I lost my partner two and a half years ago. I cared for him for his last few years and we were together 25 years. I had a good day today but his sister rang tonight. He has two sisters and I feel like they only ring to have a go at me. The one who rang looks after her husband and I understand how hard that is. She has children and grandchildren to help and her sister lives not far away. Me and my partner just had each other. She manages to have time for going swimming and exercise classes and meeting her sister for coffee where I was lucky to have enough time to run to the shop. They never offered to help.I didn’t have a decent night sleep for years because my partner used to wake up because his blood sugar went low or he wanted a coffee and chat. That was fine because he used to tell me his worries and things then which he wouldn’t during the day.I never rang anyone up to moan at I just got on with it. My brother was working and my sister is in America.
I just got frustrated tonight because she said she looks after her husband because they have been together 50 years. I told her that I wasn’t with my partner for 50 years but I looked after him because I loved him and I know he would have done exactly the same for me. Now it’s making me feel like I’m turning into a really nasty person and I don’t want to.
I think it’s because it is his 70th birthday in a fortnight and I struggle with anniversaries and he always talked about having his 70th. Nobody else has mentioned it but then if I mention him the subject gets changed.
Sorry for your loss. I don’t think you are being nasty, it seems more like frustration. While you were more than happy to look after your husband, you don’t appear to have had an outlet for the weight of the caring. Until someone has been in precisely the same position, they can’t understand how isolated and exhausted you feel, regardless of how much you love your husband.
I can’t offer any advice, but it might be worth while finding a local, or telephone, counselling service because talking to a complete stranger about how you really feel can be very cathartic, and spreads the load.
Hello Helen57
I am sorry for your loss. Thank you for your reply. I am having bereavement counselling at the moment and it is helping me see things a bit differently but you are right. It’s very frustrating when people think that caring is easy. I didn’t have any help and the fact that I persuaded him to go into hospital is very hard. I do realise hindsight is a wonderful thing. If I had known what would happen I would have fought everybody to get him the treatment at home.
I found out tonight that his sisters husband was taken into hospital today so maybe things are pretty hard for her but it doesn’t excuse the fact that both of his sisters only get in touch to tell me everything I do is wrong.
I have texted his sister to keep me informed how her husband is and that if they need anything to let me know. I’m just going to hope he recovers and goes home. I see my counsellor tomorrow but I have managed to get my head in order again today x
I lost my wife last year after 39 years of marriage and cared for her at home for her last two years. We had moved to a seaside town as i thought the sea air would have helped her and she always wanted to live in a cottage by the sea.
Like you, we were on our own and she declined fast. There were no friends and family close by so we were on our own. It was really hard, at times i hated my life and felt sorry for myself that i had had my life taken from me.
Nobody knows what you go through and what it does to you and thats before losing the love of your life.
Your sister in law is going through what you and i have been through, i certainly wouldnt begrudge her managing to get some respite from the horrors of home caring.
She’s guilty of being a bit thoughtless, and i get the impression her life is all about her and her troubles, forgeting or ignoring that you’ve been through the same and that you have feelings.
I dont think you were being nasty. I just think what we’ve been through make us super sensitive and brutally honest.
You sound like a lovely person, so dont beat yourself up over this. What you said was right.
Hello Plantman
I am so sorry for your loss.
I appreciate your reply because I think you’re right. I do think that we are sensitive and I find that around anniversaries I find life is so hard. It is my partners 70th birthday next week and he loved birthdays and Christmas. He made them so special.
The day after my post his brother in law was rushed into hospital and I messaged her straight away and she rang me. I realised that she could see happening to her was the same as what happened to me. Luckily her husband has come home on home care but I think she has realised just how I felt when my partner was in hospital but sadly didn’t come home.
We speak daily now and I have offered any help I can give I will.
It’s strange because my partner was from the seaside and we had a caravan which we stayed at most of the summer until he was too ill but even then he would think we would go again when he felt better. I knew that day was never going to come again but why burst his dreams.
I think in a way people who have family around them don’t realise how it feels when suddenly you’re on your own. After caring for so long on your own and after the funeral and everyone goes we find it hard because we have no one to care for either. We lose ourselves in caring for someone which we want to do. After having someone dependent on us we forget who we are. That is what I feel now and I don’t know if you feel it.
Maybe that’s what makes me sensitive and honest because I feel what right has she to say that to me because I haven’t yet figured out who I am now. All I feel is an empty shell that fought so much for my partner that I hurt so much now without having him to fight for.
Are you going to stay in your cottage by the sea or does it hold too many sad memories? I hope you don’t think I am being nosey. It’s just so hard being on your own
Take care
You hit the nail on the head when you said you lose yourself when caring for someone, i certainly did. I thought i was losing my marbles, near the end. You spend your married life sorting lifes problems together, but this is one problem that wasnt going to be solved. I knew Susan was terminal, but i thought i could save her.
The last two years of her life, she was bedbound on oxygen 24/7. We have a beautiful garden,( I was a professional Horticulturist ), i did everything to get her out in it, she seemed terrified.
Luckily, she got to meet our first two grandsons, born a fortnight apart, by then she was too weak to hold them. Grandson number three was born last thursday, the first she’ll never know.
Now that my sons each have a son, they want me to move nearer them, they mean well, but im 64 still with a life of my own.
Two of then live an hour or two away, i see them regularly and all speak to me several times a week.
I cant really talk to them about how i feel as they lost their mum.
As for me i dont know what i want to do. I still feel im unravelling myself, if you know what i mean.
The house and town i live in are nice. Yes my wife died in the house and we werent in it long enough to make good memories, her health declined 5 months after we moved in.
I did get rid of everything to do with her illness, even down to the bedlinen so i have no reminders of Susans ilness.
I dont know what i will do next, just that it will be something.
I suppose that’s progress
Hello Plantman,
Congratulations on your new grandson but I am also sorry that your wife didn’t get to meet him.
I see why you are called Plantman being a horticulturalist. I am mini because my partner even when he was confused could still talk about cars and especially his favourite minis
I lost my partner two and a half years ago and I still don’t know what I want to do. We didn’t have children. He had 2 sisters and I have a sister in America and a brother who has just retired so does come quite often. My brother is very supportive but neither he,my sister or my partners sisters have ever lost their spouse. I think they all in a way think I should be out making friends and it isn’t as easy as they think. All the friends we had dropped out because my partner was ill and I was busy looking after him. I join groups but find after a while they don’t really suit me anymore. The only one I have stuck with is a choir I go to every week. But after it is back to an empty house. Unfortunately I don’t have good neighbours either.
My partner died in hospital so I don’t have that memory but everything I have is a constant reminder. Like you sometimes I still think I’m still unraveling.
I have started bereavement counselling and going to a bereavement group. The counselling is helping an awful lot because I am beginning to think about things in a different way. I felt so much guilt because I persuaded him to go into hospital for what we thought would be overnight but he never came back. I know now that I was exhausted but I still fought for him unfortunately I wasn’t listened too.
I also found when I went to the bereavement group I had a place I could say how I felt.
Maybe that is where I will make friends. I have only seen them twice.
I hope sometime I will find the right group that I enjoy going too. This site is so helpful especially in the long nights. I still don’t sleep much because I just never got much sleep before he died and I still listen for him now.
Take care
Hi I’ve just read this reply to someone else but it is so similar to my story. In so far as we moved to the coast and my husband’s cancer really became aggressive. He only recently passed away but I managed to care for him at home where he died with just me by his side. I too got rid of everything to do with his illness. At first I felt quite happy that I had managed to facilitate my husband’s wish to die at home but now there is a void. Like you say caring for someone 24/7 fills every moment but it’s hard to get used to the 24/7 with only yourself to fill time.
I am starting to return to some of the groups I went to prior to caring for my husband.
Anyway enough of that. Thank you for sharing