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Comment by bluebird on November 16, 2018 at 2:27pm

morgan,

As usual, I identify so much with your post. 

As you said, by burying our soulmates we buried ourselves. Why can't people understand that? If I had a child with my husband, I would feel some pull to live for that child. I felt that because of our cat, but now our cat is dead and my husband is dead and I am dead. There is no fixing this. As you said, these feelings are normal. When your soul has been ripped from you, how and why would anyone expect you to live or to care about living? I am in the wrong place, now. I love my family, but without my husband I am no longer a part of this life.

Like you, I wish I felt some degree of certainty that my husband is still with me, or even that he still exist in an afterlife at all. At least you have what you termed a "spiritual universal belief", though I fully understand that that isn't enough. When my husband died, I lost whatever tenuous "belief" (I was agnostic) I might have clung to about there being any sort of loving god. I have lost everything, except for my family, and I don't know why people (IRL) can't fucking understand that.  I mean it, literally everything, except my family (a major exception, to be sure). My husband died. My future is gone. Any chance of children is gone. My sexuality is gone, because I don't want anyone other than my husband. Any faith in god is gone. My desire to write is gone. My desire to do anything with my life is gone. Any chance of holding a decent job is gone, because my brain doesn't work anymore. And so any shot at financial stability is gone. My health is gone, because I don't take care of myself, because I want to die, but at the same time illness terrifies me. My desire for and ability to make friends is gone. My soul is so diminished as to be gone.

I lost about thirty pounds when my husband died, too, though I did need to lose it. I couldn't eat. Since then, I've gained back that thirty and probably another 70. I am seriously overweight, and it just doesn't matter. It will probably kill me, and I want it to, though I hope it does so instantly and preferably painlessly.

I actually envy you, that you have boxes of your love's things to go through. There are no more things belonging to my husband (he was never one to have a lot of material possessions). There will never be any new things, and that is horrifying. To me, that's worse than going through his stuff. I can never discover anything new about him, anything he thought or wrote or felt, and so I am bereft.

Comment by Linda Engberg on November 14, 2018 at 6:30am

Dear Morgan and Trina,

Thanks for the two beautiful posts. We are so lucky to have this forum.It is a place we can come to and not be judged by the world for the way we feel. This is the only support we have to make it through our daily lives. Thank God for each and every one of you.

Comment by Trina Mamoon on November 14, 2018 at 4:21am

Dear morgan, Linda, John, Joe, Denise, JenShep, Monty, and all Those Others reading this,

I empathize with you all. My heart goes out to you!

I think one of the reasons that others who have not lost a spouse do not understand us is because as Linda points out they do not/ have not had the kind of love that we had with our spouse. Those of us who are here on this site after several years since we lost our spouse shows that we shared a rare, very special love with our soulmate.

As one of our friends put it to me when Joseph passed "The two of you shared the kind of love that they write poetry about" (he was so right!) I think all the others here who still mourn the loss of the love of their life after three, four, five, or more years did have the kind of love with their spouse that they write poetry about. Not all spouses and couples are blessed with that kind of love. That is why it's so hard for others to relate to us. It was no ordinary love.

When I was happy and Joseph was still alive, and I heard about the death of someone's spouse or partner, I instinctively empathized with them. Of course, I didn't have any idea how it actually feels to endure that kind of suffering, but my heart would always go out to the widow/widower, perhaps because I knew what a tremendous loss it would be to lose my beloved husband. But alas, now that I am a widow, very few people really get it: that the death of your spouse is not something that you get over after a year or two. 

The first year of Joseph's anniversary of passing I had explained to our gathered family members that losing Joseph is a daily painful reminder; it is like living with a severed limb or losing your eyesight. You never forget that you lost an arm or a leg or your eyesight. Everyday you are painfully reminded of this irreparable loss and for as long as you live the pain will be always there. I think at that point they had some sense of the suffering I was--and have been since--enduring. No, it is not something that you put behind you, you don't move on. 

I am so glad and thankful for this forum where we can come and read the comments and commiserate with one another. If not for this site, it would have been much harder to cope. So thank you all for visiting here from time to time and for sharing your thoughts and feelings candidly and for comforting us with words of understanding and empathy. Through our common bond--the death of our soulmate--we can console each other, at least for a little bit.

Thinking of you all and sending healing thoughts this holiday season. May peace come to us all.

Comment by morgan on November 13, 2018 at 1:47pm

It isn't a secret how death affects many of us.  Its just avoided when the conversation comes up......For us it is as though we buried ourselves.  I think it is brave and necessary for those who have lost their beloved and still have children to cope by doing things that support those who are part of family.  It is different for those of us who didn't have children.  I don't think we feel the same obligation to live life.  But I totally understand and I feel sorry if my own comments make it harder for you but I think I know by now that as we share our pain we all try and cope in the best ways we can.  In other words Monty, its good that you are being the best dad you can.  Bravo to you.....you are doing good.

And Joe, your last line was the sticker for me.  I have tried to explain to those who are trying to understand the new me that this is not something that needs fixed.  This IS normal.  What would be abnormal is if I didn't feel the intense connection I shared with my beloved husband for years even now.  That would be something to worry about. And I wish I could have the same amount of certainty that my beloved is beside me.  Its not that I don't have a spiritual universal belief but I need the visceral.  Its so difficult to live on belief.  And I too lost thirty pounds I didnt need to and I know my immune system is slowly depleting me.  And its ok.  I too don't want to have checkups and fix ups.  I'm like you.  If my skin tags get much worse I am sure I'll be a clinical phenomena for the cancer groups.  

And yes Trina,  what is the point?  I've asked myself that since day one.  Give me a good reason and so far, no one has anything......I do it all but the journey is unmoving.  

Linda, it is so obvious through your pictures that your Julian was your guiding star.  He was that tall beacon of light.  Now the world has dimmed.  Almost black..........I wonder i that is why I still gravitate to wearing black.  Its almost like it is easier for me....

John, The fact you said as a psychologist you recognize the triggers but cannot overcome them is so pertinent to the void we have, the chasm of recognizing the way grief operates.  Its like a stealthy bludgeon.  I can even feel the biological precursors of when I am going to have a breakdown now.  Before it was all the time.  Now its when I hit a really impactful trigger but there is nothing I can do to stop it.  Then I have to go through the crying and see it through till the end.  I know items like the car are still those material connections that unearth the more vivid repetitious moments we lived with our beloved.  I am still working my way through boxes of things I had packed over five plus years ago and I have avoided doing it.  I can only take this a step at a time because I now know what my reaction to it will be and those moments have become just excrutiatingly painful.  More than I thought possible. Yet we live through them and wish we didnt.

Its hard isn't it?  Living with this kind of suffering.  And everyday we take pity on those who are new to this struggle of losing their beloved.  I think of the dead who recently have died in the disasters we watch on TV and all I can do is think of how their family is suffering.  Seems like an awful lot and I don't remember in my 66 years in this earth so much suffering.  Maybe I just was too happy huh? 

Comment by Linda Engberg on November 13, 2018 at 1:01pm

Jen,

You hit the nail on the head that all people on this site didn't have the kind of love we had with our spouses. They were our soulmates and we were as one.

Comment by JenShep on November 13, 2018 at 11:54am

I haven't posted in a while but I'm still in the same boat I was last time I posted and to come back here and read others' posts that sound so much like what I'm still going through is a bit of a comfort. 

Joe, like you I keep wishing for cancer (or better - a stroke or something quick and painless) to end it all so I can be with Tom again. I haven't had the extensive OBE that you've had but I have started to "slip out" a few times so I have the same feeling that they are just in another dimension nearby. I live for signs and things like that and sometimes am rewarded but not often enough. 

John, that sounds awful. I am so sorry about the car. I know I would have lost my mind over that too. I still have Tom's car and feel bad when I don't drive it often enough but when I do it's like entering his world a little bit so to lose that would be awful. My mom keeps hoping I'll sell it - every time I begin a sentence with "So, Tom's car..." she gets all excited and says "you're going to sell it??!!! *yipee, yipee, yipee*" It upsets me a lot. 

And Linda, I think that's the thing - they haven't had a love like we have. I think most of us on this site had something more special than the average relationship and that's why this is so hard. 

Comment by Linda Engberg on November 13, 2018 at 9:08am

Hi John,

I still have the car my Husband and  bought in 2003. I keep it in tip top shape because it is still part of him and brings me comfort. After almost six years I still attend the annual workshop "Hope for the Holidays" given by Hospice. As the Holiday season approaches I find I miss his presence and find no joy in the season and never will.

Comment by John T. on November 12, 2018 at 7:15pm

A few days ago, our old car blew a head gasket on the freeway as I was on the way for a consultation with a doctor about skin cancer.  I am a baby about it even though it's not life-threatening.  Another of those times when I feel so profoundly alone.  My wife would ground me reality and guide me through this.  On top of that, the car itself is a connection to her that is gone.  I sobbed when it was towed away to the junkyard even though I had grown to hate the darn thing.  I hung onto it because of the connection to her.  

I went and bought a used car that I got a great deal on and that I like.  My family wonders why I'm not excited to have a Jetta that's a few years old.  Does anyone here wonder that?  Taking money from our IRA to by the car was a nightmare and buying it painful.  I drove it home in tears, thinking of what she would think of it and the place to which we would travel together.  It's been four years since I lost my wife and there is not a day I don't think of her and feel that awful hollow sort of pain that stabs at my heart.  I just feel today I should tell all of you that we share a common bond here that few outside our realm of experience understand.  Somehow we deal with it as best we can but no one really understands the lingering hell of all this.  I could never imagine it.  Even as a psychologist, I can recognize the triggers but I can not overcome them.  This all goes to the most essential part of being human.  We have lost someone that was part of us and remains so.  With that, we do the best we can and those who expect more of us simply don't share our experience.  I wish you all peace of mind, which is such a gift when we can achieve it.  John T.

Comment by Linda Engberg on November 12, 2018 at 3:17pm

Hi Joe,

You are right about the U.S. culture, I am considered a weirdo because I haven't got over my Husband's death and I don't really care what they think. I think that they never had a love like my husband and I had.

Thank God for this site, I think I would go crazy if no one understood how I feel.

Comment by Denise Lavoie on November 12, 2018 at 2:50pm

Hi It has been2 and a half years sin ce l saw my husband. He died April 2016. I feel so lost and l have no hope.

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