Hi Debbie, I live in the UK, and my wife passed in September last year 2014 of Cancer following a Bowel operation, we were married for 22 years, to say its hard is an understatement, its hell on earth.  None of my wife's grown up kids want to talk about their mum, im the only one who wants talk, and im keeping the home we have shared for a shrine to her, and I'm sick of hearing the same thing, "time is a great healer".  I know exactly how you feel.  

Debbie, 

Friends and family for the most part are clueless when it comes to the extent of the hurt we are enduring and thus think that pills, time and getting out more is the fix.  They seriously don't think it is their job to make us feel better and they are probably right.  Even the minimal amount of energy they expend on trying to understand is pretty much useless.  

No one will ever be there like our husbands.  No one.  Between having a brother tell me I need to want to fix myself  (with drugs & therapy) and until I do there is nothing he could do,  to a sister who really does mean well but listens to her therapist too much assumes I am having a pity party for myself (her words).  The others have been so detached from what my needs are for other reasons I just cannot muster the energy to explain to them how horrendous this is and how it affects me.

So I have pushed everyone away except for two friends one who I stay in touch with one on a daily basis and one weekly.  Other than that I have realized that everyone else has their own life and I am not inextricably linked. I had my life.  I had everything I needed and more.  For two years plus I have struggled what to do with myself because I am still alive.  

One of two things will happen.  One, my body will continue to live and I will treat life as I have up until now, a burden I want to be released from, no joy no happiness and I will retreat further from those who I feel have hurt me.  Or two, I will get sick and be released from this burden.  I have pretty much done what I can to enhance my own demise. The stress of this loss has taken a toll and I haven't taken any pills to mitigate it.  I needed to fully grieve.  I loved my husband more than anything else on this earth. In the process I know my body in its weakest spot (my throat) is giving me some symptoms just recently that might be serious.  I will allow nature to take its course.  I have no need to hang around and if it is what I think it is I will be released from this charade of life.  

I don't like living in this new alternate reality and I have no false presumptions that I will magically find a way to resume or move through or get fixed after losing the one thing that mattered to me.  I went looking for it through family and friends and they cant be there enough for me and I'm certainly not interested in looking for a full time companion so I just don't care anymore.  

All I can hope for now is when I die that there is a way to catch that same wave of energy I had with my husband here and live it in another dimension.  I don't believe in the whole religious theory so my hope lies in the idea that this universe is really really big and there is something we don't know about consciousness that science has yet to figure out.  Even if it isn't its better than being where I am now.  

Debbie,

I am so sorry to hear about the additional burdens you are facing. It makes it much harder for you.

Every single day, several times a day, I cry. I teach and sometimes I find that I may break down into tears in front of my students. Nothing brings me peace, only the thought that Joseph and I shared a great love and spent 19 years together brings me comfort. 

I wish you peace.