I do think it’s important in these situations to seek some mental health counseling. Sometimes when things like this all happen at once, we physically lose the ability to cope and need medication to help keep things from getting too bad and to help us eventually get out of it.
If you are feeling nonstop endless despair , it may be because you passed your threshold of stress tolerance, which even if it was very high to start with it may have broken with everything happening at once. If your stress level gets too high for too long a period of time, you can slip into a deep depression that no amount of positive thinking or processing will get you out of.
Medication can physically help your brain “reboot” from that. But you will still feel horrible about the loss for a long time and may need counseling to help you get over it. But don’t just try to do it yourself. It’s not being weak to get help when you need it.
While I’ve never had a parent pass away, I had a rough time in the early 90s before there was a decent medicine for HIV/AIDS related illness. I went through a point where I had friends getting sick and dying on a monthly basis. That started to get me down. But when my totally healthy room mate was killed in a car accident completely unexpectedly, it was too much for me. I got in a funk so bad I thought I’d never get out.
I finally went in for treatment when I got so depressed that I was afraid I’d be locked in a State hospital for the rest of my life because I was so deeply down that I couldn’t function. For a while, it scared me and I was afraid to get treatment. But then I got to the point where I was like—if it’s so bad that I need to be locked up, it’s probably better that way.
It turned out that I didn’t need to be in a hospital at all. A minor antidepressant and some very serious counseling sessions helped me. The pills weren’t happy pills that made me forget my troubles. They just made recovery POSSIBLE and the counseling was more effective with it.
At the same time, while I feel much better these days, there is a small part of me that always feels the loss of all of those amazing people that died too young. There is a slight sadness that is always there, but it’s bearable. But its more like a scar than a deep wound constantly bleeding.