Hello Tina, there’s no reason to feel embarrassed about posting six months on. There’s a Guide to Grief on a website called merrywidow that has a chapter called the six month low. It describes quite accurately how I am feeling after five months and maybe how you are feeling too. It also gives hope for coming out of this low. So please don’t feel embarrassed about posting, especially if you find it helps. I hope your journey through grief starts to get more bearable soon.
Many thanks for the reply and the information. I have just read this and its a great article. Thank you and take care.
Hi, my husband died in January and we always had trips and holidays planned. It’s difficult to see everyone planning for the summer and not knowing what to do. The house is so quiet and yes even knowing what to have for tea is a chore. I suppose it’s something you get used to in time.
HI Tina
My husband died last September and I’m also finding things are getting harder with the passage of time. While everyone else is getting ‘back to normal’ we have no normal to get back to. I’d also like to reassure you that you are not alone with feeling unable to live in your home, or even try to return to the life you had there. I’m am thinking of selling the house, no longer a home, I live in because it’s so painful being here. I don’t think there are any right or wrong ways to be. We just have to do the ‘getting through each day’ thing until something changes. I believe it will but don’t know when. One thing I cling to is a Charles Handy quote. ‘What other life have I yet to discover’. Take care.
I feel for you and i understand how hard it is, its the worse feeling ever people say it gets easier maybe it does but 18 months on since loosing my husband it hasnt and im like you i dont want my children to worry and know how bad some of my days are, just keep talking to people on how you feel and talk about your husband that helps me,some of my friends have been a life line, at lot of people say your only young you have many years ahead and it gets easier i say eveyone grieves in different ways I say no i may in time learn to live with it but i will never be the same person ever, i wish you well and i really hope you are ok. X
Thank you so much for your comments Pamela. I understand you have been going through such a difficult period yourself. Fellow member Neil advised me to read an article on the Merry Widow website entitled “6 months on” and believe me it is so accurate. Our home is still mainly as it was and when I have visited on rare occasions it’s as if I’m back in time. Everything and I mean everything is ALMOST the same but yet vastly different. It’s feeling to me to be harder, like there is a new sense of finality and it’s all consuming and suffocating. Take care Pamela.
Elly
After reading your post there are many similarities to conversations I have had very recently at work.
That I am still young, that I have my health and how well I have coped this past 11 months, that I have my children and grandchild, and do you know after standing there listening, nodding and smiling I wanted to tell them that everything they said is true however, what the hell does it all matter when you know that the very things they say about age, health and lifetime in front of me was not what I planned or wanted.
I wanted and still want my husband back, the man that I would moan at when my day at work had been bad, or sharing funny moments, or how much I ache for the feeling of him beside me in bed or just the brushing of hands at the dinner table, that althoug your friends and family mean well, when they do call you feel like they have to call so as to make sure you are still alive or around
You are so right Elly, people do grieve in many ways and sometimes at the weekends when every else is with their partners if I choose to have one too many to drink and spend hours sobbing or shouting this is my normal. If I want to tell them how damned unfair that I have been left a widow when I did everything in my power to keep him with me then I will, but it does not mean that I am slipping back into depression it means that I am grieving the way I want to
Having read messages from others I realise that I am normal, that the pain you feel when losing your soulmate is real.
Thank you Elly and hopefully I can get through the forthcoming 1st year anniversary
Scoobie
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I am so thankful for this group! Never have I felt so alone. Hate this life. Sick of people saying I’m strong. I’m not strong. I want Phil back. My daughter was around here tonight breaking her heart crying and took a jumper of her dad’s. Life is very cruel x
Hi Scoobie reading your message in floods of tears you are so right in regards to what your friends and co workers have to say yes i do nod not even taking half of it in but sometimes I just want to shout at them and tell them what do you no you dont no how i feel!!! I also wish i could have Ian back to he was cheeky funny and eveyone loved him ( he got away with murder lol) as for the few glasses of wine i no how that ends!! Sometimes my children come bring the grandchildren and try to put on me to help take things of my mind but i actually found it stressed me more so i put a stop to that you have to grieve in your own way not other peoples. The day my husband died age just 50 he was at home and very stressed as he thrashed about the bed at home he finally came to rest on his daughters tummy, one week after the funeral Sophie found out she was 3 half months pregnant not even she realised nurses said it would of been because of the stress looking after her dad, did he no!! We call him a special gift so we named him Ellis Ian every time i look at that little boy he smiles at me with his eyes and i no ian is with him, just thought id share that with you to make you smile, hear if you need to chat xxx
Hi Colleen you are strong i used to think i wasnt but you have to be for yourself and because your husband would want you to be, my husband died 18 months ago i still have his clothes in the wardrobe and smell his dressing gown all the time, my daughter also has got her dads jumper, like you i say every day i just want my Ian back!!! yes your right life is bloody cruel xx
Hi Scoobi.i was just sitting here crying and then read this post. At first I thought I had written it-my husband died in may 2016, we had been married nearly 41 years. I have 3 children who are grieving in their own way and I agree we don’t want to make it worse for them, they think I am doing fine.alone I am a mess. The massive, gaping hole in our lives where he should be is unbearable and I still cant believe he has gone-I miss him so so much
Hi,If anybody else says to me you are strong and coping well I will scream.At first I was glad my husband wasnt in pain anymore but now 3 weeks on I just want him back.
Today I cant stop crying yesterday was a ok day but all this paperwork I have to do is just to much.
Hi, the paperwork is very overwhelming isn’t it. Try and do it a bit at a time. The most important first. Hopefully you have someone to help you. People mean well by saying you are strong and coping well but I agree it can have the opposite effect and make you want to scream. Someone said to me the other day ’ never mind your young and will meet someone else’ I was so shocked at how it made me feel, No one will ever replace my wonderful husband…ever.
Hi Alison i totally agree its the worst thing anyone can say to you at this time. As for paper work your right take it day by day if you need help DWP helped me a lot x
Hello Alison - I agree about the Summer. The Spring is proving to be quite difficult already. My Husband was a sun worshipper and it will be so sad not seeing him sat out in the garden. We were not really ones for trips and holidays but as we lived in Blackpool we’d regularly enjoy ourselves on the promenade. I have not moved back into our home but even just visiting our flat to check up on it is so hard. Everything is the same, but yet not. Take care Alison, thanks for the reply.
Hi I have read through this string and yes the pain , loneliness ,anger at why us never seems to reduce. I take each day as it comes my wife of 28 years died after 4 weeks in hospital . Out of the blue really .
We were never apart except whilst at work. Always together just sitting in costa or walking, not having to talk just happy to hold hands and being together. I ,m crying now as I think of her and that I no longer have a future, no more new memories. I go to bed each night and pray to her that I won’t wake up so we can be together again. Sorry to moan I know your all suffering in very similar ways. I pray for us all. I visit my wifes grave 3 to 4 times a day since she passed and have a candle constantly on her stone. A living flame there gives me some little comfort as I tell her what’s been happening.
This thread rings so many bells for me. Like you Tina I cant go back to living in my house. It was the simple things I miss Sunday lunch, sitting the garden in the sun and catching up each evening. I pretend I am ok with the family but am dead inside. I dont they can cope either and just keep busy that is ok for them as they still have a partner and a life to be busy with but we have to start all over again and that is extremely stressful. Every decision I have to make is so hard.
Take care everyone
Love Anniexxx
Annie, here are two things you said that ring so true for me. I watch life go on around me and pretend to be part of it but also feel so dead inside. It’s a strange contradiction feeling so numb socially yet experiencing such intense pain inside. My grief is complicated - I lost my husband last September followed by my mother just 8 weeks later - and it feels like one of my life makes sense any more. Having to start all over again is so hard. So good to know I’m not alone with these challenges but wish none of us were having to cope with them.
Hi Annie so glad you said you pretend to ok with the family because I do .My family are all so busy and last thing is me keep ringing about all the paperwork that I cant understand.
Its only 3 weeks since my husband died and I have started looking round the house thinking that all the upkeep is up to me now .I go over and over again the paperwork file it then a hr later go check I have read it right.
regards Sue
Hello Nigel - Like yourself I experienced both shock and a lengthy stay in Hospital with my Husband, only it was the other way around. I didn’t think my Husband would not live, like you I feel cheated and it’s like living with the “pause” button pressed. Its a bleak feeling like no other. You are not moaning at all you are simply telling it as things are, even down to not wanting to wake again. Your visits to her grave sound like they are a prescious comfort to you. Take care and warmest regards to you.