@Cadge The early days are really difficult. Registering the end of someone’s life hits home as does planning a funeral & seeing a coffin. I wanted to support my mum throughout the process. I would say, when you go to the chapel of rest have someone with you. Best wishes to you. X
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Yeh had to see the face i loved for 37 years one last time … it was nice in a way, but very sad too ! this journey of grief is not nice ! Its sad and awful 
and everyday i realise how vmuch ive lost … the reality dawns … its really not nice glad i have my puppy but its still crap !
And i agree with @Cee have someone with you ! X
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I stayed with my husband in the hospital for a while after he died but his fingers started turning very pale and that was creeping up his hands and my son (a paramedic) left because he said he knew how fast people changed when they died and he didn’t want to see his dad like that. I decided to go too. I’m not going to see my husband again before the funeral for a reason that might upset people. 25 years ago we lost out baby. She was stillborn at 39 weeks. We weren’t going to see her after the hospital but at the last minute I decided I would. Walking into the dimly lit room I saw her not deep purple as she had been in the hospital but pink and rosy cheeked and for a split second I thought there had been a mistake and she was still alive. As we got right up to her she was covered in make up. A thick orange foundation that actually had glitter in it. Her white outfit including the delicate hat and cardigan my mother had knitted were covered in big orange finger prints, and they had tied the ribbons of her hat so tightly under her chin it looked like she was being garroted. It was utterly shocking. We are going to specify no make up on my husband but I don’t want to see him looking…
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The last time I saw my husband was a couple of days before he died in hospital. Due to my own health I couldn’t stay with him. Whilst the day before he had been chatting with friends when I saw him he was so doped up his eyes were rolling in his head and he didn’t know I was there. I called the nurses who gave him some more sedation which settled him but I couldn’t bear to see him like that. That was the Sunday. Some other friends saw him on Monday and he was completely sedated. He died early Tuesday morning. I am trying to remember him as he was before he went into hospital but that last image keeps returning.
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Personal choice isnt it ofcourse x
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We effectively said our goodbyes when he was given the news they could do nothing and it would be a few days at most. We didn’t know how long he would still be able to be conscious. It may be macabre but the first thing we did after crying was discuss exactly how he wanted his funeral and where he wanted his wake. The disposal of certain of his things. I tried to stay as positive as I could with him to stop him worrying about me whilst crying at home.
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Yeh i did same … tried not to cry in front of him ! So hard isnt it ? My husband passed at home cos that was his wish but either way its just awful ;( xxx
Richard had been seriously ill in hospital 16 months before he passed away, and we had discussed what his wishes were then, He came out of hospital and, although poorly, we had some reasonable months until he went into a nursing home, instead of a hospice, for the last three weeks of his life. He died in my arms and I stayed with him for an hour, he was so peaceful. Such emotional memories.
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We tried to get him home but he deteriorated too rapidly. I wanted to spend more time with him I just wasn’t physically able. If I had used the bed they had provided I wouldn’t have been able to get up and would have probably also ended up in hospital
@LizFar I found the chapel of rest distressing too. The hospital had kept my Dad too long so when he was ready for viewing, it didn’t look like him. I don’t think I was fully prepared for that as I really wanted a better memory than seeing his haunted features in hospital. @cadge I hope your experience is a positive one but bodies do deteriorate over time. Saying that, I’m glad I went as I had to support my mum. Strangely enough, she did find it comforting. X
I missed not having a final hug.
I am so sorry Sandra that it wasn’t possible for you. I held Richard for a while, which I shall always remember.
All so sad, I’m crying again,
Sending love xx
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I asked the funeral director if he looked ok and he said yes… its totally a personal choice xx
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So am I. After my good day yesterday today seems to go on forever. Feeling very low.
Love back xx
I had my sixth counselling this morning and she had me delve back into my negative thoughts I still have. Since I came home, I have been in a really bad emotional state. I wonder if I should stop them for a while.
I am so sorry you are in such emotional state. Counselling is supposed to help isn’t it ? Today seems to be lasting forever. After a relatively decent nights sleep i was hoping for a good day. Still I suppose you can’t have everything. Hopefully knees will be better tomorrow and I will try some exercises. Have a delivery and a friend coming Thursday but that feels a very long time away. Xx
My heart is constantly racing anxiety thinking about the funeral on monday anyone else suffer with this it knocks me sick already on anxiety tablets have been for years .
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Surely it is natural to feel anxiety when you have lost half of yourself. You are at such an early stage.
Sandra, the problem with counselling is, that we are encouraged to talk all about what’s happened. So, inevitably it brings everything back in technicolour, so to speak. I have found it useful because it has helped me to look more positively at some of my negative thoughts and stop beating myself up about events I cannot change, and which were done for the right reason at the time, Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I hope you feel better tomorrow and enjoy your friend’s visit. I am going out ti lunch with a friend. xx
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Dear Cadge
I am so sorry at your loss, I lived with my mother and she died in my arms in January at the end of a four year struggle with dementia, we were alone in the house and I just wanted to stay in my sleeping bag and die and I would have had I not been found, I am 63, single and know live alone and I can trully say the death of my mother is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, I expect to be alone for the rest of my days because everyone else has died accept for my sister in law and my niece.
I had made plans regarding my mothers funeral and as she had expressed no other desire then to be cremated I opted for direct cremation followed by a funeral service proper in April just with the ashes (they are know on the wall in a casket under a lovely photograph of her taken at her silver wedding anniversary along with photographs of the other members of my now passed family, had I not made preparations I would have completely gone to pieces, I was her principle carer for a long time and it took a terrible toll on my health leaving me with a form of battle field trauma (can be triggered by any extreme situation and on the scale of 1-10 your mother dying in your arms is probably 11)I also have bereavement depression and I think all of us on this site have it to some extent and we are all in a deep hole and have to dust ourselves off, reinvent ourselves, and find a way of climbing out off our pits of depression, bereavement and depression ARE branches of the same tree and are very similar, it is a clinical condition and it can have a devastating effect on your physical and mental health, I am going to recommend 2 books to you, the first is ‘You are not alone’ by Cariad Lloyd and the other is ‘Climbing out of depression’ by Sue Atkinson (she is a keen mountaineer and compares her depression with climbing peeks) I decided not to go and view my mother in the Chapple of rest, preferring instead to remember her in the photograph,yes, I did a eulogy to my mother and more or less ran the funeral with the minister but I WANTED to do that because it was a tribute to my mother, do not fall into the trap of putting your self through hoops just because you feel you have to, as the surviving spouse provided you are not infringing your late husbands will what happens regarding the funeral is your prerogative and no one else’s just as I have chosen to keep my mothers ashes because my mother on her death bed suggested that I could.(I did not ask), only you know how you really feel, we NEVER get over a life changing bereavement, but we do get used to it, it is a time for courage,and a time for faith and it takes enormous inner strength to clime out of the pit of despair and loss, take small steps, if you want to be alone then that is ok to and your friends and family should respect that, I cannot promise you it will get better over night, it probably will not, I went to a clairvoyant soon after my mothers death and I got comfort from that and a surprise too, the name coming through most strongly during the reading was my father who passed in 2008, (she was asking my Niece who was in before me about her father (my late twin brother) who died in 2021)
there is no such thing as the correct way to grieve so ignore anyone who tells you otherwise, the ‘7 stages of grief’ were intended for the terminally ill as cariad lloyd explains in her book, are passed lives are gone forever and we cannot bring our loved ones back, but you have loved and been loved and one day you may be loved again, the early days are hard and perhaps you should consider self help groups,may God give you guidance and fortitude for the days,weeks and months ahead.
Tim
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