AbidingTime

Coming up on 2 months and feeling almost precisely the same. You wrote so vividly about feeling like you have had some horrendous surgery. I've felt the same and wondered if it is in anyway similar to how amputees sometimes feel. This part or parts of you removed against your will. The dread of thinking that this just can't be. Phantom reminders - I hear her car pulling up...I'll call her and ask....wait, she knows where that file is... I was living an unsatisfying life before we met 20 yrs. ago. That changed when we joined our lives together. It grew to such an extent that, like you, I had one sole purpose in life. Us. Eveything I thought, did, discussed, felt and planned on was in some way intertwined with her. So now what. The better part of me has been excised. Who am I? I don't even know. What is this life I find myself in? This is mine? The only life I relate to is nothing like this. Nothing. And who would ask an amputee some of the things we are asked? Do you need help going through her things?? Are you missing her right now?? The only sanity I seem to know right now is seeing how others like you, Dean, are grappling in the same way with the insanity of this.

Mizpah and Max2507- So true what you have said. I wrote this not long ago but it was before I came to this site and found such caring support. I can see now that I 'll have to address those here much differently than those who are out there. Mizpah - blessings to you for having the fortitude to churn out journal after journal - pages of paper and ink that are without a doubt the resonance of the love you had and have. Max2507 - Yes! Yes! What a great way to take on people's unease. I'm going to start doing that and stay with them as long as they would like to talk about who they are missing. I'll log off and return to the -out there- where it seems like everywhere I go people are staring me down and surely knowing (they couldn't possibly know) my hurt and despair but with a firmer sense that this fine place and the good people that populate it are here waiting.

Your tempermental air Your twisted up auburn hair Your rare lack of care These things and more drive me to despair

I am truly sorry. I know that it has already been said but I think it is worth repeating - there is no imperative for you to "manage" your way out of this. The world out there looking in at you is tainted by an amalgam of therapeutic and clinical advice. This is America. You are expected to manage your way from a to b. To "make progress" - move forward, get better. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. If you don't feel like getting better you don't have to right now. If you want to wallow, wallow in it. Throw a fit? Go for it. Sit on the floor of the closet and stare at the clothes hanging there? Go ahead and take your time doing it. Don't you worry about measuring up to expectations or setting yourself on someone else's progress path.

I'm not really as angry as I sound. After lurking a bit and doing some reading I saw that this is a safe place. The world out there is getting a collected, strong, faithful new widower. You are getting an exposure much closer to real. Because safety beckons and because from what I have read here you'll be able to help.

We love the water park in Old Forge - but coming from Texas in midsummer makes us wonder if we shouldn't have wet suits on - even in August the air and the water can be freezing.

Thank you - it has become a fixation - all of the things and places that I'm clutching. Maybe that changes - maybe not. I'm not tuned into the management style of grieving - don't really want to manipulate it or shepherd it along. I'm waiting for that first person to come along and suggest that I'm stuck - so that they can explain to me what exactly is wrong with that.

Oh no. Here's another one. Poor pitiful soul. Just listen to him prattling on. Yep sure he really really loved his wife and really really misses her - probably sits out at the cemetery every day. Lost, alone tearing up his pillow case, walks the house in a daze. Has his kid's magnifying glass on his bedside table just so he can study that stack of pictures of his wife from last year, ten years ago and twenty. So he can get a glimpse of that locket she's wearing. Frantic minutes tracking down those humming bird earings in her jewelry case. The ones she wore in that picture - the one in the sun dress. Where was that? San Antonio? Don't you remember? She'd remember for sure. That's just how she was. Here they are. Peridot and gold. Both of them. They were set just so in her ears. In her very ears. And here in my fingers now those tiny bright little jewels. She had plucked them right out of this very same box. Gently put them on. Watched herself in the mirror as she twisted them round. Brushed back her thick auburn hair. Combed it back with her beautiful fingers. Just like she used to - laid her flowing hair over hair and tilted her head just so. Looked at herself in this very same mirror. In this spot right here- leaning over her sink top. This cold piece of granite. This ledge right here pressed into her hip. Said something to me probably in that sweet voice of hers. That sweet loving soothing voice of hers. Said something funny or charming. Had a question or two. Smiled probably giggled. Took another look then turned off the light. I picked up some dry cleaning today. All the chores are mine you know. The sweet Vietnamese lady asked how I was doing. She said "oh, well. Life goes on, you know."

We are at the forty day mark and had decided to stay at home after Mass. We were invited to a cookout without warning and I reluctantly accepted. My 13 yo daughter pitched a fit and was unusually defiant (the likely cause was that our host was her mom's oncologist - duh, dad!). I thought that it was best to get out of the house for a while - but I let her stay at home as she wished. It was a good call. My son had a good time, I felt weird the whole time about the normalcy of a pool party and my daughter was fine when we arrived back home. All in all not a total disaster for our first Mom's Day but uncomfortably strange nonetheless.