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Comment by Sherra on September 1, 2015 at 3:09pm

JaneS
By not breathing I just mean sometimes it hurts so bad that it feels like I cannot breath. I also feel like a ghost, like I am walking around in some sort of fog.
I have no peace at home everything reminds me of him and at work everything reminds me of him as well, since we have worked together for years.
Every single day consisted of him and now there is just nothing!
His family has been treating me so mean and cold because when he went into cardiac arrest, I was there with him, and even though I didn't know Cpr I called 911 and got the neighbor and tried to follow all the steps it just wasn't good enough and I think somehow they blame me, and I even blame me. Maybe if I was quicker, or if I knew CPR....and I just see it everytime I close my eyes.
I am just so ruined. I don't even know what to do. I don't eat or sleep and my every thought is of him.
I just feel so alone and such sadness that grips me and take a hold of me.
I am so sorry for your lose and I appreciate you commenting on my post

Comment by rachel_micele on September 1, 2015 at 12:00am

There is something about your posts JaneS that makes me continue to reread them. Thank you for your investment and time here.

I agree for me breathing isn't my problem. It's feeling like a ghost, an alien to this world when the only thing I can connect to is that life obliterating day back in time.

"I want to feel like I have a life, am living with some sort of purpose, just because I'm still alive, but I don't have one for myself. I often feel like I don't want to move on and enjoy myself without him." How true. Life is supposed to have purpose and meaning. I have often thought to myself, what is the point. Why work to attain anything when when it can all disappear in a flash. Just today I thought what's the point when Gary isn't here to share any of it with me.

Yesterday I talked with a good friend of mine who has been through this hell before. He is now 55 but at 35 he came home to find his wife dead, unexpectedly, in the recliner from heart related death. They were married for 19 years. I said that I feel like I'm cursed because I will always miss Gary, I feel like I will never get away from this heartbreak. This is so damn hard. I feel so beyond broken that I'm crippled, not that I know what a true crippled person feels like. I've never dealt with grief from losing someone dear before and this was not the one to start with. I miss him so much. He's been the only romantic love truly in my corner. I miss so much what we had together and it's such a sad, fucking shame there will never be another personality like him. 

"if you "just do it," then you will find that you are in a new life--eventually." That was what one of my counselors told me. A slow realization to seeing yourself change. I feel like I've been, and continue to do, everything I know to do. Read books on grief, talk to counselors, cry and cry, journal, connect with sites like this, feel my feelings, I've started to attend bereavement groups ...  but the wound still bleeds. I read and am told from those like yourself that it will stop and get better. I think what matters is not time but what you do with that time. But September 10th will be 6 months and it feels like a disillusioned eternity.

"Put your head down, plow through, even when you don't know how you can otherwise; just because there is absolutely no other choice--and there isn't. As much as we, both, feel we'd like to have another choice, we don't." Currently I ask Gary quite often, Why did you have to go? Oh how I too wish with all my might there was another choice to this cold reality. My friend said in a prior conversation that death is a part of life. I can accept that when people are sick and old. I've had 3 grandparents die and never cried a tear for any of them because that was their situations. In one case I was actually relieved because my last memory of him in the nursing home was sad. The lights were on but no one was home. 

I recently read how we can accept the ground in autumn being covered with the old, brown leaves that fall. But how do you explain the green ones. How do you explain at 35 finally finding the one to spend the rest of my future with and it ends before it had it's chance to begin. I could accept and knew Gary would most likely die before me. He was 11 years older so right off the bat statistic odds were not in my favor. He smoked for many years and had a few small chronic health things. But to accept it now is, still, just unfathomable.

I continue to reread your posts like a beacon in the darkness. I know to still be so miserable down the road is no life at all. And I feel like that is not an option for me. On the other hand, to get through this is such a whole different ball of wax ...

Comment by JaneS on August 25, 2015 at 7:25pm

Sherrra,

I still feel like that so very many times. Breathing isn't my problem, but not feeling like I'm lost, going crazy, not in control, just so without direction, and not wanting to go in any direction without Tom with me. I want to feel like I have a life, am living with some sort of purpose, just because I'm still alive, but I don't have one for myself. I often feel like I don't want to move on and enjoy myself without him.

And now that his medical bills are hitting my credit report (he had no health nor life insurance), I can't even get a loan to keep the truck he bought less than three months before he died. Even though I've made all the payments Wells Fargo won't let me take over his loan and I can't get another. I'm going to lose his truck (which I actually need, living out in the country and having to do my own trash runs--no pickup--and to get rid of all the yard waste). It's making me feel like I'm getting hit with the pain of losing "him" all over again. It was his truck and I love it because he loved it. It just seems to be coming back in different kinds of waves, over and over again.

But I know I have to push through these feelings--even if the only thing I'm doing much of the time is denying that I'm not getting past these feelings. We both seem to share that feeling--and for me it's been 9 months.

As a 16-yo kid, when my mom died, I lost not only my mom, but my home, my new school, even my dog. I came across a quote from John Lennon in the forward of his book, "In My Own Right." It was a quote from when he lost his mother--"As breathing is my life, to stop I dare not dare." I took it as my mantra, and I guess I've held onto to it throughout my life. No matter how much I feel like I'm drowning--I guess that is our connection to not being able to breath--I can't stop breathing, I can't stop existing, because that is all I have left and my lost one(s) would want me to continue to exist.

But, when losing someone who has been our everything, and especially when it's new or it's your first loss of someone anywhere nearly as important to you as our mates were to us, as soon as you have that brief moment of hope that you will survive, something comes up that makes you miss him, makes you as overwhelmed weeks-months--I'm hoping not years later. (That I'm still learning to bare because as much as I loved those incredibly important to me others, they are nothing compared to his loss).

But you know, that John Lennon quote is still holding me up when nothing else does: "As breathing is my life, to stop I dare not dare." We both just have to keep existing as long as we can. There is no other choice. That's what our lost loves would want for us, and we need to want, and do, for ourselves.

Put your head down, plow through, even when you don't know how you can otherwise; just because there is absolutely no other choice--and there isn't. As much as we, both, feel we'd like to have another choice, we don't So put your neck into the nasty yoke we're both forced to wear, and pull through it.

This is my first time in such a loss, but my other lesser losses (if I dare to say they were lesser losses--they were terribly important losses), having gone through them, if you "just do it," then you will find that you are in a new life--eventually. Hang in there. You have the strength. Don't give up, don't give up for "him." He loved you!

Comment by Sherra on August 25, 2015 at 6:15pm

I am so lost without him!!!! It feels like a can't breathe somedays.

Comment by rachel_micele on August 13, 2015 at 10:22pm

I can say too, you talking about music and having trouble listening to it ... Gary and I are/were both musicians so I would very often listen to music on my own and course music was a huge conversation for us. The latest band he found that he really liked, and I ended up liking quite a bit myself, I have yet to listen to. It wasn't until around three weeks ago (Gary passed March 10th) that I could even begin to listen to music in any capacity for pleasure as I have been ridicously sensitive to sensory stimulation, which is still working itself out. So between the physiological upset and music being such a huge trigger in general, that's a tough one for me too.

Comment by rachel_micele on August 13, 2015 at 9:43pm

Thank you JaneS for your follow up post. I so appreciate your encouragement and sharing more of your story and feelings. You said a lot of good things. I've been working to let whatever can, sink in.

This week has been overload for processing so my gratitude is the main thing I am able to express at this time. 

I can say your description of the sea analogies being desperately scary ... I've never had an experience of being in trouble on the water but feeling completely panicked and desperate was exactly how i felt immediately after losing Gary. In June going through an ordeal to switch counselors I felt that again. So I can definitely relate in some way to that.

Many hugs and good vibes your way.

Comment by JaneS on August 11, 2015 at 10:51pm

Hi Rachel,

It's hard to remember that this is the truth but I have lost three-four souls where their loss has put me in the same place, although not quite this badly. It is a fight, a true struggle, and even knowing first hand what I'm going through, knowing that I'm still feeling the immediacy of it being fresh, remembrances that I grew out of it before tells me I will survive again. It just hurts so devastatingly much right now! I'm just waiting for when surviving it will outweigh the loss. It will happen though. Of that, I'm sure.

I will never stop missing my husband, Tom, just as the loss of my mother when I was 16 has never stopped hurting. But I can't wait until the drowning feeling goes away, which it does. You stop drowning, but you will always miss them.

For me it's been nine months. I have a few good days, days with no pain, here and there, but then return the days that I hurt just as much, am drowning in the lost as much as I was in the first few weeks after he died.

I have more "better" days than I had before but when the bad spells hit, the pain hasn't lessened up at all.

I have trouble listening to music now. I loved "our" music, the music that was released when we were a couple and we shared together. I hear "his" music, newer music that he listened to at work and I still don't get it, although I'm listening to it more than I did when he was alive. And then there was the music that was mine before we met, but turned out to be his music before we met--that's the music we shared the most. Now when I hear that music, it's lost it's soothing, redeeming qualities. It just brings pain. It's overwhelming so I haven't been able to listen to much of the music that used to bring me pleasure before. I now play it, selectively, on weekends, trying to desensitize myself in hopes that the pain I now associate with it will go away and the joy it brought to me before will return. I don't want to lose it, too. I hope it works.

But what the old man described, bobbing in the waves, surviving the periods before the big waves drive me under again--that's how I felt while surviving my earlier losses.

It get's better. I know that my history tells me that after 1 year I learn to deal with it better. I still miss them; still cry at the drop of a hat--even for my mother who died 48 years ago--I still am moved by the pain I feel when I miss her the most. But after one year, I have, before, began to grow in better directions than just hurting all the time. When I've crossed that line, life has gotten better.

I know what the losses are like and what I've survived before. I know I will survive my biggest loss--and this is truly the hardest I've been through, but I recognize that it's still all the same--I will survive, eventually--I have to. I will never, ever stop crying for Tom, but there will come a time when it won't control me like it does now.

I liked the old man's analogies of the sea. That is really what it feels like and if you've ever been in trouble in water, you know how desperately scary it is.

But he survived it and still holds those feelings dear. I've done the same. Right now, though, while I'm so lost in the pain of the present big waves, I need to remind myself of the long-term reality the old man talked about, and I've experienced before.

Hang in there, Rachel. It does get better.

Comment by rachel_micele on August 11, 2015 at 9:02pm

Thanks JaneS for posting this story/post. I really liked the analogy to the initial shipwreck. That's where I'm at. Although for my world I would add that it's not just floating, hanging on to stay alive. A massive, confusing, turbulent storm is overhead, raging, coming at you from every which way while you are clinging on for the precious wreckage as well as any sense of life. Nor are you alive. It's all a mirage. 

To hear those who have walked this hell before you i know is very valuable. Even though I have yet to have the ability to believe or know certain things they say to be true, I know it's worth listening for anything that can stick and sink in. 

Comment by JaneS on August 11, 2015 at 7:06pm

I found this on my facebook page this evening and it hit home. It's the words of an old man to a young man who has just lost his friend. I know--I've been where this old man has been and I know he speaks the truth--it's just hard to force myself to remember it while it's still so raw. The waves are still too big and too often, but they are getting "a little" better (and then worse but basically moving in the right direction).

It did make me cry to read it but, then, what doesn't make me cry these days? But this site hit home and I should print it out and stick it on the fridge so I can remind myself daily of it's message. Read the story:

http://www.tickld.com/x/old-man-explains-death-and-life-to-grieving...

Comment by nicole irving on July 12, 2015 at 5:42pm

i lost my fiancee, soulmate and bestfriend on the 18th of may, from a massive heart attack, we didnt even know he was sick. i feel gutted, i had been a single mum for 16yrs and it was like a dream come true when i met him, we were so excited about our future. im not excited about anything now, i should really go back to work but i am suffering depression really bad, i miss him constantly and feel as thou god has betrayed us, we spent 3 yrs trying to get life a little sorted, the evening before he died i came home from work and told him that life was going to get easier now, we were finally getting somewhere. i wish we had had the time to follow our dream and do the stuff we planned on doing. i know he is still very much part of my life but i would do anything for a hug and a conversation. we had both had difficult lives and had finally found each other and were happy. what did wee do so bad to deserve this, why couldnt god just have let things be and let us be happy, neither of us had ever done anything terrible we didnt deserve this. i just want mike to come home.

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