Hi, dear everyone. It’s been three months since I lost my wee Mary. I thought I was a little better this. I was wrong. Edward
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I’m 3 months in to from the sudden death of my partner . I have better days now but still get ambushed every now and then. When I do, I just embrace it and let it happen. I don’t hide how I feel as I think it’s important to face everything head on but yes it is easier and days are lighter.
I hope this one passes for you soon.
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Thanks for your kind words. It is hard for people ‘outside’ our experience to appreciate what you might be enduring. A woman I spoke to the other day thought my wife had passed away five or six years ago as she had not seen me. I enlightened her that I have been 24hrs a day being her husband and friend for that time. Its only three months. Some days are rough but your kind encouragement is helpful. Thank you, you. Best regards, Edward.
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fearful loss of my dear wife after being so closely involved with her as a career made me feel my daughter had presented herself to me having ‘heard something,’ and is always on the edge of blaming me
I hope it will pass because it makes me feel such a waste of space, unmotivated. As if I am frightened to take a step, a kind of heart-sore vertigo.I am just spouting this rubbish and feeling sorry for my self. I am so unfit to cope. I am talking a lot of rubbish probably, and lost in a maze. So pathetic. I want to raise other people up nd not dump,on them. I should probably stop talking while I feel like this.
Missing my wife so much today. Sleeping fitfully and woke three times kicking a side table over in a sense of disorientation. I feel a total lack of motivation and hollow pain. Reluctant now to take any medication as I feel disorientated and drugged. I am frightened that I am passing out of my own control/ spend every day alone apart from an occasional coffee locally. I don’t know why I have returned to the depths of Hell again. I am not doing anything differently. ‘Family’ rarely visits and has gone on holiday. My appetite is either non or existing or I feel (rarely) like eating averything. So down. The doctor is not providing much help except anti depressants which I mistrust. I see little hope for the future. Was trying to write a book but that is slipping away. Thought of a dating agency which is mad and has left me even more depressed. I am definitely having thoughts of taking another way out. So hopeless.
I feel such guilt and inadequacy and totally isolated, more than alone shut out of the world, pain, headaches, sore legs I am just a total burden to everybody and a waste for everybody.
@Ashuerus I am so sorry that you are feeling like this.
The awful journey that we are now on is so very hard and lonely.
I lost my lovely husband just over seven months ago and some days it feels like yesterday. The pain and the longing for our loved ones does get slightly easier but can still come back out of nowhere and knock you down flat. I have had one of those weeks last week. To be honest I did very little and just stayed indoors where I feel safe and secure. I didn’t see anyone except my neighbour who popped over to check on me, bless her.
I don’t take anti depressants but I did have six weeks of therapy with the NHS. It did help me slightly and I now try and set myself daily goals. I still haven’t plucked up the courage to join any groups so my life is lonely.
I do hope your days become more calm. I won’t say better because they won’t but in time they may get easier.
Keep on posting as there is always someone who cares and will reach out to you.
Take care and sending you a hug xx
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I perceive that my entire life has been characterised by missed and lost opportunities, and a criminal lack of awareness of the feelings of others. It iOS almost as if I have gone out of my way to take the worst possible decisions on my own behalf and that of others. I have won international awards. I have a lot of talent. I might as well have had none and have squandered through laziness and selfishness and no real caring for others. Caring for my dear wife for years has been the only action of my life entirely devoted to another person. I had a cardiac arrest 14 years ago and died fir 5 minutes. Since that I felt I have been sent back to care for my wife. There are many other failures. I can never make up for being so selfish.
Thanks for caring. At this time it means everything to me.
@Ashuerus
I suppose we would all go back in time and do things differently if we could.
Please don’t be hard on yourself, you sound like you were a devoted husband to me. Caring for someone who has dementia is far from easy, my mum had alzheimers ,and I helped to care for her, so I can imagine what the last few years have been like for you.
Don’t think back how you felt you were in the past but go forward with kindness and love as that is the person you come across as being. xx
@Ashuerus hindsight is a wonderful thing and if we could go back knowing what we know now that would be great but that is impossible.
You can however create a future with the knowledge you have.
It’s easy for us to say what we were but what do you want to be? What do you want to change? Apart from the obvious.
You are the only one who can make the changes you need or want.
I had company last week but still felt alone.
I’m sorry probably not really helping you here but whatever you want has to come from within and external support like a therapist may help. Nothing will take away the pain and grief though, we just have to walk through it.
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thank you so much for trying to help. you’re so kind.
Thank you for
your kind and caring words. It definitely makes me feel less alone in this process of sharing and love. Bless you for helping me.
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It feels as if I am less alone when I talk to you but I feel a fool for not being able to manage. Well, I can manage, do the washing, keep things tide, but I feel so angry with myself for not doing more for Mary. You have helped me today. Thank you. xx
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I too struggle with hindsight and how I perceive that to inform the understanding of my actions in caring for my wife in her final days, her last weekend. I am slowly being able to acknowledge that when I took on the role of carer it was ultimately an emotional response to the given situation: my wife was ill, I would care for her. I didn’t realise at the time that unconsciously I had taken on responsibility for her life, that somehow we could get through this terminal diasgnosis, that somehow I could save her.
I understand now that this situation in itself arose due to hindsight, I had cared for her for many years in the past and, against the odds, she had come through the other side. And so when inevitability ground out its obvious final outcome I was thrown into a storm of self doubt and recriminations. The What If’s, the overwhelming need to understand how my actions had influenced the course of her life with me, had I done enough, had I done the right things, had I truly been there for her?
But the thing is I will never know. All I can do is reflect and learn. It was difficult to think dispassionately about that last weekend but as the weeks and months have moved forward, little by little I have found myself able to face the hours that piled together to form those days. I have admitted to myself, that of course I made mistakes, I had never had to care for a dying wife before, I was making it up as I went along. As with all of life, death is not prescriptive in its unfolding. The mistakes I made will stay with me but I know that I have to forgive myself as my wife would have.
At first I found this impossible, by nature I am a problem solver, reflexively I would engage with my feelings and memories of that weekend as a problem to be solved. A game that could be replayed and so a different outcome achieved. I enter the loop. Nothing changes. I see her face full of fear at what is coming and there’s nothing I can do to help except tell her I love her. And for a time that wasn’t enough, that there must have been something else I could have said. But really what is there other than the love we have for each other? Beyond the every day, everyone here knows this to be true. As I was able to reflect rather than engage with ‘the problem’ I began to recall things that my wife had told me over that weekend and I began to realise that she knew that this was all I could offer, but more importantly it was all she needed, that I was with her in the love we had together.
And now that is my way of moving forward, when the What If’s begin and unspool back to the day we first met and I think of my actions through our life together I remind myself that my wife was there and loved me despite my mistakes, my acts of narcissism, my petty jealousies and grievances because I demonstrated that I would do the same for her. We are imperfect creatures and hindsight leads us to believe that we are not, and so regret and guilt.
For me it’s a start, no longer a problem to be solved but a foundation to build on, A few weeks ago I bought a small notebook and it sits with me at the table, when I think of something I want to remember, something that in some small way defined us, her or me I put it in the book. I find comfort now that the book is nearly half full, that I have a physical, growing embodiment of our love, our time in this world, what it meant and why it happened. I like to think that sometime in the future someone will find it of interest and that our love for each other will extend through the years.
When all this began, when my wife died, I felt stuck on an island of grief. I was being held there by hindsight. Now I feel that I’ve found a small boat and am slowly rowing away from the island where my wife is, ever watching her form diminish on the horizon. If I could keep her in sight, if I could keep that loop of grief near me I would never lose her. But lately I have realised that at some point I have to turn round to see where I am going and that when I turn back I will have lost sight of her. And that loss terrified me. But really she is the ocean on which I sit, in my little boat and I will move across it with her below and me above, always together.
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Wonderful.
Today is what is probably normal for normal people. Thank you for your kind wishes because it I’d wonderful to feel as if I can look forward. All the grief and worries, the self doubt are still there but in their proper boxes. I was able to rise, breakfast after showering, hang out the washing and sit in the garden and do some paperwork. Then inside to continue with the substantial novel I am writing and NOT BE IN PAIN AND REGRET. I know this is temporary, and it’s like a bi-polar thing, but I literally fell down on my knees and gave thanks to God for this time of calm and a little hope. I pray that you, dear person, and everyone else also experiences a calm and fruitful day and broken hearts are mended, even for a little while Thank you dear God!
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