I am finding it difficult to get through the days. I have superior friends and family and although am very lonely can’t face seeing people
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Hello Caro, I’m sorry that you find yourself here but a warm welcome to our community.
Your loss is still very recent so it’s natural you’re finding things difficult. Whether or not you see people following bereavement is a completely personal thing and everyone reacts differently, so don’t feel it’s right or wrong, just do things at your own pace.
There are many people using this community who are in your situation and you might find it helpful to read their stories and chat to them. This might help with your feelings of loneliness without having to actually see people! This thread for example, might be a good one for you to get involved with https://support.sueryder.org/community/coping-death-loved-one/help-so-lonely
I’m sure you’ll find lots of comfort and support here.
best wishes
Nancy
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hi Caro, it’s the hardest thing ever when your husband dies. Nothing prepares you for this. I don’t have any solutions because I’m struggling right now myself. I’m a year down the road now and it’s still as hard as ever, but one thing that I have done is take the help that is offered to me. It’s really important I think, to keep connected with others. Your family also are grieving and if you don’t connect with them, then you are shutting them out too and it makes it harder for them. They are grieving too and they need you and you do need them. Your grief is locked inside and you need to release it. When my husband first died, I wanted to die too and still do sometimes. My son and daughter-in-law made an appointment with my GP, came with me and explained to him what had happened to me, because I couldn’t. My GP has been an immense help to me. Also you can ring Cruise, if you don’t want to yet talk to your family. This is their national telephone number - 0808 808 1677. Their website is here - http://www.cruse.org.uk/bereavement-services/get-help
There have been times when in desperation I have rang the Samaritans. They don’t give any advice, they just listen but sometimes it helps just to talk and break the silence that is living inside you. Also there is here. I’ve found it helps just to know that other people feel the same way and also that some people have got passed where you and I are now, even though they never thought they would. Please reach out for some help. You’ve started by coming here. you need to talk, to share. It’s such a shocking and terrible thing to happen to anyone.
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Hi Caro I am so sorry for your loss! My husband, Phil, died on the 19th of January this year and to say I am inconsolable is an understatement. I do not want to see friends although they have been saying if I need anything they are there but I just cannot do it.
My son, his wife and my daughter and her husband and the grandkids have been trying to help me. I have taken some of the help because as the comment before said they are grieving as well so I am taking up there offers of help. My daughter has been very strong and she says her dad is telling her to make sure she is looking after me.
As has been said before, although it might be too early for you because it certainly is for me, take every avenue you can think of to try and get some little comfort. I have been online looking about grieving and anything to do with losing a husband on my own with no-one around me.
Everyone grieves in their own way and there is no easy answer. I cant look at photos of my husband or watch any television programmes we used to watch or even touch his clothes because it is too upsetting. I even looked in the freezer and he had sorted out all the meat in different bags for meals and that set me off crying again.
Cry when you want to. In fact do anything that gets you through the day. I read somewhere that what this person did was take one minute, one hour, one day at a time. Do not think about tomorrow just get through the day. If you want to scream and shout do it. If you want to sit on the couch and cry do it. Do whatever you can to get you through the day.
People keep on saying it will get easier but I dont want it to get easier. I want my hubbie back and now. I will love my hubbie always and hope that he will be waiting for me when I pass and I have to say some days I have screamed to be with him because at the moment thats all I want.
My thoughts are with you like they are for anyone bereaved. Losing my hubbie has thrown me into an abyss I dont know whether I can come out of.
xx
Dear Colleen,
Our husbands died within days of each other so I know exactly how you are feeling. A void in the core of ones being. My heart goes out to you. Like you I am trying just to keep going but I do very much want to feel better. I am so self absorbed at the moment that I am no good as mother or grandmother. My children are brilliant and very supportive but no one can really help I am just trying to take tiny steps. I don’t believe in an afterlife so will slowly have to come to terms with the finality of his death. Caro. Xx
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Dear Colleen, I can identify with everything that you say. It is like falling into an abyss and it seems impossible to climb out of. It’s like a horrible dream that’s become real and everything hurts. At first I couldn’t watch tv at all, not even sit in the living room where we shared our evenings, until my son made me sit down there and eat a meal he’d made me. I couldn’t cook a meal - and still can’t cook a proper meal, a year later, because that’s the last thing I was doing for my husband, the teatime that he died. It took me nearly a year before I could bring myself to empty the freezer. We’d just been shopping that last weekend and though he’d put most of the freezer stuff away, I’d separated some things into smaller bags, so that there were portions for just the two of us. No one could imagine just how upsetting opening a freezer could be, could they.
Everything hurts and no one truly knows what it’s like unless it happens to them. It’s not like losing someone else close to you. Losing your other half is just that - like losing part of yourself - like most of yourself. I’ve not found anything easier, though people say that it does get that way. I do know that counselling helped me and talking to my GP, and taking advice from other people because I was in such a dream at first, I know that my thinking wasn’t very rational. I’ve allowed other people to do things for me, that normally I would have said no to. There were too many things to sort out and I couldn’t do them on my own.
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Hello JME
I’m so sorry to read about your distress. Everything you say is just so true. I couldn’t at one point tolerate theme tunes from my Husbands much loved soaps. As for the freezer, I cried when I opened it one day as I could vividly recall where we were shopping for most of the items and when. I have become withdrawn I don’t relate with people properly, even family. I truly empathise with you.
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Caro, I am so sorry to read of your devastating loss. I remember nothing felt right, like walking around dazed in a foreign land. A complete alien existence. Some people like being looked after and some prefer solitude but either way make sure you do things your way on your terms. It’s easy to get swept along with decisions in the midst of shock and grief and then wish things had been done differently, keep care of yourself.
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Hi Caro
Yes that’s what it is tiny steps. We all grieve in different ways so no-one can be pidgeon holed.
I believe there are spirits in the afterlife as I am very spiritual and I can feel Phil around me all the time and there have been too many coincidences for my family not to believe but, again, we are all different and have to get through it in our own way.
My thoughts are with you and your family xx
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HI JME
What you have said totally hits the nail on the head! I asked my son today to take anything he wanted out of the freezer because I wouldnt be using it. HIs clothes will stay where they are for however long it takes. At first I was thinking I would bag them up and then leave it until I could go through them but since reading different peoples views and now yours I am going to leave them were they are because its up to me now what I do.
I can hear him in my ear making remarks when I’ve done things (or not) as the case maybe. I will never ever get over his loss and when friends say be strong I’m like what how can I be strong I have lost a part of me which just wont be fixed by being strong but I was probably the same with friends who had lost their soul mates saying he or she will be around you! How wrong was I! No-one needs to hear that they want their life partner back and now. Countless times I have asked to be with him because it was always me and him, him and me. Everyone said that when we werent together for whatever reason they always asked where the other was because we were always together and they werent use to see one without the other which is good but it makes me feel even more lonely but lonely is how I want to be at the minute. Everything is conflicting and you know you are a completely different person to the one you were before.
Sometimes I do think it is hell on earth.
I feel for you I really do. I think were both singing from the same hymn sheet even though, at the moment, I cannot believe in God.
xx
Dear Tina,
It is under a month since my husband died and already I feel the pull of normal life. I am in a dilemma as I dont want to behave as though things haven’t changed but I also don’t want to be totally self absorbed. What I really want is to become a recluse while at the same time retaining all the love and support I am being offered. How do you manage? I do see that unless you are going through this terrible grief it must be impossible to reLly understand. How long have you been a widow? Caro xx
Hello Caro
How are you feeling today? My Husband passed away in early October from a heart matter. I have not been out alone since it happened and I am very much self absorbed. This is not a good situation I know. I am not managing at all, even now. I have declined medication that may make me feel better but anti-depressants scare me so I am trying to survive this without. Please don’t try to add the burden of wondering which approach you need to be taking as your emotions will tell you this as you go along. Sometimes you may want people around you but other times maybe you might want solitude. You may feel the pull of normality one day as you say, but then the next be overwhelmed by despair. Some days it may be all you can do just to get by. This is just the worse thing to endure isn’t it and I really wish I could be more positive for you. If there are people there to help you and you feel ok with this please take advantage as further down the line it’s human nature that there offer may not be as frequent. Please feel free to private message at anytime if you would like to. I hope you manage a reasonably peaceful day. Kindest regards. Tina.
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Dear Tina,
Thank you for your long message. I was feeling really bad when I wrote it. Reading about your situation made me realise that we are all going through the same rollercoaster of desolation. Regarding anti depressants, I have had them now and again and the new type i.e. Sertraline or Prozac really helped me without numbing my emotions. In fact I am on a low dosage of sertraline and am considering asking the doctor tomorrow to give me a slightly stronger dose as my husband’s death has completely knocked me down
I have a lovely whippet who is a great comfort as he expects nothing from me and is quite affectionate.
I don’t know if this is a private reply or not.
Keep on keeping on
Caroline x
Hello Caro
I have an unopened box of Sertraline that I was given at a previous appointment, I think really I would benefit from a ‘talking’ therapy as I continue to replay events on a daily basis.
Good you have your Whippet, I am staying with family and we have a German Shepherd. Take care Tina.
Hi,My husband just been sent home from Hospital with terminal cancer in the Brain.I don’t think he long left and Iam finding it so hard.I have friends an family but don’t think they realise the stress I am going through .Its so hard when people say you are so strong to not scream at them Im not.I dread the day he dies and can imagine myself crying all day and night.I also cant wait to get in the house and shut the door away from everyone.
Will send you a hug and hope tomorrow better for you Sue
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I’m sorry I really relate.