My husband passed last April, i thought i was coping ok, but that’s what people want to hear, that you’re ok, back to ‘normal’ but nothing will be normal again. Normal was sharing everything, meals, TV programs, stories, and everything mattered because he was always there. Now i’m being asked if i’m going on holiday, any plans?, but i find it difficult to even think about going anywhere on my own, why would i want to, and i simply can’t. Family? yes i have siblings but they have their own lives and don’t want to know, as i said, im supposed to be back to normal now.
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Hello Nessie
I am afraid that I haven’t any answers … just wanted to tell you that most of us feel or have felt as you do. All we can do is try to find /accept a different “normality” because the one we used to know has gone. It is a hard and unknown path but
somehow we keep going. Other people’s expectations are often unhelpful…modern society does not promote healing… everyone is just so busy trying to keep themselves afloat!!
It is still quite early days for you and you need to try to be kind to yourself…don’t do anything you don’t want to but equally try to be open to those things which may lift your spirits.
I am sorry that this is not a very positive response but i just wanted to let you know that i understand exactly how you feel…as will many others. Please keep posting and reading. Take care x.
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I’m so sorry about your loss. It’s so hard, isn’t it, to make yourself a new life, which is what is thrust upon us, when you didn’t want it, didn’t ask for it and don’t know quite how to do it. The shock of loss is so profound that it’s hard for anyone who hasn’t been through it to truly understand. And then there’s the problem for other people of how to talk to us who’ve been bereaved - most people don’t know how to do it.
My husband died unexpectedly just over a year ago and I’ve been told that I’m coping well, when there are so many, many days when I want to crawl away, curl up and drift away. And I want to talk about him but when I meet old friends it’s all forward-looking - where are you going on holiday etc etc - just as you say. It’s not that I’m not grateful for friends but I want to say don’t you miss him too?
Keep posting, keep reading, you’ll at least find many, many people here who feel as you do, who express your own feelings, and there’s a comfort in that. The rest of the time, it’s trusting to time to very gradually enable us to live with our loss.
Wishing you all the best. x
I just read this in an article and it seems quite accurate and consoling
You don’t forget the person who’s gone; you can never do that, and you should not worry that you’re going to. But you fold them, and their loss, into the new person you become; and maybe that, in the end, is the greatest tribute any of us can make to anyone who has died.”
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How true that is, although we’ve probably been ’ moulded ’ by them, willingly, over many years. Thanks for sharing.
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Yeah I was often told that I was so strong and dealing with it all so well. Even by my own family. People just don’t seem to understand the whole putting a face on it. I have many times asked people to stop saying that to me as it isn’t true. Maybe it’s just their way of dealing with me but it definitely is in no way helpful. Best wishes to you all on this terrible journey that none of us asked for. x
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