Julester3

When I experienced a bit of low self esteem in college, a good friend once told me, dress a little better, put a little effort in a touch of makeup and it'll improve how you may be feeling at the time. It does work to a point and nothing feels better than a compliment. Just accept it as a compliment. 😊

You seem like many of us, private and quiet grievers. I don't feel the need to share to anyone because I know they don't understand and they cannot put my shoes on and experience what I have. I don't want to have to try to explain how I feel. I don't wish it on them so I pretty much keep it to myself and only confide in a very small few people and not even all that often. I miss my life desperately. We have been fortunate to have to not make all that many changes but there is such a empty void. My husband was a relatively quiet guy but he had presence. He was a homebody and we are homebodies too and that presence is missing in our home too just as I am sure it is missing in all our homes. Hugs to you!

Hugs Eileen. The good news is it's Friday and you just need to get through the day.

It is so hard to maintain a positive outlook for any extended amount of time. I am just at this "meh" feeling. I am sad, disappointed, and angry. I understand I couldn't control the situation and there wasn't anything we could have done to change the outcome but I still hate it. I'm in the "it's not fucking fair" pity party phase and I avoid a lot just to not deal. I haven't packed up or given anything away. Everything is exactly as it would be in case he walked through the door, for the exception of all his nerdy tees. My 13 year old likes to wear them and they give her comfort. I honestly don't emote anymore. It takes too much effort. I am good at sounding upbeat for the kids and the coworkers but the look on my face and my many new gray hairs sticking out of my dark brown hair, I'm looking even more tired than usual at my meager 41 years old. I wish sleep would be restful but it's not. So I function and I keep chugging along but I too feel just like an empty shell of a person. I will be thinking of both of you. It's hard when your in a dark place. I think having my girls around me keeps me from going there but it means I simply suffer in other ways.

InOverMyHead, Yeah, I also have a slew of Chicago Bears shirts and Illini shirts - both not doing so hot on the sports front. My husband was a huge sports fan. I funnily enough don't miss the football. I'd have him glued to the TV Saturdays for college ball and Sundays for NFL. The poor dog would be in distress with him yelling at the TV on poor plays and bad calls! I had another random trigger on my way home from work....stupid sentimental song on the radio! Ugh! I wish I could just drive in silence but the music drowns all the excessive churning my brain does.

Triggers can come from literally anywhere. I am dealing with the Chicago Cubs, my husband's favorite team, just winning NLDS and now going to the NCLS. He should be here enjoying it but he died before baseball season even started this year. I look through my pictures and he wore his Cubs shirts constantly and with pride. Hard not to react to all the media hub hub going on!

I am an advocate for plain truth. One can withhold some information if you feel the kid is not ready but generally honesty works best. I am honest with my girls when they ask about anything about their dad. He was a wonderful man. Was he perfect? Heck no! Did he make mistakes? Yes! 13 years is very savvy and smart. My 13 year old is very astute and observant. It would be insulting for me to lie to her. I recommend having a conversation with your son but you can add additional dialogue to it to make it a learning moment. Right now, my daughter was asking about drinking/being drunk and has observed stupid behavior that results when you see videos of drunk people on TV. So now she's very critical if I or any adult she knows takes a drink. I have to remind her that 1-2 once in awhile is okay. That is called moderation. It's drinking a lot and pretty often that is a problem. Then she will ask about her dad and I have told her yes, he's made bad choices and has gotten very drunk. As a matter of fact, I could count 6 times where it was me holding his head over the toilet to throw up. I told her it isn't pretty and in the end you feel pretty sick. I don't particularly like the feeling and so I am moderate. Her dad finally learned his lesson trying to keep up with the young guns from work at an open bar at a work party. He realized he was too old and tired as a working father and husband in his mid-thirties to be drinking like a 21 year old frat boy. He was pretty miserable the following day for the entire day but he never overdid it after that. See? Lesson to be learned. HTH!

You are grieving. Give yourself a break. Everyone grieves and copes in their own way. We all have good days and bad days. I don't think it's easy to control that fierce wave of grief when it hits but sometimes in the end, it feels better to get it out rather than hold it all in. I am sorry they seem intense right now and they sound almost debilitating for you. I think counseling would be a good thing to help you make sense of how you are feeling and how you can work with it. Just take it easy as best as you can. Hugs to you.

We all have high and low days. I am constantly ambushed by things all day long: a song on the radio, passing by a particular restaurant, seeing his car when the garage door opens, a commercial on the radio, anything relating to the Cubs, a can of Diet Coke, or anything he liked. I don't think we won't ever be able to help it. A song that may make me cry on one day, won't have any affect on a different day. All you can do is breathe, take it an hour or a day at a time. We all need to cry now and then. We all have a different way of feeling functional as best as we can but some how we do it, trying to find renewed purpose and sense. Hugs for you today.

With their track record from the other post, I think with this new turn of events, you are going to have to compromise. Proceed with caution, hope for the best results, plan for the worst and try not to have expectations unless they follow through. Hopefully this will minimize disappointments for both you and your child when dealing with them. I think since their track record isn't very good since your husband passed, they have to make up for the hurt somehow before you could rely on them.

I am sort of mad for you after reading your post. It was not fair of the inlaws to put that much pressure on you and for not letting you take the opportunity and help hospice could have given you at the time and help alleviate your stresses. The fact that they didn't support you at all after the fact is just as disappointing. You need to give yourself much credit. You got through this despite their inconsiderate actions and under a wave of grief. Okay they are grieving too but it's no competition on whose grief is greater but their actions were not helpful or supportive in anyway. I agree they are best cast off. Big kudos to your mom for being there. You have a good attitude. Keep it up - that's the challenge when we get tired, weary and lonely. Hugs to you today!

That first birthday after they pass is so hard. Our first was in May was not a good start of the day either. We went to brunch, bought flowers and visited the cemetery. What made it hard for us was the weather. It was cold, rainy and gloomy and it magnified the sadness for us. We cried out an entire box of tissue, the girls and I. Our day got better as I hosted a game night with his friends at our home just like he would have done if he were still alive. My husband didn't care for celebrations on his birthday either but I always tried as well. It was so comforting to have his friends around me and to hear the familiar, comforting sounds of a game night with good friends. A month later though we discovered visiting the cemetery on a beautiful, sunny, warm day was much better like how it was on Father's Day. We were okay. We shared a few funny stories in our experiences so far without him that we thought Josh would find amusing. We teared up a little but we had good thoughts when we were ready to leave and it made the cemetery less traumatizing, less sad. Every first you will experience will be hard to believe that your loved one isn't there and you'll have different types and levels of reaction and sadness to them. It may or may not make sense at the time. Hugs to you!

I am lucky that I am an avid scrapbooker. My one regret is that I spent so much on time on the kids' albums, activities we'd do, holidays, and our vacations that I didn't work on an album for just him or even really chronicling our own love story. We have been together a long time so I am collecting pictures and will need to do reprints. FYI, you can get pictures pulled off an old laptop if you can get to a tech person with the right connectors and software. I had to do that myself since we had 2 dead PC towers holding old digital pictures hostage. What makes it challenging for me is recalling our history together. I have been typing it up and boy is high school super fuzzy. College is also getting fuzzy. I type up a little at a time and right now I'm on a break because I got to a time where LH's mom took me out to lunch and asked me to break up with her son so he could finish rushing for his Jewish frat and find a nice Jewish girl at school. We went to different colleges. I recalled the shock at her audacity, the hurt and the anger. So as you can imagine, I'm really residually pissed off at my MIL right now. I never thought I would ever have to try to recount our love story. I am glad LH and I were huge talkers and so I do know some of his perspective on some events but certainly not everything. For my birthday this year I simply asked for Josh stories from other people so I could capture impressions he left on other people but so few accommodated me. I was disappointed.

Seagirl, This place is a great place to unload and vent and work out what you are feeling. It's a safe place that though I am relatively new too that I feel I can share and truly say what's on my mind without being judged or frowned upon. It sounds like you have a lot with the kids, unsupportive in-laws and a business. I am glad you have some support. Just know many of us can relate to you on a level most people can't. I know that's why I looked for a site like this because no one around me I know can relate to how I feel and how I function. Hugs for the day to get you going....

Good days are hard because we want to share the moment with our loved one but we physically can't. We can pretend to if we can trick our minds that it is an acceptable substitute but 3 out of 4 times, it'll know that it's just not. You are still finding your way to cope. I can sense you can't find something that consistently works. I am glad you are coming here to share because in the end sometimes just simply venting or writing out what you are feeling may be just the thing to help you get through. Sorry that this is no exact science with no exact answers. HUGS to you today...

Definitely the numbness is a self protection mechanism for you. You are tapped out emotionally so I think after the hellish year you have been experiencing, it's what was going to happen if you got more than you can handle. Hugs to you as it sounds like you have a few rough weeks coming ahead.

I received hundreds of cards. What struck me ironic was that I have a good amount of cards in multiples. Apparently either the selection isn't much at card stores or people are just drawn to certain kinds of cards. I scrapbook so I make my own cards. I say what I feel and I find I tend to usually suggest something to help them garner strength and comfort depending who the person was that passed away. I always offer an ear and any way I could offer help. I can't help it. I bought a pretty large but nice decoupaged decorated box from Tuesday Morning. I keep the cards, the guestbook and any books I've gotten about grief in there. I also got a memory box as a gift from a family that received one of my husband's donations that rests atop the box. I keep it all in my bedroom.

I agree that the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. I too would be most concerned with the lack of washer/drier. No one needs the added stress of laundromat to their already busy routine.

I actually went to a wedding by myself for a good friend of mine in mid-June. Josh had passed 2 months prior. I was okay for it. I truly was but I couldn't honestly get myself to dance. I just happily sat, taking all the good spirits in. My husband and I used to love to dance at parties and events. We took ballroom dancing lessons when we got out of college just for the heck of it. I had a good time and didn't even feel the need to drink really. I had iced tea all night. I think the trick is to focus on the happiness around you and not to dwell on your own wedding memories - thus me avoiding participating in the dancing. I did have some amusement by trying to predict the music the DJ would play. I've been to so many weddings, it's almost too predictable.

People around you do care. I agree they don't know how they can be helpful. Sometimes you need to let them in or have a friend act on your behalf. I am pretty similar to you. I am the mom who did everything. I did PTA, I worked, I volunteered for other foundations, I took care of my family, planned events, pursued my own hobbies and interest. I was always 200% busy and able bodied to do things myself. Cut yourself some slack. You have an array of emotions playing through you as you feel loss without your husband but you feel you need to maintain a certain status quo for your kids. Are you and the kids doing any counseling? This might be a good time to help figure out and understand how you are feeling now. Hugs! We are here!

Give yourself a break. At 14 days I was still at home, not back to working yet, not wanting to go out or really see anyone. Give yourself time to adjust. I did the same of getting up and getting reasonably dressed to get the kids around and about. I was lucky to have some PTA moms drop off dinner to us just during the weekdays until the school year ended so I could do as I needed as I adjusted. If you think you are ready to do yoga or go out with friends, definitely do that but don't jump to do it if you don't feel up to it. Hugs!

I am glad my job is mostly office bound and I have a door versus a room with no door or a cubicle. When I don't want to deal, I shut the door. I also am known to see walking the floor and keep moving so it makes it harder for people to find me unless they page me. What field do you work in? I'm a quality associate at a biotech company. I have a BS in biochemistry. Aside from work, do you have any hobbies that were just yours for you to enjoy in your own? They totally save me from myself. I know my hobbies make me who I am and they didn't have anything to do with my husband other than he encouraged them or teased me about them but always let me have my own pursuits and interests. I did the same for him. I scrapbook, make cards, do crafts, sew, and crochet. I used to love to cook but I'm struggling with that because my husband was my taste tester and constant food stealing moocher. My kitchen haunts me a little so I haven't done much cooking that takes longer than a few minutes or I can leave it and come back. We don't have to like work but if you have something else, maybe you can develop a different kind of drive that you can gain some personal satisfaction?

Just tried to check the FB group. I'm still pending.

Oh man, that is about as insensitive as you can get. I hope your idea pans out. Someone needs to give these people a clue. I had a coworker say to me how he's glad I was taking over more leadership roles and how he's over 60 and he can drop drop dead any minute. I just stopped the conversation and said, "Seriously? That's what you have to say to me?" I turned my chair around and then cut him off. Conversation over. 2 days later he came back to my office to apologize because he just literally realized what he said to me. I told him I don't waste time or energy over idiocies like that because I can't afford to and I was more disappointed that it took him 2 complete days to realize he was a jackass.

That is a tough and sad situation. Kids can form attachments to particular teachers. You and your daughter are in our thoughts.