Hi I am in my 9th month and what you describe is exactly the same with me. When I have a good day I try to analyze why the bad days creep up on you and I can find no reason. When I describe grief to people it is like this -
When your loved one passes away you have a small bucket inside you which the tears drip into. To start off the bucket is very small about 0.25ml and will overflow on a daily basis. As time goes by the bucket gets bigger and bigger but will still overflow so don’t look for when it will happen next but be prepared for it when it comes along. Somehow my bucket is at a decent size now and I can go a short while without it overflowing but I can assure you it will still overflow and when it does, and it might take 2-3 days to pass the whole process will start again with an empty bucket.
I hope this all makes sense, to me it does and that’s how I cope.
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So just after 2 months in and really feeling it today. I don’t know if it’s reassuring or terrifying that you guys are so far ahead of me in this journey and feeling the same thing. I miss her so much and it just feels impossible that she isn’t coming back.
@TeeCee I’m also a visual thinker so the way you describe how you feel makes a lot of sense to me.
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Never ever did I think I would be able to cope again, It took a long time to accept being alone in the house, and 8 months to go and sit in the living room but I now do. I never stop talking to my Pam and convince myself little things happening around me are really her. If a robin appears in the garden I call to it by her pet name. If I unexpectedly need to go back into the house and I find a light on I know who sent me back. Its little nuggets like that which remind me that I am not alone and someone special is keeping their eye on me.
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It’s moments like driving on your own with an empty passenger seat that it hits hard that she’s gone.
I look at her pictures and can’t accept that she won’t be walking up the path to the house. Looking out of the garden window she appears looking through at me.
The memory is so strong that on one hand I know she’s gone but the other part of me doesn’t accept it. So many years together makes the grove in the brain very deep.
Even my dreams are about her and losing her.
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Hi @Dutchman you sound very much like me. I find myself doing and imagining similar things. I know my husband isn’t coming back but still think he will walk through the back door asking for a brew. Life is so unfair. I don’t like living on my own either. Take care.
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Dutchman
2m
What’s wrong with me! I can’t help it - I pick up the album where I’ve collected all the photos of Bridget when normal and with dementia and when she was content in the care home and it’s upsets me so much but I can’t help but look.
It’s like a drug that I know will upset me but I still do it. It’s like there a very thin veil that separates me from her. If only I could get behind it she’d be real again. This grief really messes with your mind.
I miss her then I’m fairly ok then I’m not and I’m a mess of tears again. It’s not fair is it.
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Just looked at some photos there. Had to stop. Every time I look at a photo of her the feeling of longing for her is overwhelming.
What a beautiful woman she was, I was so so lucky. I even miss her telling me off, she was definitely the boss, her infectious smile and just to hear that laugh again I would do anything for.
This grief is bloody murder.
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I post on here and keep going round in circles. I guess that’s the nature of grieving.
I beat myself up thinking I could’ve done more for Bridget when she was at home. She became confused and frightened and I didn’t know how to manage especially when she refused to recognise me as her husband. I retreated into self protection mode and couldn’t give the understanding and compassion she probably wanted.
In the care home she repeatedly begged me to take her out and, if it hadn’t been for the imposed isolation of those Covid years, it would’ve been worse going inside and her pulling me towards the door.
I hurt because of her hurting. I cry because I can’t go see her now and, even though she couldn’t have understood, I could say sorry.
Do you think the guilt ever goes away? I’m not so sure. I just want to be at peace with all of this and come to some sort of acceptance that I can live with.
Peter
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Peter I don’t think guilt is the right word its more a case of what would I have done differently if I could do it again. As I have said before life isn’t a script and we do what is right at the time. The decisions you made at the time would have been right for the situation. If you had lived a pristine life and done everything that you wish you would have done you would still have been grieving now so try to concentrate on the good things you had and pat yourself on the back and say I did my best we were both happy we lived a married live as well as retaining our own identities we were together a long time and it was a happy time, but remember we all have fall out’s even in a happy marriage so don’t beat yourself up, your relationship with your wife allowed you both to learn from adversities and cope with problems together, like me you are now alone so say to yourself when you are in a sad place, what would Bridget have done? Involve her in your thought process remember she is not here physically but she will always be with you in your head and in your heart you must realize the only thing you can change is your thought process and ability to cope .
Trevor
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One of my close friends wife is in hospital with heart failure and I am afraid the prognosis is not good. I think we all know what he is going through when your wife is clinging onto life. I am afraid I am at a time in my life when death seems to surround us all. And in turn you grieve for that person and the wife that you have lost. I will be there for him just as he has been for me.
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Thank you for your kind reply. Trying to distract myself with spring cleaning 
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Hello @TeeCee
Thank you for those comments. I always think I could’ve done better even though I know that there’s no holding dementia back and I coped daily and sometimes hourly.
I miss her company, of course I do, but what upsets me more that anything is how she suffered with dementia and the struggle she had with her deterioration. The photos of her in her care home show her confused with a heartbreaking look on her face. There was no way of knowing what she thought as she’d lost language by that point. This was a teacher who talked for a living.
It’s pitiful, it really is, how someone is destroyed like this. And I was helpless. And loving someone and seeing them like this till she died last September is terrible and terrifying.
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I’ve been thinking that although we join here and exchange experiences we really have to do the grieving on our own. There are many similarities with grief…. The longing, loneliness, guilt, what ifs and if only, but in the quiet of the home alone we just long for the unique intimacy of what we had together.
It’s the special expressions and things Bridget did, small things that made up the whole. And trusting each other and being easy together after a long time. That’s what I miss.
Having read your posts and responded to some of them I can see a marked difference in this particular one. What I am reading is a message from someone who is thoughtful but realistic. Dutchman we can’t undo what’s happened but over time we find a kind of acceptance, it doesn’t make it any easier but in our heads the dissaray that was there we start to sort, understand and to an extent deal with. Like me you will have bad days but when they come along go with it, it may last an hour a day or longer but you will know when it starts to subside as your mood will change with it. Hang in there my friend your doing great.
Trevor
On the surface of it, the saying, “Grief is the price of love” sounds wonderful. But when you are so deep in this pain it’s easy to interpret that saying as “grief is the punishment for love”. I hear you @Dutchman. To have your person, who you loved, and who loved you, taken from you and to be left with that void, that loneliness feels unbearable at times.
I don’t know what else to say to you other than, I’m in the same place, too. As are many others here. And all I can do is look to those further ahead in this journey as an indication of how survivable this is.
Trouble with me is that I lurch from just about ok to total sadness. It’s difficult isn’t it @steenbras that which we miss them so much and we know that we have to get through each day with the chance that something, however small, will upset us again.
Sure, we can look to the future in the hope that the heartache will get less, but we do it on our own. I try not to but I find I need to look at her photos, the funeral booklet with the poems and her smiling when she was well. To avoid doing this feels like I’m abandoning her.
Some say why do you torture yourself like this but for me it’s all about remaining connected as best I can. That why I go to her grave and sit there as it’s the closest I can get her.
You’re not torturing yourself. You’re doing what you need to do. I do the same. It hurts but when it hurts she feels closer. I don’t want to forget her or how I felt about her.
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It’s interesting what you say @steenbras as I look forward to putting aside a time when I can look at photos, sit quietly and remember her and
be as upset as this all makes me. I need the upset
It’s like that this will bring me closer to her in some way that i let the grief and heartbreak come in. Why would i want the hurt? Exactly what you say, that the hurt is one way of getting closer. And also, it confirms in my mind that here was a woman who I loved and miss so much
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It’s a sad fact that the way we are are with the heartbreak, grief in all its ways, the sudden tears and longing, are all because we loved someone so much that we want them back to make our lives whole again.
I feel very much that why wouldn’t I feel so wretched some times? After all, I’ve lost my wife who was my love and companion, I’ve been left on my own, I’m getting over chemotherapy, the days are empty and quiet, and I could go on.
I just want to ask that we recognise that what we’ve gone through and still go through is alien to many couples. We are going through the awfulness of bereavement and it’s normal that we feel so bad. I felt my life was over and what was the point!
So every day is a struggle but it’s obvious why. It can’t be otherwise and for me it helps to know that I’m living inside abnormal circumstances.
