couple years ago, and the surgery for it was successful— but he had always hated hospitals and was terrified when his follow up visits were near; and of course the anxiety made it hard to sleep, etc. I live 3 hours away, and he needed to use a bathroom every 20-30 minutes, so I didn’t see him often. I was trying to visit at least once a month.
All of that to say that he had not been himself in a long time. He couldn’t do things that used to make him happy, simple things like go downtown to get a coffee and read the paper. And I didn’t see him very often, and when I called home he could generally talk to me for a minute before he was too tired. This is the part that confuses me: I feel like I am telling myself all the unhelpful things I would not say to anyone else. I shouldn’t be upset because he’s not suffering, my mom was not able to continue at that pace and we were worried about her, I didn’t talk to him or see him much so it’s not like my life is any different now. Of course my mom and the siblings who live close are having a hard time, but I’m OK. Sometimes I think I don’t feel anything, but that’s not true because I don’t want to do anything but watch tv and play on my phone and I don’t want to cook for myself or shower and I am very irritable. Further complicating matters is not having any kind of service for him because of COVID. I think I am just feeling stuck