Grief, ADHD, and the Endless Cycle of “Processing It Again”
Today I did something hard – I processed my mother’s death yet again. This wasn’t the first time, or the second time, or even the third time. This was yet another in the long process that we call grieving. While the process itself was a bit somber, this will remove a blocker that has been in my way for almost two years. You see, everyone talks about death and grieving, but nobody talks about how people with ADHD process grief and death. That’s what this post is about.
The moment the phone call came in that my mother had passed, the words were literally just information. I heard it, I knew what the words meant, then finally, I processed them about 10 seconds later. I asked what had happened and got the answer, then a sinking feeling slowly started to fall over me. This feeling slowly enveloped me until it was this odd mixture of depression and numbness at the same time. Over the next few days we went through photos and music to create a memorial service worthy of the woman we called mom.
After her passing in August we followed her wishes to have her cremated, and not have a “funeral,” so we held a visitation so that people could pay their condolences. We waited to scatter her ashes until a warm sunny day in November in hopes that her sister would be able to make the trip to attend since she was unable to make it to the visitation. This unfortunately did not result in her attendance, but the weather was beautiful for the small service and scattering.
We wanted every detail of her send-off to be perfect, and for my sister, that meant having a locket with mom’s photo for the pastor to hold during the service. That locket was supposed to be a small comfort, but instead, it became the exact point where my ADHD would paralyze me.
For my sister, it went smoothly, but for me, my ADHD had interfered here and I decided to try to print the photos at Walmart and none of them turned out quite small enough, and the one that was almost small enough didn’t cut quite right but I didn’t have enough time to have it reprinted. So instead I printed one on my home printer and cut it, and while it wasn’t cut quite right, it was the right size. This locket became a blocker for me when wanting to do my mother’s tribute box.
The problem was that I wanted to reprint the photo correctly and situate it perfectly in the locket, but then I’d argue mentally myself that I should use the version that was used at the scattering. I would then put it off, and then because of my ADHD totally forget about it until I saw the flowers from my mother’s urn arrangement hanging from my basement ceiling where I had originally left them to dry. This was usually when I was rushing around doing something and didn’t have time to dedicate to working on the memorial, so it would get pushed off yet again. That, or it would start the internal conflict about the locket up yet again. It seemed like a neverending cycle. It wasn’t just procrastination. It was executive dysfunction mixed with profound loss. Every time I looked at those drying flowers, my brain demanded perfection for my mother, couldn’t figure out the ‘perfect’ way to execute it, and chose to completely shut down instead, which meant putting it off, and forgetting it yet again.
This cycle wasn’t just forgetting to do something, it also caused me to have to process that grief over and over each time the process happened – sometimes three or four times per week.
Today I finally had the time, remembered, and made the hard decision to just leave the locket as it was during the service all at once. That made the locket symbolize more than perfection, it made it real, just like my mother lived her life. It was about an hour of work to carefully place the dried flowers without ruining them and fixing some leaves/petals with archival-grade glue. This will now allow me to remove the rest of the urn arrangement from my office closet, which I’ve been afraid to be around for fear of breaking leaves off of. Fixing that one blocker meant I could finally clean out my office closet without fear. It’s a strange reality: with ADHD, processing grief isn’t just an emotional journey; it’s a physical battle against the unfinished spaces we leave behind while our brains try to catch up.
This is what it is like to process grief as a person with ADHD and how it affects our everyday function.
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