Double grief

Dealing with grief when you have children is incredibly difficult.  Having to emotionally regulate for both yourself, and your children, is difficult at the best of times, impossible in the worst of times.    Those times when you have literally nothing in you to give, yet you have to somehow find it, as its being demanded of you, or their need is so painfully apparent that it would be cruel not to somehow meed their need.

My daughter, neurodivergent, high needs at the best of times, highly sensitive, constant sensory inputs required, constant queries about Clive, Henry and their health journeys as a means to process what she has experienced in this past year.   Being unable to be with me in the months before Clive's death due to my full-time carer role, and trying to figure out if she also needs to become critically unwell in order for obtain my attention at the level she desires.  Telling me she plans on dying of cancer by the age of 10.  Telling her teachers she doesn't care if she dies and she knows no-one else will either.  Asking me constantly whether a certain illness or injury would cause death or require a stay in hospital.  Asking me constantly what is worse - cancer or stroke?  Cancer or dementia?  Clive's cancer or Henry's cancer?   Cancer or being hit by a car?  Cancer or falling over and hitting your head?

Asking me constantly to remind her why Clive couldn't eat most foods and why he couldn't speak properly and why he wasn't able to walk and why an ambulance came to her house and how long the ambulance took and what happened in the ambulance and what happened in hospital.

Those constant scenes and thoughts were not already flashing through my head, and her constant line of questioning ensures those scenes and thoughts never leave.

I have without doubt crashed and burned after the months' long draw down on my adrenal preserves, and reality has taken its bite, grinding and chewing loudly, its ability to cut through a valium and steal my sleep, pouring a thick murky gravy over my cognitive abilities and sticking its fork through my internal organs with a good twist to establish its grip.