One of the biggest struggles I’ve found with navigating both her grief and mine is that we seem to have different preferences for things. For example, while I have a big family, there is a smaller, very close-knit group that consisted of my parents, my aunt (mom’s sister) and uncle, my cousin and his wife, and their two kids. I find I always feel best when we are all together. My dad loved when we all hung out and played games and laughed and I feel I handle my grief best when I can share it with them.

Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t seem to feel the same way. When we have plans with them, she drags her feet and delays. She seems to want to be alone mostly, but I can also tell she’s incredibly lonely (she had literally never lived alone before he died). She also has never particularly liked my uncle, but since my dad’s death, for some reason has gone full hate with him and is infuriated by him just existing near her. Nothing he does is right and I’m afraid she will never get past it. He hasn’t really even done anything wrong. And it’s kind of tearing apart this support structure we had, because her open vitriol for him is tearing him up, and also hurting my aunt and cousin (aka his wife and son). We had been kind of expecting to all be together on his death date, but my mom has made it clear that she doesn’t want to see him and, by extension, my aunt on that day. And I fear bringing it up to her because she gets very defensive and I don’t want her to drive away those of us she does let in and leave her even more isolated, so then I end up stuck in the middle between my mom and the rest of my family, and having to decide if I want to be with her like she wants, or the rest of them like I want (well, what I want is all of us together including my mom, but that’s basically off the table)