my husband passed away a few months ago and i cant heal. whatever that means. i am disintegrating. i have done grief therapy, one on one, group, been to a doctor phychologist therapist…now i am in the hospital trying to get help and its a joke. heres some meds and go and lie down, eat this, wear this and we will make it all better. all it does is EXACTLY what i said it would but nobody would listen. it makes me calm, i am a zombie, dont really care what happens. just forging ahead and hope i die soon. life as i knew it and life tht was to be is gone. i want to be with him. please dont tell me it takes time. the only thing time will do is prolong my life. i am already dead. just going about the motions. im lost, alone and empty and thats the facts. there are no other facts. i feel responsible for his death and nothing anyone says will change that. never. just deciding what to do, how to exist in my bubble…
@L-is-l
Hi, I can relate to much of what you say, the feelings of loneliness and emptiness and that no one really understands the devastation we feel. But why do you blame yourself ?
I worry that I didn’t see my husbands symptoms but he was under medical care and the medical professionals didn’t see them so I kind of feel a bit less guilty , it’s very difficult to rationalise sometimes isn’t it. Sending best wishes to you x
I lost my spouse of 45 yrs middle of Nov so I feel a lot of the same things you do. I blamed myself because he had emergency surgery and had to go on a ventilator. Next day his health deteriorated and we had to make the decision to take him off the vent. While I know he didn’t want to live this way and his body wouldn’t be able to heal I still feel like I ended his life. I know everyone keeps telling me it will get better with time I don’t know that it gets better but I just need to learn what my new life looks like moving forward. Hope you can find some peace and move forward.
I relate to your total despair & I too blamed myself that I didn’t take it upon myself to get him to hospital, but I don’t drive & the doctor said it was a non emergency. You have to take the professionals at their word. After a 4 hour wait for a doctors visit, 6 hour wait for an ambulance & 6 hours in A & E my darling husband had kidney failure. He passed away 4 days later. I still feel the deep down guilt because hindsight is a horrible thing. I found writing down my feelings really helped, got it out of my head. Several months afterwards I went through the complaints procedure as his treatment was shocking. After investigation I got the usual apologies, lessons have been learnt & more training will be given. I didn’t take it further but I felt like I’d done something.
I really feel your pain, I felt like I wanted not to be here & could quite easily have joined him, had it not been for the rest of my family. It’s a natural emotion we suffer a form of PTSD, everything going round in our heads on a loop. I’m 4 years on & all I can say is time helps you carry the grief better, you learn to move forward bit by bit.
Sending love & strength 
I lost my husband of 54 years 18 months ago and like you i just can’t get over it whatever I do. He had dementia although not that advances but died with a heart problem and Covid in a care home for 16 weeks. I sometimes was horrendously impatient with him and lost my temper when he was so confused for which i can’t forgive myself. So I have to live with that for the rest of my life. . Grief is a most dreadful thing when it is for a much loved husband of many years. i hope that somehow you like me can gain some purpose in life.
So sorry about what you are going through.
You say you feel guilty for being angry. I was exactly the same with my husband but I realised that I wasn’t mad at him. It was the illness I was shouting at. He did say once after I had moaned about some stupid thing that he knew I wasn’t getting at him, just his illness.
Yes, we feel guilt, but when all’s said and done, if you look back, I think you’ll be able to remember many times when you made things better for him. Just being there for him will have helped. Try to remember the happy times and I bet you’ll find they far exceed the bad. That’s what I do and it certainly helps me.
I lost my husband 8 months ago. I had been coping reasonably well but like you, I feel guilt that I could have done more, although he had even seen a doctor the morning of the day he was blu-lighted into hospital without the later diagnosis of late stage lung cancer being recognised. It was a complete shock. Best wishes to you.
My partner passed away nine weeks ago and I’ve always blamed myself for not doing enough to keep her alive Ann was a heavy smoker and about six years ago she was diagnosed with COPD she spent a lot of time in hospital and was always advised to stop smoking over the years I tried to get her to stop but I always feel like I didn’t do enough she had twin daughters from her first marriage and I was very close to both of them they were with me in the hospital the day Ann passed away I even said to the doctor that it was my fault but her daughter’s said there was nothing more I could have done to keep her alive the day after she passed away both her daughter’s came to see me and said if I hadn’t bullied her to stop smoking then she might still be here the guilt that I feel is making the grief and loneliness so much worse every day I wake up and wish I could join Ann
@Boo2
How awful for you, guilt is a natural reaction to grief, we all probably have the could haves, should haves. Her daughters are probably just lashing out, they’ll be carrying guilt of their own too but it’s unfair to put that on you. You should be supporting each other through the grief, hopefully that will come. Sending love & sorry you’re going through this. Take care.
My mum lost her husband, my dad, 3wks ago, they had been married for 55yrs! They were a fantastic team, he was an amazing dad. My mum, as it seems, is coping well. She keeps her mind positive and fills her day with activities, i cant imagine the grief she feels inside, the emptiness and despair, but day by day she is managing. Everyone copes differently with grief, but knowing your not the only one in deep grief loosing your husband, and having feelings of emptiness does that not help your pain? This chat group is fantastic, the advice from others is magic, knowing your not the only one suffering. Good luck!
Totally understand how you feel. I lost my husband very suddenly on Christmas Eve just gone. I get that feeling of wanting to be with him I don’t want to know the world without him - the only thing that keeps me going is our 2 children. I have a deep sense of adding to whatever caused his heart attack as he’d been working full-time and looking after me as I have MS and none of the family know we kept it to ourselves. Every day I get up I count it as one day closer to being back with him.
I understand where you are coming from. I lost my husband last September he had be ill for years with various chronic illnesses. The last 12 months had seen him slowly deteriorate. He had two hospital admission which were so horendous that he swore he wouldnt go to hospital again. During his last few days I was begging him to get medical help but he wouldnt. In the end I called an ambulance the night before he died. He agreed to go into hospital. The care once again was awful one Dr saying nothing more to be done the other wanting to give it another 24hrs. It was decided to move him from A&E to ‘upstairs’ just before he was moved it was obvious he was dying. They moved him anyway to the very ward he had a bad experience, nobody greeted us nobody came to see us until just before he took his last breath. How I wish I had kept him at home to die peafully in his own bed, how I wish I had made more effort to get him on the little break he wanted but was so wrapped up in how difficult it was going to be for me I put him off, how I wish I hadnt moaned about every little thing in our lives that didnt meet my expectations. I realise now that nothing was more important than having him here. All the things I wanted for our future seem so insignificant, all my hopes and expectations for my retirement insignificant. My life was him and us, l dont see any joy in the future, I just want to be with him.
@Nett1 how terribly sad for you I feel guilt about being too wrapped up in my own health issues to insist he went to the doctor when he was getting tired and looking pale I hate myself for that