agnostics- how do you cope with a bereavement?

[oops]

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[DelGirl]

i'm going to sound like a hypocrite I guess, but i'm agnostic too but I do believe we move on to somewhere else. Not sure where exactly but I feel my dh around alot. My dad didn't believe in an after life but i'm sure I have felt his presence too, though not as strong as dh. I'm sorry, this doesn't proabably help you much if you don't believe. I just think, what is the point of it all if this is all there is? Sorry for your loss, you do learn to live with the grief eventually but it does come in waves.

[gothicmama]

the energy that was the person will still be with you cos you had a relationship things that were special will still be so and link you and your children to you mum

[Twiglett]

I'm agnostic .. but I do believe in the sense of spirit .. I believe that the sense of being yourself is strong and probably exists outside of the body .. so when the body dies the spirit (sense of self) is freed .. maybe it goes to a different plane .. maybe it hangs around .. I do believe in the sense of spirit but not in god

do

[Mum2FunkyDude]

I agree, their energy still lingers, and you can always visit them in your mind.

You need to focus on all the happy memories, believe that she lived her life the way she wanted to.

You must now work on your feelings of loss. What you probably are feeling is a sense of betrayal because your mother passed away. She left behind a life of experiences and you can keep them alive by tapping into them when you need to.

Me personally, always remember the last happy place I saw them alive, they never really die in my mind, I just don't see them anymore. I also don't attend funerals and burials.

[Mum2FunkyDude]

On the other hand, some people need closure.

[MoreTeaAnyone]

What did your mum believe? Could this help you feel close to her?

[serenity]

I'm sorry you're feeling so bad oops.

I think it's still very early days in dealing with the loss of your Mum. I know when my BF lost her Mum, it took a very long time before reminders like birthdays etc became good memories rather than sadness over her passing. I think you're are expecting too much from yourself.

I don't know if this will help, but I look at it this way,

1. She's not gone, she's still part of you and your siblings (if you have any) and therefore part of your children too. So everytime you you see them you are seeing the part of her that lives on in them.
   
   
2. As far as I understand it one of the major rules of physics is that nothing can be destroyed, it only changes to another form of energy. So that doesn't rule anything out for me. I might not believe in a god, or a manufactured religion but that doesn't mean there isn't anything afterwards

[lemonaid]

I'm atheist rather than agnostic, but the way I feel about it is...

What my sense of "me" is is, in essence, a big neural net a network of neurons that is shaped by what happens to me and that reacts in largely predictable ways (always taking chaos etc. into account). For people I know well, I carry my own little "models" of them around with me bits of my own neural net that are given over to an idea of the person. It's that that allows me to think "Oh, mum will laugh if I tell her that" or "DH would love this book" or "So-and-so would say something very scathing about this movie".

So what each of these people is is a big neural net, and what I have for each of them is a vastly-cut-down model of their neural net. The better I know someone the more of my own processing power is devoted to them and the more accurate my model of them will be.

When someone dies their net is gone forever, but my model of them cut-down and over-simplified though it may be remains. To me it's as if part of them carries on, and whenever I think "So-and-so would have laughed at this" it's as if they are, in some sense, laughing at it -- or at least the part of them that carries on in me is laughing. And everyone else who knew them well will also have their own mental models of that person. So while the person as a unique individual is gone, potentially dozens of imperfect simulations of them are going about the world. And parts of them will live on even past me in the way they've influenced my way of thinking, which will influence the way in which I bring up my children, which will influence the way they think... and so forth.

You will never see her as an individual again, but part of her is always with you.

Anyway, that was a bit rambling, but it's how I think about it. I did think it was all my own idea, but I read a book by Dougklas Hofstadter last year and he has the same view (although he expresses it much better than I do) so perhaps it's a common way of looking at the world.

[WideWebWitch]

Oops, it's very early days. Bereavement can be, to use a cliche, like a roller coaster. It is hard but it gets easier, be kind to yourself, Nov is still very recent. I don't believe in life after death either and am not relgious and I find it hard thinking I'll never see my dad again too but I still didn't (and don't) think religion is the answer. I do think it must be a tremendous comfort if you have it but I don't.

[oops]

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[oops]

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