CandiceS

I am a widowed Mother. I have two kids under two and lost their dad almost a year ago, but that’s not why I’m here today. I’m considering making a blog post about widowed mothers and need some personal experiences from other people to give more than one perspective. I always see posts about dealing with divorce, the effect of divorce on children, dating with kids after a divorce. When I was looking for tips on what challenges I might face I found nothing except sites about processing greif. I’d like to help people like us know that they’re not alone in this without them having to happen to find this site and post their experience in hopes of a positive response like we did. You can choose to go by your username or remain anonymous, that’s up to you. What did you wish you knew when you lost your significant other/child’s parent.

Every time I hear the neighbors door slam, see his car pull up(his parents took it over), or the dogs start barking in the middle of the night, I expect him to come in like nothing happened.

It's only been about two months for me, but I still wear mine. We weren't married, but it still means a lot to me. It has our names and it's engraved with little heart shaped stones. I'm planning on wearing it as long as possible and giving it to our daughter one day. It makes me feel closer to him somehow.

At first I was fine, slept with a giant teddy bear he gave me for valentines that was about his size until I didn't feel like I had to anymore. Switched to a smaller bed, let our daughter sleep in my bed when she wanted. I was fine with all that. It's been a little over two months, his birthday is Friday so we're all a little off lately. I woke up at 3am stressed out of my mind over nothing specific, mostly party planning and our dentist appointments today. This usd to be a regular occurrence for me. I'd just roll over, put my arm around him, and know everything would be fine because he would help me through it. Now it's after 5, still just laying here hoping I can get back to sleep soon because by 6 it'll be impossible. This is the first time in a few weeks I've just missed sleeping next to someone. Usually I'd just sit here and deal with it until I eventually pass out or my daughter wakes up, but the whole house is going to be waking up soon, I have to get her to the dentist in four hours, my own appointment after that, and I only got maybe three hours of sleep the second night in a row. I don't even know why I'm typing this, I guess just to focus on something not stressful. I do have to figure out something to help me sleep though. Medication isn't really an option when you're pregnant and my bed doesn't have room for that giant teddy bear I used before.

We recently had it confirmed that my boyfriend died of an overdose from laced heroin. We had NO idea he was on it, no one did as far as we know. Everyone has been asking, and I was honest with his friends. I told my mom and sister because everyone until then was supportive and they keep talking badly about him like he was a horrible abusive junkie or something. He wasn't. I've started telling people I don't know and don't want to know because, frankly, it's none of their f****** business how he died, but that won't hold forever and I'm going to hit the next person that tells me he was a bad person because he hung out with the wrong crowd. I don't even think it was a longtime thing because he made some new friends and started going out more for like two weeks before he died that he was really secretive about.

Considering the mess that we've had to deal with since my boyfriends death, and the fact that I'm my kids only parent now, I've been thinking about starting a will. I haven't before because I didn't think it would be necessary since the kids had their father and I don't have a lot of possessions. I'm also considering pre paying for my funeral because I don't plan to purchase life insurance(the agency did everything they could to keep us from using his policy for the funeral, insisting keeping it with them to earn interest and finding the money elsewhere was a better idea), but I don't know if I'm going to be living here the rest of my life. Has anyone made an official will? What do you really have to do?

Have you considered therapy? Its entirely acceptable to want to talk about these things. No one will judge you and you can choose whether or not to have your son there while you discuss everything and get it off your chest.

They don't know what to say. I wouldn't be mad at them. My mom wants to be here constantly and I can't stand it. I let her watch my daughter, but she wants to go through everything and throw away all of his stuff like that will make it all go away. She's the kind of person to toss everything and get rid of every memory of them so she won't think about it anymore. I'd rather be alone with my thoughts than Have people making things worse.

I have a bad habit of basically devoting my life to people. I did everything to make my bf happy, and now that he's gone I don't know what to do with myself. I dont know what I like or who to talk to because I followed him like a puppy. He never asked me to do anything and encouraged me to do whatever I wanted, but I just wanted to do things together. Now that I'm really letting myself reflect on our relationship as a whole, I realize he probably didn't really love me. He did a lot of things to try to drive me away and his friends were always really mean to me and blamed me for all of his problems. I feel guilty that I wasted the last three years of his life, but I don't understand why he didn't tell me. I've questioned whether his death was accidental or on purpose a lot since it happened because he went from completely clean to abusing every drug he could get his hands on. You don't do that if you're happy with your life. I thought we were doing better. We split for a couple weeks in October, he begged me to come back, and we were pretty much perfect together. He showed no signs of wanting to leave, but he also never wanted to talk about his problems. I know this post is probably all over the place, but I can't stop thinking about it and I can't talk to anyone because my family is really judgmental and there's no way in hell I'm bringing it up to his parents.

It'll be a month tomorrow since my boyfriend passed. I know that's not a lot of time and I don't remember much of anything right now, even before it happened. I feel like my brain is trying to block it out and it's not working. I've gotten enough control to be able to focus at school finally, I put my giant teddy bear back in our room, can go in when I need to, and set myself up in the spare bedroom. Everything is becoming a new normal, at least during the day. When I go to bed at night it all comes flooding back. I remember finding him, the way he looked, hearing his dad react to seeing him. I relive it a thousand times every night in the back of my mind and I don't know how to stop it. I always think I'm doing better and I'm finally past all the anger I was feeling. I don't mind thinking about him all the time, I write down all the good memories, but I can't stand reliving that every night.

I know you've all done it and you don't need to be reminded of it, but I wasn't sure where else I could post this. We went to the viewing today and i fought with myself for two hours about whether or not to go up to the casket and see him. Everyone kept saying how great he looked and how he looked like himself. I didn't realize they meant the way we dressed him. From far away he looked the same, just a little grey, so I decided to go put one of our necklace sets in his hand. I figured it would be better to remember him this way so my last memory wouldn't be of how I found him. He looked horrible. Part of his face was dark and it looked like they slapped him with a chalk eraser. I've never actually looked in the casket before, I've only gone to one viewing before this, but I thought they would've done a better job with the make up. I'd done pretty well with holding it together until that moment. I'm glad I waited until I was on my way out or I would've been a mess the whole time.

Its been a week. I had to return to school so I wouldn't lose my financial aid. I've already started screwing up there because I can't concentrate. I'm finding other things to keep myself occupied because the viewing is tomorrow and the funeral is Saturday. I'm creating an online scrapbook for our kids at the moment, writing in my favorite memories so I don't forget. Going down memory lane is nice, but tomorrow is going to be a punch in the face seeing him there. What have you guys done to cope? I've always been the kind of person to keep looking forward, and moving on with life, but I've never been in a situation like this.

My boyfriend passed on March 29th and I am mad at everything recently. I'm mad at the cops for acting like they didn't believe me, I'm mad they took my cell phone even after I told them it was broken, not that they had any reason to take it in the first place. I want to have it fixed to get my pictures, but I doubt I'm getting it back. I'm mad at his friends for hiding his drug use from me knowing he had a problem, I'm furious at his drug dealer, I'm mad at myself for not realizing he was using, and I want to be mad at him for doing something so stupid and dangerous after he had been clean for years and had friends die from it, but I just cant. Sometimes I feel like he did it on purpose because he was stressed about working so much and having a baby on the way with a toddler at home, but we had so many plans. I'm staying with his parents for a while because I'm in school, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm 21, I shouldn't be raising two kids and burying their father.