Need help so I don't cry

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As some of you know, my mother died last month. I haven't actually cried yet. I've been pushing those feelings down and avoiding feeling full on grief. I'm scared to because I don't know if I can recover from it soon and sufficiently.

I've done good at it. Cried a few tears here and there, but no real crying or going through the pain. Avoided it like the plague.

Today, the stupidest thing pushed me so close to the edge of having to deal with my feelings. We got this dog in 2001 as a stray. I wasn't that attached to him, but everybody loved him and he was a good and faithful dog. Big dog. Dobie looking mix but I called him a jackal cause he looked like one to me. He was blind from about the time we got him because he had been shot getting into somebody's chickens. Thats how we got him basically. The kids saw that stray they had been feeding, hurt and shot, on Thanksgiving day of 2002 and brought him inside my mothers house for the first time. They were staying with her to go to school down here and try it out. We moved shortly thereafter and my mother and the dog moved in with us too.

Everybody was attached to him, and he was a good dog. Very faithful. He went to live with my mother in law, at the lake, about five years or so ago after he kept digging in my neighbors flowers and wouldn't stop. He was very old. Not only blind now but also deaf they said and pretty much hairless and arthritic. He was ran over by accident in his own driveway by my dumbass brother in law today and killed. That was sad, but I think it was his time and all. It's not the dog I'm upset over.

This is what upset me. OK, first off, when I heard about it my first thought was "I have to call and tell my mother" before I remembered she's dead. That's happened a lot and I could deal with that. Then I thought that he was with my mother and I had this horrible sentimental vision of the dog and my mother, together in the afterlife and while I would normally think of that kind of thing as silly and juvenile and sentimentalist BS, I wanted to cry! I STILL want to cry!

I know I eventually have to feel this, but I just can't right now. I'm doing everything I can to just suck it up and put those thoughts out of my head but now that stupid picture is in there, all in technicolor like a Sunday School painting, of my mother feeding treats to that dog, both of them healthy and younger and with even a freaking SUNBEAM on them. I hate this. I so do.

Somebody say something to me to help me push this out of my head. I just would like encouragement to stay strong and not give in to it right now please.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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Crying is not the end. However, I have often found that when I release a sadness it can overpower me and I get consumed. I think it is an autistic thing to think that the moment will never end. Try not to be afraid of your pain. But rather to guide it. Easy words and I might not be able to do it myself. So sad about the dog, but he did have a much better life than if you'd not helped him. My father died almost 4 years ago and I have not cried. I don't know. I think his spirit is in the ethos, so he's still here kinda.
*hugs* and *brownies*

I don't know. I'm so sorry *hugs*

*Hugs* I'm sorry that you're going through this.

I know when I've lost parents, it's taken me a long time to even start processing the emotional side of it, especially since we had a very complicated and difficult relationship. It took me a really long time to cry, over a year, actually. Everyone is different and people grieve differently, but for me, avoiding the grief just prolonged it and, in hindsight, I kind of wish I'd just confronted it head-on. But, like I said, everyone is different, so just handle it the way that feels right to you.

Take care and hang in there. I'm sure you'll stay strong and the easier you are on yourself, the better you'll be able to cope.

I'm sorry this happened to your dog. And I'm sorry you have to have a vivid image of your mother along with this. In a way, though, even though it's indicative of your loss, this image would seem, to me, to be of beauty--of perhaps what would happen in Heaven.

***Hugs***

By the way: I was going to ask: do you live close to Atlanta?

*hugs*

Sorry about all your losses.When my best friend died a few years back it was months before I stopped going to the phone to call and tell a funny story or what's the local news and gossip.Then I wanted to cry,I still have not gone down the road where their house is,I can't bear it.I'll break down and bawl.Doubt I'll ever have a friend like that again.Was lucky to have them in my life,they were a rock.

Ask yourself, "What would Carmela do?"
(Sorry lame attempt at making you laugh)

You should probably just get it out of your system, which even if you do cry will probably take a while. You know it never really ends, but it feels better eventually. Usually anyway. I"m really glad you didn't take her toe though!

Jackal sounded like a sweetheart, you probably are mourning him too - not just your mom.

Here's a song for you, to say it better than I can (Can relate to a difficult mom relationship, also)!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0qm8nq8RcA[/youtube]

Sweet Pea hugs

Perhaps you are experiencing grief in other ways. My mother has severe dementia, and doesn't know me anymore. I have been experiencing grief as nausea. Every time I visit her I feel like I'm going to puke. No crying, just feeling really sick to my stomach.

My mother has been going through a similar process with the loss of her parents, first my grandmother in 2008 and my grandfather in 2009. She still has not got completely over it, and at times in conversation she will still cry about their loss, especially considering my grandmother's loss in 2008, which she still regrets not doing enough to prevent. Basically, my grandmother's stepchildren, who lived near her and disliked her, while we didn't, were somewhat negligent, just leaving grandma on the couch all day every day for a week or more with only a bed pan when she had broken a bone, causing her to develop a really bad bed sore, which just escalated from there until her passing. (My grandfather was there, too, but he was starting to get senile, so we didn't blame him.) My mum wishes she could have been the one present because she believes that she could have prevented that bed sore and extended grandma's life by several more years. She believes that grandpa died a year later because the loss of his wife caused him to decompensate. She constantly thinks that she could have done more to save the both of them and they could still have been around.

Mine is probably not the reply you want to get, but I'll post it because it's the opposite view and you might want to take it under consideration even if you still reject it anyway. Crying is not weakness or giving in, or not being "strong." It's not "strong" to push down and suppress and reject feelings you are actually having. If you don't feel like crying or you don't feel upset, that's one thing, and that's fine. But you seem to be saying you do feel your grief enormously, and you feel like you could cry, but that you are strenuously stopping yourself from doing so.

In my view, that's bad. It's unhealthy. Grief is something you need to allow getting out of your system. It never really leaves -- I lost both my parents within two years, while I was still in my twenties. I know what it's like to lose a parent, and pets, and I went to counseling. My therapist told me the same thing I'm telling you -- that's it's unhealthy to push down feelings, refuse to cry if you do feel like crying. It's not strong to "be strong."

It's actually the stronger person who allows their emotions to release (in an appropriate and safe setting, or course, not just in the middle of the supermarket or something) and who accepts that this is part of their reaction, and part of life. It's not weak to cry, crying and fully feeling your loss and your grief is natural after something truly sad has happened -- my therapist told me that too. It's weak to be in denial and think that "strong" means just carrying on as if nothing's happened.

Getting it out of your system in an allowing of grief actually HELPS you go forward feeling stronger. Like blowing your nose when it's full of snot. You don't just deny you've got a nose full of snot. You blow the damn thing every once in a while and you feel better for it, even if your cold is still there and you have to blow again later.

Sorry if that's a side of things or a take on things that doesn't fit with what you feel about this, but that's what I think. That whole John Wayne (even for women) "Take it like a man" (even if you're a woman) stuff is bull s**t and not actually a healthy way to live life.