Desperately needed to talk as had a really bad day again with panic attacks and can’t cope after suddenly losing Rob, the love of my life two weeks before Christmas, so rang my daughter and had a cry and she told me she’s sorry to sound harsh but I need to stop wallowing in my grief and to take up a new hobby 
I have hobbies and used to make things with Rob so can’t even look at them at the moment.
Feel even worse now 
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Sorry to hear of your loss. My lovely husband Alan died very suddenly in September 2021. It still seems recent and very surreal that he’s gone. For weeks after Alan died I didn’t feel like doing much at all. I’m starting to try and pick myself up now as I need to find myself a p/t job. My husband died at the sports centre where I had worked for 26 years. My family didn’t think it a good idea for me to go back. December is no time at all and grief has no timeline. My coping mechanism is to try and keep busy. My difficult time is the evening when everybody has gone home and it’s just me and the dog!
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Oh no, that’s ridiculously harsh after such a short time Sal. It’s heartbreaking to lose your soul mate. You aren’t wallowing in your grief, you are newly grieving as so many of us are. We understand how hard it is, bless you. It’s something we’ll never get over, we MAY just learn to live with it in time.
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I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I have lost half of me, my rock, soul mate, love and best friend and the pain is awful. I don’t think anyone understands unless they have experienced the loss of their other half. x
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I’m so sorry your daughter was so harsh with you. I have lost my parents and that is hard to deal with but losing your partner is so much worse. Nobody can understand properly until they have experienced it themselves.
Hope tomorrow is a better day x
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Sal3 hi, wallowing in your grief ?! After a few weeks, sorry I am still wallowing in mine 9 months on, and still receiving much support from others ,thank goodness. Rob obviously was not your daughters dad then or she might have some empathy. Sounds like she is young and has never experienced loss and so no chance of her getting what you are going through. Maybe Don’t upset yourself anymore by discussing it with her she can’t understand. Hope you have someone else you can speak to, friend or work colleague. Samaritans or CRUSE will listen and help to. Maybe counselling.
You have a lot to go through , grief is a minefield. Hope you get lots of support reading the posts on this site. I have found them so helpful. Be gentle with yourself, the death of a loved one is just so awful and takes as long as it takes to come to terms with.
Take care jss
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Sal they don’t understand my husband died 14month ago told by daughter-in-law pull yourself together lv annie x x
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Dear Sal3
I for one want and need our kids to move on and live their lives following their dads sudden and tragic death - I don’t need them also victims of the motorbike which took his life. But for myself, I will never get over his loss. I might learn to hide my grief from them a bit better, but the heartbreak will always be there. I am sorry that your daughter caused you upset but do not question your emotions.
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You are so right Sheila, it’s all about hiding the grief from others who just don’t get it.
My niece lost patience with me last week because I was honest with her.
The alternative is lying - so his death makes me an accomplished liar??
I cannot understand why my husband is not being missed more by family & friends, why do they never cry,maybe if they did I would comfort them & tell them my husband wouldn’t want to see them upset. How do they appear to have moved on so quickly or are they pretending too? He was a huge influence on so many people, a huge presence & big character, he was so loved.
Dear Maigret
One of my husband’s brothers appears to me at least to show no signs that he misses or even thinks of my husband/his brother. Our son told me that he is probably grieving but in his own way. Well if you take all the pics on Facebook and the stupid cards he has sent me and his even more insensitive comments then he has a very strange way of grieving. I honestly believe that he is probably living his life because he can - it just hurts that he never mentions my husband at all.
I am sorry about your niece. One of my nephews has been supportive but always ends the conversation advising me to ‘get counselling’ as if that will change everything. I think you are right we either have to suffer the wrath from those who don’t understand or lie more than we already do. Its so sad that these are the things we face when we thought our lives would be so different.
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Dear Sheila
Some folk (who don’t know what else to say, suggest or do) think that counselling is a magic bullet. Not for me. I tried for months, paid privately & she was a lovely, understanding young lady. But basically I paid to cry in her office for 90 mins every week.
I was told by family member last week that I am just being stubborn!!! Stubborn is the only thing I haven’t experienced- felt everything else.
Good if counselling works for some folk, I wouldn’t put anyone off from trying but wasn’t for me. The one I could spill my guts to isn’t here, the only one who really loved & cared for me.
And had my back, through good times and bad.
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Dear Maigret
I agree. The one person who we could say anything to, get support and certainly loved us. Had a few bad days - to add to the million others - this week and really needed my husband to be here for me and to give me the love and support that I so desperately miss. Our son just keeps telling me that I am not the easiest person to speak to on occasions - probably all the occasions that I realise that I have lost the love of my life.
As you say don’t think that ‘stubborn’ is in the hell-hole of a tool-box called grief.
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Dear Sheila
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had more bad days. I’ve been in bed since last Friday, only getting up to eat & fill my water bottle. And throw out 6 vases of dead flowers, place looked like the Adams family home.
Would your son have said that about you before his dad died? Does he realise it changes us, often beyond recognition? I know I’ve changed, I was strong, funny, confident, capable- I’ve lost it all when I lost my man.
Lets agree to take stubborn out the hell-hole of a tool-box called grief & replace it with ‘shredded’
One of my forum friends here said that after 4 years he has found an inner peace (but knows the fragility of falling back). I wish I had that.
Take care x
M
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Maigret.
I understand when your friend says he has found an inner peace but is afraid of falling back.
It is 3 years and a half years for me now and on good days I feel that I have the strength to move on but only because on those days I can manage not to let my past life totally absorb my day. It only takes a few seconds of being off my guard though to feel the love and emotions I have tried to bury, and then I realise that whatever I have now is never going to match up to what I had, and the reality slams a door in my face again and again.
That is what it means when we hear that grief comes in waves and we never know when one is coming or how big it will be.
I don’t know if eventually our grief will become a stream that will forever trickle through our heart. I just know that when it comes it submerges us time and time again.
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Dear Maigret
I have no doubt that our son would not have made those comments if his dad/my husband was here. Like yourself I have changed beyond recognition and the former ‘me’ cannot return because it was moulded and formed over decades through the love of my husband. There really is no point in anyone telling me to dig deep because there has to be something there to find and my heart is scattered into a million pieces which cannot be repaired.
I am not having the grandson’s for a few days so have planned very much like yourself to take myself off to bed and just stay there. I don’t have any inclination to try and meet up with anyone as they all have their partners and cannot begin to comprehend the physical and emotional pain that I continue to suffer.
I took the eldest grandson back to his parents this afternoon after an overnight stay and on my return back to the bungalow decided to try and put some effort into making the house look half decent. I have my mother - my poor, 87 year old mother who should not be having to worry about me - coming for her Sunday dinner so thought I better make some attempt.
I agree stubborn has no place in the hell-hole whereas shredded describes how I feel everytime I wake and have to start another day without my husband. I wish I could even believe that I will find an inner peace but my husband’s death and the circumstances continue to haunt me still.
Will be thinking of you this weekend. xxx
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5.30am & still awake…
Wish I had the courage to say this out loud. Loud enough to be really heard. Clear enough to be understood.
Megan Devine, from the first page of "It’s OK that You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn’t Understand
Here’s what I most want you to know: this really is as bad as you think.
No matter what anyone else says, this sucks. What has happened cannot be made right. What is lost cannot be restored. There is no beauty here, inside this central fact.
Acknowledgement is everything.
You’re in pain. It can’t be made better.
The reality of grief is far different from what others see from the outside. There is pain in this world that you can’t be cheered out of.
You don’t need solutions. You don’t need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hand while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life.
Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
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Dear Maigret
Sorry been in bed most of the weekend eventually getting up to collect my mam for Sunday dinner.
Everything you write is true and no one understands because we are made to feel that we have to hide our true grief. I have certainly had at least two moments where in public I have sobbed and wailed with tear streaming wanting that someone to hold my hand and not to say that it can only get better because we know it cannot. But on these occasions people have continued with their business and I have had to drag myself to the car and wait until I can reasonably drive back home. I am not fixable but no one wants to hear this - and certainly not acknowledge it - so I continue to carry this grief alone, wanting the impossible.
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Dear Sheila
I hope your mum enjoyed her time spent with you today, I am sure she will have enjoyed being with you for dinner. Do you think she understands your pain?
I made a flimsy excuse to release myself from dinner with family today (readily accepted/not challenged) & stayed in bed all day. Even here the memories haunt me - on TV today a holiday prog in the country one of our last trip together overseas. We stood there on those same spots, took photos over those same rooftops, took that very same cable car to the mountain top and gazed at that same view. Just heartbreaking.
We are the only ones who can acknowledge and understand each other, until it happens to them the enormity of this horror just can’t be understood. I don’t want to be this way, my dear husband wouldn’t want this for me either.
Do I need someone to be firm with me & tell me to get my life in order or is this just too overwhelming to try to find another way of life. If I don’t know the answer how can anyone help?
Impossible indeed.
Hope you sleep well tonight, as well as you can, ready for groundhog day again just shortly.
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Sal my sister said the same they don’t know the pain we’re going through it’s hard a get days when I just want to hide from everybody lv annie x
Dear Maigret
My dad died 12 years ago (4 Feb was the anniversary) and they had been together 54 years - they always did everything together. I don’t think I appreciated the extent of her pain until I lost my husband. She likes to come round to the house but to be honest it is sometimes difficult because for the first hour she just lists off all those people who have died recently.
I understand about the adverts for holidays. I am also still on the mailing list for the local travel agent who keep sending me through brochures. I can’t bring myself to contact them and explain that my husband is dead. Years ago our daughter hung holiday pictures on our little bungalow wall. They show a couple so happy with life who thought they had years more to spend on holidays and adventures and now neither of us in that photo exist. I’m not capable nor have a desire to get my life in order. The only thing I know is that I somehow have to function for the benefit of others - kids and grandsons - but it is an uphill struggle everyday.
Do I recall right that you are expected back at work sometime in the future?