Brenda

Plenty of guilt here.  Not over how she died - I had no control over the disease whatsoever (although I do feel like I froze at the very end and I could have spared her from such an unpleasant moment of departure, but that's another story); no, I feel lots of guilt about the stupid stuff we bickered over while we were both healthy and alive.  The dumb arguments that I caused.  The idiotic things I did that caused her so much emotional pain.  I can't say I was the nicest person.  I used to think that we'd have the rest of our lives to make up, to deal with the past, to get over this stuff and to focus on simply loving each other like I think we did.  Turns out I was wrong and those few peaceful, wonderful decades of the future we had looked forward to were nothing but an illusion.  So yeah, guilt over making her short life a fucking miserable existence at times.  She could have done far better than me.

Getting over it?  I want to.  Despite the guilty feelings, I can't help think that she would in no way want me to live as a guilt-ridden wreck for the rest of my life.  She would want me to (try to) be happy for the children, for the family, to (try to) enjoy the time I have left.  I'm certain that she would never want me to spend the rest of my life in penance.  If I've learned my lesson, even at her expense, I've become a better person who can pass that on to others.

Thanks ever so much, Mizpah.  You make perfect sense, and I'm glad you popped over to share your experience.  Perhaps the search for meaning is a fool's errand in the first place, and that if we get the little things right - starting with the most basic, such as staying organized, eating right, exercising etc. - then the big things like meaning and purpose take care of themselves.

Deedee, best of luck to you and baby tomorrow.  It'll all go well.  Sending a massive hug over to you.

Every piece of paper I can find that has his handwriting on it....

Same here with the paper.  Even credit card receipts at the bottom of one of her many pocketbooks; I feel terrible tossing those out.  And her old organizers from years ago, filled with her handwriting about the mundane things in our lives like dentist appointments and such.

Her clothes, oddly, I had no trouble parting ways with.  Nor most other things.  But anything with her handwriting on is a real struggle to part with.

Exercise, decluttering, gardening, smashing plates...

Decluttering has been my "go to" task for the past few weeks.  There's something very therapeutic about violently hurling bits of the past into the dump.  Exercise, tidying, and smashing things all rolled into one.

What I am doing when I feel that way is to try and remind myself of the little points in my life.  I have thousands, or at least hundreds, of small points and while they can't replace the big point ever, they can build me up just enough to keep moving forward (like my husband told me to).

That's a very interesting way of looking at things, Dahlia.  If I think about it, there are many minor points that do add up to a significant reason for getting out of bed in the morning.  None will ever replace my poor spouse, not even close, but I guess she's wasn't the be-all and end-all of my life.  (Sorry honey.  Feel bad even typing that.)

At this point, I accept that I am not in a position to uncover the answers to those questions. I have only recently entered this strange new world, and I am still learning my way. I also know that I have not been thinking very clearly in the months since I lost my beloved. Months that have been filled with shock, grief and loneliness.

 

So for now, I will spend my time trying to heal. That is as much as I can handle. And those questions, as important as they are, will have to wait

Those two paragraphs are perfect - thanks for sharing.  Healing first, then work on the other stuff.  You're right; they are very important questions, but there's no way I can even begin to answer them either until I'm sure I'm thinking straight.

As ever, thanks all!

I know it's still early days for me (three months, give or take), but I'm struggling with the total loss of any sense of purpose I had in life.  Everything my wife and I had planned for our future together is gone.  It's verging on a loss of the will to live, and that frightens me - but also comforts me because if anything did happen to me (or if I did anything to myself), I'd be with her, and that's exactly where I want to be right now.

Don't worry - not going to do anything to harm myself.  Just want to get it out there and see if anyone else struggled with the same thoughts.  And how did you overcome them?  Time heals this problem, or did you need to actively work on a plan to refocus your life.

Or at three months, should I even bother trying to figure things out?  I guess there's no rush...

Cards and oven cleaning.  I get the cards - at least that can be done more than once.  To need to clean the oven daily, you'd have to be an extremely messy cook.

Although I do tend to clean the microwave when the tears start to flow - nobody can see my face when I spent ten minutes doing that, and with my kids and my awful cooking skills (and general laziness in the kitchen), it does tend to look like someone's thrown up in there on a fairly regular basis.

But yeah, weird advice.  Wonder where they got that from?

That's pretty much it.  Does anyone have a key to the acronyms/initialisms used on this site?  I'm assuming that "H" is husband, "W" is wife, but is "D" deceased or darling or dear or dead?

Thanks?

Illegal as it may be, it comes up.  Polite smalltalk, innocent disclosures, etc.  Nobody's realistically going to tell an interviewer that a question is outright illegal - that's a deal killer right off the bat and you might as well tell them you don't want the job; chances are, they'll find another reason to give it to someone else and your complaint will be ignored.  Real world here; been there, done that (on the interviewee side, not as an interviewer), and preferred to get a paycheck rather than be unemployed.  Not that anyone has overtly asked me an illegal question, but interviewers aren't stupid and they are human.  For example, if a casual lunch is part of the interview process, the conversation is bound to stray to family matters.  These things come up as part of demonstrating that you're able to build rapport and fit in with the existing team.

My concern would be why it would be an issue.  Are there those out there who would discriminate against us?

I'd suggest being open and honest.  While not one to capitalize on this miserable situation, being widowed certainly generates an abundance of empathy and sympathy.  As I'm rapidly learning, we're all now part of a rather large but rather silent club.

It's nothing to be ashamed of.  If asked, explain.  If not, feel free to keep it to yourself.  What do we have to hide?

Actually, all wids would probably benefit from a head-to-toe physical... I know I personally spent six months neglecting my health shamefully (and on purpose-- I quit taking my prescription meds, reasoning that I had no desire to prolong my life, so why bother?). Just my 2 cents, but there it is. (((hugs)))

Wonderful advice - thanks so much.  I'm going to the doc to ask about the hair, but I'll also see about having him give me a quick once-over to make sure there's no other glaring problems that I'm just not picking up on right now.  My mind is elsewhere, and like you, my own health has had to play second fiddle to the needs of my children/bank/house/job/etc.

Grief brings out the spite in people.

You are so right about that.

Important rule for grief: surround yourself with positive things and positive people.  If that means cutting out in laws, so be it.  You don't owe them anything. Really. You might feel like you owe it to your spouse to maintain a relationship, but I hate to remind you that they aren't here anymore. Do what YOU want.

I shall follow this advice, guiltily or not.  And I think the future me will thank the present me for doing so.

Three months past my wife's death and my hair is dropping out like crazy, probably ten times what it normally does.  After a single shower and dry, my bathroom floor looks like I haven't swept it for a month - hair everywhere.  I spoke to my doc about this and he said that it could be a temporary reaction to extreme stress.  Anyone else experience something like this?  The last thing I need right now is to have hair issues on top of everything else, superficial as that seems.  This has been going on for about a month now and shows no signs of stopping.

I'll echo the great advice above that you should take good days when you get them.  At first, I found it very hard to not feel guilty about having a good day once in a while, and it did take a little getting used to; the stress of feeling good could be as bad as the stress of feeling awful.  Sadly, the good days don't last forever; there's always a rather unpleasant crash back down to reality.  No idea when that'll stop happening, but at almost three months out, I'm not even close.

I'm happy to do so simply because a wonderful man with sparkling blue eyes made me very happy for 24 years.

This bit of your post really struck a chord with me.  I wonder what my wife would have expected me to do?  Put no effort into saving the relationship, or at least try to make things work for the sake of her memory?

I appreciate the advice.

No matter how we protest otherwise, most of us aren't really their family, you know?

You're absolutely right about that.  I'm not their daughter.  I'm literally the girl who looks after their grandkids, like a babysitter.  They want to keep up the closeness with the children while cutting me out of the loop.  Frustrating at the best of times. 

Thanks for the replies.  Sounds like it's pretty normal then.  To be perfectly honest, I married my wife, not her family.  It should be no surprise that once the link between the two passed away, we remember how little we had in common to begin with.

I'm looking forward to the day when I see it as a blessing.  Somehow I don't think it'll be too far in the future.  It's hard for me right now to imagine my life beginning a positive new chapter; it still seems so much like a very frustrating and slow ending to the current chapter involving me and my wife.

Evidently, the only thing tying me to my in-laws was my wife.  Now that she's gone, they've all distanced themselves from me to the point of rarely communicating.  This after the countless times they told me "we've become so close" as I cared for their daughter/sister 24/7 while she died from cancer and they visited once in a while to sit and talk to her while I washed clothes covered in blood and vomit.  And now that my wife is gone, so have they, back to the good old days when we spoke very rarely.

I get it: they're grieving too.  They've lost a daughter and a sister.  That's a big deal.  They have their own needs to worry about.  But it frustrates me that they don't seem to understand how lonely post-spouse life can be.  It frustrates me that they don't seem to understand that while the details of their lives continue largely unaltered (I know, a gross simplification, but I'm talking about their jobs, their financial situations, their houses, their families, their own spouses), every piece of my future with my wife is shattered.  Everything has changed for me.  It's as if they've made this whole thing "about them" and totally forgotten that there's days when I go without ever speaking to a fucking grown up.

I'm not begging for their return.  Just venting at how frustrating it is to be left to suffer through this alone while they suffer through it with their unchanged and stable families, safe in the knowledge that they don't have to worry about how to pay the mortgage, how to juggle grieving kids and a job, how to be a single parent etc.  They get the luxury of having the mental space to focus solely on grieving the loss of their family member, while I'm so damn busy and confused that I struggle to make sure the bills are paid and the kids are where they're supposed to be at any given time.  It's as if grief is the bottom of my urgent "to do" list, and I'll never get to it.

Jeez, this is more stressful than saddening.

Oh Carey, you made me laugh.  Not much does that these days, so thanks!

I'm not sure the "right" way to phrase this, but I wonder if being a man doesn't cause some of that.

I wouldn't know

I think you nailed something, Carey, which is how utterly arbitrary this whole process seems.  There's been big things that haven't affected me at all, but then something stupid and small will throw me completely by surprise.  For example, cleaning out her clothes from the closet was no big deal whatsoever, but throwing away an old receipt with her signature on made me feel terrible.

New to this still - hope these aren't stupid questions.

It's almost like I think that people will judge me on how openly I grieve and how many tears I shed.  My in-laws, they wear their hearts upon their sleeves, then there's me who seems outwardly to be coping magnificently, almost uncaringly.

I am grieving.  Really.  But in my own pragmatic way.  Life doesn't stand still for young parents.

Time for the black nail polish?  I don't know what else to do to show people I'm genuinely upset.  Or that I even need to show people that I'm upset.  Utterly lost.

Maybe this is just something I should stop worrying about.  Jeez, god forbid I do start openly grieving like the others in the family - I'd get nothing done.  Maybe I should count this as a blessing?

And I'm clearly such a shitty spouse that I can't even figure out, after two decades of marriage, whether my wife would be mad that I'm so un-upset, or whether she'd be happy that I'm coping and looking after the kids.

Thanks ever so much for the replies.  Sounds like it's not as unusual as I thought it might be.

I still find it odd.  Her parents and her sister spend their days sobbing away, almost unable to drag themselves out of bed with their all-encompassing grief, and here I am, able to keep my small family afloat and on track.  The logical part of me knows that I'm this way out of necessity - someone's got to feed the kids, and I don't have the "luxury" of wallowing in grief right now like my wife's wider family does.  But the emotional part of me worries that I wasn't that in love with her, or she wasn't that important to me after all.  And I'm not sure which part of me to believe.  I hope to god it's the former, not the latter.

I suspect that once life settles down, it'll change.  When I can finally take a breath and spend some time reflecting on what's happened, I imagine I'll turn into a total mess.  Right at the time when everyone else gets over it and wonders why I'm the only one crying and starts wondering why I can't just get over it too...

I'm struggling with the idea that I'm not feeling sad enough.  Lost my wife in January, but haven't really shed too many tears or been totally incapable of functioning.  Things seem to be going pretty well, to be honest.  And I'm feeling rather guilty about it.  I absolutely loved her, so any ideas why I've cried only two or three times?

I'd like to think that it just hasn't sunk in yet and that the sadness will hit once I get settled into my new life without her, when I actually have time to think about what a devastating loss her death was.  It's busy right now, lots going on; children to look after, etc.

Did anyone else experience this?  And did it end up being delayed grief that hit you much later, or did you find that your grief was actually rather manageable and you "got lucky" with how mild the effects were?

(If it helps, I did shed many a tear right after she was diagnosed with cancer, so I could have got much of my grieving out of the way in the few months after diagnosis but before death, while she faded away to nothing in front of my eyes.  I think maybe I felt like I lost her when she was diagnosed, not when she died; the person she was after diagnosis was not the person she was beforehand.)

Brenda, My husband died of colon cancer but by BIL (his brother) died of pancreatic cancer.  He was 53.  He was experiencing some lower back pain.  3 weeks from diagnosis to his passing.  He passed a month after my husband.  Cancer sucks....

That it does.

I'm so sorry to hear about your losses.  Makes the three months I got with my wife (to say goodbye) sound like an eternity.

Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.  Less than four months from diagnosis to death; from "perfect" health to nothing that quickly.  She was amazing throughout, and I'll never forget the dignity she exhibited in the face of utter hopelessness.  Fuck that disgusting disease.

Seems like there's a fair few pancreatic cancer widows here.

I'm fairly certain that aggressive chemo made my wife's last few months pretty miserable.  Long into Stage IV when diagnosed, and I don't think her oncologist had any business whatsoever suggesting that she undergo a course of treatment that almost instantly sucked out what remaining strength and quality of life she had.  Her disease was never curable.  Ever.  Not even under the most fortunate of circumstances would she have lived.

But given the shock of the diagnosis and the rush of oh my god we've got to do something that follows, there's very little time (or so it seems) to properly research everything.  The docs were a trusted source of information, and they offered hope.  So she started treatment, and it felt like we were fighting.  Skipping the chemo sounded a lot like giving up, and if there's one thing Big Medicine and Big Pharma have done successfully, it's promulgating the idea (myth) that all cancer patients can be the successful survivor story if they just fight hard enough.

My dear wife was bedridden from day one of treatment.  She died a few months later.  Had she gone straight into palliative care, she'd have had at least a few more weeks of good life.  The months she spent living while undergoing chemo were not worth living.  She was miserable.  The girl she once was died the moment the chemo entered her veins.

Oncology - at least for those who are beyond repair - is a business.  Expensive "cutting edge" treatments with pathetic results, a miserable focus on extending life rather than extending good life, and drug companies and doctors milking the last few dollars they'll ever see from those particular patients.  Dead bodies don't need medical care, do they?

Perhaps my wife's death is still a little fresh in my mind, but I'm still angry sometimes that she spent her last few months in bed rather than taking those last autumn walks with our children or that last trip somewhere she loved.  And I'm angry when I did my research on the chemo she was infused with and seeing the grotesque profits (in the billions of dollars) that the manufacturer was reaping by pushing it.  She was, in retrospect, treated by the system as a sponge to squeeze the last few drops of juice out of before throwing it away.

Hospice care was extraordinary though.  The nurses who visited her, who actually gave a fuck what happened to her and how comfortable she was, those girls were absolute angels.  That's the only piece of this mess that gives me any faith that there's still good people out there who actually care and don't go into medicine for purely monetary reasons.