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Comment by morgan on May 9, 2015 at 9:36pm

Mark,

The best part about these kinds of web interactions is we are never obligated to respond but it certainly gives us all so much room to vent, not be judged and/or ruminate when others tell us how or what they are doing to deal with the angst of this thing we call death of our beloved.  I am convinced nothing will ever explain this silent separation to our satisfaction and certainly not to the extent that others think we should be fitting back into their dysfunction. Life for me has become a sort of prison.  Some speak of having the "freedom to get to know who they were when they were single (before meeting their spouse) even though many tell of staying isolated.  I just feel absolutely no pressure to return to anything prior and I am quite incapable of doing more than functioning in the exact present moment I am in.  No plans, no dreams, no goals, no motivation to speak of and little energy to do anything that sounds very productive.  Yes, I m getting along better now (27months) than I did for about the first year and half but that is all relative.  It's just so sad I didn't have more time with my husband to love him.  To embrace that vital life force that drove me to want.  I am now devoid of want.  

And don't feel compelled to answer ok?  I get it.  More often than not I write just to convince myself of my inner compunction to tell the world how much this hurts.  Gawd, how it hurts.

Take care,

morgan

Comment by Mark on May 9, 2015 at 7:55pm

Morgan

Thanks for the for the response to my blog post.  So much thought went into it, it sounds very like the things my sister tells me.   

You talk about simply existing, much of the time I feel the same, plodding through the days just to mark them off the calendar.  All my future plans gone, and now going down some strange unfamiliar road that I never wanted to be on.

I am having trouble responding adequately to your extremely thoughtful comment.  

I just want to say thank you very much.

Mark

Comment by morgan on May 9, 2015 at 1:32am

 Mark,

I have found it amazing how many emotions I can go through in a day.  From loneliness to desperation, from anger to crying like a banshee. I am alone (no children) so I have no one to care about or have care about me so your situation is very different having your son who needs you.  But the grief, that constant analysis of the big "why" is the same.  I was with my husband for 35 years and he died at 63 of stage four cancer diagnosed on Xmas Eve day and dead 27 days later.  It might as well have been one day for neither of us really understood the magnitude of what was about to happen.  For him knowing he was about to die and for me hanging onto what I could do to lengthen my time with him we never gave one thought to what it might be like for me after he died.  It is the most complicated, brutal time of my life now.  I am constantly thinking.  Thinking about every nuance, every moment we had or didn't have, every reason why he should still be alive……..you name it, I think about it.  It is consuming me.  I'm not sure how to break the cycle or if I want to.  Just more analysis.  

As for your mother in law I would proffer that she wanted to know for her sake and yours.  In my life I have a no holds barred policy now when it comes to telling people (anyone) what I feel.  I've determined I have nothing else left to lose.  I think people need to know how much this hurts.  I think grief has been hidden and treated like a cut finger when it remains an open gaping wound for many.  Family need to know what we feel.  How it hurts.  What happened to get us to this point. They can't read our minds and they certainly aren't going to hear anything from our beloved.  

I quit my job six months after my beloved husband died and haven't worked since.  I just scaled back my entire living situation to do so.  I am not in a bad place I just had so many other things I wanted to do but only because I was going to do them with my husband.  Now I am simply existing.  At this point in my grief I am much more functional and as John T said the black fog lifts after awhile but for me I cannot see a future.  Ours was not an idyllic marriage all the time but the love always made up for the times we spent disagreeing about life's obstacles.  I think many of us have had drugs or booze or both be a thorn in our lives and some pluck it out and some grow a callous over it.   I think my husbands cancer was exacerbated by his early years of abuse of alcohol and even though he didn't die directly as a  result of it I think it shortened his life.  I get angry about it when I think of the abuse and then I need to remember how much I loved him.  It really didn't matter why he made crappy choices about some things there was so much else I loved him for.  

We are only allowed to be here for X amount of days.  I wanted to be with him more than anyone else.  He was my lover, my best friend, the man I wanted to be with regardless of fault or fortune.  I wanted more and I didn't get it. I wanted to live out the cliche "come grow old with me the best is yet to be".  I grieve that I didn't have that chance to do more with him.  I hate life now that I have to live it without him.  I am not very helpful because I can't think of a way to make this sorrow any better than what I am enduring.  I don't think I will ever get through this to a point where life will be happy.  I think some people can but it wont be me.  I only want my own demise to be painless and sooner rather than later.  I do not relish old age now.  

Preparing for your son and his needs going forward is now your purpose.  You sound like you are doing all the right things to the best of your emotional capacity to do that.  No one, not him or anyone else can rush your need to reconcile all the thinking you are going to do between now and the day you will be better able to find some peace with how your wife died and where you can pick up and go forward.  I wish you the shortest and least painful path to that end.

BTW, I grew up close to Pittsburgh. Small town in the Laurel Highlands.  Take care and keep doing what you are doing.  Each of us is here to give the only and best kind of support we can because each of us knows the pain of what death has done to our psyche. Keep writing until it is not needed.  And try to get some sleep.

morgan