A SAD DAY TODAY

Today it is two and a half years since I lost my husband and today is also my granddaughter’s ninth birthday. A funny, emotional and bittersweet day for me. Isla loved grandad and grandad loved Isla. I so wish he was here with us xxx

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Dear Lesley,
‘Isla loved grandad and grandad loved Isla ‘
Such a simple but oh so poignant post. It’s heartbreaking losing someone so integral to the family structure. I have no grandchildren but two adult sons who miss their dad like crazy. We function and support each other but life will never be the same without my husband and like you, so wish he were still here. I always will. Xx

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Dear Jobar,

Aw big hugs to you, how sad our lives are now xxx

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My heart goes out to both of you. I have two young adult children who are missing their dad like crazy. It was so sudden, we never got to say goodbye. It will never stop hurting. Sending hugs

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Having known such great happiness it’s so hard realising we’ll never have that again.
I don’t listen to music now but quite by chance a song came on the radio. It was by Dido ‘I wanna thank you for giving me the best days of my life’ . I haven’t heard it for years and normally switch off evocative songs but this time I listened and thought that is just what I want to say to my husband. He died so suddenly and I didn’t get the chance to say just that.
I hope that Isla looks at photos of her grandad and remembers just how much he loved her. I was seven when I lost my granny and I still remember the great love I had for her and wished she’d been in my life for longer. We still talk about her. Thinking of you on this bittersweet day. Xx

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Ah, thank you so much for your kind words xxx

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Hi Jules,
I feel so sad reading your posts and I empathise with not being able to say goodbye. The pain it causes is beyond imagination. I was always someone who could only cope with order and organisation. The phrase ‘ there’s a place for everything and everything in its place ‘ would have described my attitude to life. Now I find the chaos of grief worsens the total heartbreak and nothing can resolve the feeling that our happy story will always now have a sad ending. I want to rewrite it !!
I feel for you and your children. You rightly expected so many more years with your husband and I’m so sorry this has been so cruelly denied. Thinking of you .xx

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Thank you - I empathise with you as well as it seems you had to endure the suddenness as well. It just wasn’t meant to be this way, was it?

I can only sit here and cry with everyone who has lost their yang. It is 3 months today since my Sammy spoke to St Peter and was handed her wings and invited into heaven.
To realise that emptiness is impossible to explain to the unknowing. I try to shuffle forward down the new path but my feet won’t move at all.
In essence time has stood still while the world rushes by doing its own thing. To understand what a purpose is now, they may as well be speaking Cantonese to me, because I just don’t grasp it. How do you start a new purpose in life when the life is gone…
I know new lives developed slowly, but then I feel like I’m living both at the same time…
May God bless you all.

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Yes - the new purpose. He was my purpose. I don’t see what other purpose there could be. We worked hard to bring up our family and then the purpose was to spend more time together and eventually enjoy retirement. He will never get to do that - neither will I. What other purpose could even come close?

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Dear Jules4

You are so right. There is no purpose. Whilst I have adult children and two little grandson’s all of whom I adore, they have their own lives. Myself and husband had worked so hard to give them the experiences and tools to build happy lives of their own so that we could go off and explore and just enjoy ‘us’ as part of our retirement. To have that taken away with only months to go before the finish line of retirement and to have the person I love and have been with since my teens lost through a road traffic accident does not and cannot equate to me having any strength or motivation left to find a new purpose in life.

People mean well but I just cannot take anymore platitudes and misjudged comments from those who have no concept as to what I am going through.

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Dear Sheila,
I couldn’t agree more about the unwelcome platitudes and cliches. Sudden death brings with it a trauma that is impossible to describe and imagine until it happens. Shock has always been underestimated and I believe little progress has been made in dealing with its effects.
When I learned my husband had not survived his collapse something switched off in my brain. It’s the only way I can describe it. Whilst my outer shell remained, inside I died. For all those who have encountered sudden death I know this will be no exaggeration.
I have just been speaking to a ‘well meaning friend’ congratulating me on how well I’m doing !? She then said she and her husband still find it hard to believe my husband has died followed by the question ‘ did I feel the same way?’ Where are the words to describe what it feels like every minute of every day?
Thinking of you. Xx

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Hi, an acquaintance of mine came round the other evening, trying to be considerate and well meaning. Demanding ‘we should go to the pub’, erm problem… I don’t drink. So his next idea was to go wherever on Tuesday evening next week. I know I will cry off because I’m not interested. To be honest I should have said at the time.
But his lasting comment is ‘I don’t know how you did it’ meaning the caring and commitment I had. The thing is you don’t think about the care you provide, they shout for assistance and your out the blocks like a sprinter, Linford Christie had nothing on me. I tried to explain this to him but the vacancy on his face was a give away.
Your consuming love for your partner has no limits on the care you provide.
The fact that my Sammy was a prolonged cancer sufferer, it was still a sudden departure, as she contracted sepsis. No way back from that…

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I agree- my outer shell remains but the inside has died. I think when a soulmate dies, three quarters of the couple goes - the soulmate and half of the one left behind.

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Clearly, they have no concept of soulmates. My husband would do anything for me and I for him. I actually feel quite sorry for those who never know such a relationship. The flip side is that because we loved so deeply, we grieve so deeply.

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Never a truer word spoken. These so-called empathetic people have no concept of the phrase, the link, the concept of a soul mate. But we pay a very high price for this love we embrace. When it is gone so are we!

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Dear Jobar

I remember the day my husband died so vividly as if it were only yesterday. As you quite rightly highlight there are no words to describe the shock of sudden death. In my case and others there is no opportunity to say goodbye, I keep going over our last conversation three hours before the accident. We were both laughing and my husband was so happy. One of our friends asked me if I had a premonition of my husband’s death - the mask slipped that day and I quickly retorted that if I had known he was going to die I am sure I would have warned him. I did not give her an opportunity to say anything else I just walked away and have not seen her since.

I can only describe my life now as one of auto-pilot only getting up on the days that I have to child-mind the grandson’s. Rest of my time I spend in bed or hiding under a blanket on the settee as I just cannot watch life continuing when mine and husband’s has been totally wiped.

I don’t know how to live a life I did not want or ask for.

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Oh bless you Sheila26,
When we now know that we have to pay the piper for the love we had before. The question remains, would you do it again with that person?
Well to me it’s a no brainer I wouldn’t hesitate to have that love with her again. To have all the little quirks and isms together, and thinking at the time your daft as a brush!!! But, still I would run the gauntlet again for that pure love that was your life and purpose. The price we all pay is considerable but I wouldn’t change it.
I still sit here 3 months on changing the TV channels or switch off the TV then back on again and think what am I doing? To have suicidal thoughts because my life doesn’t exist anymore so why should I… I’m that daft I’ve just bought my Sammy a title!!! So now she’s Lady Samantha… But everyone has different meaning in different ways, so your not wrong for feeling so lost, because on here believe me we’re all lost in our own way!!
Blessings and prayers for you x

Dear Mark

My husband was and always will be my one true love and my life. I knew instantly when I met him back in the 70’s that he was the one for me and all I ever needed was him.

If I could I would change only one thing and that would be letting him buy the motorbike - I wish I had put my foot down. I think it was his mid-life crisis and but for the motorbike I would still have him with me. The hatred (and it is hatred) towards the motorbike and for his persistence in continuing to go out on it only adds to my grief.

I really am lost without him. People assumed I was the strong one but that is not the case, we were a team - a good team - who supported each other and I drew my strength from knowing he was always there to catch me if I fell. Now I regularly fall to my knees just begging God to let him come back to me, even if only for a short period so that I can tell him how much I love and miss him and if I am being honest to ask him to take me with him.

I know what you mean about strength. I now realise how much of my strength came from him just being there. Like you say, a strong team. Together we were invincible. By myself…I don’t know how much strength I have to keep going as just getting out of bed and plodding on takes it all.

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