I just lost my mother yesterday, March 19. We had been expecting it---in fact, we lost a lot of her in tiny increments over the past 15 years (she had dementia). But one is never completely prepared. How can one be?

I know how you feel. When my father passed 15 years ago, I didn't feel heavier, but there was a palpable hole in me, a hole in our house.

I'm sorry for your loss, too. All you can do is try to get through each day. It does get better. That's what I'm telling myself, now, again.

Take care.

Sean, I'm so sorry for your loss. I was in your shoes 2 years ago with my mom, and I'm now having to watch my beloved stepdad face cancer after he took care of mom with hers. As Cary and Virgo said, things do get better with time. The heaviness, the emptiness...it will recede with time, even though right now it doesn't feel that way. Be kind to yourself, and with your family, and take things one at a time, and it will get better. Or as my biodad says, you learn to live with the loss, adjusting to the weight of it (as it were).

Virgo, I'm also sorry for you and your family. I can't imagine what you've all gone through with your mom...you have all my good wishes. I hope her passing was a good one, to make up for the dementia.

You are both in my good thoughts...may the passage of time be kind to you and yours.

I was also surprised at the physical feelings that I had long after losing someone. Just as Cary said, it is a weight. The muscles in my back and legs actually hurt for weeks as if I had been carrying a sack of rocks on my back, bent over. And there was a hollow pain in my chest and throat... It can come back when you least expect it. And then some day it just doesn't. Some day the shock of seeing a body that you loved without life doesn't haunt you as much, because it starts to make some kind of sense. The person is gone and you come to understand it by living. And the pain becomes more like normal pain and sadness. The kind that you can deal with by having a good cry.

I got a call on a Thursday afternoon, my brother telling me that my mother had had a heart attack and it didn't look good. The redeye flight that night was the longest in history. The ride from the airport to the hospital even longer. For four days she roller-coastered, better/worse, living/dying. On the fourth day, the tests confirmed that she was brain dead and wouldn't be coming back. We (me, my father and my brother) made the difficult choice to turn the respirator off, and we were all on her bed as she drew her last breath. The decision, and the aftermath of that decision, were the most wrenching experiences of my life.

I don't tell this story in a "my parent's death was worse than your parent's death" kind of way. I tell it so that you can have some perspective on the situation. As the letter above, things could have been much, much worse. You came home and found your father, lying in his bed, dead. Please realize that you are fortunate in that his passing was peaceful. The pain you experience is your pain over the loss of him, not pain over how he was lost. That is a true blessing.

You are in shock. You are in pain. It's a part of life, this whole death thing. Spend the next few days with family and friends and truly celebrate your father's life. Accept that you will never be the same. And then go on. Because yes, this too shall pass.

I am very, very sorry for your loss.

The other posts have it wrong. Sean, your father's death is different because it was sudden (to you) and unexpected. It's very likely that once the initial shock wears off you'll be dealing with traumatic grief. It has symptoms that are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And until you deal with the trauma it's hard to get to the grief part. About 40% of family members who experience a sudden, unexpected death experience PTSD symptoms by the end of the first year. Theresa Rando has a wonderful (and extremely detailed) book; Complicated Mourning. Don't settle for a bereavement counselor's advice of writing a closure letter to your father. That wont cut it. Good luck to you in getting good help.

The loss of my parents was not quite as abrupt as your father's passing, Sean, but although we had plenty of time to prepare - and even feel relief, in the case of my mother - it hasn't gone away. We've come to terms with it, it certainly wasn't as terrible as the loss of one of my daughter's college age peers between the two, but there is a sense in us of immortality in our parents who have given themselves to us and been loved in return (and not all are, needless to say). When we discover they've left, whether or not with preparation, the discovery of that shell, that chrysalis, still leaves us with a strange and terrible new feeling impossible to convey.

And yet it does pass. The hole is never filled, the empty chair is never right again, and yet somehow the love that leaves us feeling so lost in that moment of discovery does change us over time, and so changes the feeling from one of loss to one of separation, to one, eventually, of being closer to wholeness.

It doesn't make any sense, but it happens. It gets better. The gift becomes more gilded and burnished and precious with time.

But right now all anyone can offer that does make sense is what I feel right now: I, too, am terribly sorry for your loss.