mikeeh

Like Mark that question has always bothered me because it is always so insincere. The only thing worse than asking that question of someone you know will give you a neutral answer. I'm OK or Good thanks. The only thing worse is asking it of someone you don't think is ok but still think you should get the neutral or positive answer. It becomes our obligation to bury our real answer, one very similar to mawidow's, and truncate it to those last three words knowing the person asking doesn't really care how we are doing. Or even worse, they think it is now safe to ask because you should be okay by now. Like Mawidow I am close to 2.5 years and it seems nobody even remembers what happened, how torn up my life got 2.5 years ago. After all this time it must be safe to ask me that question now. Surely I am over it by now right. Mike

I get it TooSoon. How about having an actual dinner, and not just eating whatever you can throw together. Dinner meaning eating with someone and not just filling your empty belly. Someone to tell our stories to without having to explain who everyone is and what they do. Evenings are the time you have to think. Think about being alone. During the day you have work and some people around you to distract you and keep your mind off things.

It has been a while so I thought I might update. I have been to her psychologist a few times. I was upfront about why I was going to see him. That I was visiting hoping for more of a Medium experience, in my own head at least, than as a psychologist. That talking to him was more as a surrogate for talking to her. He has shared some insight in general about what she said to him and what she said about us, me and Zack. Her denial about her dying was so complete though that even when talking to him they skirted the issue so it isn't like the things left unsaid between us were shared with him. Still he seems to be good at what he does and I will probably continue to see him as a psychologist and not strictly as a surrogate for my wife. Here is the strange thing, that prompted my other post from last night. So last night was my third visit with him. I was waiting in the waiting room for my appointment. When his door opens to let his current appointment leave so it is almost my turn my wife's best friend comes out. A woman she worked with that she really connected with and we even did a couple evenings as couples. I follow her on facebook but don't really say anything because I don't have much to say. But she comes out and walks through the waiting room and we just look at each other and try to take a couple seconds to actually recognize each other. We talked for a few minutes while he prepped for me or made his notes about her visit. For most people those connections to that past life is probably normal. My life has been so partitioned from that before life that there is almost no overlap. It was really nice to see her and nice to talk to her but it can be so difficult to make that connection and that reminder of what life use to be. It is such a catch 22. I wanted so much to come home and say "Hey, guess who I saw today." But then again if she were still here I wouldn't be there and wouldn't have seen here there. She is going because the same guy who referred Sue to him referred her friend. They both worked for him. I don't know if it was a big violation of her privacy or mine that we met and now know that each are seeing a psychologist. I wonder if she is glad she bumped into me or if I am the reminder that her friend is gone, that if her friend was still there she might have that sounding board to get her through the rough year at work and wouldn't be going to him either. It was nice to see her, but became a sad thing when I had a chance to think about it. Such is life as a widower/widow right. How happy can happy get?

I just wish I had someone to talk to, chat with. Not an in depth conversation but just someone to chat with, blurt something out that might become a conversation or just an independent comment. Someone who understands what I mean when I say something. That when I say I ran into this person or this happened they know what that means, no explanation or clarification necessary. Someone that when something strange or funny or good or bad happens you can just say "This happened today" Sometimes you just have to tell someone about something that happened to you. I wish I still had that someone, but she's been gone for over 2 years and there is nobody to fill that role anymore. So much we have lost, and may never get back.

I think Canadiangirl and Maureen might have hit on something. I don't know about any confidentiality post mortem or anything. That is why I mentioned the appropriateness of seeing him when I talked to him. I do hope that he will be able to say "she said this about you' or this is how she felt about me raising our son without her. Some insight into what she said or thought about me. Maybe he won't be able to do that. I think talking to someone about her who knew her might be something I am looking for also. I am not able to talk to anybody about her, certainly not anyone that knew her. On the rare occasions it does happen it is very emotionally trying and upsetting but maybe that is because it doesn't happen often. I was at a high school graduation party for a nephew a couple weeks ago. Her sister and I were talking. She said she got a call from someone from my wife's earlier life, way before me. She went to college in another state and worked for the college and for a state senator. They said they knew her from that period of her life and that they often wondered what happened to her. They talked to my sister in law about how nice a person she was and how much they missed her. They did some research and found the obituary. It was tough even hearing that from my SIL, and honestly I resented a little that they called her and not me. Makes me wonder how I will handle it if her Dr starts to talk about her and how much it will upset me. Then again that is kind of what I am looking for. This stuff is hard to figure out.

I don't know if anyone has done this,or thought about I thought I would run it up the flag pole and see who had an opinion. My wife was sick for many years and knew for three of them that she was stage 4 so was dying. At some point during her illness she started to see a Psychologist to help her cope. As she got sicker and couldn't drive I would take her to her appointments and I would go into her appointment with her. As a little more background we never had any of those hollywood death scene talks. Be it denial on her part, or maybe on mine. I felt I had to protect her by not having that candid talk which would highlight that she was dying. I don't think that many things that should have been said were ever said out of denial or a feeling I had to protect her. Plus we just weren't the kind of people to just lay it all out there like that, even in those circumstances. Though I see my own guy to talk about things I am thinking about making an appointment with her Dr. I am not sure If I am looking for his services as much as a Dr as a Medium. I feel like the things that she never said to me she may have said to him and that I might get some closure and hear the things I need to hear from him as a surrogate for her. That he will have some knowledge, some insight that will help me. It will be tough I think. I actually talked to him to set up an appointment today and it was hard. I just went past two years and I could barely speak to partially explain what I was looking for, discuss the appropriateness of me seeing him, and setup a time to see him. So is this a good idea or a bad idea? I'm sure he will say nothing bad if she had for some reason to say anything bad about me. I guess it will either be heart wrenching or disappointing. It has been two years, how much will he remember? He says he remembers me from the few times I came to her session. Maybe he checked his notes before he called me back. I just don't know if this will give me closure or re-open wounds that I don't even know have started to heal. Opinions welcome. Mike

Thanks both of you. I don't know what a good deal for a hotel is to be honest. It seems any with any reasonable price (under $200night) puts you way out of town. I am hoping to do a whale watch at some point. That and Red Sox tickets are def on the agenda. Duck Tour and some historical stuff. I was looking at the Go Pass but not sure if it will be worth it. The trolley seems to have pretty hit and miss reviews. I have a sister in law (ish) who works at a travel agency so maybe will check with her about any packages. Getting there is a question too. Will probably drive since only 6 hour drive. Looked at the train but 12 hours by train. How ridiculous is that.

Carey, thanks for your reply. While I hate the idea of any of us going through this stuff but I know I always find it gratifying and reassuring when someone puts into words thought I am unable to express. Just knowing that I am not the only one thinking this way is reassuring so I am glad I could provide that for you in this case.

In a private discussion I may have stumbled upon something that maybe helped explain some things that I wonder rings true for anybody else. Now a couple weeks past the 2 year mark I have already wondered on a different thread what active grieving is. I think that there are times when I miss her and the life we had. The loss of her is not in the fore front of my thinking and though I am not a generally happy person and it is mostly due to her death it is the unhappiness that is my focus and not the loss. I guess that is beyond active grieving. There are times though when it will really spike up again like it was yesterday or last week that I lost her. On commiserating with a fellow wid from the board I think I realized that it is when we try to change things that the grief and the loss spikes and times get tough again. I think my pattern is familiar to many. After her loss, after the funeral and through the first year I think we do what we must, and only what we must, to survive and stay alive. Feed kids, do dishes, go to work, whatever needed to happen and nothing more. We settle into a routine and while not happy or pleased with our lives we get a certain level of comfort from the stability and familiarity. Our life becomes 'normal' (won't use that dreaded term) again. Then as time goes by, one year or two you decide that it may be time to start making some changes. It may be to finally get rid of his/her clothes like I did a couple months ago. It may be taking your ring off, which I set a goal to do at second sadiversary yet am still wearing 3 weeks later. It is starting to make those changes that dregs all those feelings up again. I think those who were forced to make those changes earlier for financial or other reasons go through the worst of it earlier and as the hit these later years they don't have the flare ups of 'active grieving' that those ofus who put it off do. Maybe I am completely off base with this theory. We all have triggers and we all go through bad spells and does it matter why or who has more, or whose is worse? Mike

He is 16

This isn't really about a bago but who knows. I am thinking of going up to Boston with my son for about a week for vacation in mid August. Anyone from the area that has any suggestions for what to do or where to stay while there? We are looking at a whale watch and maybe a Red Sox game.

Gives our two lunches together a whole different feel doesn't it.

I am at risk of coming off as a creepy pervy wanker here, especially being a guy. Is it just me or aren't we all kind of 'on the prowl' almost all the time? Maybe not actively looking but secretly hoping. Hoping that almost by accident we will find that someone that will fill the gaping hole in our lives. I think we have multple motives for checking out those fingers for rings, and at least subliminally part of it is wondering if this one could be the one to make us whole again. Then again it could be just me, probably is.

You never know where the triggers are going to come from. I still can't hear Sultans of Swing without tearing up. It played during our first date and I could not resist the air guitar temptation. How is that for a first impression on a first date. Conversations ends and fingers flicking all over the place for the duration of the song. And there was a second date, a minor miracle.

It is so interesting to see how different, but not wrong, our perspectives are on some of these issues. I think we all envy the married couples we see and give no thought to if their marriage is a happy one or not. We assume that it is a marriage and not a trip to Disney or the Bahamas. Is it fun, or easy, or perfect? No, it;s a damn marriage with all the aggravation and trouble that happens whenever two different people try to blend their lives together. It's still better than what we have. Not that there aren't some truly horrible marriages out there but we tend to not think much about those.

Thank you all for your kind words and insight When I hear people say things I have been thinking it is always reassuring. Yes, there are things I have thought about but not foisted upon you yet. It suggests to me that maybe I am not alone in what I think and what I feel, at least not so far out on the fringe as I usually think I am. Just Jen, I have to agree with Mizpah that it breaks my heart to hear that you think like that, even though it is exactly how I think. Maybe it is grass is always greener ism but I am sure you will find someone again, as soon as you are ready to look and let someone in. I don't know you well but you seem nice and fun and friendly and there will be plenty of guys looking for such a woman. Maybe it is a chicken and the egg thing. Am I miserable because I am alone or alone because I am miserable? I have seen many doing much better at dealing with this mess. It seems like that comes with finding someone new to share their lives. Are they better because they have found someone, or did they find someone because they were better and able to look and find, and let someone else in? Going through this over so long. The long illness and intense care giving. Losing her and dealing with the loss and the isolation. Seeing the facade of life stripped away when it comes to friends and family and how much they all let me down. Seem no matter how little I expect from people they always manager to disappoint. It all seems to go into my inability to open myself up and let anyone else in. So maybe I have put up a big barbed wired fence around me and the ring doesn't really make a difference. To me though it still is my symbol that there was a time when I meant something to someone. Taking it off will just highlight that now I don't mean anything to anybody.

I remember when I was a kid there was this really bad Hercules cartoon. In this cartoon he got his power from a ring that he would put on when he needed it. As a semi comic geek growing up Green Lantern was my favorite hero. Again the power came from the ring. I think it was specifically the ring which for some reason caught my attention as much as anything else. Now as I sit here. Just past the 2 year mark. I contemplate taking my ring off. I have always realized how important this ring was to me. How proud I was to wear it. I took it off for a minute or two last night and looked at it and realized it didn't give me any super strength or powers or anything but it was part of my disguise. My disguise as a human being. As part of the human race. We all dress or present ourselves as how we want the world to perceive us. Suits and ties for the respectable look, long hair or short. Tattoos and piercings etc. My ring was my way of telling the world that I am human. That someone once cared and I was able to connect with another person at one time. With the ring I am at least a married man who has that person at home or someone that cares for me. Without the ring I am just a fat, balding, miserable old man at the grocery store. For all the world could tell or surmise someone who is either a divorced bastard, and who could blame her, or someone who has never found anybody to share their life with, no surprise. It isn't power or strength in this ring, it is my humanity. By taking it off do I lose the last vestige of the humanity I have left after losing her Did I bury it two years ago like I did her?

So year 3 has officially begun and I guess it is tradition that most move on to this category of Beyond Active Grieving. I am not sure what active grieving is. I still have my 'oh shit she is dead!" moments but more often it is "was that part of my life that I think that I remember real? Was there a time when I was happy and someone cared?" I am fairly certain that it isn't so much grieving that I deal with as much as it is just hating this new, well I guess not so new anymore, life I am stuck in. A life of nobody caring and meaning nothing to anybody. I often think I exaggerate my loneliness and isolation. Judging by the cascade of concern and well wishes that I was bombarded with yesterday maybe it isn't exaggerated. Since it seems to be much more about my miserable life than it the loss of my wife, not that they aren't related, I guess that would make grieving a secondary concern and maybe puts me into the beyond active grieving category.

I thought the withdrawal thing was just a me thing because of my own social ineptness. Sorry to hear that you all have these times, but at least I feel a little better that I am not the only one who withdraws and don't feel like I have a contact with humanity.

Thank everyone, I know intellectually that it wasn't my failure but it is still hard to not think of it as a failure when they had to take her from me. I tried as hard as I could to go through this with her. It was always 'we' have chemo, 'we' have a Dr appointment. Them taking her from me took me out of the process and it was not longer 'we'. It was nice being part of a 'we', especially during the better days. And as I find now being a part of a 'we' even in the worse days is better than being a 'me' now. So I don't really beat myself up too much about the failure. Only in the deepest wallowing session do I draw from the sense of failure that I felt when the nurse told me they had to take her away. I set a personal goal that I would finally take off my ring after 2 years. Now I am thinking it may be too much to deal with.

Maybe there will come a time when June is just June. Every day of June won't be that day in that year when that thing happened. I guess in my case if that ever happens it will take more than two years. On this day, June 14th two years ago was her last day in our house. That was the day my care giving failed and her illness had progressed to far and they took her from our house for the last time to go to a hospice facility where they could administer stronger painkillers and have her under closer supervision. Soon 'that day' will be the second anniversary of the day she died. I almost don't know if that day will be worse than this one. All the uncertainty of how long she had and how much longer I would have her seemed to be answered. No more fooling yourself about weeks, months, years. One they go to hospice it is pretty much over and that is what this day is to me. The day I could no longer help her. The next time I came back in this house it would be without her, forever. I guess June isn't just June yet. It is still the crappiest month of the year. Mike

So here I am rapidly approaching the end of year two and I still don't think I can understand death. I still can't quite wrap my head around the idea that she is gone. Actually is turning into having a hard time believing she ever really existed. So as I wrestle with this concept of death and being a survivor, a left behind, something happened that made me think about another angle. I had an Uncle die the other day. No sympathies needed sine I haven't seen him or any of his family for probably close to 40 years and didn't see much of him before that. We weren't close. I just found out from his obit that he was a twin with an aunt that died a very long time ago that I barely knew. That was a surprise. Then I had another eye opening surprise. I thought my Mother's side of the family was getting through this life thing pretty good. My many, many Aunts an Uncles on my father's side are dropping like flies. Of course there are much more of them, my Father was one of 13. My mother was only one of 5 and though I knew her one sister was gone and my mother has been gone for almost 20 years I thought that the rest were doing fine. Then I see in the obituary that along with his wife and two daughters he is survived by only one brother. How would it feel to be the last of your siblings to survive? I haven't lost any yet, being one of 5 myself. I also haven't talked to any of my siblings since about a month after my wife's funeral. Those few who might know me know about how little support I got from them during my wife's illness. Their indifference and absence is something I can't forgive, but it seems like only a matter of time before we start to drop like flies ourselves. One brother had a cancerous kidney removed a couple years ago. I have a terribly obese brother and sister whose hearts must be ticking time bombs. How will I react when they start to go, and how hypocritical of me would it be to pretend to care after years of ignoring them the way they did us. But even in a family that isn't close what would it be like to be the last surviving member of your generation of your family? Not as debilitating and overwhelming as losing a spouse but it is just a whole new side of death, a concept that I already can't wrap my head around.

And I bet that these incredibly sympathetic people who are so torn up at the loss of their uncle, dog, or celebrity or athlete were nowhere to be found when you were going through the hell we all went through. I care as long as I don't have to do anything about it.

For people going through what we have, losing our spouse, I have all the sympathy in the world. A workmate went through losing her husband to cancer after I lost my wife. All the sympathy in the world. Losing your 92 year old parent who live 2000 miles away, sorry not the same thing. So many around me getting a divorce, sorry your choice now or your bad choice then, no sympathy. If the car breaks down and you are stranded or the house if flooding or the kid is sick you can always pick up the phone and call them, even if divorced. We can't So I am with you, sympathy challenged for people going through what I don't think measures up to what we have gone through. I had to not only tell our son his Mom had cancer, I had to tell him we were cancelling a Disney trip with his cousins at the same time because of it.

Thanks all for your input and suggestions. There are no Grandparents. His last Grandmother died about a year after his Mom did. It isn't so much that I can't trust him or he can't handle himself on his own. I just don't want him to feel like he has been abandoned again. I don't keep him from hanging out with his friends but I don't really encourage it either. I am just so worried about a bunch of teenage boys hanging out unsupervised. He is a good kid and all but he doesn't like the smart kids. He likes the rebels and has already found himself in trouble. Nothing worse than what I did his age but more than I want to deal with. I guess in another year or two he will be out of high school and living his own life and I will hardly see him. I just don't want to spend that time wishing for it to come so I can have my own life because it will be tough when he leaves.