Dear Stephen,

I am in shock for you.  It is good for you to have found this site early on because after 54 years of marriage and being sole caretaker for your beloved wife I can only imagine the pain you are experiencing right now.  This is a mighty burden.  One can never imagine the kind of hurt death lays at our doorstep until it happens.  It is beyond explanation.

I lost my husband of 35 years almost three years ago now and I had no children and no faith so I have met the death of my husband head on and it is no exaggeration to say that it is like being hit by a speeding freight train.   Or there are many other analogies but bottom-line is this is going to be very very hard.  

It sounds as though your career has been in the humanities so you have probably refined a rather sensitive nature over your 74 years and not to say a scientist would have it any easier but I think you will be digging rather deep into the whys of death even though we all know it is inevitable.  When it happens it doesn't seem to matter how philosophic we were before.  The sense of our beloveds essence disappearing someplace that we have no idea of is mind numbing. There is nothing we can attach to.

My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer on the day after Xmas in 2012 and after they split him open then sewed him back up he lasted 27 days.  We were so busy fighting for is life we sort of forgot what about if he died.  I was left behind and I have struggled mightily for the past three years.  I shut down right before Thanksgiving this year and I am not bringing my head back up until after the 21st (his death date).  I have furiously distracted myself for years but fall back still quite often and have to pick myself up over and over and over.  I have yet to go beyond two days total before i cry again.  It was a love affair I had.  We all feel that way or we wouldn't be on here.  I am too old to love again besides there is no one I would ever want.  Very simply my husband was my soulmate.  The best many of us are doing is biding our time.  And the suffering we endure while we do that is pretty much what you will read on here.  

There is lots of wisdom.  People here do not judge.  We know what this is like.  Pain, misery, hurt  and wondering will it ever end.  The best I can say after this long is that the frequency lessens but the love and the missing of their essence never goes away. It is there every minute on your shoulder. You can't go through life, meet your soulmate, and expect anything different.   I just wrote to another newcomer to the site that this site can provide a constant place for support.  We all just write about how we are progressing and some posts will ring clearer than others but all of us know the pain.  The excruciating pain.

Not only take baby steps but try to keep yourself busy with anything.  I drove myself hard to fill the hours.  Not with anything that was exhausting (well some) but stuff to help divert my thought pattern.  Sometimes movies will work, reading was tough as I couldn't  focus so I actually ended up listening and watching videos on physics and the universe on you tube.  It was my way of trying to understand what science knows about life and consciousness and the universe and for me it has helped.  I have been listening now for almost three years and I think it has given me some understanding of how we are all star stuff but whatever works for you.  Just distracting I think is helpful. Although others find other methods.  All are good, just pick what you think will work.

Today I have made it through the day without crying but this is a relatively new phenomena.  I never stopped crying for close to two years. It has only been in the third year that I am starting to see mysel