A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Anon,

What a horrible situation for you, where the issues about your sons and their relationships to their father distracts you from your primary grief about your husband who died.

The fact is that you're grieving all of it, not just his death.

When we have our children, we create hopes, dreams, and expectations for them and us, and about the future we will have together. The visions we have are positive and loving.

But life doesn’t always deliver up the things we’d hoped for, and we’re left with the grief and unresolved grief about the hurtful things that happened.

As difficult as it may seem, we’d suggest that for now, you focus on the feelings you're having in reaction to the sudden death of your husband, and try, for the moment to leave your sons out of the equation. We know that may be hard, but when you put your husband’s memory together with the actions of your sons, it makes it unbearable for you. And as you say, the grief is hard enough without any other complications.

To answer your question about putting this all into perspective: In reading your story, we believe that the same issues between and about your husband and your sons existed before his death. This is not new. We can only guess that you would have liked to have seen some resolution between them before he died. His death robbed the possibility of repair - of apologies to be tendered and accepted, etc. Even though it may not be realistic to think that ever would have happened, it probably is something you would have liked to see. After all they are your family.

We hope this helps.

From our hearts to yours,

Russell
And
John