Don't grieve alone; 14,000 members and growing
I lost my husband we were high school sweethearts we had plans and it was not suppose to be this way we had two kids together and I feel so lost and the pain i feel becuase of how much I miss him…Continue
Started by Nicole. Last reply by Martha Washburn Sep 22, 2022.
For 40+ years we were together…married 39 years….We were to celebrate our 40th anniversary…Nobody who hasn’t been married, and lost a spouse could possibly understand….even though he was into many…Continue
Started by Susan B. Last reply by Connie Sep 1, 2022.
I got married on May 1, 1992 and lost my husband on June 30, 2017. My wedding day was the happiest day of my life and if I had one wish, it would be to go back and live that day over. It has been…Continue
Started by Carol Klotz. Last reply by Carol Klotz May 3, 2020.
I lost my wife on the 25 of March after returning from my Dads funeral. She is everything to me. No matter how bad it got, no matter how much my PTSD drug me down, She has been my light in the…Continue
Started by Shane Hughes. Last reply by Shane Hughes Apr 16, 2020.
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Hi Morgan,
I also lost my husband over two years and have to agree that the pain is less, but the emptiness is still there. Everything you stated is exactly what I feel. Thanks for Sharing.
Linda
Tildyc, Part 2
It’s not much to hold onto. It’s been everything I can do to hold onto it myself. When I fall into the hole I curse the thoughts I had that gave me that moment of respite. It’s like I get a little step and then I am back to square one. I am not well. Far from it. And I am having different thoughts now as the fog lifts. The clarity of the reality of now presents a whole new set of life’s pains because of losing the man who provided me with my north star. Now enough beyond the fog I have to ask myself if the new universe that I began occupying the day my husband died is one of meaning. I could not have honestly answered this question before now. I feel I’ve given it enough time now so I am not cheating myself out of an honest answer. Before now I would never have been clear enough of mind.
I can tell you that I am giving myself one last chance, one final attempt to find meaning. It is a very shallow attempt at pretense so I am not counting on it to give me the reason for continuing life but I am promising myself one last shot. Up until now I have withstood the pain to prove to myself and others that grief is not self pity or drama or any of the reasons society wants to give. I wanted to prove to myself that it wasn’t me and that grief is valid and it was the dysfunctional world that has it all wrong. I know now it wasn’t me. But now it’s up to me to decide for myself whether I want to put up with this dysfunctional world and adapt enough to try and fit back in. I am undecided and I am doing one last project to see if I think it is possible to live alone.
I could say it is a scary thought. It is one I really have not wanted to entertain. It was and is much safer to not have to ask myself if I could live alone because I don’t want to. I have not wanted to accept all that it would entail. And I still don’t which is why I am trying to avoid it. But I have one more thing that my husband would have wanted me to do and if I can accomplish it it willhopefully give me enough reason to make a decision. To live without him the best I can or totally relieve myself of the responsibility. I don’t want to do this but I will give it one last attempt. I am clear enough of mind now to see this as the clearest resolution to the worst time of my life.
Tildyc, (Part 1)
I'm really the last one to be giving advice since I have been on here more times than I can count telling all of you how my life is over. And I am not redacting any part of those confessions but I will give you one small thread. Not of hope but of less pain.
It happens. It took me right up to the two year mark before I could say looking back the pain got less at that point. Slow and negligible but there nonetheless. Less enough pain where the intensity is not so constant. Until then, for me, the pain just wouldn't quit. No breaks or breathers. Just constant excruciating pain. But, and it is a big but, if you can make it that long I think I could honestly tell you that the constant intensity really does lessen. Not the hope that you will want him back, that continues. Not that you will stop thinking about him every second, that is always. No, just the constant pain lessens. That crushing constant begging for no more breaths kind of pain.
I am not saying that much else changes. As my second year started I noticed small but noticeable changes. The fog of the shock starts to dissipate. The surreal existence starts to fade a bit. Your brain has put up HUGE walls between you and death. Your own death. I think our brain tries to stop a lot of us from taking our own lives. Those walls start to get a tiny bit lower and the reality of living in the old universe starts to show a little more face. It becomes another kind of mountain to climb but with it there is some room to stop and rest. To breathe. And there are times you will walk around the mountain rather than climb it. That becomes an option which wasn't there before.
None of this reduces the missing. All it does is make it less painful to function. Much of the time is still spent trying to function which is why I am still on here so much because that's what I have been doing for these past almost three years, just trying to function. But the intensity of the pain is less.
When the pain appears, and that can be whenever, triggered by whatever, it is still intolerable. It hurts the same. The only thread of hope I am giving you is that the intense constancy lessens.
Hi Tildyc,
It's a relief to hear from you.
I tried to sleep early this evening to avoid another evening of missing D. I didn't make it to sleep before the bad missing him started.
That kind of missing feels like my memory of him is so clear, that he is just almost right there somehow. Just ... in his whole wonderful self. Right there, I can't help but feel him so completely, remembering him so presently, I usually babble out an I Love You, just helplessly.
These pains then start cutting me up. I feel them mostly in my thighs, in the front, and all across my midsection. The pains cut as if I'm being sliced into, and then also burn. They happen quickly, and then fade, and then happen again.
That is what it feels like to miss D. It feels like being chopped up. Over and over again.
I know that an end to this suffering will be welcomed.
John,
It goes in cycles. Just when you have crossed a bridge you come to another ravine. I can't tell you much more than that.
It's like grief knows when you have just gained a little foothold and as soon as you do it wants to make sure you know who has the upper hand. And it isn't you. It really makes one wonder what part love has played in our lives to make it be so painful doesn’t it? Did we have too much of a good thing? Did we take it for granted? I seriously don't think it is any of those things I just don't have an answer for why these deep dark desolate days come upon us, hit us like a speeding train and then drag us down the tracks. Its unfathomable. No worldly explanation for it.
Technically all we can do is make our brains be a bit more compliant. Force our brains to allow us a little room to breathe without pain. Doing this for what seems like an eternal length of time I am flummoxed by how dark I can get and then I come up for air. I guess it must be like drowning.
And yes, I think we do "gear ourselves" up trying to inure our psyche to the oncoming battles we wage in our heads. We think we are good to go like we used to be in our old universe but we only participate there. We live in our new universe. It's a tough place to live.
Take Care John.
Very good insight Hilary. This makes me think about the grief for myself and how it entails so much more than just the loss itself. It happening all in a moment there was nothing to do with that type of medical care. But what maybe can be similar is the loss of control over something/one so important to you, all of your existence hinges on it. I will spare the details here but I never got to physically see or touch the body which was against my wishes. I have struggled so damn hard with this one thing and that may always be the case. Literally the only thing tangible I have directly related to the body to tell my senses this actually happened is the stocking hat he was wearing, his earrings in a small baggie with the medical examiners notings, and a portion of the ashes. Animals benefit from seeing/smelling a deceased body and we are no exception. I may have went on a tangent but I guess my point is, grief is so complex. Our emotional turmoil, I agree, can easily be a pool of multitude horrors to find some bullshit way to make peace with. In August I made a blog itemizing all the things I am grieving. I realize now there are more I could add to the list.
Yes, Hilary, the recklessness, the disregard, the the hypocrisy oath, it all was a part and parcel of the dreaded end. In one hour eastern standard time, three yeara ago, a lifetime it seems, I will be told by the uncaring, callous, embittered surgeon that he did what he could but there was no saving my husband. And he left me there in a heap, a puddle, a place in time where I can barely stand to be to this day to cry and scream to no one. To no one. As they rolled my husband by on his gurney high from the anethesthia and morphine I had to smile. I had to force myself to pretend that what we had was enough for then but certainly not enough for now. I am broken. I am in a million pieces. I understand suicide. I know what it feels like to have nothing left. I know what it feels like to reach for that bag of pills. It wont be tonight but it is here.
DO not be frightened. DO not be worried. THIS is not the time. I have promised myself one more thing. I will keep that promise but the suffering is so great. I read your posts and I see myself reflected in you as my mirror. We are all in a very fragile stage of life. Stage, almost like a theater. The death of war continues unabated while some are pocketing millions of dollars reaping their contaminated monies from the grief of thousands upon thousands. I have not wanted to bring the politics of death into our discussions but for everyone, everywhere, the day after death the mea culpas ring hollow. What if what we are doing is being blown back to people like us who have been chosen to carry the burden of such destruction? I do not understand this weight.
I have done way too much meditation and yoga to believe that our lives are an accident of nature. I believe there is a fundamental energy that is vibrating and is being manifest in all of us because, well, because the universe seeks life and wants relief and balance. Some of us are chosen because our journey into light means carrying individualized burdens. I am not a Stephen Hawking nor am I Malala, not that kind of burden. I am wife, lover, best friend and confidant of the only man who reached down deep within me and brought out the best in me. I am an extension of his light, his energy, his essence of the qualia. I belong elsewhere but have not reached entropy or so it seems. I seek to find my center again because for now it has exploded into the ether. I weep because I must, because it is all I have. It is all we have. Death, yes, Hilary, death has "cost me my heart and my reason for living."
Thanks to all for understanding when each of us come here and Mel you hit the target….. "this leaking umbrella of mutual understanding in the middle of a never ending storm of loss that swirls around us. May those who have yet to know this reality, listen to us, we are the experts and everyone who breathes will one day also be an unthankful expert on just how horrible the pain of losing your soul mate, son, daughter, mother, father. Just how horrible it really is, and may continue to be……"
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