I stopped when my dad got ill. He died in March. I start again on Tuesday

Started 30 May 2026 · 8 replies · 401 hearts · read 5.3k times

NevGrimsby, UK · 30 May 2026

2 months ago

Grimsby. Quiet bloke, posting anyway, and this is more than I have written in two years on here.

My dad went into hospital in October and it turned into the whole winter. I was up and down to the ward, then to the home, then back to the ward. Somewhere in November I stopped taking mine. There was no decision. I did not run out and I did not choose — I just stopped being a person who did things on a Thursday, and it was one of about nine things that fell off the list and the only one nobody noticed.

He died on the eighth of March. It was peaceful in the end and I was there, and my sister was there, and I do not want to write much more about that part.

Since then I have eaten the way you eat when somebody dies. Sandwiches from petrol stations. Whatever people brought round. Three weeks of the freezer emptying and then a lot of chips. I am not going to pretend that has been fine, and I am not going to be dramatic about it either. It is what happened.

I have got a prescription again and I am starting on Tuesday. My GP was decent about it — asked how I was sleeping before she asked anything else, which I did not expect and which finished me off a bit in the chair.

The reason I am posting rather than just doing it: I do not know how to think about the winter. Part of me wants to call it seven lost months. And part of me thinks that seven months of being at my dad’s bedside is not a lost anything, it is just what a son does, and the medicine can wait. I would like to know which of those is right, if anybody knows.

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WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

Nev. I hold the carers’ circle and what you have described is the shape of nearly every story in it — the list, the nine things, and the one nobody noticed.

To your question, as honestly as I can: I do not think either of those framings is right, and I do not think you have to choose one this month. What you were doing between October and March was holding a dying man’s hand and driving to a hospital. There is no version of that where a Thursday injection was the important thing. And you are also allowed to feel the loss of the seven months without that being disloyal to him. Both, at once, is where most carers actually live.

The other thing I will say, and it is the whole reason my circle exists: nobody asked you how you were for seven months, did they. Your GP did, and it finished you off in the chair, because it was the first time.

57me too 12

KeeleyBlackpool, UK

Carer for my mum. I stopped for five months when hers got bad and I understand the not-deciding exactly. It is not a choice, it is an evaporation.

I am sorry about your dad. The petrol station sandwiches are their own kind of grief and I have never seen anybody put it in writing before.

48me too 9

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

Nev, I would like to gently take one word out of your post, if you will let me. Lost.

Restarting circles get a lot of people who talk about lost months, and almost always the months in question contained something enormous — a bereavement, a birth, an illness, a job going. The medicine paused. The life did not. Calling it lost time flattens the thing you were actually doing with it.

Tuesday is a good plan and one practical thought: grief and a restart at the same time means two lots of appetite disruption arriving together, and it can be hard to tell them apart. Your GP asked about sleep first, which suggests she is thinking about the same thing. Worth telling her about the chips and the sandwiches, plainly, without dressing it up.

52me too 8

EdwynNewcastle, UK

Geordie, sixty, grateful. Lost my mother in the first year of mine and did much the same. Went off it for four months without ever deciding to.

What I would say from the other side of it: the restart was not the hard part. The hard part was about six weeks later when the funeral admin had finished and everyone had gone back to normal and I was on my own with it on a Tuesday afternoon. Have something in the diary for six weeks from now. That is my one piece of advice and I wish somebody had given it to me.

54me too 11

NedChesterfield, UK

Quiet bloke, posting anyway — the other one. Chesterfield.

Nev, I have nothing useful. I read the whole thing twice and then went out to the shed for a bit. My father went in 2019 and there is a stretch of that year I could not tell you anything about.

Sorry about your dad. The kitchen table where he sat and complained about the football is a good place to have done it.

43me too 7

MairéadMayo, IE

Rural nurse. Advises everyone, takes none of it. Your GP asking about sleep before anything else — that is a good one you have got there, and I would tell her so at some point, because we hear almost nothing back.

On the winter: I have sat with a lot of families in that exact seven months. I have never once thought of any of them as having lost the time.

46me too 6

MossHebden Bridge, UK

Walks, weather, weekly journal. The six-weeks-later thing Edwyn said is the truest bit in this thread and I would put it on a card.

Nev, if a Sunday walk with somebody who will not ask you anything would help, there are a few of us who do exactly that in the carers circle.

41me too 5

NevGrimsby, UK

Right. That is more than I expected and I have had to put the phone down twice.

Started Tuesday, as planned, at the kitchen table where he used to sit and complain about the football. Which I had not thought about until I was sitting there.

Something in the diary for six weeks. Done — my sister and I are going over to see the boat he never finished. And I am taking the word lost out.

60me too 9