All very normal. You were a good son and I suspect there was nothing left unsaid between you - she would have wanted you to go on your trip as planned.
Sweet Charlotte said it all - and much better than I could have.
Live each day to the fullest...none of us know how many we have left.....so make each one count.
We all share your sorrow.....

My sincerest condolences for the loss of your mother. It sounds like you were a great son! It takes a long time to adjust to losses like this, so take it easy on yourself. However you are feeling at any given moment is perfectly OK.

I am sorry for your loss.

I don't see any reason to avoid understanding the reality of my own mortality (and of others). I would not advise anyone to avoid "looking in the mirror", as you put it. Accepting and integrating your own mortality is a huge part of fully maturing as an adult.

Everything you've described is normal. Thanatologists tell us that the intensity of any given grief experience is proportional to the extent to which the deceased was part of your daily life -- either in person, or in your thoughts; or how close you felt to them regardless of geography. Also, [grand]parents and siblings are highly symbolic; they remind us in a more direct way of our own relationship to time, aging and death.

The reality of mortality and death are not actionable or avoidable, so the best way to not be perturbed indefinitely by it is to accept it and embrace it as the organic part of life that it is. The hardest part of doing so, from what I've observed, is the difficulty of accepting what I call your "true scope" -- your unimportance in the (non-existent) great scheme of things; your lack of entitlement to things like immortality in any form, good health, freedom from want and pain, etc. Our fear and loathing of mortality is ultimately a great big obstinate NO to personal limits. But we ARE in fact limited beings ... limited in knowledge, perception, awareness, the very capacity to understand even the data we are aware of.

When you truly get this through your head, you're much more able to "smile because it happened rather than cry because it's over". You're much less apt to see a death in your world as a personal affront, an obscenity, as something to find intolerable and unthinkable. All of which makes it easier to make peace with.

Death is bad enough in that you have to adjust to the loss and learn to get along without someone who may have provided you with a good deal of support, assistance and validation. It serves no purpose to make it even worse by having to somehow reconcile it with the ways it violates your understanding of, and expectations about, life and how it "should" play out.

The two biggest losses I've experience was my wife (12 years ago) and my son (2 years ago). Both of these happened after my deconversion. Prior to my deconversion I dealt with the deaths of my oldest brother and my mother (not by "natural causes" ) and my father ("natural causes" ). Comparing all these experiences I found the experience of bereavement as an unbeliever to be actually a lot LESS painful and drawn-out. For one thing, I no longer ask all the useless questions prompted by religious ideation, such as, "why them, why me, why now, what did I / they do to 'deserve' this, why didn't god protect them or help them as promised, why did he permit their suffering", and on and on and on.

Instead, it's just people dying, not when and how expected, but it's not something that surprises or perturbs me in and of itself. Just more stuff happening in an indifferent universe. It's not something to bemoan as somehow "unfair". What perturbed me of course for example in my son's death was that I lost the roll of the dice, since it was more likely he would live to bury me than the inverse. That he did did not live to see his dreams realized and his interests fully pursued. Things of that nature. But that he died? That's not something I was tempted to think I or my son caused through action or inaction, or something I had to jump through hoops to try to render comprehensible and explicable. He died due to an unusual confluence of physical problems, which neither he nor I nor anyone else involved could have predicted or known in advance.

I think a great deal of the suffering around death is that we think if we all live our lives "correctly" we can prevent it or at least make sure it only happens "in turn" when we "expect" it to. That there is some kind of guarantee provided by our virtue or entitlement or ritualistic observances such that death will not be able to surprise us, such that everyone we love dies only at a ripe old age and maybe, we think to ourselves, not even then.

Once you truly accept the reality and inevitability of death and the possibility that it will call at any time, you are caught far less off-guard about it and, as a bonus, you pay far more attention to living in the moment and leaving nothing unsaid and undone between you and your loved ones. When you're ignoring / denying / pretending around death, you may well feel much more like you have basically forever and thus don't need to "keep short accounts". Paradoxically, when we stop kicking the can down the road with respect to mortality, we're better able to handle it overall.

??? I'm sorry about your Mom, (((( Dave )))

Consider that you were fortunate to have that moment of gratitude with the milkshake. You were there.
"How do you avoid looking in the mirror and not feel you are next in line? Is this all normal stuff?"

Well,... tomorrow is promised to no one, that's for sure. There is no "normal", there just "is".
((( hugs )))

Everyone grieves in their own way and in their own time. There is no "right" or "wrong" way.
Similarly....we all celebrate life in different ways....and we all get "over" losses in our own way -- or not at all.

When faced with death and loss....we all see how fragile it all is and how fleeting the breath of life...

This is all normal.

So sorry for your loss. As already said, remember the things she did for you, the things and places you did/went together, all the happy times. Hugs

There is no normal..we react the way we have to. I went to PA to watch my Mom die in my arms ( i think she was holding on for me) then took care of pets brothers..everyone came home to Brooklyn but stepfather.. But i sent him food packages from Netgrocer ( quite a while ago). As she died in my arms she told me that she would be a butterfly..yellow purple white. I'm working on a tatoo now. She also called me Mr. Chinese Stir Fry...i won't do a tattoo of that.It was horrific and I am sorry for your loss. Many of us can relate.

When my grand mother passed I was in the Navy on my way to the Mediterranean. I had seen her approximately 2 months before that and decided to hold on to the last enjoyable memory that I had if her, instead of taking emergency leave to help bury her. I had faced too many deaths in my family already. My mother at 4, my oldest brother at 12, my second brother at 19. I wanted to remember her smile instead of her lying in a box. I still struggle with that decision in my life and wonder if I will ever find peace on it!!
Point is - we will make many decision and we will question some along the way. Some, we will find our answer for and some we will not. For me, when I get to see grandma again (I choose to believe in life after death) then I can talk with her about it. Together we will find the answer I seek.!! The best of luck with your struggle Dave!! PS until then, I will settle with her smile that I love so much.

Sorry for your loss. Sending hugs to you Dave. I lost my Mum in 2005, she was 59. My biochemistry teacher told me that energy is eternal and as such she goes on forever. That helped me. We have to stay around and value every single moment, even if they are shitty. Our days are ours. hugs again

On her 96th

My mother did not believe in heaven and all that stuff. She lived her life in the here and now and died a happy and fulfilled woman. Just remembering all of her funny sayings and stories and what a remarkable life she led just being a good mom, wife, neighbor, co-worker, etc. helped me get through some bad times...I know she wanted me to live my life in the same way, so I am...

I don't think I am next in line as much as I think about what I can do or share or live to have the best life in the time I have...more time with friends and those I admire and less with total strangers and negative people...more good food and drink...more beautiful places to visit...more fun things to do...more books to read...live your life and you will be honoring hers and yours.

Oh yes for sure. I absolutely see my mortality in losing my parents