@Mike75 people say keep busy like you seem to have but youâve also got to take time for yourself to grieve, itâs still not that long since sheâs gone and we are all on a very long road ahead of us. Take it day by day & take that time out to grieve.
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Hi Jane, sorry your son does not understand fully but his relationship with his father was different. Luckily my son is very supportive as is his wife but I worry they are not fully expressing their grief to protect me. He was close to his mother so I know he has pain. The grief after the loss of a partner of 50 years is indescribable though. I worry I wonât cope with the intensity of it.
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Hi @Mike75
So sorry you have experienced such a difficult loss. I donât think, as many of us have experienced, that many people understand unless that have lost the love of their life.
It is all so recent for you and many changes. A new grandchild will be a mixture of emotions Iâm sure. On the one hand knowing that your wife is missing this and grandson missing having a loving grandmother, but the blessing of a new life to treasure will I hope still bring some light into your world.
I hope you find some support here. There are many kind people who care and can empathise.
Sending you love. xxx
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Hi Emz. It seems like yesterday or forever that my beautiful wife died holding my hand as I kissed her goodbye. Every day is equally awful but I have a timetable which has kept me focussed in between the dark moments. I hope my new grandson will bring some light back but there is so much sadness that she is not here to share it.
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Thank you Karen. I have a couple of friends who are also bereaved and they have been exceptional in helping me. I only wish I had been as supportive to them but like most I did not realise the utter intensity of this grief. My wife did though and they have told me they are simply repaying the support she gave them at the time and by remembering their partnerâs significant dates since. As you say you usually only know this when you experience it yourself.
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@Mike75
Your wife sounds like an exceptional woman. 
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Thanks Karen. I put together a photo show of her life for after the funeral and most of the people in the early photos were still our friends and at the wake. If you were her friend it was for life and through thick and thin. She was not perfect but neither was I and our love was unconditional so that never mattered. We were together for 50 years. The grief is beyond words.
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Hi Mike, like you we were together fifty years. Mere children when we got together (19). The gaping hole now left since my husband has died is huge. I am beyond despair. Itâs not getting any easier, I wish it was.
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So sad to lose such loved ones. @Loobyloo2 .
Hugs Xxx
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@Mike75 That sounds lovely. We put up a photo display of Richard too showing so many aspects of his character. The hard working farmer, brilliant driving instructor, family man and fun loving friend.
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Hi Loobyloo, the pain has got worse for me too. I fully understand what you say. At first I took comfort from looking at our collection of photos. Now I canât do it without crying uncontrollably. I sense you are in the same dark place. My friends who are bereaved say they cannot say this will get better, only different as different things happen in your life and that grief cannot be erased. Those who have not been bereaved just try to get you to continue as though it will go away. I know who I believe.
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Hi Karen Your Richard sounds like a good person. People like that are easy to love but create such a massive crater in our hearts when we lose them.
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@Flower_garden
You message has brought a rare smile to my face because my story is quite similar. My husband passed away in September 2022 after only four days in hospital (he had been diagnosed in June 2021 with incurable lung cancer), he never looked or seemed ill even after July 2022 when he was told he had âmonths â. He seemed just the same and was even still riding his motorbike two weeks before he died. I have struggled to deal with what happened when he went in to hospital and the terrible fact I wasnât with him at the end but like your husband Iâm sure Barry would have said âwell I didnât see that comingâ. Whenever he was asked how he was feeling he just said âfineâ and I used to joke that on his headstone I would put âHe said he was fine âŚâŚ but he was wrong â it used to make him laugh!!! But since the circumstances around his death I rarely smile. Plus I am still awaiting the post mortem results and it was four months on Monday since he passed away (we were at least able to have his funeral at the end of October). I feel as if I am in some weird limbo.
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My husband was digging his allotment 3 weeks before he died, heâd had an infection a few months before which landed him in hospital, he had treatment & came out again so when he had the same symptoms I thought infection again & heâd get treatment & come out again, but he caught E-coli in there & became weak, then we were told the cancer had spread & 2-4 months left, I thought that meant minimum 2 months so arranged to take him home but he passed away 5 days later a few hours before he was due to come home, when I got the call from the hospital at 2am to go there as he had deteriorated, he had passed away by the time I got there, I think he had passed away when they rung me, looking back I think when they told him he had limited time left he gave up, when I questioned why it was 5 days when theyâd said months they said they never know the exact time left & medics donât know as much as we think they do, Cancer is still a killer no matter all the adverts saying it isnât, even though the end was shocking for me Iâm glad he died before it got really bad, I feel I was such an innocent before all of this, I think the weird limbo is like Shock, I felt like Iâd become an alien & didnât know the world anymore, the walls if the house felt like they were closing In, I wish you well on your journey & feel reassured you will heal as time goes past, it has for me.
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A few weeks before my husband died a palliative nurse told us that for all they know about cancer and cancer treatments there is far more that they still donât know. His treatment never really had any benefit and I went through a time of feeling very jealous of those for whom treatment did work. Selfish of me I know but âhumanâ ! I hope one day to be able to live peacefully with what happened 
. And I know that as much as it hurts me it was better for him as he passed away without too much pain and he was still his joking, cheerful self when I left him at 5.00pm.
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Same as me, my husband had Chemo & suffered with awful side effects only to be told it had made no difference, I still donât understand why Chemo works for sone people and not others, I have a friends husband who is fighting Cancer, he is having Chemo & its working & they think theyâll be able to cure him, Im happy for them but I walked away thinking why is the treatment working for him but not my husband? Why is he able to be cured but not my husband? Why is my friend able to keep her husband? I then felt bad for having these feelings!
For the first year all the feelings were there 24/7, I couldnât think of anything else, i was consumed with grief, shock & disbelief & so scared for the future, now these feelings arenât at the front of my mind a majority of the time, i do feel peace now but itâs taken me time to feel like this & ive had to make an effort to get there.
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My wife had two chemo and two radio therapy treatments for lymphoma over the last 10 years. In 2019 she was told she was in remission. Then came Covid. She had 5 jabs because she was vulnerable and we took lots of precautions. When she caught Covid she was told the jabs had created no antibodies as the cancer treatment had effectively degraded her immune system. She had no resistance and died. We were living with a time bomb but never knew.
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That is so cruel!!! My heart goes out to you. We often felt bitter that we had been so careful during Covid and then just as it ended he was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer (asbestos caused). We felt we had lost a year for nothing. But for you it must have felt so much worse knowing that the treatment meant to help her actually left her more vulnerable.
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Jan that was terrible. But I look on it as the treatment gave us 10 good years together. The hardship of lockdown gave us that time together as I could have lost her earlier. I would count no time we spent together as wasted now we have none. I would give anything for just another minute together.
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@Flower_garden. I know exactly how you feel. My husband died very suddenly and unexpectedly in November last year. It was his heart. I did CPR and 3 ambulance crews worked on him for about an hour but they couldnât get him back. He was only 62. I found myself going through an angry bitter stage of âhow come other people manage to be brought back and not MY husband?â âHow come other people get a second chance after heart failure but not MY husbandâ he deserved another chance. He still had so much to give. I am, however, very glad that my husband didnât suffer at all. Iâm so sorry for your losses and the trauma you had to suffer. Big cuddle to you all xx. Jean.
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