My Dad died and I'm despairing

I slept properly part of last night. I think it was exhaustion. There's been a lot going on, including before he died, that kept me up late. And afterwards, I couldn't rest because in those moments before sleep it was when I've got nothing to distract me from the memory, and when I've felt so guilty that every night, for all the weeks he was stuck on that noisy, brightly lit ward in that uncomfortable bed, I was coming home to my own bed, in comfort and privacy. I'm fairly sure he was also autistic, just better at masking it, and I can't imagine myself surviving in that environment for a few days, never mind weeks! It must have been torture.

But I finally slept last night and found relief from the reality. I had some dreams and while he wasn't in them, they were in a world in which he hadn't died... if you know what I mean. Waking up was painful, again. My first thought was why couldn't this be the dream... a nightmare... and why can't the dream be reality?

Now the sadness is pressing down like a heavy weight. The world is changing and moving on, leaving him further behind, and I have more and more things I want to tell him, every day, and questions I want to ask him. He knew so much, and sometimes when the news was scary, as it often is, he knew how to be a calming voice of reason. I never realised how much I valued that.

I'm very worried about my Mum and sister. Mum is being too strong. My sister had a very close relationship with Dad and is broken. I have not done a good job helping them because I was blinded by my own shock and grief, and because I'm not good at that kind of thing, anyway. Dad always knew what they needed, and had the capacity to provide it just by being there, by being that calm voice, or giving my sister a bear hug. I'm too much of a drama queen to fill that role.

He was failed by the medics. They mismanaged his case, lies to us about the severity of his condition and refused to acknowledge he was dying in time to get him into a hospice. This made his final weeks an unnecessary torture, robbed him and us of the chance to say goodbye, and left us shocked and traumatised. I think this is making the grief even worse.

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think I've worn out the people around me. I've now got a GP appointment next week that might lead to therapy. Seems that we might all have PTSD from the trauma of Dad's death. Yes, it was that bad and the hospital made mistakes. The coroner is now involved.

I have another question I can't now ask anyone else. Dad and I had many common interests, and he had many advanced skills because of his background and career. Take one example, tying knots. I never had any luck learning it from books and Dad always showed me whenever we were doing something that needed it... but most of it didn't stick.

I had the thought that I'd make a knot tying board and we'd sit down and he'd teach me properly, rather than just occassionally showing me whenever a knot tying job turned up.

But I never did. That distance we had between us, which I've mentioned, must have had something to do with it, perhaps made me reluctant to initiate the idea. But recently he helped me fix the car, sat on a chair on the driveway and told me how to do it while I had the car up on jacks, and that was fine. I actually enjoyed doing it!

So if I enjoyed that, what stopped me finding other reasons to do things with him? I've also mentioned about recording his stories, and how I just completely forgot to do it ten minutes after having the idea, how it slipped away as I left the room and got distracted.

So, I guess what I'm asking is whether the fact I thought about doing things but never got around to doing them, either felt reluctant or just forgot to make time, is because of the unnecessary distance that still existed between us, or because my weird AuDHD brain can't hold on to things for five minutes if I'm not looking at them.

You might think this answer can't help, but if I were to try knot tying again now, I'd feel bad that I missed the chance to learn it properly from him, and wouldn't want to do it. But there are jobs in my future that will need it, jobs I'll have to do that he would have done, you see. And I just need to know why I missed this, and similar, opportunities so that maybe I can find a way to do these jobs without breaking down emotionally... which is what I'm doing right now.

I'm so sorry Kimi. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. The hardest times right now are first thing in the morning, when the reality comes back, and in the evening when I run out of things to be busy over. Or any time I see something we would have talked about, like the NASA launch or finding that ship wreck in Denmark, or seeing our local Nuthatch or Woodpecker in the garden. We did talk, but it had to be under certain circumstances that I imposed, and that limited my ability to approach him.

I know why I pulled back, kept some distance, but I also think I kept it up too long. Dad was going through his own problems, but was coming out of it. My sister was close to him, again, after also distancing herself. She called it a "reset". Looking back, it was my turn to reset next… but I ran out of time.

Five weeks is almost exactly the same time Dad was trapped in there... yes, trapped, because that's how it felt. Was that how it was for you? I began to feel so guilty that every night I could go home to a comfortable, private bed while he was stuck in there. We're discovering new things all the time, like the fact that he didn't have a "chest infection" but instead it was full blown pneumonia! They treated us like children and were not honest. I want answers... even though they won't bring him back, Dad would want me to try to stop it happening again.