I too miss my husband for all the practical jobs. Our son also is not practical but is trying hard to assume this role - it is hard to not let him try but he sometimes causes more problems than resolves them. I now find myself having to get workmen in for tasks which my husband would have easily sorted. Christmas was especially difficult - not only because it was the first without him - but also because I was unable to construct our grandson’s toys. Eventually I went round to ask one of our friends husbands - I felt such a pathetic individual if I am honest but they were happy to help out.
I find every evening difficult. I return to an empty house and have no one to talk to. I don’t want to keep ringing my friend as she still has her husband and nor do I want to keep calling my husband’s best friend as I cannot see his wife being too happy. But it really does just compound the sad reality of what is now my life.
A year ago I was the happiest woman on this planet - with a happy retirement looming and our little grandson to share. I cry for everything my husband has lost.
We do. I hope you get answers to your questions soon. I have to be honest I did not go to the inquest or read the reports. I sent representatives and they filtered the information they told me but even that was hard to take.
I was with my husband 42 years and married 38. As with all marriages there were challenges but we loved each other and worked through them. The only sticking point ever was his motorbike and I cannot help feeling it won.
I recognise what you are experiencing. This is my second loss. My husband 12 years ago and my partner 9 weeks ago. It is truly unbelievably painful. I too have howled in the middle of the night and not wanted to bother family or friends. I know from before that this harrowing pain will pass but I feel for you and what you are going through. We must go through this together. The price of love?
This is indeed the price of love. I am now 21 weeks since I lost my gorgeous big guy to covid, I cried almost all day today.
I also thought today, what happens when love isn’t returned - he is not here to love me anymore, will I stop being in love with him & only be in love with a memory.
We’ve heard of the saying I love him but I’m not in love with him, that scares me, I don’t ever want to be not in love with him. He is my entire world.
Dear @Maigret,
I think I understand some of your concerns about what might happen when love is not returned after we have lost our partners. I have three pictures of my wife on the wall above our mantlepiece, and I talk to them/my wife first thing in the morning and last thing at night - as well as other times during the day. I sometimes feel that instead of speaking to my wife, I am talking to the paper photo itself rather than the person she was or is, if that makes sense. I have to consciously recall the times when my wife was physically here with me at home, how she spoke, how she moved about the home, how she behaved, etc. I want to connect emotionally with the individual who is my wife, not some paper or electronic representation of her.
I do believe that as long as we keep our partner as alive as we can in our hearts and minds then we will love them as we did when they were physically here with us. The difficulty is that it can be exhausting to do that, we’re grieving yet trying to carry on somehow too, and the memories we have can so easily become less intense as time passes. Maybe there’s some happy medium, a balance, I don’t know. I do know that the only way I can keep surviving each day at present is to keep my wife as alive to me as possible. The day I am no longer able to do that is the day I’ll want to be reunited with my wife.
@Alston56 Reading your post I could have written it myself .
You’ve just summed up how I feel day in day out hour on hour.
The pictures the fear of losing the image doing things to honour her memory .Keep it alive ,make sure no one forgets .
I have her name on The National Covid Memorial Wall in south bank London.
I have her image on St Paul’s Cathedral memorial website .
I have sponsored her name on a lifeboat to be built and launched in Norfolk,where we last holidayed .
I am determined no one will ever forget the way Covid wrecked my life .
I have recently moved into a flat and have her chair side table , just as she left it ,magazines,puzzle book,kindle,inhaler,pen,bookmark .
I photographed it before the move and placed everything back to the millimetre.
I’m creating one wall with pictures of her,us,and our families.
My sole purpose now I feel is just keeping our memories alive . I have no other reason otherwise to exist .
I am kept going by talking on sites like this and I also use a What’s App chat group that is just people like us sharing everyday lows and occasional highs.
We all have a different story to tell but are united in one common factor Grief, we cry, we laugh, we support one another, some of us have met up in different parts of the country already,new friendships formed through grief.
Anyone reading this would like to chat openly in real time with people that understand,people who don’t judge you,no censorship, don’t try to fix you,offer support not solutions, then PM me and I’ll put you in touch with our co ordinator.
We don’t ever “move on” we only move with our grief , on this exhausting journey which never ends .
As Alston56 and Mickp have said I don’t think we ever stop loving them and certainly for me I will always be in love with him - even as I sit and shout at him for leaving me.
The only way that I can try and function is to keep my husband alive in my head and my heart. I hope that in the next few weeks when we scatter his ashes this does not change although I am starting to become anxious that whilst I have picked a beautiful spot when I return home I will be leaving him, the same way I left him in hospital following the crash.
I now pour my physical love into our two little grandsons and I make sure I tell our kids that they are loved every day. There is nothing else left for me.
Dear Sheila @Sheila26
I think I’m getting worse instead of better. I don’t look at my family with love anymore, I am incapable of expressing anything. Numb. Another day spent in bed this week, lying to text messages saying I’m all OK.
I’m far from ok.
I thought about a cottage by the sea too but equally I could spend my time in a cell, it makes no difference to me.
Dreamed of my darling past 2 nights, in one dream former work friends brought him into see me in the office. In another he was happy I was selling our vehicles to buy a brand new one.
I too feel on occasions that I am getting worse - certainly the pain of his loss has increased significantly and as I see couples the same age as myself and husband it is a hammer-blow and reminder of everything I have lost. Our little grandsons continue to bring some joy into my life. Our eldest grandson - adored by his granda - showers me with cuddles and hugs and always has a big smile when he sees me. He looks like our son who is the double of his dad so have two reminders of my husband - bittersweet if I am being honest but they are all that keep me going now.
I wish I could reach out and help you in some way but this is a road I have never been on before either so I do not have the answers. I do know for sure that your family still love you and will want to do anything they can to help. But I do understand that sometimes it is far easier to just say we are fine and hope that they can see through this and come round and help us or just be a bit company. The texting also means they are not speaking with us - if they did they would hear how we really felt.
I too dream of my husband - not sure if these dreams are blessings or a curse because either way I wake up crying and my brain is now just blocking out recalling what they were about.
Hi I have so many mixed emotions regarding his ashes I am just not sure what to do. He would have normally helped me make a decision when I was so undecided.
My mum faltered when deciding what to do with my dad’s ashes. I told her if she wasn’t ready, to wait until she was. She ended up keeping them until they can be scattered together. You can always wait until you are sure. You can’t go back once you have done it.
I have booked a cottage for me and the kids but as you say I can review my decision if needs be. I currently have him in the house - the kids don’t know this - but it is not bringing me any comfort. The beach is a little slice of paradise and where I always said I wanted to be so we shall see. I think it is the realisation that this is the final goodbye that is causing the extra anguish.
So true. A few friends have said to me that now that the sunny weather is here I must be feeling better. Really? No it only makes the grief so much worse. I should be sitting with my husband feeling the sun shine on my face and smiling that he and I can spend our days together. That has been taken from me.
I totally agree with your feelings about the sunny weather. There’s nothing that can make us feel better, least of all the weather. On the contrary, the good weather simply amplifies the feelings of loss within us, because this is the time of year that we would normally be enjoying ourselves in the company of our partners. Instead, we are only onlookers to the rest of the world as it goes about its daily business. I often wander aimlessly into our conservatory and just gaze into the garden, muttering aloud to Nicki (my wife) that she should be here with me enjoying the weather, and that this isn’t the way our lives were supposed to end. In days gone by we’d sit on the patio, we had our dogs and each other, then one by one we lost the dogs, until it was only us two together. Now it’s just me on my own.
Last year I spent my days sitting in our conservatory after Nicki passed, often in the darkness until 10 or 11pm. I couldn’t bear to be enclosed in the house, it felt suffocating. Now I’m the opposite. I spend my days sat in the living room, TV on for the noise, radio playing all day in the kitchen, laptop on my knee, because I can’t bear to sit in the conservatory in the sunshine. It doesn’t matter what form the weather takes now - I hate all of it.
Hi Sheila I still have my husbands ashes here at home and it’s coming up to the 2nd anniversary of his passing. I can’t bear to part with him and our son knows when I die he is to cremate me and mix our ashes up so we are back together again. If you can’t bear to part with yours then don’t as know one will judge you. If they do it’s because they have never been where you are. Or keep some and scatter the rest. We walk this path alone and until well meaning family and friends walk their path they have no comprehension of what it’s like.
Hello Maigret
Hello
I see your post is concerning for you.
You can love your husband forever and forever.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Do you love God?
I love God.
That helps me know my Gary is safe and that’s what gives me strength that I will see him again.
My Gary has already met God since his passing.
And yours too.
I will always love my Gary forever, also knowing he is safe is an amazing comfort for me
In life there is a time for everything, and dying is one of them. We were not meant to live forever on this earth.
There is a plan for every soul on earth.
Take care
Have reassurance that your man is safe
Hugs
Gary 54
