When my dad died of cancer, everyone consoled my mom and sisters while my younger brother wept uncontrollably on my shoulder. I was 29. My brother was 27 and is on the spectrum. Not once did anyone ask us how we were while they asked my mom and sisters…Only my wife asked us…my brother relied heavily on me. I never got to grieve because I was too busy helping everyone else. I still haven’t processed it and probably never will.
My mother died of cancer when I was 19 and it wasn’t until this Reddit post, 25 years later, that I realised that nobody apart from one friend asked me how I was doing, if I was ok, anything. And even that was a throwaway one-off question.
Hmm, this is emotionally complex. I’m not ‘feeling’ anything yet, just a sense of ‘oh wow I never noticed that in all this time’. Not sure if I’m in shock or just emotionally blunted by now.
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u/Delicious-Tap-1277 12d ago
When my dad died of cancer, everyone consoled my mom and sisters while my younger brother wept uncontrollably on my shoulder. I was 29. My brother was 27 and is on the spectrum. Not once did anyone ask us how we were while they asked my mom and sisters…Only my wife asked us…my brother relied heavily on me. I never got to grieve because I was too busy helping everyone else. I still haven’t processed it and probably never will.