AaronP

The morning my wife passed in hospital we all said our goodbyes, lots of tears. My girls were there, my parents and of course my wife's parents as well. I need to pack up the months of accumulated stuff in her room to take with us and put away my wife's cell phone. My girls often used the phone while visiting to pass the time in hospital. As I placed it into the bag my eldest, who's 5 at the time, looks at me and says "so I guess mommy doesn't need her phone anymore - that means it's mine now right?" ??? Oh dear child!! :

I used to cry in the shower, even before S passed away knowing what was about to happen to out family! The kids need to see you cry, need to know that it's alright to cry and be upset. Show them the happy times as well as the sad times, this normalizes their feelings. They will have moments just as we do, if they don't see you upset or crying they may think that something is wrong with them. My girls would comfort me as well when I broke down, just as I would comfort them when they needed me. AS much as my daughters learned from me I learned probably twice as much from them. They showed me that life went on, we needed to move forward and it was alright to be happy and enjoy life despite losing my wife and their mother! Let them see you cry, let them see you be happy despite it all - all of this is part of life and hiding reality from them would be doing them a disservice IMO. I learned! I grew! And in turn we all have.

My pleasure! Easy?? What is the meaning of this word you speak of?? 8)

@patriciad In your photobucket library when you click on the picture you want there is a "Direct" link. Copy that web address. For your picture it is: http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/dd375/patriciad930/IMG_0635.jpg When you hit "Reply" just above all the little smileys is a "Insert Image" button. Click that and image tags will appear in the response box. They look like this: [ img ][ /img ] (without the extra spacing) Put that direct link right in between the middle square brackets ][. Click the "Preview" button before hitting "Post" and scroll up the page an you will be able to see what your post will look like first. If it's working then hit "Post".

For what it's worth I'm with Grace. Use her first line! I think you're skipping a step, don't bring up wanting to meet early on. Messaging through a website can be cumbersome. See if they'd be willing to exchange numbers and text for a while, get to know each other as much as possible that way first. Unfortunately in today's day and age that is likely the most logical step for people. Giving someone you met on a dating site your phone number is a huge step for some, meeting even larger. Everyone carries their phone nearly 24/7 these days, it's a very personal thing to give up or exchange numbers. Try simply exchanging numbers first, stating it'll be far easier to communicate and get to know each other!

Appendix cancer. Health issues started in early 2010, official diagnosis in September of 2010 after a ridiculous number of tests and hospital trips. The longer it took to diagnose the worse I knew it was going to be, it's like they were crossing off all the more treatable ailments first. We were completely devastated as the oncologist said she'd be lucky to live 5 years if treatments went well. DW responded well to chemo which enabled further treatment. Positive news. Major surgery (oft termed "the mother of all surgeries") June of 2011 - cytoreductive surgery with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Was informed by doc he felt he got everything. She had a ileostomy bag as a result of this surgery. Months of recovery but fairly positive news. Went back a few months later to attempt reversal of the bag only to find cancer had returned, very quickly! Devastating news. I had a horrible feeling the whole time waiting for the procedure to be done, the doc called me in to his office well before it should have been complete. I knew before he said anything. Back to chemo in an attempt to kill cancer cells again. This is when I knew I'd be losing my wife, best friend and mother to my girls well before her time. They would never perform that surgery again as they removed too much the first time. It was about quality of life and making the most of the time we had left. no matter what I never let her know what I knew - I could tell by doctors reactions how bad this really was. She responded well to chemo again but they can only do so many rounds. We were willing to do everything, we did do everything we could. Hell I had to discover the surgical option myself as our initial oncologist said there was no surgical option! A lie, they just didn't perform it in BC. We had to go out of province but there was an option. DW always fought, and we never gave up hope for a miracle. She was incredibly resilient and strong. In May of 2013 she went into the hospital for dehydration (commonplace for us with her bag and chemo) and this time never came out. This was incredibly hard, having to slowly break the news to our girls that mommy wasn't coming home this time. That we were going to lose her! Even harder was that she would continually tell the girls that she would be home soon, despite her rapidly worsening condition. I know everything we did extended her time with us and ours with her. For this I am forever grateful. We lost the battle in August of 2013.

You can change your library settings on photobucket to private so no one else can see it.

There are options and features you can adjust in your personal messages: I've played around with a couple, not entirely sure what I will prefer. You may have to click around to explore what options you prefer but it looks like you can customize it a bit. Oh and Jeff, as you log in there's a time box that determines how long it keeps you logged in for. I think default is 60 min. I just click the "Keep me logged in" box. Then log out manually when I want to.

I wonder if instead of "Newbie" it can be re-titled "YWBB Refugee" or "YWBB Expat" or something along those lines!

A secret smiter!

If you smite someone does that mean you're smitten with them?

[move]There's a heath section?[/move] bahaha Sorry, had to try that feature!

Oh geez, you can smite people. haha I foresee no problems stemming from that! ;D Wonder how long till the mods are flooded with "Can you tell me who smite'd me so I can smite them back???" "Take my smite away!" 8)

My girls were 3 and 5 when we lost their mom. They would do a lot of the same as your son, cry and tell me how much they missed mommy! This was of course mostly at night while they were getting ready for bed. I allowed them to have their moment and reassured them that I missed mommy everyday as well, and so did everyone else. But I would follow it up with something along the lines of "bedtime is not the time or place to talk about mommy! Sleep is very important and if they wanted to talk about how much they missed mommy we should do it when we aren't so tired and getting ready for bed." It took me a couple months to realize they were using this a lot at bedtime and rarely any other time. Of course it started to become more and more regular when they realized I would stay longer with them at night. Many times it was a delay tactic, but there are times they really need you to sit and talk with them. Just make sure they know it's alright to talk about their mom/dad but that there are more appropriate times! We definitely made sure mommy was a topic of open discussion but I had to make sure the boundaries were well known. They know how to tug at those heartstrings for sure don`t they? :'( Be there for them without question but don't let them take advantage of you!! I've used the velociraptor reference before, but they are exactly that. They test the fences and when they find a weakness they will exploit it!! If they know they can use emotion to get you to do what they want they will continue to use it. I swear they're much more intelligent than we give them credit for sometimes - sneaky little beings they are!