Blackseraphine

The other day, I was kinda busy looking at things. Looking for more messages, more condolences. And I was gathering them, but even doing that made me feel unsure.

Is it okay to do this? Won't it seem too sad to think about it for so many days? 

I'm not saying what happened should be forgotten. I'm just wondering how do people transition to starting healing? It could be depressing to think about sad memories everyday. I've looked at comments and some people say they couldn't move on after ten days. Others said they were in a bad state for months. But to talk about this everyday— wouldn't that be like keeping somebody's emotions down? But to instantly talk about happy things seems insensitive too.. I didn't know which path to choose. I'm not sure what's okay for him. 

I'm trying to think about how I processed things when these things happened to me and I can't think of a suitable answer. With every loss, I just went through the motions.

I think it's the same for my family. I wasn't raised to deal with emotions. I don't know how. And I don't think my parents actually knew how either. 

My family had a practical view of death. More so with the passing of pets. In our home, it was just a moment in time; you don't dwell on it. There's a very practical approach to it. I'm grateful to my mother in that sense because I don't think I could have done what she did: Buried each of our animals who passed. We have an area that was set to be the burial site for them. It's not a proper grave. Nothing placed there to serve as a memorial. It's just soil. To remember what was under there is happenstance. Not intentional.

Sometimes we would even joke about not planting root crops there. 

I wasn't sure what the right approach was. Check-in often? Then I thought that might be too depressing. Suffocating even. Would a person find that too heavy to be reminded of it every couple of hours? 

But then yesterday, I thought what if I was wrong? What if checking in often was the right approach? What if in trying to give him space I made him feel alone?

I don't know what the right choice is! I don't know what people actually need! So many different people want different things and I don't know what he prefers, what helps him.

Sometimes, I feel regretful about how socially inept I am.

It's not just in this instance but in other instances as well. For other people. I feel embarrassed having to google what to say at times when people I know say that a relative of theirs had passed. I just end up saying "Condolence" for fear of saying the wrong thing.

I read the comments carefully and I read that somebody liked it when people would ask about her pet right after her pet passed. So I decided to go with that. I thought it was nice, a kind of memoriam.

But other times... I was worried that I talked too much, said too much, that I might seem like I'm trying too hard and that it might be misunderstood as insincere. 

Is there a way to better know these things? Know what to do?

I was looking at a follower's comment the other day and she was posting about International Cat day. One had a caption that was like, 'yeah, we know she's a beauty'— it was worded as if he was in a jovial mood bragging about her. I thought the follower didn't know what happened and I was about to tell her when I thought to look at her profile. Yeah, she knew. She posted a comment about it but she still continued posting about International Cat Day as if nothing happened. Uhm, this is not the time? 🤦‍♀️

I think I found someone more socially inept than me.