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Permalink Reply by morgan on March 5, 2017 at 12:12am

I spent all day packing and organizing and tending to last minute small construction details before I stage my house for sale.  I got through the day.   Even plastered on a fun face for the friend who came over to help me.  I've checked into this site a couple times today as I do every day and am watching a Harry Potter flick as I finish up some more packing and doing the dishes.  And all day I have felt the overwhelming intensity.  I am crawling towards my hole.

I just don't know what to do with the intensity of the missing.  It was weird to hear you talk Kevin how you kept trying to get your wife to eat.  When my husband was getting worse I, like you, kept trying to get my husband to eat and take short walks.  They were telling us at the hospital that the motility would help.  So I kept thinking if only, if only he would walk or eat.  All I can think back on now is we were both fighting for his life and did not really talk about the opposite.  Like you trying to get him to keep fighting for his life.  And he was but I just could not, did not realize how horribly sick he was even though they sent us home from the hospital calling it palliative/hospice care.  And without insurance we had no hospice.  I was his caretaker.  From the day he entered the hospital Dec 24th to the day he died, Jan 21st.

Four years later I am doing exactly what you are doing.  Distractions, noise, hiding and enduring the pain. The pain.  I haven't accepted it except to say I can see now it is never going away.   I still think about checking out and I am thinking about it more again.  I thought about it a lot for a about a year or so.  Then I got fearful of the what-ifs.  Now as I continue to try and beat back the grief when it comes around to hit me I am thinking about it more again.  The intensity is overpowering and the need to prove that I could make it this far is waning.  I am not sure I need to prove anything anymore, to myself or to anyone else.  I don't have children so I don't have that responsibility.  Only to myself.  

It took another breakdown to get to finish this post.  I knew it was going to hit me all day.  Just reading about how you fought to keep your wife alive and the same kinds of things you did just brings my own fight into the light.  I know I am not alone.  I know others did the same thing I did and yet we lost our spouses.  They are gone and we are still here and I simply am having a hell of a hard time figuring out how I am going to live like I have been because I just have no one to be responsible for and cannot find any reason to keep marking time.  

There are some things I have been doing in order to not leave a mess behind and I am going to continue to do that.  It should take me to the end of this year.  At which point unless I am either not quite done or I have figured out how to live without my husband I am going to have to do some serious soul searching because the way I have been living sucks.  

Permalink Reply by Michael on March 5, 2017 at 9:02am

Don't go down the guilt road.

Permalink Reply by CJ Moore on March 5, 2017 at 7:17pm

Similar here. I told my husband he needed to drink more water! And same, I would get mad at him too. It never occurred to me that he would die. Never ever. But I am glad I never thought he would because to live without hope would have been worse. I will always love my husband. Always. My grief is profound but I have learned to live with it and would rather live with this pain than never not had him in my life. I know it hurts. We are all in 'this' together.

Permalink Reply by Robin Quinn on March 8, 2017 at 12:13pm

So sorry you have to go through this.  There is no pain like losing the one you love.  I know exactly the guilt you feel, I lost my soulmate of 30 years in Jan. 2016 to cancer. a little over a month from diagnosis to his passing.  He was so brave and I kept falling apart.  I still feel the guilt that I couldn't save him, he kept telling me it was ok that he was ready to go, but I couldn't save him and I keep going through those days in the hospital over and over, wondering what I could have done differently, why I didn't see how sick he was, why, why?? Doesn't get easier, you just learn to hide it better. 

Permalink Reply by Libbie H on March 11, 2017 at 8:43pm

Guilt I think we feel cause realizing their death day will come just does not enter our brains so we push them to eat,drink,take meds etc...I was pushing for my husband to eat something healthy. How ridulous! It's been 2yrs and 4months. Breathing becomes a little easier but pain never dulls and purpose never comes...but you have to push thru for kids and people who Love you. Praying one day for I don't know what but praying for all of us...I do realize now how blessed I was to have my wonderful husband for 36yrs...