Hey I'm so sorry for your loss. We all cope differently and when my mum passed I don't think it really hit me until 3-6 months later... To begin with you're just dealing with everything and managing everything and you don't have time to really appreciate that they're really gone. Sorting funerals, assets, homes, telling people what's happened, sorting family, remembering to eat, drink and bathe with all that's going on around you... You're managing and coping just as you and your brain needs you to.

You're doing fine and you're grieving how you need to. If you feel you need to cry now then fine, if you feel you need to crack jokes to manage for now, then that's fine too.

You may be upset a few months down the line like I was. When it suddenly really hits you. Or you may not.

You're in a state of shock at the moment as well  - it does get easier and please don't compare your feelings to others as your feelings are your own. sending you and your family lots of love and healing thoughts x

Hi MissA87

I'm so sorry to hear about your loss.

It might be shock or might not. I don't think there is a certain way anyone 'should' feel after the loss of a loved one. It's a very personal process I believe and everyone is different. There is nothing wrong with what you're feeling at the moment and there's no need to feel guilty about this. I lost my mother 10 months ago and although it was extremely stressful from the beginning because of my underlying anxiety, the real grief hit me about 5 months later. I don't mean in any way 'wait and see what's coming' because as I said everyone is different. One of my closest friends lost her father in the summer and has managed to go on with her life pretty quickly so there are no rules here I believe.

Look after yourself and keep close the ones you love and care about! I've made the mistake of needing my space more and more ofter and avoided meeting friends etc. but in the end I think it's made it a lot worse. xx

There's no "should" with these things. And honestly, many, probably the majority of, people never have panic attacks or are unable to get out of bed due to unhappiness, no matter how bad things get. Those, while normal responses to grief are not something everybody who is really upset experiences.

I also think that sometimes when somebody has been ill a long time or is older, there is a sense that you have known it was coming and sometimes you almost grieve in advance.

When my dad died, I felt sort of...distracted for a number of weeks, like I wasn't functioning at my best at work and so on and there was one day when I felt weirdly anxious, not to the point of having panic attacks or anything like that, but like everything was stressing me. And that was it. I don't think I cried or even really felt unhappy. I think it was largely that while his actual death was pretty much out of the blue, he was in his 80s and had had cancer a few years previously, so I had kind of resigned myself to the fact that it was likely to happen sometime in the following five years or so, so at some unconscious level, I was somewhat prepared.

Your reaction sounds completely normal. I mean, not that there is any real "normal," but your reaction sounds pretty as close to "typical" as it's possible to get. Don't compare with other people. Their reactions are neither "better" nor "worse" than yours. People just react differently and being more visibly upset doesn't mean one loved the deceased person more.