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Comment by Angela on September 22, 2015 at 11:11pm

the one person who could comfort me and understand me is the one that is gone. It's almost 5 months. I miss his voice and just having him with me. I go through his clothes, hug them and smell them. I cry with them in my arms, holding on tightly. I keep hoping I dream about him but I haven't remembered any dreams since he died. I can't fall asleep at night and then wake frequently after I do fall asleep. I am restless and unsettled at all times. I feel like I keep waiting for something but nothing ever comes. it's still not real, it's still hard to truly believe.

Comment by rachel_micele on September 22, 2015 at 11:06pm

"I don't know but I'm awfully tired of pretending I'm okay and that everything will be alright just to make others feel better." This is one thing I've worked hard at to be real about. If I can't be real to someone about my grief, if I can't talk about it, I can't be around them. Period. And so little by little I've isolated myself greatly. By now it has eliminated a majority of, if not almost all, people from friends, family, and many circles of strangers. Reducing the hours I work happens for this reason primarily. I can't and I'm not going to pretend all is well when I'm still a hollow, lifeless skeleton. I'm still not okay. Life is still not okay. And I just can't figure out how to make it so. Even though I feel like I'm being lifelessly dragged COMPLETELY against my will and maybe, barely, heartlessly, depressingly, grudgingly starting to go with it just for now, I still hate how life, the rest of the world, and everyone else in it just continues on. It feels so cruel like life takes the dagger in your heart and continues to give it another twist, out of spite, just to dig it in a little deeper.

Comment by Trina Mamoon on September 22, 2015 at 8:12pm

Patti,

So many people like to mouth platitudes. Those people who say things such as "it happens for a purpose" have not walked in our (bereaved/widowed) shoes and so it's easy for them to come up with these empty phrases. Had they been visited with a tragedy like we are facing, I doubt that they would have said these things to console themselves. And when they say it happens for a purpose, what purpose is it, I wonder? And even if there were a purpose the fact that we are having to endure intense anguish doesn't change. Purpose or not, we are having to live in this unspeakable pain and suffering day after day, year after year. 

Someday these people will find themselves in our situation (unless in an accident or a natural calamity, one of the two in a couple is left behind at one point in time), and then only will they understand how it feels to be the surviving spouse. Also, they'd have to be in love with their partner/spouse to be grieving and mourning their death like we are mourning the death of the love of our life. Only then they will know that the pain is out of our control and that we cannot just "be strong and bear up" and will away our grief. If I am still around when these people find themselves in my shoes, unlike them, I will not be judgmental and superior and smug. I will show them compassion and offer them sympathy. I will not utter insensitive platitudes, because empty phrases don't help to heal. They make the bereaved person feel even worse.

Comment by Trina Mamoon on September 22, 2015 at 7:58pm

morgan,

Thank you for the nice comment on our photo. Joseph was an extraordinary individual and a wonderful husband. (Just two days ago a former student of his posted on his FB page saying what a great teacher and mentor he was.) His tall stature added to his strength of character and personality. I felt unconditionally embraced by his love and felt safe and secure in his presence. He was my moral compass as well as my lover, soulmate, life companion, and intellectual partner.

And it's true, even when we didn't do something special on weekends, just being in the presence of one another, doing simple things like reading a book or listening to music, watching a film, was deeply satisfying. Joseph and I--as I suspect you and your husband were, morgan--fully complemented each other and made each other happy beyond words. We didn't need anyone else (we didn't have children) to liven up our time together. Just the intimacy and the love we shared was more than enough to fulfill our desires and needs. And for that I am grateful. I knew great love, a love that is very rare and very beautiful (I think the people on this site all knew that kind of love, hence we grieve our loss so intensely and inconsolably); not too many people have the fortune of meeting and falling in love with their soulmate. As short-lived as it was--19 years--I am grateful for the love and grateful for Joseph. The grief that I feel so deeply is testimony to the great love I shared with my darling Joseph. This thought brings me comfort.

Thanks again for your kind words, morgan, and hope your day is bearable and you are able to take more baby steps in this tragic journey of yours.

Comment by morgan on September 22, 2015 at 2:15am

Trina,

I look at your picture with Joseph and I can see how you would have felt so embraced by his love. He is a tall man of stature.  He would have carried his love for you proud and with dignity.  It is an earthly vision of something that I see in your picture that now has to be envisioned by you in a different plane and how hard that is. 

Your post of sitting at home on Saturday night alone is another chord that hits hard.  Its just one of the things we all have in common.  It wouldn't have mattered that some of us would have gone out to dinner or to a movie or others would have sat around the house watching TV or reading a book or using our computers for whatever. What mattered was sewer sharing the time with the one person in whom we had invested so ugh of ourselves that we could feel them inside of us.  We didn't have to do anything more than be around each other.  Now, there is nothing.  It is so difficult.  It seems no matter what I do now, not trying to replicate what we did then because that is impossible, but just to do anything is so empty.  So meaningless.  So unlike the world I used to live in.  The whole bottom has dropped out of sight.  I am getting better at doing but I am not better at being.  People think that because I am talking to them in a conversation the best I can that somehow it means I am getting better.  That I am living better.  Its literally impossible for them to understand how utterly broken I am.  The only person who gets it is a woman I have met who also lost her husband and though her circumstances are different as is her history we are on the same page as to the healing properties of time and what looks like progress.  We agree that time has not necessarily healed us nor do we see it as progress but that because of the time that has passed others find us a pigeonhole that they can put us in because we aren't constantly in tears and can walk on our own volition.  We can actually drive again or get to the supermarket and buy and cook some food.  I guess you could call that progress.  I just call it forcing myself to do the bare minimum because I still draw breath.  I tried starving myself at the very beginning.  I got to 18 hours without food and water and I caved in. I couldn't do it.  My body/mind wouldn't let me.  I got hungry enough where I ended up eating and drinking again.  But i tried.  Now I eat minimum calories in order to strain my system.

Does this sound morose?  Yeah, I guess so but I just cant see myself at 63 living another ten years. god forbid.  Hell, ten minutes, but my body does not seem ready to give it up no matter what I am doing.  I know I am stressing it but it has yet to do more than just make me a little uncomfortable at times.  

I am noticing a little more internal symptoms that might be the development of the stress and it it truly is my hope that something might cave.  I know most people don't want to hear that but I think here in these posts most people get that there could be that wish from some of us.  I would never encourage it but I do believe it is ok to voice how one feels.

 

As for family my own fell away from me quickly all except one.  They simply cant be bothered to hear how much it hurts.   Like you said they all think it is drama or that I should be taking enough pills to fix me or that I am looking for pity and not doing enough as time passé to fit into their model of me.  Wow,just wow.  Someday one of the two of them might get their comeuppance.  Will I be there?  I don't know. I am not sure I can forgive them and I guess my hope is I wont have to be here to work about it.

Comment by morgan on September 21, 2015 at 2:56pm

Patti,

I am two years and eight months today into this GD grief path and I can tell you that as hard as I try to keep doing life I too am just worn out.  How is it that I can still manage to get up and do anything at all is beyond my imagination because inside I am so broken.  I am forcing myself every single day to get up and do.  Some days I don't do anything at all and like you I also feel I have made so little progress with my grief and yet I know from what it was like at the very beginning (the first year and half) I was just a walking zombie.  I'm not sure what to describe myself like now but it isn't a whole lot better yet I know I function better.   I can actually get a shower on a regular basis and I feed myself a bit better than I was but again, inside I am just totally gone.  

I simply cannot stop feeling so at a loss.  I thought of this analogy before and I elaborated on it in my head this morning.  Try to imagine.  

I have been dropped into a really large forest.  There is a thick heavy blanket of fog everywhere.  As I try to walk I keep running into large trees and when I hit them it hurts so much and I drop to the ground.  I sit there stunned and dazed and my head hurts.  I try to think about where I am and how I am supposed to continue.  I finally get up and start to walk again and bam! I hit another tree.  The fog is so thick I can't see in front of me at all.  After this amount of time along in this forest (two and half years and eight months today) there are a few little tiny spots where the fog is less and so I can avoid a tree or two but then the fog descends again and bam! down I go.  It is a really big forest so I have no real hope of ever finding a clearing and so I keep walking.  Sometimes it gets really cold and damp.  Sometimes when the fog lifts a little I don't feel quite as trapped but that is not very often.  It is where I am.  It is how I feel.  And I really don't know if there is any other way to go except for what I am doing.  Walking and hitting trees in the fog.  

I have already cried twice already today and I am trying so damn hard to force myself to do things and when I do it isn't always good but somehow I guess I pretend it is contributing to my journey.  Otherwise I would sit/lay on this sofa and just starve myself.  

I would never wish this kind of pain on my worst enemy (not that I really have any) but  wish I didn't have to endure it myself. I can only hope that the distress of the anguish will find its way into my own body cells and make quick work of me.  Its already been way too long but one can wish.

Namaste,

morgan

Comment by morgan on September 20, 2015 at 10:10pm

John-  Your post about the dolphins reminded me of my first year marker. I was living in Hawaii at the time and I spent the day by myself at the beach. I decided to walk down the beach and remembering what that was like with my husband I broke down.  Just fell into the sand.  Several people came to see what was wrong and as I was crying a whole pod of whales came by the shoreline and were singing and blowing.  Even natives said they never saw or heard such a sight.  To this day I have to try and force myself to believe it was my husband because as beautiful as it sounds I have continued to suffer.  At two years, eight months tomorrow I can tell you that although you begin to tap into a bit more of reality and start to function better (and I can say this just began about two months ago) the being alone is definitely the worst.  

I will never be with anyone else.  Wouldn't be fair to me or them as I am in my eyes still very much married  to my husband and plan to stay that way. What has changed is I am more determined to not participate in life.  Some of that is choice and some is because when I go out into the public I am prone to running into a trigger and I fall in the hole so I avoid going places.  When I do, like I did yesterday, it’s a disaster. So when you say you are looking into a place where no one knows you it wont change the basic fact of your aloneness much.  It's a toss up as to whether family are really helpful but they are close by.  I too am debating relocation as I don't want to be in this cold weather but then the energy involved in doing a move plus undoing what I have done here just to maintain seems more of a challenge than I am ready to do.  So instead I stay frozen in place.

I know I am “better” but that is relative to what I was before and I know full well that this sorrow, grief, aloneness, isolation and all the other things I have felt from the very beginning will be with me until I die.  And I don’t think from what I was to what I am now is any great shakes.  Just enough so that I am not lying on a bed in a fetal position unable to move.  Reading that Patti and Robin who are years into this and still feel like they do is just reinforces what those of us who loved so deeply have in our future. 

 

All I can hope for all of us is we find a place where our minds are connected to the feelings we had when our love was alive but without the pain.  My wish for us.

Comment by George H on September 20, 2015 at 7:15pm

I'm pretty much doing my best to keep up with y'all I don't post much anymore but then again I don't do much of anything anymore I pretty much live in my room all the time now living without Mary has become a lot harder then I thought it would be I really wonder if it doesn't get any better I wish you all well and I'll be looking in on you to keep up with your life take care

Comment by Fran on September 20, 2015 at 6:59pm

My heart breaks for you, John. And yet, I know, I will feel just like you next month when our wedding anniversary occurs. Last year, Bill was still able to go out for an "anniversary dinner"...this year I will probably hole up and try not to fall apart.

Comment by bluebird on September 20, 2015 at 5:54pm

"That's what I've been reduced to: memories and heartache."

I completely agree; it's the same for me.

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