My partner and soulmate passed away on April 1st, like everyone else I’ve experienced feelings of anger, depression, extreme loneliness and had thoughts of ending it all. My life without her is empty. Perhaps the worst feeling of all is guilt, that I could have done more to prevent her death. In my heart I know I did everything in my power to save her and her family tell me the same, but it doesn’t make the feelings go away. When my sweetheart of more than twenty years passed at the exact second her heartbeat stopped on the telemetry I felt a jolt go up my arm, like part of her was joining me, it was that feeling and subsequent signs which have kept me going.
I firmly believe when we truly love someone they never leave us. Our lives have been changed by them, and in my case she made me a better person, more loving, caring and respectful of others. So even though her physical presence has gone, she hasn’t, she remains as a part of me.
Hi Carl. I’m so sorry about your loss. I too lost my wife last November and I’m still coping, just! All the thoughts you are having are common to the vast majority of us and are normal in this process called grief. What I say may not, at this moment, sink in. You are too raw to have feelings other that what you describe.
My wife did the same for me. She sure made me a better person. Time is irrelevant. The time grief takes is the time it takes. No limits or set rules.
I always find some consolation in asking ‘what would she have wanted for me’? and the answer comes back, ‘get on with life and don’t mourn for me. I’m alright’.
I absolutely agree with you. Love will conquer all, and our loved ones are with us always.
This site has proved invaluable to me. When I came on here well wishing friends told me it was a bad move. WRONG! It’s the best move I could have made. There is companionship here that can’t be got from anyone who has not been there.
It’s very early days for you so take it easy. I have to pace myself. Don’t force myself but at least I make an effort when I want to. Moving slowly forward and at your own pace helps. None of us will ever forget, but peace can be found even in the darkest places.
You may not believe this at the moment, but it does ease, just a little as time passes. Just a little but a little can be a lot in grief. Take care.
In three weeks it will be a year since my wife died. My mother died a few months before, and my aunt a few months after and then my cousin earlier this year. The three women each, in their way, helped to shape the person I’ve become. I accept I will grieve for ever and particularly for my wife. We were an item for 49 years and married for 44. I anxious to hang on to as much as possible of the memory of my wife as possible. We have four children and an eighth grandchild is due in October. I see my wife’s smile in each of them and that is a comfort. We moved into this house 43 years ago, going from two to six and then down to just the one. Carolyn’s presence is reflected throughout the house as she was the one that invested the time and effort into making it a home. I’ve reached a point where I can smile at memories now and that keeps her close to me.
It’s taken nearly a year but I think I’ve reached a kind of acceptance of some things and I’m determined to live on with my grief and keeping her memory intact.
I know that this situation can’t be replicated for everyone and it hasn’t just happened by chance as I have worked hard to build a different life.
Hi Carl sorry to hear of your partners passing,my wife Jane passed away last November we had been and still are married for 43 years I’m sure all the people on this site feel as you do I know I do .
When Jane was cremated I wanted her ashes placed in the churchyard where she was born not at the crematorium a distance of 20 miles from home ,I have had a headstone/tablet placed on her ashes and try to take flowers every 8-10 days,the funny part of it all is I can feel her more at home here than when I go to the churchyard,just as if she’s sitting here at the dinning table or standing in the kitchen sitting in the garden.
I do not know if you believe or not but I have had 3 visitations from Jane since November not just imagination definitely not we always talked about comunicating after death and if you love someone enough the light will shine through.
Yes I miss her so much it hurts and will do till I see her again but till then if I can feel her around me it makes me feel glad,happy sometimes sad .
Hope you find peace my friend in this sickness called grief MM69
I do believe you on the visitations, although I have seen signs rather than anything else. My partner was an American and I’m English, we lived in the USA until shortly after her passing when I returned to the UK. I’d asked her to scatter my ashes in a specific place in England when I died, she joked that it would be me scattering hers in the same spot in England we both loved. At the time I had no inkling her words would be prophetic. I had a small tube of ashes to scatter, her children kept the rest in the box from the crematorium.
In the past when we were still having a transAtlantic relationship I was due to visit her for Christmas, on the 9th December, the day before I was due to fly out my Christmas cactus bloomed, she said it was probably a sign.
On the 2nd April this year, the day after she passed her Christmas cactus in the kitchen was in flower. A week later her orchids which I’d told her would never come back after being flowerless for a couple of years were blooming. Another night when I was outside talking to her telling her I believed she was still with me as part of me I asked her to show me a sign to prove my belief, at that moment I glanced up and saw a shooting star.
My partner was a nature lover, she loved astronomy and the stars, I don’t believe in coincidence, what I saw were signs from a woman I loved and still love more than anything in the world. I talk to her every day and ask for her advice when I’m struggling.
Hi again Carl funny you should say about Christmas cactus and orchid I have the same on our kitchen window sill the cactus had never bloomed since Jane bought it 4-5 years ago this year it started in May and still throws the occasional flower even now ,the orchid Jane bought last year before she passed away it flowered once and I thought it would bloom again on the same stem healthy leaves but nothing until this past week when a new shoot appeared I have looked after them as Jane would have done so???.
Mind you we have lived in this house 11 years and the garden as never bloomed so well as it as this year perhaps Janes presence.
Funny how coincidence strikes hope yours keeps blooming as I do mine shows they are both still with us.
Regards MM69
Carl…
… my Richard too passed away suddenly at home on the 11th April, we too had been a couple for 20 years only meeting in our later life years, I am now 68, my Richard had just turned 74 at the time of his unexpected death…
Oh how i so want this to be true, well, yes, i do believe this to be true…" they stay with us, they never leave us…"
Jackie…
Death ends a life but the love and relationship continues. A simple but profound truth that makes the future possible. Good luck.
In reply to all on this thread writing about our loved ones still being with us. My dear husband and soulmate died 16 months ago after 59 years of marriage. Like all on this site, I have been through the emotions of grief over the past months, reading and writing on the various stages of grief experienced. Since my husband passed I have tried to make a ‘new’ life for myself, though it is not easy! I find that when I go out, whether just to shops, or socially where I may meet groups of other people, upon returning to my home, I am so relieved and glad to be back where I feel the love and presence of my beloved husband. I still drive the car in which we had many happy journeys together, and sometimes feel that he is with me! I can take comfort and feel his presence when I sit reading in our garden, where we once sat together. We had two children, and I now have five grandsons who are fine young men, in whom I can see, with pleasure, the various likenesses and traits where they take after Alan, their grandfather.
This site is the only place that I know, where we can say how we feel, and understand others in the same situation. I do not know how long people continue to write here, but it can be helpful to express our thoughts and feelings, and find that one is not alone. With thanks, and my good wishes to all coping with the difficulties of grief. You will find a way through. Deidre
Staying on this subject…through the recommendation of an American Christian site i post on, an elder member recommended a book she is reading ( she not long ago lost her daughter ) which i too purchased and have now received yesterday…This book is called…
Touching Heaven ( A Cardiologist’s Encounters with Death and Living Proof of an Afterlife…) the author is Dr Chauncey Crandall…
Like many of our members, I so am wanting answers…
Jackie…
Thanks for that touching post Deirdre, I’m not sure now if my tears are of sadness or happiness for you.
When a sad movie was on TV Rhonda would glance at me and say “you aren’t crying are you?”
I’d look away and deny it, but she knew what a big sentimental softie I really am, it was always hidden from everyone else.
I’m an ocean away from the home we shared together but she came with me. In life she had communicated with me across the Atlantic without mechanical aids, death isn’t going to stop her.
I have so many instances of the unbreakable bond between us during the 22 years we knew each other and the 21 we spent together that I’ve been typing them up for a book. The story doesn’t end when her soul left its shell, her energy lives on in me.
Thank you for confirming that with your own experiences.
Take care, Carl.
Thank you Carl for your kind reply. Be happy for me with my feelings and memories. I often think of the song from the musical ‘The King and I’ with the line - “I had a love of my own”! All the best with your book. Diedre