It’s cold .it’s cold in a bed by your self
That warm spot beside you is gone
Were once there was a warm cuddle is a cold spot instead.
One person sitting in a blanket watching TV
Is cold…
Going on a night walk by yourself with no warm arm to link is cold .
And some people and work colleagues are cold when they think
They can say things like like You’ve changed
Your not the worker you once we’re .
And you will feel better soon .
There’s a lot of cold people about .
I was not expecting so much coldness
I wish the cold would just go away
And it’s the middle of summer
I’m dreading what the winter will be like…
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Posted in the wrong place .was meant to be in losing a partner…
Sorry
Dear Fred123
Thank you. I thought it was just me that felt this coldness. Since my husband died in September I can find myself sitting on our sofa and reaching for a blanket because the coldness is right to the core of my being.
As for people’s comments I now just walk away. I read somewhere that silence is more powerful than words. So in doing this I hope they reflect on their words which really bring no comfort. Unfortunately some who cannot comprehend our grief think it is an illness from which we can recover.
Take care.
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Hi, I know what you mean. It’s a cold and lonely house we live in. I haven’t been able to do anything for so long I keep looking for him. It may be summer but the sun is not shining in our lives. The loneliness is the worst. My husband wasn’t the most talkative (I made up for that) but now nothing. Nobody understands what we are feeling because I have never felt this pain in my life. The friends who you thought would be about are long gone. As my husband said we’ve only got each other. Now totally alone. I’m not looking forward to the winter. Cold dark nights. In fact not looking forward to much.
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We always said that as long as we had each other we could over come any challenge. Now he has gone trying to function on a daily basis is a challenge.
In the months before his death we were coping with the sudden decline in my mum’s health which was very stressful. I said to several friends that as long as I had my husband by my side I could deal with anything. That was true. Now he is not by my side and I have my mother’s illness and now my MIL’s horrible decline (brought on by his death). How to cope with all this without him by my side I do not know. I do know that there will be more heartache in the coming months because of their illnesses and I will lose even more.
Dear @Fred123,
Last winter all I wanted to do was crawl under one of the old dog duvets that we used to let our (passed) dogs curl up on the furniture. I achieve virtually nothing most days in summer, but in the cold weather I achieved even less, if that was at all possible.
My brother’s wife is poorly at present, has been deteriorating gradually for a few years, and it’s reached the stage that he’s afraid to go out and leave his wife on her own at home. I’m honestly worried that he might be left on his own in the not too distant future. My mother said to my brother that she didn’t know who was in a worse position, he or I. Apparently my father said “At least Alston can go out on his own when he wants”.
Yeah, well…
I agree with every word @Parsley and @Sheila26 have said too.
And @Jules4, as if you didn’t have enough to cope with…you, and everyone here, are in my thoughts.
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Dear Sheila,
It’s amazing how friends and relatives think they “know” what we are going through. To be fair to them, some of them really do care and think they understand. Some of them are widowed themselves so can claim to have , “been through it”. No-one has experienced what you are experiencing because your grief is unique.
I feel as though no-one can possibly be hurting as much as I am because there is not enough hurt in the world to go round but my brain tells me that each one of us here is feeling ungovernable pain. I understand the cold that has been mentioned. Even on hot days when I know I am hot, there is a feeling of cold.
You talk about people thinking this is like an illness and we shall recover. It is not. It is more like a dreadful, maiming, life-threatening injury. In my case this injury happened 15 months ago. To other people, whose lives resumed as soon as they returned home from the funeral, fifteen months have passed and therefore I MUST be better. For me and for you, although the injury happened in the past, we are still, today, without the vital parts that made us the whole persons we were. We are broken, with pieces missing. Trying to function is an everyday struggle and when our friends complain that they they have not seen their children or grandchildren for over a year, they cannot comprehend the pain they inflict on those of us who will never see the one we love again in this life.
I have stopped answering the 'phone to one friend, who prides herself on being understanding but who thinks that it “takes you out of yourself” to be regaled with the chatter about parties, family gatherings, weddings, birthdays and holidays and short breaks they are planning. I am supposed to be delighted to hear about the flights and accommodation and to look at all the new clothes purchased for the various occasions.
Sometimes I am included by being asked to comment on which earrings or other accessories would be suitable. Sometimes I am invited to the BBQ. Of course I am grateful but (and here on this site is the only place I can say it) my only input is to accept or decline. I have no part in any planning or decision making. Never again will the words, “Shall we …?” or “Let’s …” or “What shall we have for …?” be heard in this lonely, empty, silent house. Even when the radio is on, it can’t drown out the silence.
To everyone else, my husband died 15 months ago but to me, the loss is here and now, today and nearly 60 years of marriage died with him. Being everything to one another, being true soulmates, with no children and few friends - at our age nearly all our friends have died too - means that my whole way of life vanished.
I am exhausted beyond anything I have ever experienced. I am failing to cope with much that now needs to be done in a big old house with extensive grounds and have no hope of moving as it is a task outside my abilities, even if I had the means of travelling around the country looking for an alternative.
I have been loved and cherished for the whole of my long life, never had to fend for myself and don’t really know how. I don’t want to know how. I long to be be cared for again and to come first with someone, to be the centre of someone’s life rather than on the periphery of it. My husband was my reason for wanting to wake up in the morning, my reason for taking care with my hair and make-up or for buying an occasional new item to wear. It doesn’t matter what I do for other people. To them I am just one tiny part of very busy lives and when I die, it will make no difference to them. Some of them might even shed a tear but their lives will continue, unchanged.
Perhaps I am on the wrong site because I want someone to be able to tell me that everyone feels likes this but it gets better with time. It seems to be that the longer I carry this burden of grief, it just gets heavier and more awkward to handle.
My husband and I always counted our blessings and always started and finished with, “As long as we have each other…”
Together we were whole and could do some good. Alone, I feel broken beyond repair. Too many pieces are missing.
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No grandsons today so have spent the whole day on the settee, drifting in and out of sleep and wrapped in a blanket as the cold engulfs me yet again. I tried to summon up the energy to go out but there is nothing to go for and it only compounds the loneliness. Friends and relatives keep telling me that the grandsons are my life now. And whilst I love them totally others cannot understand that both our son and daughter have the right to enjoy and live their lives as we did at their age. There is no doubt that our grandson’s are thrilled when they see me pull up in the car and while I am with them they keep me temporarily distracted. But nothing takes away the deep pain that I feel without my husband by my side or the knowledge that he is waiting for me at home.
I agree. Broken beyond repair. I just long for my husband. Never to be with the person we chose and who chose us. I cannot cope in our small little bungalow. Cleaning, doing the washing. Cannot remember when I last washed my face and showering is a rare event also. There really is no purpose.
Hopefully this forum allows us to share how we really feel. I cannot burden our children they are struggling with their own grief.
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Dear @Prof,
I’ve found that I don’t seem to comment on so many threads here nowadays, unless something really touches me. I seem to have become more and more absorbed in my own grief and want to be on my own, safe at home (which I may lose in the next 4 or 5 years, but that’s another story).
I can identify closely with so many of the things you say, being exhausted and unable to cope, no hope of moving, being the centre of someone’s life, and especially your husband being your reason for wanting to wake up in the morning. I lost my wife almost 14 months ago and I didn’t realise until then that I drew ALL of my strength and motivation from her. Now I possess neither. Without her I am nothing. There is no pleasure in anything whatsoever, because any pleasure came from being in her very presence. The thought of spending another year without her horrifies and scares me. I’m starting to dread again the coming of the long, cold, dark days and another lonely Christmas to be endured, I’m just not sure I will be able - or want - to cope with all that again.
The more I think about my loss and my relationship with my wife, the more I realise how much she completed me. We always described ourselves as a team, stronger together than individually, but we were more than that - we were two halves of the one person, such was the connection between us. Over the past few weeks, I felt deep down that that didn’t even adequately describe us together. The best description I have come up with so far is that she was (and still is) ingrained in my soul. I miss her so so much, to the point that nothing really matters to me anymore. Because of my age bracket, I received a couple of letters last week, inviting me to be checked for two medical conditions. I telephoned to cancel one appointment and I won’t be responding to the other letter. I have no desire to find I have a condition needing treatment to artificially improve or extend my life. I always hoped I would be reasonably fit and healthy as I aged because of my wife’s physical problems, then I could handle the physical requirements for both of us. Now good health feels like a millstone around my neck, because I really, really, really do not want to spend any longer on this earth than is absolutely necessary. I’m done.
Your last sentence sums up perfectly my own feelings too:
“Together we were whole and could do some good. Alone, I feel broken beyond repair. Too many pieces are missing.”
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Dear Sheila and Alston,
Your responses and thoughts are both heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time.
It is profoundly sad to learn of such suffering but also perhaps we can all take some strength from the knowledge that we are not alone in the way we thought we were. We are just three voices of the many who would be heard. This reminds us that what we are suffering has been going on for generations and all around us (though hidden from us) is the living proof that the pain eventually becomes manageable. Those of us walking this path can take heart from knowing that we are travelling toward some relief and rest.
Alston, like you, I’m not interested in having my life prolonged. I just want to be with my husband, to be complete again and to put down this unbearable burden of grief. Some months ago, I was just waiting to get my affairs in order and then research into ways of joining him.
Due to many legal complications, that window passed and I was shown that my purpose is to live the life that was taken from my husband. He was so fit, strong, athletic and healthy and had such plans and projects ongoing but was suddenly snatched away. I feel that living, however much I hate what has now become my life, is the last thing I can do for him.
I believe that there has to be some reason why he died and I was left alive - or half alive. I want a reason to want to go on living.
Sheila, perhaps your purpose IS your grandchildren. None of us can know the future, which is a mercy, so on the rare occasions when when we are lifted out of our sorrow for a while, distracted from the pain by events or other people, perhaps we can catch a glimpse of what it is we need to be doing.
I have not discovered it yet but there is beginning to be in me that spark of hope. It is tiny, flickers and is extinguished almost as soon as it appears but I hang on to the memory of it and in the worst storms of tears, I try to do two things. Firstly, I call out, aloud, that I am glad that I am the one suffering this separation, not my husband. I know he is safe and complete. His present is my future. All is well with him. I am suffering this instead of him. The second thing I try to do is to recall the spark and believe it will come again.
I cannot say what will help other people. All I can do is tell you how I get from one day to the next.
My husband always used to tell me how proud he was of me. We met dancing. He told me, only a couple of yeas ago, when I had asked him if he remembered our first meeting that he had seen me enter the studio and instantly decided, “I’m going to dance with that one.” I don’t remember it at all but he has often told me that he has looked around when we have been out together and thought, “I’m glad this one is mine.” The little, loving things he used to say, comfort and uphold me now. Yes, they bring on the tears and pain but would any of us say that the love was not worth the price we are now paying?
For me, getting up every morning alone is hateful and on so many occasions I have felt unable to attempt it BUT I HAVE DONE IT, morning after morning for 15 months. I talk myself through the bathroom - halfway there - only another ten minutes and I’m finished. I do my hair and make-up (which invariably ends up blurred and smudged before the morning is over) and dress in the clothes my husband liked to see me wearing.
There must be a reason why I am still here and I know that to be up, ready to face each day, is part of it. Sheila, I know how hard it is because I am doing it and by 7 p.m. each evening I am changed, ready for bed, wrapped in a rug, drifting in and out of sleep in front of the television until I can get back into bed shortly before midnight.
I eat something three times a day, all within a ten hour window. This is my framework, to which I have clung ever since my husband died. I have to believe that it is helping me to climb out of this slimy, suffocating pit. Sometimes, when right back at the bottom again, feeling as though there is no more strength left, I am able to tell myself that I must have climbed some distance in order to have fallen back. I have a rest and start again.
I am analytical and critical, examining my progress and realising that there IS some. There are not enough broken pieces left to rebuild what was once me, nor time on my side to do it but I have to believe that enough is left to build something different. I shall try my utmost to honour my husband by building the best I can.
Dear Sheila and Alston, please take heart. I believe that for all of us on this site, there is hope. Perhaps I am not feeling it right at this moment but I have had glimpses of it and I know that we are here for a reason.
God bless you and all of us.
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Dear Sheila,
I don’t know whether or not this is coming to you as a private message as the site has changed but I hope it reaches you.
You are hurting so much at the moment and I want to hold out the hand to you that has so often been held out to me by people who want me to be better but have no idea how to make it happen.
I am showered and dressed, with my hair and make-up done as I know my husband liked to see me. If he can see me I hope he is still feeling proud of me as he always told me he was.
I know you can’t live your life through your grandchildren but how wonderful it must be that there is someone who delights in you, to whom you are a central part of their lives. You love them but they cannot take the place of the one for whom your whole being longs. Still, they are there. Your husband can’t be there to watch them grow and develop into the people they are meant to be but you are here and you can help to shape that development.
The loneliness is felt most I think when we are with other people but I do believe that, little by little, we are helped to face the challenges and take small steps forward. I know we so often fall back, too exhausted to carry on but, look at us! We are still here. Something is sustaining us, even against our will very often but we shall be helped by finding a purpose in our lives. I don’t know what mine is as my husband was my reason for living, especially at times battling illness. Perhaps yours is indeed your grandchildren. You mention that your children should be allowed to live their own lives at this time and of course you are right but you are still pivotal to their lives, playing a more important part than perhaps you know.
I hope you can take heart, soothe your battered spirit and believe that there IS a way forward. You may be at the door already, unwilling to open it to the challenges beyond because I think grief and fear are just two sides of the same coin and we don’t know what lies on the other side of the door.
For me, anything I attempt is completely new. I have no family, so no built-in purpose, no-one ready made to love or to love me. Even when wrapped in my rug, in tears of despair, I still cling to the spark of hope that I am here for a reason and however much I don’t want to find out what it is, I want to be the woman my husband loved and admired. I don’t want to let him down.
If you can, make your house warm and comfortable, have that shower, washing your hair and telling yourself that the comforting water is washing away some of your pain. Let the water fall on your face and feel it soothing away the tears. If that’s all you can manage and you then put on your robe again, that’s fine. Do what is best for you but inside, there will be the knowledge that you got that far. Next time you will get a little further and the time after that, further still until you are dressing with confidence and hope.
You are still facing an unrecognisable, hostile world but at least you are facing it in full battledress and warpaint.
God bless you.
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I could have written the same words. I lost my wife in March 21. She was just 50. It was sudden. Like you we were one. We started together when we were teenagers and married for 26 years. It was like clay initially, soft and easy to shape; through the years the trials of life was like fire in the kiln: we became one piece and hard as stone. We were inseparable unless we were broken. So broken as I am. And I understand without her life has no more meaning and prolongation by any means would be pointless. I go on only because of my daughter. She is just 15.
I hate every moment of this life.
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I feel the same. My daughter always makes us proud. She still does. She scores straight As at school while enduring the lost of her beloved mom, her best friend. She was like me…the old me at least, would never give up no matter what. And being with her after losing my wife has been a great source of comfort to me for the last 6 months. This is because she is the only person who knows me well after my wife. But that won’t replace my beloved wife, and I miss the days she’s waiting for me at home everyday terribly…
Everything seems pointless now. Today is sunny and hot in my city. We should have been eating out, going to the countryside or just sitting on our balcony doing nothing. Now I dread every weekends and holidays. It feels all the more lonely as I see couples and families go out and enjoying life. Yes my life is broken beyond repair and has come to a dead end…
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Alston, you have summed up perfectly how I feel. I am scared because I am relatively young and so could have many more years. To me, this is hell - to have to continue on here for the sake of my children when there is absolutely nothing left for me. We too were one, our lives were entwined from before we were ‘adults’. He was my strength, my confidence, my very reason for being. I have just become exhausted getting through each day without him. When you have had so much and then life goes to this it is just so obvious that it is not a life really. I used to be so positive and enjoy so many things but my home is now just an empty house - the laughter has gone.
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I’m coming up on one year since my life ended. It seems to be getting worse for me. I’m dreaming of him almost every night recently and they are sad uncomfortable dreams. I manage to get through the day, but I’m just a shell of what once was. Where do all the tears come from? It’s the middle of the day and I should be doing something but I just can’t move. I hate my life now.
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Yes, I think it still goes on getting worse after the first year. This is partly because we have gone through all the “Firsts” I think. Those events and anniversaries we dreaded, have been and gone. Somehow we survived but now have to face the rest of our lives. Perhaps, subconsciously, was the notion that things would get better and when they haven’t, it is yet another shock.
Added to this is the heavy cloud, which has become our constant companion.
All I can say is that we must be here for a reason. Somehow we have come this far so we know that we have coped with a whole year. I am holding on to that fact. Surely I can keep putting one foot in front of another, however much I hate it, until the steps become easier. One thing that helps is being able to switch off the emotional part of my brain. For hours, days sometimes, at a time, I can make myself forget. When a happy memory begins to emerge, I push it away and distract myself. Letting it in just opens the floodgates.
We are here and this is the place we have to start on our unwanted journey.
God bless.
I know you’re right. One day at a time. The loneliness is the unbearable part. I miss being with him talking, laughing, shopping traveling……even arguing. The memories are killer aren’t they? And nothing stops the pain. It just keeps coming. I just want to stop crying. Maybe it’s especially hard lately because next month is my one year anniversary without him. It went so fast. Thanks for responding. We really do help each other just understanding the depth of our pain.
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