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Comment by morgan on March 21, 2015 at 12:28am

Tildyc- (part 1) I am so sorry for your pain.  I remember what it i was like when I was at your point after my husband of 35 years died and there is nothing that will ever come close to the feelings we now have struggling with wanting answers and wanting to feel our suppose again.  

The first year and half was pure hell.  The first three months I spent researching suicide, barely showered and ate nothing. Lost 35 lbs.  Felt as though I had been removed to a totally different planet.  Having to function was impossible.  The next three months I spent how I was going to extricate myself from my job and still figure out how to live.  Ended up deciding to sell our home and so between trying to show it and keep it clean and barely being able to talk to anyone I ended up at month eight moving.  Yes, sold the home.  Moved near to one of my siblings in her cottage and spent the next three months laying in bed.  Coming up on the month of his diagnosis and the following month of his death I thought I might be able to reconstruct my life back in Hawaii.  I might as well have tried to move to Alaska.  Found out location makes no difference and my emotions were off the charts.  Passing Xmas and the date of his death I thought I would "get better" after such trauma during the really bad dates I had just been through.  No such luck.  I spent year two trying to obtain a house I could live in and one I could use as a rental income.  Day after day I would cry.  Everything was still so overwhelming.  Everything.  Grocery stores, post office, dealing with returns or purchases at any store, each day there was another horrendous breakdown, most often several a day.  Would I ever see an end to the pain of not having him around me anymore.  Would I get anything that would help me, a sign?  Something that I knew he was listening and could help me through this?  

I am now 40 lbs lighter at 103 lbs and look like a refugee.  I have aged 20 years so look 83.  My eyes are sunken and the lines in my face are deep.  I am now at 26 months.  In the past couple weeks the constant intense crying has begun to lessen.  I am now simply hopeful something will happen to me naturally so I don't have to live too long.  I get through days by keeping myself maddeningly busy doing nothing.  I keep internet podcasts going almost 24/7.  At first I couldn't stand noise and now I do it to block out my thoughts.  

This is a journey I would not wish on my worst enemy.  How is it we are enduring this kind of suffering. I asked myself today "what did I do to deserve this kind of punishment"?  I was brought up Catholic but left that behind at 11.  I have immersed myself in studying physics because they are finding out a lot about how the brain and the energy that drives this reality we experience functions but there are no answers for our questions.  Death is quiet.  It gives away nothing.  

Only those who have had to shake hands with death by losing their spouse get what this is like.  There isn't any version of how someone dies better or worse than another.  We all end up struggling with the whys.  Constant ever present "whys" taking different forms.

Comment by Tildyc on March 20, 2015 at 3:19pm

John T- I am so sorry you have to go through this all by yourself. I myself have chosen to be pretty much alone, except for here on this site. I refuse to burden my loved ones with my over whelming sadness and grief. After all – how could they truly know what I'm going through? And why would I want them to feel this pain? And i'm not saying this to seek pity. It's truly how I feel and I know this is the best way to do this- for me.

And it's good that you have your religious faith. And that your wife was very strong in her faith. It's at least it is something the two of you shared and perhaps can connect in that way. What a blessing that would be wouldn't it?! Myself – even though I was raised religiously, I never took it too seriously I guess. All it seem to do was instill fear and guilt in me in just about everything. I'm fairly certain there's a God. But I don't know how he/she fits into one kind of religion. And after losing my Mark – i'm questioning everything I thought I used to think I believed. I find myself searching and praying and pleading for real answers to this overwhelming heartbreak and sadness. This sudden huge emptiness in my life.

Its said that time is the one thing that makes everything better. But that does not bring back my Mark. And without Mark in my life, there is no getting better. I need to so desperately know in some kind away that- he IS around me and that he IS happy and at peace. And I will continue searching for answers until I find them. Or I guess – until I go crazy. :/

Comment by Tildyc on March 20, 2015 at 2:30pm

Donna- I keep trying every day to feel him. I try to do this meditation thing I found in a book everyday. I've never been a person to meditate – being ADHD all my life- it's been a very hard thing to do.- To still my mind as they want you to do. I feel like it was working at the beginning but now I don't feel it is. The best communication I guess I've ever had with him was a couple of dreams that were very vivid and that was within the first couple weeks of his passing. I'm very anxious that I can't feel him anymore and I'm doing everything I can to connect. If I figure something out I'll let you know. And yes – I know I sound crazy. But I don't care because , I miss my Mark and my soul is aching from absence.

Comment by Donna M Dowling-Hall on March 20, 2015 at 4:46am

Tildyc-I know what you mean.  I keep trying real hard to feel his presence.  I just feel emptiness.

Comment by Tildyc on March 20, 2015 at 12:01am

I found the link to this song on one of the groups here.

http://youtu.be/C4dci4Z7p6A

Comment by Tildyc on March 19, 2015 at 11:39pm

And I'm still waiting to feel something from him. I'm not remembering my dreams anymore and I feel like I'm losing my mind. Does anybody else ever feel like that?

Comment by Tildyc on March 19, 2015 at 9:51pm

Well –just got home from a dog walk. I cried the entire time. It's spring right now in Alaska where I'm at. It actually is getting pretty nice. But – it means nothing to me. Except that I won't be able to help Mark get his boat ready for the season. The barbecue will just sit where thr paramedics moved it out of the way when they came to get him in the ambulance. He loved to cook and barbecue. In fact he was the best cook I've ever met. There won't be any friends over for dinner. There will be more dog walks together. The trips to the swimming hole with the kids will not happen. No plans to go to the cabin. And that's just the summer...

Just the thought of the up coming yr fills me with despair and sadness. They'll be no fall hunting or canning and putting up the fish. There'll be no birthday celebrated in October (his), thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday in January and then there will be the anniversary of his death in February.

The thought of it fills me with darkness and a deep loneliness. No one really understands how this feels unless they've been here. I Just want life to go away. I don't want to kill myself but I so badly want to go to where he is at.

He can't come home to me and I can't bare being alone without him.

Comment by Fran on March 19, 2015 at 7:11pm

The length of time that the spouse is sick before dying seems somewhat irrelevant. My husband was diagnosed just a year ago (literally) and died Nov. 6, 2014. We spent that between time in hell. Initially he tried to get a bunch of projects completed(with the help of our son and his brothers) so that I wouldn't have to worry about the house once he was gone. We did a lot of talking, a lot of crying, a lot of touching...but, when he died I don't think it was any easier. After being used to having someone there thru thick and thin, good and bad, etc, when they're gone it's still heart wrenching! A huge hole ripped out of your whole being, not just your heart. I took care of him and hurt almost as much as he did...and now I hurt more. I'm still mad at God and the world that he was taken and all the thieves, murderers etc are left. But I try to take baby steps, and make little goals to complete. Believe me, the first couple months just getting up was a major task.

Comment by Donna M Dowling-Hall on March 19, 2015 at 6:26pm

My 42 year old husband of 14 years passed away Feb 12, 2015 from cancer.  He lived 10 days after we were told that there was nothing more they could do for him.  We were best friends and he was my whole world.  The pain is so incredible.  I am mad at him for leaving me and I am relieved the that he is no longer in pain.  I feel so alone.  My sister has told me to "push through this"..  Are you freaking kidding me.  We weren't blessed with children, so I am alone.  My parents live 45 minutes from me.  I can't sleep.  Someone asked if I feel his presence and I don't, or at least I don't think so, because I still feel so empty and abandoned.  I know he did not want to leave me and he fought so hard.  I feel cheated and I feel that he was cheated out of a wonderful life. 

Comment by morgan on March 19, 2015 at 11:24am

To the kindred spirits that have just written on this "lost my spouse" post.  To Tilydc, Jason, Fran, John T and others.  You are not alone.  Unfortunately you are now walking right alongside people like me.  We are there when you fall into the gaping hole.  Not that we can help you from falling, we are just there to soften your fall.  We are there giving you the barest sustenance because while you still live you need food (empathy) and water (comfort).  Do not believe the books that tell you about stages and sages.  There is no wisdom of how to recover from shaking hands with death.  You are now living in a totally different dimension than before.  You will never return.  You will suffer.  Oh yes, it will be like suffering you could never imagine. Some of us continue and learn to walk again, some of us come out of it with a lifelong limp.  But it is like being an infant all over again.  You wont walk for at least a year.  Steel yourself, this is a job to relearn everything about yourself.  

I can say I don't like everything about myself now.  I think I used to. But I am 63 and was married for 35 years, known him since I was 8. I can look at his picture and experience what he was feeling at that moment.  You will go through infinite feelings of how you translated your beloved's every gesture, every look, every breath.  You won't believe you can take another breath and yet the universe makes you take one.  

Why are we here to experience such grief?  Are we vessels of the massive universe set upon this pale blue dot (Sagan) to FEEL what the collective conscience is undergoing?  I wonder to myself.  How could I have moved from such a wonderful existence to such pain.  

The first year and half was probably the roughest.  I thought I would never see the end of the tears.  At 26 months I still cry everyday.  Still.  Some days are worse than others but I at least have some days where there are more good hours than there are ones that I don't move.  I knew from day one I could not focus on the job I had so I sold our home, and downsized both financially and physically and live much more simply.  Was it hard to do?  Unbelievably.  But then you know that.  Today I live small, think small, cant interact with the world at large very well but I try in small steps and cry alone.  It's a crappy ending to a beautiful life of love and I have no idea when I will expire but in the interim I still take baby steps. The best advice ever.  Baby steps.  You can only do what you can do on that day at that given moment.  It's a pit.  A big hole.  The ONLY consolation is that I can come here and know that I am not alone.  I am suffering the consequences of losing the man whom I saw myself through, here along with other people who feel the same.  That's it.  It's not much but it's all I've got.  Take care of me and yourself ok?

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