It is a very difficult time when you are quietly gay, and have lost your lifetime lover, friend, confidant, and have now no immediate male friends. This will be my first Christmas ever alone, and already I am dreading a time that should be a celebration. We did everything together, never being alone in all 55 years together, and now I just don’t know what to do, not being able to drive, living with my two small dogs, without which I would have given up long ago.
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I’m really sorry for your loss. It can be very hard coming to terms that you’re now I instead of Us.
You’re not alone, you have people on here going through the same feelings and emotions. This is the place to be able to express yourself
Grief is a personal journey. No right or wrong way to deal with it.
I will say, don’t be hard on yourself. Just take each day as it comes.
Sending hugs
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PercyBella - it is a loss only a widow or widower can understand and every one of us here understands completely. I am so sorry you lost your partner, it is so unfair.
Are you physically unable to drive or just too scatter-brained to handle driving ATM? Scattered brain has kept me close to home. Can you Uber? Taxi? Trains? Busses? Do you have friends who said “If I can do ANYTHING!, just call”? Maybe it is time to call. People want to help. They really do.
Do your grocery stores and pharmacies deliver?
We all have so much adjusting to do. Every molecule of our lives changed. It is surreal. Personally, I am numb. Walking wounded. Robot. Living hour by hour.
Isn’t is a shame to dread our favorite holiday? I vacillate between putting up a tree and joining family and friends for the holidays and staying home with my dog and keeping my head under the blanket. But, the real meaning of Christmas can be celebrated, no matter what. A time of prayer, reflection of self and seeking spiritual guidance.
Much love.
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Thank you for that. I do have my groceries etc all ordered and delivered (on-line Supermarket). I have been unable to drive since 2000 due to DVLA deciding that my sight field was not up to their standards. I regret not challenger that in the courts as I could have done, I don’t see any difference to my sight at all. (Glaucoma) I use taxi’s of late quite frequently, but costs are getting higher as all things are. There is a bus service locally but it takes me now a 20 minute walk to the stop, so taxi’s are the best for me. I carry on with all things we did together, but that one void of my partner not being there after 55 years is difficult, but I have to adapt, try and be positive, but would be nice to have a few more friends. When my partner was alive, that’s all we needed just the two of us and our poodles, but now I am feeling that loneliness, I hope things will improve.
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Percybella, it is a loss like no other. We’ve lost half of ourselves and the whole of our loves. There is nothing and no one that can fill the void.
I don’t know what improvement looks like yet as I am only 5 weeks in and frankly, it is just a chit show ATM. But, I am determined to live my best life for whatever time I have left. It is just a slow start. My goal is to be rip roaring ready by New Years. I shall start 2025 as a new person with a new life.
Much love.
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I’m 24 days in to this misery after losing my husband/bestmate/soulmate for 33 years, totally out of the blue. Everything’s changed, nothing seems worth doing, the future alone terrifies me. I cry all the time, and still can’t accept it. How on earth can he be dead??!!?! I feel angry and bitter and alone, though my mates are being awesome. But they are grieving him as well.
How do people cope with this for years?
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Hi Jamie It’s just over a year since I lost my husband. We were together for 44 years I realise that I’m still in early grief, sad and tearful every day. Your loss is so recent, you are probably still in shock and it may feel unreal that it has happened. I know it was like that for me in the early months. You will be doing well to just be getting out of bed every morning right now. When we lose the love of our life part of us dies with them but more importantly part of them lives on in us because love never dies. Sending hugs 
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Thanks buddy. The funeral is two weeks this Friday. Dreading it, but I want to do him proud when I speak. Going to be very hard to get through.
Will I feel better or worse afterwards?
Along with the pain and loss and agony is my intense terror of the future. Alone. All our plans for an awesome retirement vanished overnight. I fear being old, lonely and broken.
We’d discussed death and mortality and what we’d do when the first one of us died, but that was supposed to be in our 70s, not 50’s. I feel robbed, betrayed by life.
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You have both been robbed and it’s ok to be angry about that Jamie. What happens to us in life is just random and it upends all the things we just assumed we would doing. We are going along quite nicely and I guess taking things for granted when life just blows up in our faces. I was dreading Graeme’s funeral but we made it a Celebration of his Life. Four of us, friends and family, stood up and just described what a lovely, gentle, kindhearted and humorous guy he was. It was hard for me to speak without breaking down but I’m so glad I was able to and I get comfort now from looking at the recording from time to time and I can smile through the tears. Remember he is still with you, even though you can’t see him, because love never dies. Happy to chat further if it helps and let me know how the Celebration of his Life goes. X
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Am crying again now: but not in a bad way.
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Crying is good. It’s very wearing but it releases chemicals in the brain which have a calming effect (for a while at least!) I still can’t get through a day without tears at sometime but I’ve given up trying to suppress them as it just increases the sadness and anxiety.
He was the love of your life so you are going to cry buckets, as he would have done for you if the loss was reversed.
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Reading this is helping a little. Nothing else has so far. Thanks.
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You ok my friend?
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Just checking in to see how y’all are holding up. It’s been 6 months for me and it is much different now than it was at 5 weeks. I hope some of the shock has worn off and that you are coming out of the fog. It happens without trying, I think. My thoughts are not so jumbled and I am not as confused as I was. Still living hour by hour and day by day, but functioning much better and learning how to do everything that my husband used to do. The extra responsibilities are exhausting mentally and physically. But, I am getting there.
Life is what we make it. Let’s make it good again. Right?
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Wished I could make it good again, but struggling 9 months after the loss of my partner, My niece and husband visited for a few days last week and did much work in the garden, and my late partner would be very proud of how it looks. The responsibilities I have now on my own are taking a lot out of me day by day, but, I am trying, but 55+ years are going to take a long time to get over. I don’t think my family realise I am a gay man, maybe they do, but that is something for me to hold close to my heart with my late partner.
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Still feeling the effects of being alone, crying every single day.
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So sorry for the way your feeling i feel like that to sometimes
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Just another sad day to follow the last one Jamie.
How are you doing though?
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Not good my friend. Broke down in a car shop: needed to buy birthday cards and saw the “loving husband” cards and had to sit on the floor and weep. The owner was so lovely.
Just had Jon’s best mate round for a drink and chat. He’s broken poor lad, but feels guilty grieving that much when I’m the husband. His grief is immense but so different to mine. I consoled him more then he consoled me, but that’s fine. Yesterday was ok, today is terrible, tomorrow hopefully ok. It’s a random see-saw…
Bless you for checking-in. How’s your day been?
J
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Percy, your family knows that you are gay. They just don’t mention it because our sex life is none of anyone’s business - it is private and special and ours. I am so very sorry that you are suffering so, but yes, after 55 years together the loss is so profound that it will be hard to learn to live with the love and the loss.
It is a yearning that never goes away, just dulls a bit. It is okay if you live hour by hour and day by day. Don’t let it stress you that you haven’t “moved on”, we never do - we just keep living with the loss.
It will get better, I know this because I know widows and widowers that have learned a new normal and have adapted to the single life. One is widowed for 20 years, we never forget him and we cry when we talk about the old days. One is 4 years in and making a life for herself. One moved to be closer to his kids. One went wild and lived a precarious life until he met his husband and now they are married, helping to raise his Godchild. We do not ever forget the ones we lost, but we do manage to make a life worth living again. You will too.
Much love and lots of hugs.
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