Jess

I am so very sorry for your loss but am glad you found us. I lost my husband to a sudden and completely unexpected seizure. It is hard to even wrap my mind around even at around 14 months out that one minute he was here and everything felt so certain and the next I was rudderless and adrift. This community has helped me find myself again and showed me the impossible times are 100% survivable. It is so hard, but you can do this and we are hear to listen.

I am so sorry for your loss. My husband died very suddenly, too. I asked a friend to make calls for me to spread the word. I couldn't do it either. Is there anyone that can help you like that? Take care of yourself and keep on posting. We all understand.

Upper respiratory virus and jammies. On the plus side, my Kentucky visitors are here taking excellent care of me. On the minus side, I should be having fun for a change. Nonetheless, I know I am very lucky today.

Yes! I think we all need at least a year off from our bodies' business while dealing with grief. Seriously. I did skip 3 months from stress in the beginning so I guess thanks, body!

I think sex is as important as the two people in the relationship make it. There are great relationships with little sex or no sex and there are great relationships with a lot of sex. I think it becomes more or less important when one or both partners are dissatisfied. For me, yes, honesty, humor, snuggling, good conversation, etc. are important, but sex is a way of physically expressing that connection with the one person that gets to experience that side of me. Plus, it is damn fun! So I think there is no overarching answer. It all depends on the couple.

Thinking you today. Thank you for sharing your beautiful post.

It felt like a weight off for me to do that. Strange times! Good for you on this step. It makes me happy to read this.

Exactly what IfIonlycould and BrokenHeart2 said. I read it and thought "Wow, that is a tough one! Boy, am I not qualified to give advice on this!" I guess the closest thing to advice I can really give is figure out what your heart is saying and figure out what your mind is saying. Typically, when I am faced with an issue and cannot decide it is because my heart and mind are at odds with each other. For me personally, I now go with my heart most of the time. I hope someone with better insight can pop in here and give actual advice.

I am so sorry to hear about your FIL. Thank you for sharing this story. It brings me comfort to hear things like that. I really don't know what I believe, but I know what I WANT to believe and things like this make my heart happy.

That made me laugh out loud. I love it!

I'm also in the sudden death camp. I kissed my husband goodnight, went upstairs, got ready for bed, then heard weird noises. When I ran downstairs to investigate he was experiencing a seizure (he'd never had one before) and I called 911. They had me follow and not ride with him. Later I would find out he went into cardiac arrest on the ambulance and they couldn't being him back. In an instant, life as I knew it was over and my life was terrifying. I was so scared every second of every waking moment, which I had far too many of in those days. It is weird to live in the fog, so very surreal. For me, the fog lasted several months. When it lifted and the pain really, really started coming in, it was hard. I spent a lot of time typing to the people in this community and had regular therapy sessions (once a week in those days). Now, I am around 14 months and I am functioning and even have really happy days. My grief has not left and honestly, it never will, but I have gotten better at living with it and around it. For now, try to take care of your basic needs. You can do this. Although we are not there in person to help, you are not alone in this. We understand and we are rooting for you. I am wishing you peace and comfort.

Yep. I am in a funk today, too and can't seem to get myself out of it. Sigh. And did I mention BLAH?

I thought this yesterday. Actually, the precise thought was "Holy shit, my husband is really, really dead. WTF?" It wasn't sadness exactly... maybe more like bewilderment? What an odd reality.

oscarsbeloved, I am so very sorry for your loss of Oscar, but I am so glad you found us. I found our community (then located elsewhere) and got my account activated at day 11. I credit doing as well as I am with finding these wonderful people, getting support, and being able to say the scary or ugly things that I couldn't say to friends or family. Mizpah is right, the healing has already begun. Part of the healing is feeling the pain of the wound that has cut so deep you don't even know how to recover. Right now I know you have a ton of worries and things are scary, but you have one main job- to take care of yourself. This means sleeping and eating as you are able and drinking as much water as you can manage. It is like being on an airplane if the oxygen masks deploy, you take care of securing yours first and then help others. Taking care of you will make it easier to take care of your son and then start facing the other issues as they come. I was very fortunate that my job was so supportive and understanding. I was scared to lose my job, too, but they put my mind at ease. They also had an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that allowed me to get 5 free counseling sessions and then additional ones for my co-pay amount. You may wish to find out if your employer offers something similar. If not, sometimes you can get free or reduced pricing on counseling through hospice programs. Keep sharing and posting because we do understand. I am wishing you peace and comfort.

Hi Aspen, I have always said that I was never suicidal but did want to die. If I am really, truly honest with how I felt, that is not entirely true. I started avoiding driving for the first couple months. It wasn't because I was going to veer off the road purposely or drive into incoming traffic. The real reason was when I would get back to the home we shared and pull into the garage, I would hit the button on the automatic garage door opener and watch it close and then think about how easy it would be to simply stay in the car and not shut it off and let myself slip away. Obviously, I never did it and am so thankful for not making that choice. In its simplest form, surviving this is simply allowing yourself to keep breathing and waking up each day. Whether a day is awful, impossible, mediocre, or even good doesn't change the survival of that day. Survival is easy since you have to physically commit to an action to stop doing it. I think too often we search for a reason to keep going, when really we need to be looking at reasons not to choose to stop surviving. I, for one, find myself much more indecisive than I ever have been before. So a big reason I did not choose to stop surviving was because that was too damn big of a decision for me. That may sound like a lame reason, but it was enough for me. That is why I chose my signature line roughly a year ago- to remind myself I could keep going, even when I didn't want to do so. Since you have had feelings of self harm, I am so relieved you are going to therapy today. We understand what you are going through and how you feel, but are not trained therapists and can only give so much help. I started therapy very early with weekly appointments. After a while, we went to every two weeks, and finally monthly. Just shy of one year, I felt okay enough to stop. I know the door remains open to return if I need to. I also blogged daily back then and visited the boards. Having an outlet to let all of it hang out was so helpful and getting feedback and support meant the world for me. I know people here or people I connected with through my blog are not licensed therapists, but since I had one of those the solidarity of community helped me immeasurably. You are very good at laying out your thoughts and saying how you feel, so I am hoping getting it out there is helping you, too. As for anger, it happens. There's just way too much in this new world to be pissed off at, isn't there? People that don't get (well intentioned or not), your fiance that left, the shambles of what you planned for your future, and so on and so on and so on. Lashing out happens. People that love you will understand it is part of you processing everything and will continue on loving you. It's just a time that feels impossible. It will get easier some day. I know that today is not that nebulous, currently unimaginable "some day" so that sentiment may be of little comfort, but it will happen. For now, just keeping breathing.

Thank you for all of your support and telling your own "going public" stories. It has all seemed to go well so far, which really makes us happy. I've met a lot of people in Justin and his daughter's life this past week (too many to count!) and all of them have been so kind and welcoming, which means a great deal to me. There are no rule books for how to do this stuff, but man I wish there were. Nonetheless, we seem to be figuring it out. My biggest concern really was to make sure people know I am not terrible person, I care deeply for them both, and will do my best to give them a happy life. It feels like that mission has mostly been accomplished.

Truthfully, this is why I have not unfriended my awful MIL. She lives on the other side of the country thankfully but keeps talking about visiting AZ. I don't need any surprises.

I found out today the verdict was finally handed down and we won. Even though I am on vacation, I've been peeking at my work email watching the atta girls roll in. I feel really great about this!

First, I hope you did an immediate unfriend of those two. Just ridiculous! I have a MIL issue myself. She has always been a schemer and a thief. Some of her highlights include helping my husband sell his car for 5k so we could pay for our wedding and then spending all of the money and stealing his identity to get a credit card that charged off due to non-payment (we found out about that when we went to buy or house). I wouldn't be shocked if she consulted a lawyer after her son died to see what she could get from me since she consulted a lawyer when her ex-husband died that she had been divorced from for 20 years to try to get access to his land, despite the fact both she and he had remarried. I can't even begin to explain why your MIL did that, but I think the reason is that we are the types of people that would never do such a thing. I'm so sorry, lcoxwell.

I cannot even count how many times in the past several months that I have said either out loud or to myself "I am so SICK of being a widow!" Why does everything have to be so hard? When will my mind come back? When will the people that know me not view me as this sad, broken thing that is so fragile she could break down further at any time? I am not that fragile little thing any more, but I am often treated that way. When my thoughts travel down that path, I remind myself what being a widow actually means. It means waking up each day and continuing on living and breathing despite having suffered through one of the most painful and stressful things someone can endure. It means community. This shared experience is so powerful that although many of us may never meet face to face, our shared understanding of the struggle will unite us for a lifetime. It means strength. Although often we can't see our own strength because we are so focused on the struggle or feel so hopeless, it is always there keeping us moving forward. When I remind myself of these things, widowhood seems less unbearable. I wish none of us had to endure the pain of widowhood because I would trade everything not to walk in these shoes, but trade backs are not an option. The more I get to know many in this community, the more I see that we don't deserve this. You do not deserve this, Jen, but you can keep moving forward. Do not lose sight of how far you have come. Sometimes it is hard to see it because we are so focused on how far there is to go, which I think is why I have my own meltdowns sometimes. ((Hugs)) to you, friend.

You know, I had the realization early on that somehow my life had become being that friend of friend you know of that had something horrible happen to them. You never really know the person yourself, you just heard their story and thought "Oh thank God, it wasn't me!" Yet, somehow, it IS me now. How the hell did that even happen? You will not fail him. That was something that was fresh in my mind in the beginning as well. I was still around and I had to figure out why that was and what to do with my life. I knew if I stayed in a sad little ball, he would be destroyed. If he and I ever meet again, I know I need stories of what I did with the time he didn't have. I am working on that and have a few already for sure, and so will you in time. For now, try not to worry about not being sad. We all know it is impossible because Houston was great enough to dedicate your life to and therefore is great enough to deserve to be mourned. Just focus on taking care of yourself the best you can so when it is time to make him proud, you are still around to do it. You can absolutely do this. You are doing this.

I couldn't say it any better than this. I am so sorry to hear this is happening.

I got so little sleep in he beginning I actually experienced hallucinations. It wasn't like Charlie Chaplin suddenly as in the room doing a routine or something like that. It was more hearing noises that weren't there and seeing orbs of light the size of bugs whizzing towards my face. Crazy, right? I started sleeping any chance I possibly could. 30 minutes here, an hour there. It wasn't until I was nearly 3 months in that I slept through the entire night. It helped me to put something on tv. My attention span was such crap I would be able to drift off. Often, it took 3 or 4 passes to watch an hour long show, but sleep was happening. I also completely gave up caffeine for about the first 2.5 months. Not sleeping compounds everything and that sucks so much. At over a year out now, I do often sleep through the night, but I do not always. My wake ups are shorter and I can go back to sleep easier. I so hate saying it took months for me, but do remember everyone is different and it may straighten out sooner rather than later for you. I hope it does.

Another widow smoker here. Sigh.

It makes me sad we all have stories about "friends" letting us down. I hope everyone has at least one person that sticks by them through this. I count myself lucky to have such a friend.