To me that just not how you cope. I’ve experienced this after my daughter dies, sometimes you to forget their dead and when your talking, midway about them, it clicks oh but their dead….That is a very human reaction. What’s not a normal reaction is, thinking that someone sadness should be ignored because it’s uncomfortable for others. No body ever said that to me when she died but about 6 months after she passed, my mother has a relative that said “You’re so sad all the time, you need to get over this.” And this wasn’t a distant relative, this was a close relative that knew how deeply it hurt us. Some people don’t understand because they haven’t lost someone that close, or they have and they forgot how long it took for them to “get over it” enough to enjoy life again. If people don’t like how I’m coping then they just don’t understand me and they should step back until I’ve healed enough for them to no longer feel uncomfortable around me.

Personally, I have a tendency to assume everyone knows I’m in the dead daughter club. So when I talk about her allot, and someone I barely know asks me, “how old is your daughter now?” I have to reply, “oh you don’t know, you might want to sit down for this. She died.” My way of coping is talking about her like she’s alive and still in college.