I’m grieving for my late aunt, and I think about death all the time

QI was very close to my Aunt who died a year and a half ago. She played a huge part in my life and helped raise me. She and my mother were inseparable. She had been sick for some time, was elderly and in a hospice when she died. I was there for her passing and although I was sad to see her go I was glad that her pain was gone and that she had passed after living a full life. Recently I have felt quite low, not all the time but now and again. It is an awful feeling that I cannot shake. I don’t believe that I am depressed as I go to work every day and I don’t feel low all the time — it’s just a couple of down days and I’m ok again. However, when I get these lows I often wonder what is the point of anything. It’s so odd but witnessing a death has made it so real to me, I now know it is inevitable. I think a lot about how I am going to die and that those around me are all going to pass away too. I am aware that everyone knows this but I think of my aunt frequently and her passing.

She seemed afraid of death when it came and she was reluctant to go. When she was gone I felt that everyone got on with things like she had never existed almost, nothing seems real anymore. I find myself questioning everything about life. I wonder why I am here at all. I believe that we come into and leave this world alone. I have this overwhelming feeling that I am alone, even though I have a wonderful family.

In the months after her death I felt grateful to be alive and thought I would never take my life for granted again, and that life is for living, but lately I feel so different. I feel like we are born to die and spend our days getting one step closer to death. Sometimes I get so angry with myself for being so preoccupied with this. I know watching her die has made me face my own mortality and of course that is natural but it’s just when I get low I am starting to wonder what is the point of this life. I am not suicidal, just a bit lost.

A

LOSING a loved one almost always has a profound effect on us such as you are experiencing. It also means that we have to face up to the inevitability of our own death, which is not something that we think about all the time because if we did we would go crazy. People deal with grief in different ways — some bury themselves in their work, others are so overcome that they find it impossible to do any of the normal everyday things while other people seem to grieve for quite a short period, and then get on with their lives. There is nothing wrong with any of these responses, they are simply different.

I think the best thing for you to do when you feel sad and down is to tell yourself that these feelings are quite natural and that they will pass. It is perfectly acceptable to feel like that — it is simply one of the stages of grief. Your aunt was really a second mother to you and you will not forget her ever. As George Eliot put it so eloquently, “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them”.

I have found The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche to be extremely beneficial. He writes about death being a natural part of life and the Buddhist approach to it all is quite stimulating. Another more conventional book is On Death and Dying by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who pioneered the now very well-known concept of the five stages of grief. You might find it helpful to dip in and out of either of these books to try to understand what is going on for you right now. But try to bear in mind that all your thoughts are quite normal and very much a part of the loss that you have experienced.