AutumnGlow

I'm having a lot of mixed feelings because he was so cruel to me when Jim was sick. He had wanted to see our daughter again after Jim died and I never let him. I cut off contact with him and his wife (Jim's step-mother) after Jim died. I still think it was the right thing to do, but she was the main problem. She was truly evil to me...he mostly just supported her in her evil. I found out tonight that he died on June 4th. No one contacted me to tell me, but I'm not surprised about that. I feel some regret, though, that things went so badly. I had been hoping that MIL would die first and that then, MAYBE, I'd have been willing to let him see Rachel. I'm not 100% sure what I would have done, but definitely as long as it was both of them there was no chance I'd have any contact with them. Now that possibility is gone and I'm kind of sad about it. I am having some other feelings coming up, too...about Jim.

Thanks everyone. I hate that you're dealing with this, too, but it's good to know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

I've just had a pretty big "meltdown" emotionally. I had thought that my hoarding was entirely related to my lack of energy due to depression, but as I'm getting rid of things I'm realizing over and over that they are things that were Jim's, or things that Jim had touched or seen...and that he'll never see or touch the new things. I know it's stupid, but it's like I'm erasing him. It's especially true with Rachel's stuff. She was 5 years old when he died and now she's 8. I've gotten rid of clothes that he dressed her in and saw her wearing, toys that he played with with her and picked up, the car seat that he used to buckle her in to. I cut off and kept the button part of the car seat because his thumb used to go right there...it's a spot that I know 100% that he touched exactly there. So many things have been replaced since he died...the fridge, the dishwasher, one of the toilets. He's never heard of Monster High or Frozen. He doesn't know that she can swim now or that she was a Brownie this year and went on her first overnight camping trip without me with the Brownie group. He doesn't know her best friend, Isabel. He doesn't know that she couldn't see in 3D and he doesn't know that the optometrist gave her a prescription that helps her to see in 3D sometimes and that we're going to an eye specialist to see if we can improve on it. The little girl he knew is disappearing and this bigger girl is growing up in front of me and he will never know her...his own child. All of this decluttering is throwing me back in to grief. So many feelings are coming up. I want my life to move forward. I don't want my home to be junked up place where I can't have people over. I want to be happy. I want to HAVE a life. I want to get back to work. I feel guilt, though, about erasing him to do it. I feel sad losing more and more of him when I get rid of things that he touched and only have things that he never even knew about here instead. This is really, really hard.

I'm so stuck in this journey. A lot of painful stuff is coming up for me right now, most notably that I blame myself for Jim's death. I pushed him to go to the doctor about other things and I knew that a change in a mole could be serious, but I didn't push him about it. He was dealing with other stuff and said he'd get an appointment in the fall, just 2 months later...how much more serious could it get in just two months, right? *sigh* Then I didn't go to all of his appointments with him because I was saving up my sick days for when I'd really need them when he was in treatment, and that led to his dad getting over involved and a whole bunch of mistakes and problems that could have been avoided. Every time I look back, I see so many poor decisions...so many points at which if I had gone left instead of right it might have made a difference. I'm furious with myself about my mistakes and my failures. I'm still stuck in this quicksand pit of depression over 3 years later and I hate myself for being so weak and so screwed up. It all comes down to me not being good enough. I wasn't a good enough wife, I wasn't a good enough teacher, I'm not good enough at taking care of the house, I'm not a good enough mother. I don't know how to get back up. There have been times when I thought I was getting back up, but I fell again and again. Now I'm afraid of trying. Other people manage to get back on track again...why not me?

I think it's when every problem in my life wasn't about grief anymore. I could have something difficult to deal with and it was difficult because it was a problem in its own right instead of everything leading back to "This wouldn't be happening if Jim were still alive." I can't put an exact time on it for when it happened.