A realisation

[TrishaF]

I rarely post these days -but I often read others, usually in the wee hours when I wake and find sleep illusive. The raw grief expressed by so many echo my own posts and thoughts this time last year. It is now almost 18 months since I lost my wonderful, funny, talented husband and whilst I still miss him every day - it is no longer every minute of every day. Yes sometimes I do weep and think I always will but my tears are not the heart wrenching sobs of raw grief. There is still an ache that I live with - but no longer that intense pain that feels like you have been hollowed out. And I want to give hope to those of you that are recently bereaved that one day your tears will be mixed with smiles of precious memories.

The analogy of grief that it is like a ball in a box is true for me. In the early days the ball was huge and filled the box so full the grief button was depressed all the time - now time has shrunk the ball a bit and yes it sometimes hits the grief button - but there are days when it misses it.

Sometimes It is the smallest thing that tugs my heartstrings - today just putting on a pair of his socks under my boots and seeing the hole in one and hearing him comment !. The look in his eyes in one of my favourite photos - and of course the new year. Never a big celebration - just curled up on the sofa waiting for the children to call to wish us happy new year - me saying I am off to bed now and him saying I will have one more drink. Then me waking an hour later to trek downstairs and shake him awake and say come to bed. How many times have I done that - I pat the cushions now as if giving him a little shake and say - come on bed now love imagining him to be there.

I always knew from the first day of our romance that we were two halves of a whole and when I lost him I literally felt I had been cut in half. I thought I had it all figured out - but this the second day of 2021 after just a few tears this morning - I realised something - I was still a whole person. That his half was still part of me. The special memories that can bring tears as well as smiles - are held in me and I feel that because they are there and buried in me - so many over so many years - that the whole of me includes so much of him that I will never lose him - and as I hold those memories close it is like a warm glow. This is a new feeling - is it some kind of acceptance at last? I will ask him later when I write in the journal. The books I have written in for the last eighteen months - at first tear stained incomprehensible ramblings. Now still declarations of how much I love and miss him but also chat - asking him questions about things that concern me - telling him about our wonderful children and confiding in him and asking him to look after a dear friend who has recently died of Covid - just like I am trying to support his wife for I truly know what she is going through. My journals to him are like the nights we sat talking - for after 40 years we still had so much to talk about.

I loved, and was truly loved, all my life and like most people on this site who are grieving, believe our love story to be the best - our relationship like no other - just like you all do. I still feel that love, the warmth of it - and if I am wavering I ask for a sign. The white feather on the coffee table - no doubt from the sofa - but why in the middle of the coffee table when I have just said to him show me you are still here with us? Yes of course I feel robbed of so many things we will never do together - watching a travel programme and thinking we never went there - now we never will. That does make me sad - but then we spent so many years of just doing things that made us happy and I know I was blessed. To try and explain to my daughter what real head over heels love is like - you have to experience it - you cannot tell people. I had that head over heels, I had the whole package as they say. No one can ever take that away - he is part of me and always will be and I can see that now.

I do not know how to finish this post - as words are not enough - for all I want to do is offer you comfort and hope.

xxx

[amelie_sgran]

Such a beautiful post. Thank you for sharing and giving us hope and inspiration. X

[RichardM]

Thank you for posting @TrishaF

[Riley]

It’s amazing when I was just thinking earlier if there’s a positive post here today I came across yours… I wondered if anyone is doing better… Thank you @TrishaF for your heartwarming post, it makes me believe there will be a glimpse of hope in the future, with our gratitude replacing the sorrow day by day maybe one day we can all reach there.

Wishing you and your daughter lots of joy and good health in 2021 xxx

[Stargazer]

Thank you Tricia for expressing so much I can relate to but haven’t felt able to share with those so early in their loss as I am so aware that so much has been added to their grief in 2020. I have been truly touched by the way they have shared and are supporting each other.
What you have given is that insight to how we survive and go on to live a life that has meaning and connection with our loved one.
You have given so much in your post, hope, reassurance and comfort
Sandra x

[Cinders21]

Thank you so much - your words mean so much x

[Debbie55]

Thank you for those lovely words x

[rocketron]

Thank you so very much for your words helped me so much. Love and hugs to you. Xx Carol xx

[Prof]

Dear Trisha F,
I can finish your post. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I know my marriage of 58 years was the best, that I was blessed and loved all my life and believed, until I read your wonderful message of hope, that my life had ended, that I had become something behaving almost normally to observer but was empty of spirit.
You have helped me to believe that it might be possible to find a way through my present pain and become whole again.
The gaping, jagged hole where David once was in my heart and soul, will perhaps, in time, become lined and softened with memories. I believe that these will soothe the burning pain. I don’t believe the hole will ever fill but neither will it hold scalding tears for evermore.
You have given me hope. I pray that, in writing them, you have affirmed your own belief in your future.
God bless you.

[Sadsadie]

I send you a big hug
Sadie x

[Lola1]

Just beautiful, so much I can relate to while approaching the first anniversary. Thank you TrishaF

[mike2]

Thank you for these heartfelt words. They offered me comfort on this grey January day. I lost my wife eight months ago after a short aggressive illness and its been very hard to see a line on the horizon since then. I recognise that sense of being very diminished by the loss of a soul mate. I’m adrift and lonely but functioning and hoping to catch sight of myself again at some future point. Your post is reassuring and does offer hope.

[Bereftone]

Thank you so much for your beautiful post - it really has given me hope that I can perhaps survive the grief as it feels now nearly 9 months after losing my wonderful husband and soulmate suddenly. The shock, grief and isolation all together felt completely insurmountable so your post has given me comfort - thank you x

[JoG]

Thank you so much for your beautiful words, so meaningful and full of love. Made me feel teary and smiley at the same time Xxxx

[Prof]

Hello, Jog,
Welcome to the site. You will find friends here, travelling along the same road. Some are ahead if you and others behind. Occasionally you will find someone who walks by your side for a while.
We all move at different rates and some of us can get stuck in an unseen hole for a while, not necessarily on anniversaries, for which we can prepare to a certain extent. We clamber out, sometimes with a helping hand, and move on. Our pace changes and we stumble and fall but we DO GO ON.
None of us wants to be here but the only way is forward, except in our memories. I can’t allow myself too much time with those as, for me, remembering just scrapes at the raw place in my heart and soul, leaving me suffocating in tears.
My husband was my world for the whole if my adult life - no children and all other family far away. I was the youngest of our circle of true, close friends and now the only one left.
I was cherished and cosseted always, now having to learn to manage alone. When is bin day? Which bin is it? What goes in each bin? And that’s just the bins. I struggle in the same way with everything, including those tasks that were my responsibility such as household accounts, Internet and energy providers and dealing with insurance companies. My head feels full of wool.
Nevertheless I have made progress and you will too. Establishing a routine has been essential for me. I feel that part of my husband’s spirit is proud of what I have achieved. He always told me that being my husband made him the proudest man alive and he hasn’t changed. When I am consumed with grief I hope he is shielded from me in some way because this is something I can do alone FOR him so that he is spared the pain.
There is so much anguish and despair even on this site because we are all free to express our feelings to those who understand. Because of that, we also find hope and comfort in the words of those generous enough to tell us how they have become stronger. Perhaps they no longer need the site but want to reach out to those of us who do and encourage our efforts when we feel worn out and unable to continue. We can and we do. God bless you.

[Thescream]

I am 21 months along since losing my husband, life has moved on around me. I try and catch up and trying to somehow move forward with a life I didn’t ask for being alone and living alone for the first time was so hard. It’s strange you never think you will cope but as time goes on you learn to cope, you learn all the things your partner did that you have to do now and there has been so many for me, but I’m learning every single day. We start accepting this life that was thrust on us, it hasn’t get better but a little easier as time goes on. I have gone back to studying which has helped me get through these hard times during covid, but living alone sucks. Big hugs everyone.

[Watt92]

Beautiful. Just beautiful. If I could write words for my Dad, they would be of similar song. The thoughts, feelings of beginning, middle but never the end. Love never dies, so our story of grief never will. Our wisdom is what grows, the love for our loved one, and the rawness dulls. Like you, I miss my dad just as much today as I did when I lost him. It’s weird now thinking I didn’t lose my Dad last year anymore, and that seems to hold new meanings for me. I’ll forever look for the signs, the sheer glow of warmth I get whenever I see them. The feather as you mentioned, the crow, turtle dove, robins, bumblebees or even the feeling you get when the wind blows, the sun shines on you or the moon beams at you. You just know it’s them. You can’t explain it fully until you experience it, just like love.

Best wishes to everyone x

[ChristineM]

My husband died April last year of covid after battling ill health for several years We were together 45 years married for 43 and I miss him so much more now than when I lost him .The sadness and loneliness is overwhelming
Your comforting words have given me hope
Thanking you take care
Christine

[Bereftone]

I also lost my husband to covid at the same time as you, it was such a shock, he had not been unwell - devastating . It was nice to read something positive wasn’t it?

[JoG]

Thank you so much prof for your kind words, means a lot. Please take care and stay safe Xxxx