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Introduce Yourself - What Brought You To Specific Situations?


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motski,

 

Welcome to Young Widow Forum. So much time has passed since those early years when we posted regularly on the old YWBB (and elsewhere). It is great to hear from you again. I hope the passage of time has brought you much healing.

 

--- WifeLess

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

It appears as though not many people have been here recently but it is the most appropriate place for me. I lost my 31 yo wife in August 2017 to suicide by hanging after a long battle with PTSD. I am now 36. My wife served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine Corp Sargent and endured many awful experiences. We met in 2011 and married in 2014. As a true Marine she was a perfectionist and treated me like a queen. She took her own life soon after our third anniversary. She is my soul mate and my everything so the following months have been nothing short of tumultuous. We were in the process of purchasing our first home, starting our own family and simply enjoying our lives together. Just after losing my wife I lost my career as a healthcare executive, our home, and our 15 yo dog. After struggling for quite some time to start our own family, a month after her death I found our last attempt with fertility specialists had been successful and I am now pregnant with a baby boy. I am currently 6 months pregnant and expecting this May. It has been bittersweet yet a miracle none the less. I moved our home into storage and am now residing with my sister, her husband, and foster baby until I can get back on my feet. My brother in law lost his father to suicide by hanging as well and has helped me tremendously. The changes brought with the loss of my wife have made moving forward even more complicated. Not only am I lost without her, can't muster energy to do anything I need to do but I carry the weight of PTSD myself after her suffering and finding her hanging in our basement. I miss her beyond what words could ever express but understand why she left us. I am trying with all I have to continue to adjust to my new normal and I just returned to college to finish my degree to find a better career for our new baby and me to have a better life. Much like most of you here this is a life I never imagined, a group I never wanted to join. I hope to find some friends or online companions that can relate a bit more than I can find in my community now. The city of Buffalo NY has only one widows/widower group that is only open to those older than 60 and I am 26. Thank you for letting me share my story, I look forward to you introducing yourselves and I wish you all peace.

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Hello, Lanajoy,

 

I'm so sorry to have to welcome you to our club.  The loss of your beloved wife is such a tragic experience for you!  I don't have the experience of your kind of loss, but there are others here who have lost spouses to suicide and also others who were widowed when pregnant or with very young children.  You are also a very young widow, and it can be difficult to find support groups for younger widows.  You might try searching for support services for children.  My first support group was attached to a center for grieving families and children and wasn't advertised as a young widow support group.  You may also try contacting hospice groups.  They often offer grief support to individuals who have not used their hospice services for a family member.

 

I saw your other post about Social Security.  I'm not sure what your status would be with SS.  Most often, a young spouse without children will only receive a one-time benefit of $255.  (Yeah, that's it.)  Your situation is more complicated in that you have an unborn child and I don't know the legal status of your child in relation to your wife.  You will likely have to talk to Social Security to see if your child will qualify for benefits based on recognition of parentage with your wife, I imagine.  So...I might start with a phone call to SS.  If your child qualifies for benefits, they would likely continue until age 18, and that would certainly be financially helpful. 

 

I hope you find reading and posting here to be helpful.  I have found online support to be a critical part of my journey after losing my husbands.  I have also made friends amongst people on this website and its predecessor.  You are most welcome here. 

 

Hugs,

 

Maureen

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  • 2 months later...

Hi. Maybe if I had known how much of an addiction he had. I always thought it was something I could slap his wrist for and that his love for me, his family, and our future would fix. I thought if I could make his life better, more fulfilling, and more stable, there wouldn’t be any need for drugs. I wish I had been more supportive. I wish I had gone to meetings. I wish I had understood so I could save my husbands life. 

 

On March 19th I came home to find my husband of 5 months sitting on the couch not breathing and purple. I had just seen him at lunch around 1130 and I was going to the doctors after work, it was his day off, and he wanted to come hang out while I waited. I got out of work a little later than I wanted to and had to rush to the doctor’s office. I tried calling and he didn’t answer. I left a message telling him I was going to just head straight over since I was running late. I drive by the house on the way and saw his car was home. I assumed he was taking a nap or in the shower. I kept driving and spent another hour at my appointment. I came home around 510 and just saw him sitting there hunched over. He and a root canal that morning and when he didn’t respond to me saying his name, I froze and looked at his arms, there were purple patches, I ran around the couch and saw there was drool and blood on the table, I instantly thought something went wrong with the dental work that morning. And then I saw the needles and a spoon. The next twenty minutes are something for another post. 

 

His name was Ron and he was 31 years old. He died of an accidental overdose and I’m still waiting on final toxicology and death certificate after 1.5 months. Two years earlier he had started using because of our miscarriage. He had always wanted to be a father and when others didn’t understand his grief there, he turned to his cousin whom he had used with before and asked him to hook him up. I had caught him in a lie about returning home lad one night and went through his phone to find messages between him and his cousin about getting drugs. I confronted him and we fought. He told me the truth, apologized, and we talked about his pain and how we needed to move on and not do drugs. That was it in my head. Fast forward 6 months later when he started making a lot of money and yet had no money. Things started disappearing from the house. I called his parents and they said he had borrowed money for work. I confronted him and found out he was taking opiates and morphine. The next day his family and I paid for him to start going to the suboxone clinic. His was there almost 6 months before he was completely weaned off. We got engaged and I thought, aside from suboxone, he was clean. That’s the only way I agreed to get married. We got married and you could tell the difference. His skin looked better, we had money again, and he was more active. Everyone thought he had made it. He went to NA once a week and had a new job.

 

We were trying to have children and he was looking into going to school since I had just set up with my degree and college, it was his turn to do what he wanted. The night before we talked at length about the next year of our lives and what he wanted to do. We talked kids, school, careers, and support. He seemed happy, it felt like our lives were beginning to really start. On the fridge he had wrote out his goals and info about schools for the path he wanted. There was food burning in the oven from the lunch he started to make himself. I think he was clean from the time of the suboxone clinic to that day and maybe that’s why he died. He was still sitting there, like he had just taken it and stayed that way for hours. I struggle wondering if he died quickly or suffocated slowly. I struggle with the fact that I didn’t give CPR because when I threw him to the floor I could get his legs to straighten and lost it, unable to do anything but panic. 

 

It was a shock for all who knew him, even those who knew he had struggled with opiates in the past. He was a good man and everything was going well. I still can’t believe it most days. 2 weeks after he died I found out I wasn’t pregnant which some say is a blessing but I feel like I have no one to share his memory with.

 

His sister in law just got pregnant and everyone is looking forward to that. Everyone seems to want to forget and move forward with life. I’m trying to be happy for them. I am happy for her, but it’s also devastating. My family thinks I should be handling this all more gracefully. Anytime I get more than just tearful, but cry, or yell, or get angry, I am told I’m having a meltdown. I’ve asked for help with food, laundry, cleaning because when I get home I can barely function after keeping it together at work all day. I teach and I tune it out, as soon as I get to my car and know I’m going to an empty house I start crying. I get home and have to flip the TV on and try to distract myself until I can fall asleep. It’s hard for me to ask for help. Yet, when I do, every time, I’ve been told they are busy or maybe another day, or they don’t understand why I need help cleaning? It’s like they think I’m milking it. I also have to move because I can’t afford where we live on just my paycheck. I’m already having to try and box stuff up and I feel alone and like no one understands. I feel like people are cruel and I wonder how the hell this is happening. I can’t believe this is all happening.

 

I miss my new husband and the life we were about to create. I don’t understand why he did this and how I didn’t know it was a possibility. I feel like I was blind and selfish to not have seen the warning signs that now, after his death, seem obvious. Because I don’t feel safe to be upset, I only lose it when alone, so most people keep telling me how strong I am and how amazing I’m handeling it all. It makes me really angry. so instead, I sit at home and have found myself drinking more. I try to drown everything out. I feel like I’m being weak and moody. That I am suppose to handle it all with grace and move forward. 

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On 3/22/2015 at 5:10 PM, MissingSquish said:

I found ywbb a few days after my DH, Squish died. At the time, we weren't sure what ultimately caused his death, but the toxicology report stated he died of an accidental prescription drug overdose.

 

Let me back up a minute. Squish was an amazing, charming and ridiculously intelligent guy who happened to be bipolar I. He had quite a few other physical problems due to his previous career and had chronic pain as well.

 

Squish was the type of guy that commanded attention when he walked into a room, but was secretly so insecure. My FIL's eulogy of Squish publicly acknowledged this incredible insecurity that was always brewing inside of him, but it seemed like a slap in the face to me.  The relationship between his family and I took a major downhill turn when Squish and I were married, and an even worse downturn when he died.

 

Squish and I were married only a bit past 6 months when he fatally overdosed.  I had gone through hell and back with him during the time that we were married and living together. I found him nearly dead on the floor over a dozen times, and had revived him myself. It has taken a lot for me to overcome the PTSD of watching someone kill themselves over and over again.  Though the coroner ruled his death accidental, I don't see it as such.

 

I've only recently felt comfortable acknowledging to my extended family and a few close colleagues that my husband killed himself. The stigma of suicide is very real, though my husband was as terminal in his mental illness as someone is terminally ill dying from cancer. I have also recently forgiven him for putting me through such hell as well.

 

The way I finally see it is that my husband's suicide was as selfless of an act as he could muster. He realized he was making everyone's lives around him miserable, and he wanted to liberate us all from the drama. I am thankful that I do not have any children and I never have to deal with my in-laws ever again.

I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve been struggling wondering if my husbands death was an accidental overdose or intentional. I can’t imagine seeing that situation over and over again. 

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@Jessm1, Welcome to Widda.org although I’m sorry you have reason to be here. I can relate to much of what you have shared regarding the lost promise of your relationship, what a good person your husband was despite his battle with addiction, and the guilt you feel as you look back in hindsight. I lost my husband to chronic late stage alcoholism, and although I knew he had a life threatening addiction, I was still in deep shock when he died from it. I too found my husband sitting in his favorite chair, almost like he was waiting for me. 

 

There a no “shoulds” in the way you are handling your loss. For the first months of my loss, I spent most of the time in bed or going on lots of walks, by myself, crying under sunglasses. I did not want company and I did not want others to tell me how to be, or that I was being “together” or a “mess”. I wanted to be alone with my grief. The one thing I would say, is if there’s one priority right now, it’s taking the best care of you that you can. Grief is harsh. It weakens us. Being physically healthy - drinking enough water, eating food that nourishes you, getting some time outside if you can...all these things strengthen you for the road ahead. I have one widowed friend who set a goal...get up each day and take a shower. She repeated that every day until the darkest fog lifted and she could begin to think about other things. That was her best, and it was enough to get her through.

 

Please take care, Bluebird.

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  • 3 months later...

I am not even sure where to begin. I lost my husband of 34 years to an accidental overdose. He was with my brother at the time so they left this world together. I have not even really acknowledged my brothers death as I was not surprised by it and knew it was only a matter of time. My husband on the other hand was a complete shock. He had been struggling with addiction for years now due to an accident. We had separated for the first time ever after I had started attending Naranon meetings. He was trying so hard towards the end to beat it and get his life back on track. The guilt and pain of his passing is some days almost to much to bear. All the questions, the what ifs.My heart is broken and I feel like I don't fit in with most widows who lost their loved ones to illness. Even though he had an illness, addiction it is different. There are no grief groups at least none that I can find for spouses who lost a spouse to addiction. I have yet to fine a therapist who actually specialies in this topic. I am surrounded by family and friends and yet feel alone, scared and sad.

 

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My husband died in March of an accidental heroin overdose. The stigma is so bad that people who jump in to support me, as soon as they find out how he died, stop talking to me like I’m a bad person or he was or somehow deserved to die or I deserved this life. It’s ridiculous. 

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  • 3 months later...

I’ve found myself here after 211/2 years with my dear husband, he took his life on 17 March. My world has collapsed. Family and friends have disappeared. We never had children, wonderful dogs but I am “all alone”. 

He was my soulmate, my best friend and forever love. 81/2 months after his death, I still cannot believe that he is gone. The life that was ours is gone, and I feel like I am gone.

My sadness is overwhelming and the loneliness leaves me exhausted. The hole in my life feels like it keeps growing as the holidays arrive, as I feel and ache from missing him.

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