I lost my wife suddenly on new years eve.
Im struggling with being alone she was everything to me we had been married for 24 years i miss the company so much
Thankyou …
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@Stevie3
So sorry you are here - the place no one wants to be, I lost my husband on 8 October he was only 56.
It is incredibly tough for you at the moment and I hope you find words of comfort here, as well as support.
It is so raw for you at the moment, and you are right in the maelstrom of it.
My strategy was/is just to ‘roll with it’ whichever emotion decides to knock on your door, accept it, and let it in. Don’t fight it, as the emotion will win, every time.
One day in the future, whenever that may be, you will live at one with your grief, and one day, it will be ok. Not yet, but one day.
Best wishes.
Helen
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@Stevie3 I’m so sorry for your loss, my wonderful husband passed 2 weeks ago at 56. Missing him so much, he really was my best friend, we had been together since we were 15.
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@OnlyMe2 Helen, what great advice, I’m struggling right now but hoping the happy memories will one day outway the sadness. It’s only been 2 weeks since I lost my wonderful husband at 56.
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Thankyou for the lovely kind messages was feeling down yesterday felt so alone the weekends seem so hard .
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I understand how you feel, i lost my beloved husband of 22 years in November, its been 7 weeks and the pain is unbearable even now, i miss him everyday and its a struggle without him
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@AlliH Thanks AlliH. I found that strategy of just accepting which ever emotion I am feeling on that specific day really works for me. It is pointless trying to fight it, as it will just manifest itself at a later date, and probably stronger too.
I also don’t put any pressure whatsoever on myself regarding what I ‘should’ be doing. According to who? According to a book someone wrote? No, I ‘should’ be doing whatever is right for me, and when it feels right. It doesn’t matter if that is next week, next month, or next year.
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Like you I can’t handle the loneliness,my wife did everything for me. Her cancer was so unexpected and only lived 12 months after her diagnosis. Her time in the hospice was not pleasant and drugs weren’t working as they should have. Certainly wasn’t a dignified death. I think I was left traumatised and cannot get it out of my head
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This is day 49 without my wife Carol she was just 68 and we had been together for 36 years. She wasn’t ill for long, the melanoma was so aggressive and grew so fast in her lymphatic system that she went from fit and able in September to unable to walk by the end of October and she died after just 5 days in the Hospice on the 25th November.
Christmas and New year were horrible. Even though I had a friend staying over Christmas It wasn’t my wonderful wife and confident. Since then I have been trying to manage but at times it is so hard. I sleep late, walk the dog (not very far in this weather) then sit and watch the television. All on my own.
I hope next week will be better. I have managed to get a 1:1 conselling from the Hospice on Tuesday and then a group session on Thursday. I had to push to get the seas it seems grief counselling isn’t offered for several months normally. I needed help on day 1 and especially over Christmas.
I force myself to go out to events in the community even if it wasn’t previously my thing.
I can only hope it gets better for both me and all of you. I keep screaming at the world but it doesn’t make any difference.
Day 49, just 7 weeks as at 04:55 tomorrow morning, I still don’t believe she has gone for good.
I still have the “celebration of life” to organise for the end of March. There was no funeral because we both agreed to donate our bodies to the medical university and I really could not have had a funeral in the short time before Christmas and it is not what Carol would have wanted. I only hope I will manage it by March.
What does bring some comfort is knowing that Carol only ever wanted what was best for us whilst she was alive and I would not believe that sentiment would have changed. I would have wanted her to carry on and been happy had it been me that had died.
For all of us that are grieving whether it has been days, week, months or years. I can only hope that the good memories do eventually come through stronger than the loneliness and the desperate sense of loss.
Love and best wishes to all that needs this forum. Derek
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Hartwood, Im so sorry for the loss of your lovely wife. I lost my wife 1 year ago and know so well what you have ahead of you.
This site has been very helpful and it will help.
Circumstances, of course, are different for each person, but the pain we all feel is the same.
You will go through every emotion: disbelief, anger, loneliness, hatred, jealously,fear for the future, longing for the past. At the beginning all motivation and purpose vanish.
Ive found that the wave of sympathy soon disappears and you are left to get on with things on your own, very much like getting flung in at the deep end.
I cared for my wife at home for the last two years of her life at home and although it nearly finished me, we were able to talk about the inevitable and what my lovely lady wanted for me.
Things will get better gradually. You will never forget that lovely wife and its also time to remember yourself; the you she fell in love with.
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I have woke up very early this morning .
All i can think of is my wife . She past away on newyears eve. She was only 57 my life my rock my everything. Feel so alone in the house . I cant concentrate on anything.
So sorry for going on we all have our problems.
Steve …
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So sorry for your loss Stevie. Don’t ever apologise for how you’re feeling. We all understand as we feel the same. Here i am a year after i lost my wife, Its 5am and Im awake too.
You have to get all your feelings out and this site is perfect for that purpose. We all feel your pain.
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Thankyou plantman
Can i just ask will i ever be able to sleep at night …
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I’ve had a bad sleep pattern for years. I looked after my wife at home for the previous two years so used to check on her during the night . I was terrified she’d need me in the night and i wouldnt hear her. I had the dread of getting up in the morning and she had already passed.
You’ve just suffered a major trauma, its no wonder you’re not sleeping. Im sure everything will settle for you in time.
At the moment Id say dont beat yourself up and allow yourself to grieve.
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I wake at around 4:55 most mornings. The time I was wakened by Carols last breath. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed or how late I stay up its always the same time. I turn over and try to sleep again but can only doze at best.
My nursing duties only lasted a few weeks but it did wear me out.
Carol would wake many times during the night and need to move between the bed and a chair. When she was asleep I would lay awake listening for her. The only night I got any quality sleep was the night before she died. Even the nurses that came to check her morphine pump and move her didn’t wake me and I was asleep int he chair right next to her bed. I felt and still do feel guilty about being asleep, but I read a book my Kathryn Mannix called “with the end in mind” that uses many different cases to demonstrate the whole process of dying. It would seem that in many cases death happens when no body is in the room, maybe this is the last caring thing our loved ones do for us before they die. For my part I am not sure. The previous nights in the Hospice I has sat holder her hand, I wish I had been holder her hand when she did die.
I recommend the book, especially for people where death of a loved one is on the horizon.
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I’m not sure if i was in the room when Susan passed away. She had been in pain when the nurses came in and as she was having trouble swallowing, they suggested that a syringe driver would help, which she agreed to.
I called my sons asking them to get here quickly.
The nurses came back to the house after getting permission from the G P and asked me to leave the room while they worked on her.
At that two of my sons arrived and we were allowed back in to be with Susan. By then she was unconscious.
I popped into the ajacent kitchen to make the boys a cuppa and i got as far as filling the kettle and sorting the cups, when my sons called me back in saying they thought she was gone.
I beat myself up for weeks for leaving her to make tea.
That book you mentioned would have been a god send to me then. I did not know how the body shuts down.
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Apart from a daily visit from a Care at Home Nurse I cared for Carol at home for 3 weeks. She got progressively less and less mobile and the pain killers didn’t keep her comfortable. A profiling bed was ordered but didn’t turn up until the day before she went into the Hospice. We did have a slightly lesser bed that a friend had lent to us so I could move into the dining room for her last weekend at home. We finally got a place in the Hospice on the Wednesday and an ambulance came to collect her. She died on the following Monday having never been able to leave her bed. She had some issues for her position in bed and had to be moved often but she didn’t complain of having much pain. As time went on she became less and less responsive. She could hear and if I asked for a kiss she would pucker her lips.
I miss her so much, I still don’t believe she isn’t coming back. She should have survived me by many years. Most of her family have lived into their eighties and nineties and even over one hundred. To die so quickly at 68 is unbelievable to me.
I do believe her condition was accelerated by the vaccine that was forced on us, but that could never be proved conclusively and whilst the stats seem to be leading that way there is still too much that isn’t being made public. I begged her not to have it but she wanted to carry on working and her employer insisted.
We will never know and it is not something I can worry about now she has gone. Safe to say though that my faith in the powers that be to do the right thing for people has been completely shattered.
Sorry for those that have faith in the system, this is my opinion and I know a lot of people believe whole heartedly in the benefits that the vaccine gave. Each to their own I suppose.
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@Stevie3 Im so sorry hearing your sad news. I lost my husband in June 2023 after an aorta dissection which after a 14 hour operation he did not recover. He was 68 yrs and he was my everything. Like you emotions run high. I gave very sad times, angry times and guilt if i find im laughing. Ive also had 2 weeks where i was so done i couldn’t leave the house. Eventually it passed and i started to get back to some sort of normality whatever that means. Dont be hard on yourself tge emotions you feel will come and go and at times grief will come when you least expect it. I hope you have good friends and family around you. Take care and never be afraid to ask for help which unfortunately has been my problem
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Stevie,
What we all have an abundance of is time to think.
During covid, my Susan was seen as a vulnerable adult and although she was still high functioning then, i believe the resultant isolation robbed her of her independence.
She developed agoraphobia and never went out again, gave up driving , became later bedbound and gave up.
After a particularly nasty hospital stay, a care package was put in place . I hastily emptied the dining room to accomodate the hospital bed, oxygen machine and all the other equipment.
For her remaining 2 years she never left that bed and no amount of anger, bribery or coaxing would have got her up on her feet, when she still could.
Yes, like you, i was angry, frustrated and exhausted, but never stopped looking for ways to help her, a sometimes reluctant patient.
She was 66 when she passed , way too young.
We’d been a couple for 41 years, married 39. To say i was lost was an understatement.
Alone with my thoughts, i lost my motivation in life. I was so angry that it was my darling that had been taken.
You’re a man in pain who has lost his beloved wife, as i am.
Eventually the sheer raw emotions start to untangle. Nothing you could think or say could possibly change the inevitable. Nothing could have stopped the loss of Susan and you’re Carol . We did everything we could to love and support them right to the end.
The love never leaves
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Hi
It is so fresh for you. I lost my husband of 30 years to colon cancer that metastized in his lungs. It was the second time he battled cancer in 5 years. The first time it was lymphoma. He passed in July of 2024.
Dealing with my loss has been one huge roller coaster ride. I’ve gone through many stages of grief. I’ve found that whatever phase I’ve been in, it has been best to just deal with it by accepting the emotions that go with it. At first, I had a counselor through Hospice. That helped tremendously. I joined group activities to be among people. That helped so-so. Now at 6 months into this nightmare I’m ready to go back to the gym and have chosen to volunteer at the local animal rescue. None of this seemed possible for several months, but it’s possible now.
I miss my husband terribly. I break down several times per day, but I recover.
I’ve become much more spiritual and have found that choice to bring comfort and clarity to the grieving process.
A book that has been beneficial is “Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love” daily meditations to help you through the grieving process. The authors are Raymond R. Mitsch and Lynn Brookside. Highly recommend.
I pray that some of my words bring comfort to you during this sorrowful time.
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