HCMBirdie

Did you switch your numbers or start using his?

When did you guys turn off their cell phone? He still gets calls, mostly commercial calls, but its expensive. I've been thinking about just turning off the data on his phone... but keeping it in case he gets calls or texts? I've been carrying his phone since the day he died, but I can't/shouldn't continue to pay for two cells.

I read online that you can make quilts and teddy bears with a deceased spouse's clothes. Has anyone done this? Would you recommend it? Any other ideas for clothes or other stuff that you've done or seen? I'm nowhere near cleaning things out or disposing of anything, but I'm also curious what others have decided to keep for themselves, or reworked into memorials or concrete reminders of their person.

This spoke to me: " I didn't want to forget anything, and I'd grab it and jot in it constantly." That is an urge I've been experiencing, so I went with paper.

My husband and I were literally months from trying for children when he died. He had a hernia and we wanted to have the surgery and get him healed up before I got pregnant. His surgery was scheduled for May and he died suddenly in March. I have always wanted kids. I told him it was important to me on our third date. I told him it was a deal breaker. I had anxiety about how long we were waiting to have children, but it always made sense to wait. We were between jobs, we were moving, we were in debt. We finally got to a place in the last year where we were both ready and excited. Now, at 34 years old, I have no partner and no children. I have at least a couple years ahead of me where neither are probably a good idea. My future has been obliterated. So I'm trying to figure out what to do to preserve options. Anyone else freeze their eggs? The internet tells me 34 is the right age to do it. The idea of being pumped full of hormones right now sounds awful. I just don't know what a happy future for myself looks like yet.

Im 18 days widowed. Several people have recommened to me that I journal, and it appeals it to me. I'm interested in hearing how others do it... good internet platforms? Apps? Paper journals? Emails to yourself or your spouse? Do you make yourself write everyday?

Ugh. Yes, you're right. This is exactly it. Thank you for naming it. I am and have been in crisis mode because I am and have been managing a crisis -- and I'm pretty functional in a crisis. With my husband being so young, and me having a pretty clear idea of what he would want... I felt an immediate responsibility to make sure his funeral would be on point and to make sure his friends and family were taken care of. People keep saying to me that this is mostly about me or worst for me or I'm most important in this situation, and it kept ringing false to me... we all lost him. But this makes sense now.... I'm depersonalizing the situation to manage the crisis because I feel like I owe it to him. Its not a fantastic place to be, but its freeing to know what's going on with me. TY

My husband died 13 days ago. He was 38 years old and in great health. He was coming back from a work conference on a Thursday afternoon and banged his knee with his suitcase, tearing his ACL and meniscus. By Monday night, unbeknownst to us, he had formed a huge blood clot in the leg and experienced a saddle embolus, which he survived but mistook as a panic attack. We went to the hospital Tuesday morning, and they apprised us of the situation. They put him on blood thinners, but he'd survived, his vitals and breathing were normal, and both my husband and I thought we'd caught it and gotten lucky. Wednesday evening, he felt good until it shifted suddenly and he was probably dead in a matter of five minutes, though I watched them work on him for 30. I cried over his body until I couldn't anymore. Then I made the phone calls in the room next to him, packed up our stuff while they tagged and bagged him, and then had a friend drive me home. Since then, I've been collecting passwords, tracking down credit cards, responding to facebook, planning the funeral, scraping together money for obituaries, and generally handling our business. I'm functional and I hate it. People keep telling me how strong I am and how proud they are of me, but I don't feel anything and it feels like a betrayal. That's not entirely true... sometimes I feel a flash of deep, black tar guilt about all the ways I was a bad wife. Sometimes I feel painful stabs of regret that I didn't think harder about asking about sperm recovery in time. He was 38, I am 34, and we'd planned to start a family in May after he'd had laparoscopic hernia surgery. He was excited about it. Sometimes I cry because of how terrible I feel about how little I've cried and how productive and functional I have been. How little it feels like it matters to my life that he's dead. People tell me I'm still in shock and/or numbness, but when I read about being in shock or numbness, it doesn't describe me. I have people around me to help, but there's so little for them to do. They keep waiting for me to crumple into a ball of depression so they help me, but I'm still functional - I donated his tissues, shopped 3 funeral homes, met with lawyers, crunched spreadsheets of our assets and liabilities, made most of the funeral arrangements myself, cared for our dogs, done my own laundry, helped my in-laws make travel arrangements, blah blah blah. I'm sleeping normally. My appetite is returning to normal. I'm not emotionally disconnected. I smile or laugh at things that are funny. I had a fight with my brother. Every now and then it feels briefly like I'm grief-constipated. I see something or hear something and I well up like I'm going to cry. I think "Here's my grief. I do miss him. I knew I did." and then it subsides before it takes hold. I keep thinking about my future, will I marry again? Will I every have the children I want SO BADLY? How? I worry that I didn't actually love him. That I wasn't as invested in our marriage as I fooled myself into thinking. I wish I was a lump of tears in bed so I knew my love for him was real.