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Just Trudging Forward


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On Friday it will be 19 months since my love took his last breath.  I know he is with me, he gives me signs all the time.  Recently I went with friends to the beach that my husband and I went to all the time.  My friends and I went to celebrate my wedding anniversary.  There were monarch butterflies everywhere.  This past weekend I asked him to give me a sign...I asked him to make a broken clock on my wall start ticking again.  The next day it was ticking.  I know he is still with me but I miss the hell out of him.  It feels like life is just slowly moving forward with all the mundane things you have to do - go to work, come home, take care of the animals, stay up way to late, get up and do it all again.  I guess I really don't have a point here...other than so far it hasn't gotten "better" and I don't think it ever will get "better".  I feel like I will spend the rest of my life trudging through life almost zombie-like until I take my last breath and can be with him again.  I always thought time could heal all wounds, but this one it can't.  Anyway, just venting I guess.  Blah day I guess...

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Hi, Steph. 

 

I hear you!  I have been widowed twice and have had very different experiences with grief. I was remarried 18 months after my first husband died. I don’t know how I was able to move forward so quickly back then, but it was all good. I married a wonderful man who was also widowed. Life was moving along gloriously. But less than 4 years after I met him, he died unexpectedly. 18 months after he died, I was pretty much a mess!  Such different experiences. 

 

I wondered if I could ever be happy again. I persisted in putting one foot in front of the other. I moved, started a new career, then moved back again, trying to find the path to enlightenment, perhaps?  What I do know is that 5+ years later, I am better than I was and life is getting to be more satisfying. Am I really happy?  Not yet. But I now have hope that it is possible. 

 

Hang in there. Post to your heart’s content. This place is here just so you can do that and find others who understand. 

 

Hugs,

Maureen

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@Steph It's coming up to four years since Ken is gone and it has got better in a sense of being able to function "normally". I go to work, vary rarely (once in a few months) meet up for a drink with my closest friends, plan holidays with my family and I am able to enjoy it. However, I still wear my engagement/ wedding rings and very much look forward to dying and re-uniting with my husband for eternity. And I too get many signs, not daily but when I either directly ask for it or Ken knows I need. 

I guess everyone is different, like Maureen said. Some will move on with their lives faster then others, some will never do. 

And no, time doesn't heal anything. You get used to leaving with pain.

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Hi Steph, 19 months is still early in the healing process, although I know some days feel purposeless and seem to take forever to pass.  I remember at about 2 years starting to feel like I had found my identity again, something very difficult after being one half of a whole for so many years.  I can now smile and laugh when I think of my wife most of the time, although there is still the odd day when I am sad.  It's been over 3 years for me.  I've met someone really wonderful, but I will always have that hurt inside me.

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Thank you guys for your responses.  It does help to know that that this hollow, purposeless feeling is "normal" and other grieving spouses feel the same way sometimes.  ...I hate the new normal...

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Steph, you are indeed normal. I'm inclined to agree that we don't actually heal from this loss. Time is needed to adapt to a life much different than what we chose. Time helps with that adaptation process. I still say up way too late some nights. Early on I was up every night. Life is different now. Not better than or as good as when he was with me but much better than the early grief. 

 

Your progress takes as long as it takes. Be good to you.

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 I don't think the purposelessness ever fully goes away. I'm 7 years 1.5 months out and I still have days that I'm empty, when I miss him so much. Even though for all intents and purposes I've rebuilt my life- I'm engaged to a wonderful man, my children are doing fantastic, and I'm lookibg forward to what I'm going to do next professionally  (as soon as I can figure out that's going to be). But I don't want those empty days to go away; I feel that they're a sign of how great our love was and how important he was to me and I'm okay with paying the price of that emptiness for the glorious years we had together. 

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