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Comment by morgan on April 19, 2016 at 5:37pm

John- yes, missing them.  Missing them so much that nothing else we do can possibly give us impetus to be alive.  And oh the sobbing,  I hear myself now and it is worse than any cattterwauling. I just have not found the tool in my toolbox to make this missing him stop. No one or nothing else will do.

Mel- I don't know if I can make it through either.  I am, because I breathe, but still as you said, it is taking a toll.  Why is there no solution to this specter of death? Why can't I see a way to help myself not have to break down in fits of extreme crying or just only be existing but not living.  Why did his death affect me like this?

I certainly don't know the answer to any of this which is why I come here.  It makes me feel as though what is happening to me is not so alien to others as well.  I wish us all some sort of peace.  

Comment by Mel Royer on April 19, 2016 at 2:48pm

John, that's been happening to me all day today, in fact all week. The worst stabbing pain I've felt in a long time. A week from Friday is my one year anniversary of her death and I don't know if I can make it through it. Perhaps, I'll pass myself on that day. The grief is taking it's toll on all of us. May God bless you and everyone here and grant us a modicum of comfort to weather these horrible days!   Mel

Comment by morgan on April 19, 2016 at 2:16am

Stewart, Boy you hit the nail on the head for me.  From the day my husband died and the first psychologist started trying to counsel me the only comment I repeated to her (and then successive others) was "give me one good reason".  No one has come up with anything more than platitudes like " well, we're all here to learn something"  or "your husband would want you to be happy".  Those aren't reasons for me because living life for me means sharing it with my husband.  No one else has the ability to reach me and make it worthwhile other than him.  All the other people who keep pushing me to survive are just temporary and only fit me in when they have the time.  I needed my husband.  Yes,  I needed him, 24/7.  He kept me focused, grounded and he always had time for me.  He was my sounding board and my advisor.  The kind of guy who would choose special occasion cards like he was buying me a diamond ring.  He shared his very essence with me and not only will I never meet anyone like him I don't want to.  I don't want another man to touch me the way he did.  It was a sacred bond we had.

 Nothing will ever come close to what I had with him so why am I continuing this farce, this charade of a life?  Because I think I have passed the point of taking it upon myself and so far my body hasn't given out but I am trying hard to make that happen.  I spend days now "doing" things but nothing has meaning.  Right now I am undertaking a project that will keep me occupied till the end of the year and hopefully be an investment that will give me some additional income.  At that point I'll see how much more meaningless my life is.  I wonder to myself how long I can put up with this.  I wonder if one day I will just say no more and be glad to end it.  I don't know if I can or will but I do know this is not living.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  I live in the past to the extent that the memory of my husband is so burned into my brain and how I used to be as his wife that I can't reconstruct a new me.  I've tried and I keep trying but I am getting very tired and less motivated as time goes on.

I dread having to climb into bed at night and I don't want to open my eyes in the morning knowing I have to face another day.  I have never been pessimistic just very pragmatic but anymore it just doesn't matter.  Nothing matters.  Just pushing around the mountain in the room.  Three years and three months in two more days of pushing the mountain.  Damn tired.  Big mountain.  Insurmountable.  

Comment by stewart p on April 19, 2016 at 12:06am

i think the hardest part for me each day is trying to find a reason for anything. From getting out of bed to finding something to do for the weekend.  I make myself get started each day but by the end of the day I find myself wondering what was any of it for.  Some days I wake up only to find myself looking forward to the end of the day before Ive even begun.  Its one thing to go through the motions its another thing to find a reason for any of it, that's the part I struggle with the most these days. Gone all day for work today, new opportunity but now by the time Im at home i cant help but feel it was all for nothing, it means so little with out my wife to look forward to seeing and sharing with. Its been a few years and I try to meet other people, havent really gone out on any dates, well a couple, but everyone I meet just feels like to me superficial. So many single people these days, most are divorced or never married, and all they talk about or seem to care about is how much they "love' life, their recent trip, how the work out every day or their new car, and I can barely stand to listen to the words coming out of their mouth and think to myself how little they know.  It sucks because its hard to meet anyone who seems to really appreciate what life is really about.  Thats the one thing I know from this is how much those little moments, each single one you share with somebody means, and its just so discouraging to meet other people who think life centers around their entertainment or stuff they own.  Like I said its so superficial for so many of them I cant stand it, so instead i spend so much time alone which gets a little lonely after a while but there doesnt seem to be much of an alternative.  I listen to others whove been down this path and hear many different ideas, the ones that seem to be getting along better than ones who arent say they just stick with it and eventually find meaning

Comment by Cydney Oliver on April 18, 2016 at 10:13pm

I am always amazed that I am not the only one that feels these feelings, has these thoughts, cries daily, languishes without him. It feels like I am in this bubble and no one understands how hard it is to get out of bed every day. It helps to know that I am not alone, yet i am.

Comment by Sheryl Kep on April 16, 2016 at 6:17pm

How much do i relate to all these comments.  i miss being special,  i miss being beautiful (he always told me) .  now im alone,  a fat ugly blob,  who seems to be unable to make frends,  or keep any of my old friends.  work is just a torture,  im expected to just continue...and its all meaningless.

I cant tell him about it.

Comment by morgan on April 15, 2016 at 2:41pm

Clearly, those of us who have lost the love of their life realize we no longer live in the same universe we used to enjoy. When I read about how we cannot seem to find ourselves in this new world we have been thrust into I cannot help but want to cry.  To cry for all the hurt in this new world where people like me cannot understand how we are supposed to negotiate life anymore.  

I am into this grief journey for three years three months and as I have progressed through time so much of what I felt at the very beginning, things like people not calling anymore, my inability to reach out leading to more isolation, living in an empty house, sleep and eating patterns disrupted, physical impairments and no one to help, the inability to comprehend the magnitude of death touching every part of our day…….all the while thinking I would work my way through it, all have remained as obstacles.  As much as what I am able to get through a day "doing" things, the feelings that I still have are slowly burying me.  

I believe when others see me they see me through a lens that filters out my need to scream out how much I miss my husband because for them they see me as getting out of bed and getting dressed, feeding myself more often, driving myself to get places………they see me as being able to participate in their universe.  And yes, I do participate in their universe but I don't live there.  My brain lives in a totally alternate place. My brain cannot turn off the history I had with the man who made living life worthwhile.  Now I have no history.  Just an aimless wandering with no one being important enough in my life to help translate my dreams and goals and future into reality.  

After 35 years of love I have no tools in my toolbox that fit the lock on my heart that was him.  I simply know that I care not to look or want someone else to connect with me.  The energy I had was driven by his life force.  He drove me to be the person I could be because I wanted his love, his acceptance of the real me.  I don't have that consistent loving energy beside me anymore and no matter how much time seems to pass I flash on his connection to my inner self and I end up crying and feeling lost all over again.  Again and again.  Better in the practical aspects of living but empty and gutted in my brain.  

How to end the daily, uninspired movements through time, each day, ending every evening, pointedly hating where I am?  I have no clue.  I've tried every tool I know of to fit the lock on my thoughts and I seem to be using a pipe wrench when I need a screwdriver.  I just don't have the right equipment to move beyond where thoughts of my life with him don't pervade my every move and cripple me.  It's like being very ill with no apparent manifestations to pinpoint cause and effect and yet cause is so apparent to me.  

Like everyone else who takes time out of his or her everyday existence to fight the dragon of grief I try to post when I have the energy but that is getting less and less.  All I am really doing anymore after this long in my grief is praying the universe sees a place for me out of this dreary, unfulfilling existence not so much because I don't have something to contribute, because likely as not we all have something more to give, but because it is willing to see that the pain of my being here, in this body without him is like being dead myself.  Contributions notwithstanding.

I also wish I didn't have to be so negative, so pessimistic about life and living as I never was this way before my beloved died but I just can't find a way to do more than just exist.  The pipe wrench just keeps beating me into a corner.  

I hope in some lifetime I'll be better equipped to handle what death means. I just don't think it is going to be this one. 

morgan

 

Comment by stewart p on April 15, 2016 at 2:04pm

I did the same thing for the first couple of years, stayed home mostly, alone.  Even today I feel like everything I do is an effort, it is.  A shear act of will more often than not, but later I feel better I did it and as time marches on  it seems to become easier to do.  During those first few terrible agonizing months where I even thought of ways I could die I caught a youtube video of a speech to a group of military surviving families by a man who decades ago as a young husband newly elected senator was told his wife and daughter had been killed and 2 little boys were also critically injured in a car accident while shopping for a Christmas tree.  During that speech he shed a tear and a smile and promised those families the day would arrive one day where their memories would bring forth a smile to their face once again.  I watched that speech over and over and will never forget the transparency Joe Biden shared in that speech. It didnt change anything for me at the time or how i felt but it gave me hope that things could be and might be different one day, and Im begining to see that that is possible.  Im not there yet, many years away Im sure but my feeling are just that and it is only how I choose to react to them and what to do with them that will make a difference in my life, the feeling alone are just that they are feelings.  We read in Romans that God uses all things for his good work, and I believe that as i have discovered there may be hope on the horizon as shared by others like Biden, and though I was raised going to church, today my relationship with Christ and my faith is much greater than nearly everyone i meet in church today, my talk and relationship with my kids and others I find myself continually striving towards more authenticity and genuineness than I ever knew existed, and i endeavor to treat each day with greater gratitude and set aside my temporal ambitions.  My most profound remaining regret is that my wife is not here to share in this metamorphosis that would most likely have begun to take root had she not left

Comment by stewart p on April 15, 2016 at 11:15am

Im up on nearly 3 years after 23 years and I must say to you all I wouldn't trade places with anyone here, these long hard fought years ~ I feel Ive earned my spot here in more ways than I could ever have  imagined, clawing my way some days it almost seemed just to survive or keep a piece of sanity about me. My neighbors too at times seem to look the other way as our paths appear to begin crossing on the way towards the mailbox or somewhere, or maybe its more just my perception but alas these days I am emboldened to engage with anyone particularity those who appear to rather want to avoid me, and even more so because of that reason.  Are they afraid of death, are the uncomfortable or unsure what to say, my attitude now is lets gets in there and find out.  Lets engage.  It is in those moments of interaction accompanied with tension where therapeutic healing may begin to take its course and maybe they need it more than I do.

I still have the anxiety but now I make myself go.  And that is the thing Im beginning to discover now, its almost like an ailing body part, it continues to hurt and all the feelings are still present I'm just learning to adapt and live with it, and if Im really creative I begin to learn how to tap into this energy to empower me in my life today.  The thoughts of my wife, and the fear, loneliness, joy love happiness sorrow, everything is with me every day now as I expect it will not leave anytime soon nor would I really want it to any more, but now it seem,s to push me to live more than ever before because of it, maybe  because she cant I can, or something. I don't know yet, Im still learning as I'm going, I guess for me what I'm saying is yes there is this dark side to it all, we all are too familiar with that by now, but there seems to be another side to it as well that only us few can discover and for which the price of admission is high to be sure and one I had no choice over

Comment by O.L. Cato on April 15, 2016 at 10:36am

Angela,  I'm so glad you said it, "no one comes around anymore".  I told my adult children and they think I'm imagining this.  When I go out  in the yard or check the mail, if anyone is out they go inside.  What do they think I'm going to do?  It's like I'm a Leper.  Friends from "back I'm the day", don't call anymore.  Most called ONE TIME to offer condolences and that's it.  Yes, the loneliness is excruciating.  It's been 15 weeks and after a huge crying fit on Sunday, sounding like an animal and crying for the longest time, I'm beginning to feel a bit better.  The loneliness is hell....I miss him all the time.  I feel that my life is gone, he wouldn't want me to feel this way.  Angela, you are not alone.  OLC

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