An eternity and a blink of the eye

[Kate]

Hi all,

This is my first post here since the first year or so after my partner died suddenly. I think it is the same board but I am not even sure. That was November 15 2012, six years ago. Our kids were 3 and 6. Now they are 12 and 9 and I have a 3 year old with a new partner, someone I met and married less than two years after that death and a month after my mother's from cancer.

 

And now I am trying to explain our family to my youngest. I say things like, "before Bryan was everyone's daddy, Rose and Jacob had a different daddy but he died."  

 

But everyone's daddy or not, she calls him "daddy" and the big kids call him Bryan.

 

I hadn't thought about this board in a while but I often tell people how it sustained me in those first awful months and years to come on here. But it came up again. An aquaintance, pregnant with her third, the older two both under 5, lost her husband today and I directed her here.  

 

So I guess I am beyond active grieving, but I sometimes wonder, if I didn't have the big kids would I even believe that the first part of my life existed? That my decade with him was real?  I felt so young when he died. I was 37 and he was 40. But if ever there was a marker to end youth that was it and if ever there is anything that made me feel my age it was having a baby at 40 after already feeling like I had lived a life I choose and was happy with.

 

Thank you for still being here...

 

 

 

[Wheelerswife]

Hi, Kate.  

 

Our old board, YWBB, shut down in the spring of 2015. Some resourceful people started this board immediately so that people would have a supportive home. 

 

I was 47 when I joined this club. The old board sustained me in my dark hours. I connected with a widower on that board and we married a year later. Sadly, my second husband died less than 4 years later. I have had continued support from people I have known on the old board and this one as well. 

 

I’m sorry your friend has had to join our club, too. I hope she can find connections with others who have experienced a similar loss. 

 

Hugs,

 

Maureen

[Kate]

Oh Maureen! Thank you for filling me in I the trajectory - I thought it felt like the same familiar place.

 

And - oh - to lose someone again. A second husband. That is just so much.

 

thank you for responding. 

 

[Captains wife]

Kate - I am 6 months ahead of you - lost my husband in May '12 and was on the old Board. I'm so sorry about your friend - I too had a friend just lose her husband (in her 40s and so was he). I told her what a life saver this community is (and has been) and how it has helped me retain my sanity. Congratulations on successfully recoupling/blending - it is something I have wanted and I am still trying to find my way. My son was 9 months old when my husband died, now age 7 and sometimes (like you mentioned) my son is my key reminder of my prior life (and that life seems a long time ago). One thing I really miss still is that my husband and I were a team with the same devotion to our son - and its never going to be the same again for me, even if I recouple (as there are no more children for me in my future - since I had my son in my early 40s). In trying to date divorced men, its so tough blending with other kids/exes etc. Wishing you all the best !

[Kate]

I think I recall your user name from the old board! Thank you so much for replying.  I ended up with a man who had not had kids of his own and I really dithered about having another. But I haven't had to navigate blending kids, just a new stepdad which is complicated enough. I can only imagine how much more so if children are involved on both sides.

 

Amazing how fast six years can go and that your nine month old is now seven...

 

Sending the warmest of thoughts, 

Kate