I have lost a lot of people in my life, two husbands, my parents, my sister, two cousins, a brother in law and my dearest friend. Some suddenly, some with cancer and one after suicide. In each case I managed to find something to feel guilty about. I wasn’t there, I didn’t realise, I should have noticed something was wrong. The list goes on.
I used a support network similar to this one after my first husband died. It doesn’t exist now but there were lots of posts about guilt. Often that there had been arguments about money, children or whatever and the surviving partner was feeling guilty. There was one widower who felt guilty because his wife found out he was looking at pornography. They talked it through and it was all in the past, but then she died suddenly. There were others that found things surfacing that they were not expecting. All of it resulted in guilt or anger piled on top of grief.
I was looking through Jeremy’s pockets trying to find a key to the shed. Remembering those posts made me nervous about finding something. Silly, we never spent a single night apart until he went into hospital, yet I still thought ‘what if I find a hotel bill, or a receipt for something strange’. Of course, I didn’t find anything unexpected, bits of string for tying up roses, the odd pound coin., etc. No bloody shed key, though.
I have to admit that I don’t really understand the pornography issue. He thought it was just a bit of fun, his wife was devastated though, believing she obviously wasn’t enough.
My self-inflicted torture is wondering what will happen when my turn comes, having loved two wonderful husbands.
Strange creatures aren’t we? As if grief isn’t more than enough to cope with.
Xx
