MrsT85

I may be an odd duck here, but this is how I've felt basically the entire time I've been widowed. I started dating Tim when I was just 19 - still a kid, really. We married when I was 23 and he died when I was 27. I cannot think of a single interest either of us had that wasn't shared - we pretty much had the exact same taste in music, movies, books. Politically, ethically, religiously (or total lack thereof) - we were on the same page. He was also an avid reader, incredibly smart and articulate, and was just weeks from finishing his teaching degree (he wanted to be a high school history teacher, had finished his history major and was in the final three weeks of his student teaching) when he crashed. We could and did talk for hours every day, and would smile when we discussed how much we were looking forward to growing old together...We never had the chance to have a child, but we would fantasize about being retired empty-nesters and getting to enjoy each others' company without work or school getting in the way. We knew how lucky we were to have found each other - this wonderful person we could never get bored with - and would talk about it all the time. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I became an adult as his partner. I was in my first year of college when we met, so his fingerprints are all over the person I've now grown into. No one it going to "fit" me as perfectly as Tim did because no one else was the most important influence on during that extremely formative period of my life. That's no one's fault, I think it's just reality. I'm getting remarried at the end of next month. My fiance is an extremely decent and caring man. I enjoy taking care of him (one of my favorite times of the week is when I get to show him all of the favorites foods of his I've bought at the grocery store) and he seems to enjoy being there for me as well (he must - he asked me to marry him!). We respect each other intellectually, but our interests don't line up nearly as well as Tim and I did. He's also far more physical than Tim was - he worked with battieries for industrial purposes when we first met, and he's now working for Tim's best friend doing safety testing for electronics at a huge international company. But while our passions are different, our values are similar. We both crave companionship (although not the constant companionship that Tim and I shared), we both would like to start a family, we share the same worldview politically and ethically. Am I as happy as I was when I found who I knew what my perfect match? No, but after losing Tim I'm not sure that it's even possible for me anymore. But I'm reasonably happy most of the time, and I'm building a good life with a person who I love who loves me back.

I'm so glad to hear such wonderful news for you and your sister! No one deserves a spot of brightness in their lives more than you!

Thanks for starting the thread, Jess. I remember right after he died, thinking "I've lost all of our children before I even had the chance to create them, to meet them...." Very similar to Mizpah's friend, I guess. Everything I had been planning to build my life around for the next 50+ years was just gone and a gaping, smoldering hole in my life was all that was left. Thank you for that too. I've always struggled with pretty strong self-loathing, so this isn't the kind of thing that would ever even cross my mind to think. I give most of the credit to my friends and family - I think those first handful of months I would have been content to just bury myself in a hole with bottle of something to keep me company and never dig out. It would have been easiest for everyone in my life to just let me. But most of them didn't, so most of the credit for this new life that I've built belongs to them for not leaving me behind even when I was nothing but an emotional anchor tugging them down into depths with me.

Tim and I were waiting until he finished his teaching degree to start a family - he would have been done in May 2013, we were planning to have one more care-free summer together, and then I'd start trying to get pregnant in early September 2013 right after I turned 28. I'm a type 1 diabetic so even a best-case-scenerio pregnancy would be high-risk, so I really really wanted to have a child before 30 to try to limit the risks to myself and the baby-that-never-was. He died April 2013. Less than a month before he finished the teaching degree he had spent the past 6+ years chipping away on and less than six months before we had planned on starting to have a baby. I had literally just stopped taking birth control pills a month or so before his accident to try to get my body back into the regular hormonal swing of things...it made the timing of everything feel even more unimaginably cruel than it already was. I never wanted children before I met Tim, but he was such an amazing person that I changed my mind and couldn't wait to see what a combination of our two brains and hearts could produce. We'd even picked out names - Morgan Margaret for a little girl and Ian Jacob for a little boy. He would have been such an incredible father, and it certainly adds a special twinge to my grief to know that the world will never see the wonderful person he and I could have created together. I guess for me thinking things like this really isn't much of a comfort. Yes - I may still have time to be a mother, but that's not really the point. The point was to have HIS baby. To start a family with HIM. Like Blue14 said before me, if we had the chance to become parents together "I'd still have a piece of him." ((HUGS))

One of my (our) favorite comedians Patton Oswalt was sadly and suddenly widowed last month. One of the very last live shows Tim and I saw together (and there weren't many those last handful of months, he was so busy with student teaching) was a Oswalt stand-up show at the Vic here in Chicago. He's held a special place in my heart for years - mostly for just being a brilliant and biting comedian, but also because his comedy was another thing Tim and I fell in love with together. He wrote a beautiful obituary for his wife Michelle McNamara. She was just 46 when she passed away in her sleep: http://time.com/4316653/patton-oswalt-remembers-michelle-mcnamara/ I winced when I read this. I remember feeling like this. Like I didn't even know who I was anymore without him... "I loved her. This is the first time I’ve been able to use “I” writing this. Probably because there hasn’t been much of an “I” since the morning of April 21. There probably won’t be for a while." I feel so horrible for him and his young daughter. What a terrible tragic loss :'(

LTSL - I'm sorry you have so many additional hardships piling up in advance of your 6 month. You're in a very very tough part of the journey (which seems ridiculous to say since none of this is easy, just varying degrees of terrible) and as wid who doesn't have children and who battles self-destructive impulses (cutting) I ask that you please keep posting even when you feel helpless and hopeless. No matter what you write - someone (and usually several someones) has been there too and will understand. I've been in those deep depths of despair and self loathing, where the fact that I never got to be a parent made my existence feel even more pointless. Sharing continually with this group - for over three years now - has been more important that I can adequately express. You mentioned your feline babies and that they bring you relief - I just started a thread over in the "Wids without Kids" section called "Tell us about your non-human babies." Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your sweet kittens?

I'll start - here are my two wonderful fuzzy babies, Flint and Tinder. Flint is the sweet chubby black girl, and Tinder is the mischievous little tabby boy:

MrsDan, thank you for posting those lyrics. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know nearly as much about Prince as I should, but knowing what a musical genius he was and how much he influenced many of my own favorites I still felt a lot of sadness and shock upon hearing of his death yesterday. But now that so many personal tributes are coming in - the sadness is starting to settle in more deeply. I cried a little when I read the lyrics you posted this morning. The month of April is such a motherfucker, now for one more reason... I felt the same way when David Bowie died in January. He was the first person who I cried over since losing Tim.

It's funny that the first thing you read was something just mentioned by another member. The first thing I read after Tim died was a collection of Phillip K Dick essays - the author just mentioned by TS above! I remember Tim saying that PKD wrote some of the most well-thought-out-but-totally-nuts theories on the nature of reality and even though a lot of the ideas seemed ridiculous on their face they really made him stop and think. And once I got my concentration back enough to read anything, I thought some far-out ideas on the nature of reality and life-and-death was just what I needed.

Holy hell Trying, I just did a double take when I read your post to make sure it wasn't one I had written and then totally forgot about! Just change "Tim's diagnosis" to "Tim's car accident" and "boyfriend" to "fiance" in the quote above and you have completely and accurately described my emotional state as well! I am grateful every day to have people like you in my life (even if it's simply as a fellow forum-mate) who understand the still-daily battles that go on inside my own head. It's such a comfort - such a wonderful emotional "pillow" - to know I'm not alone.

Another sci-fi fan, yay! Now I feel more at home

I'm in the April 2013 club too - just had my three year on 4/5 and 4/6. He died at around 2am, so 4/6 is his official death date although 4/5 - the anniversary of the last time I saw him before I left for work that morning - hit me much harder this year. I've done a lot of work rebuilding my life these past three years, but I feel I remain a fairly hollow version of the person that I was when he died. Most days are fine, some of them are even really good. But losing him still mutes the vibrancy of happiness I'm able to feel. Some days the grief still kicks me hard enough to start the tears streaming down my cheeks and leave me just gasping for breath. Huge hugs to all you as well. Thank you all for being here for me and for each other and for always understanding. It's truly and sincerely inspiring.

I hadn't chimed in on this thread because I read such comparably sophomoric literature I just finished a new post-apocalyptic trilogy by an author I hadn't previously heard of names Hugh Howley called The Silo Series, and have Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age on deck for next. Justin - it's been about 8 years since I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but isn't it a more of a combination of a memoir and a non-fiction philosophy book? I definitely remember that it was non-fiction because of a simply devastating reveal that happens in the afterward that proves the book to be about the farthest thing from frivolous that I can think of....

Just got off the phone with DirecTV - typing out in the "Confessions" thread that I've been paying for it for three years without using it finally lit the fire under my butt to call and discontinue my service. While explaining why I didn't know what happened to the dish in 2013 (I moved out of mine and Tim's apartment in a rush and under considerable duress), I mentioned the reason was because my husband had died and that I had to move without much notice. While waiting for something to load up on his end (I was letting him try to retain my account if he was going to offer a considerable discount) he "made small talk" (and even introduced it as such!) by asking how my husband died. I snapped "That is a terrible thing to try to make small talk about," explained that the reason it took me so long to cancel was because it is still very difficult for me to talk about, and then immediately asked if we could just proceed with the cancellation. So after three years, it's finally done. Time to sign up for HBO-on-demand and save myself $45.00 a month. It amazes me that someone who is trained to talk to people for a living would think that the death of a spouse is prime "small talk" fodder!

SVS, RIFF - how about this one - I've moved three times in the three years since he's been gone, and I still haven't cancelled our DirecTV account. The damn dish hasn't been up since June '13 and I never actually set up "real" TV after he died (I stream everything via a Roku box and now my fiance's PS4). I used to have the excuse "My Mom and brother use my account to watch HBO-on-demand" but now that HBO split their streaming service off many many months ago I really only have inertia and a tenancy for avoidance to blame....

This was me, too. And I would get so angry with myself, because music was the thing that brought Tim and I together and remained the most significant shared passion throughout our entire relationship. I avoided it altogether for the first several months because I was simply afraid of how intense the triggers would be. It probably took me almost six months to be able to listen to *anything*, and it was just a couple weeks ago - on the three year anniversary of his accident - that I was finally able to bring myself to purposely listen to some of the most emotionally significant songs from his favorite bands (and even then it wasn't without tears). Like Mizpah said - there will always be a part of me that will remain the devastated young woman, starting out into space with tears streaming down her cheeks not knowing what life even means anymore. Sometimes it's still difficult to believe he is gone and sometimes the pain is still unbelievably intense. But I've also discovered what life means without him and (with a lot of help) have rebuilt a pretty good one. My happiness might be a little more cautious now - maybe a little more muted - but three years later I'm able to imagine a positive future and even sometimes have the emotional energy to work toward it. You're right - life will never be the same. I wish every day that my wonderful husband was still alive and love him as much today as the day I married him. Getting through these next handful of months (or weeks, or years - we're all on our own timelines) will likely be the hardest thing you've ever done, but please keep reaching out to this community for support. We all get what it's like to walk this path, and the empathy that was showered upon me when I first started posting on the precursor to this forum just two or three days after losing my husband was the *only* thing that was able to make me feel a tiny, tiny bit better because it let me know that all of the confusing emotional turmoil I was experiencing was totally normal and that others had walked this path before me and survived, so I likely would too (regardless of how little I actually believed it at the time). I'm so so sorry you've had reason to join us here. Sending support....

I wish you so much strength as you clean out yours and Alex's home, finding those wedding mementos must be so hard! :'( ((HUGS)) I've had to move three times in the three years that Tim has been gone, but so much of those types of of really emotional keepsakes (the toasting flutes from our wedding, our cake topper, honeymoon souvenirs...) have stayed boxed up at my Mother's house because I'm honestly just too afraid to face them. I've had a few instances recently where the pain of missing him has literally taken my breath away, leaving me sobbing and hyperventilating. I'm so so impressed with your strength and have been years. Let me echo was Maureen and SVS said. You are such a kind and wonderful person. I remember you were so welcoming and supportive of me (despite and through your own awful pain) when I first joined the YWBB as a broken, barely functional being almost exactly three years ago. Your Alex loved you so much and would want you to be happy, to share that kindness and grace and love with another who deserved it and who would cherish you as much as he did. I'm marrying my own Chapter 2 this summer, and please let me assure you - Tim is still a part of me. I still think of him all the time and love him as much now as I did the day I married him. I will always miss who we were. Like you two - he was my best friend, my world, my everything. My relationship now doesn't diminish any of that in the least - it may perhaps to outward appearances, but I know the truth in my heart just like you will. Just hugs. And love. And support. You deserve so much happiness.

Apologies in advance for this little unsolicited public service reminder, but I saw this article on HuffPo today and it just kicked me right in the gut. I'm here because my husband accidentally killed himself when he (almost certainly) dozed off behind the wheel and slammed into a tree. Drowsy driving - something that on the surface sounds so innocuous - robbed me of the person I love more than anything else in the world and the future I so desperately wanted to build with him. It killed a wonderful person - someone who was so full of promise and about to step into a career of such deep importance (public school teacher) who I'm sure would have helped make the world a better place. It caused horrendous devastation not only to me, but to his mother, his brother, his grandmother, all of our friends... What really stopped me in my tracks though...and what made me think of all of you, was this opening paragraph: We?ve all done it. Balancing the needs of family, work and friends is all it takes. Stressed out and sleep deprived because of the demands on our time, we get behind the wheel when we shouldn?t. Even worse, sometimes those dearest to us are in the backseat. I?m talking about drowsy driving. Getting behind the wheel when too tired to drive safely is more dangerous than you might realize, yet many of us have done it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-l-doney/naps-arent-just-for-babie_b_9635292.html I know we have so many solo parents here as part of our community. So many people who are having to stretch themselves so thin and push themselves so hard. I am in awe of you all. But those few sentences - they made me so scared. I care about you all, and as someone who lost their dearest to drowsy driving I just wanted to bring this up, however annoying as it may be. I wish every single day that Tim would have taken a 20 minute nap in the car before trying to come home that night. Or not even try to go to work, knowing how tired his was. It would very likely saved his life and stopped the bottom from totally dropping out of mine. Again, I'm sorry for sounding so preachy. I guess this topic - instead of cancer, or heart disease, or anything else - is my weak spot. The thing that just cuts me right to the core. And I don't want it to steal any more people away from those that they love. /end rant

I'm so glad to hear that she is doing so well! I hope things continue to improve and she can get back to living a normal, healthy and full life soon!

Thanks everyone - for your kind words, understanding and support. Especially my fellow 3+ year wids, who have been here (and on the old YWBB) with me every step of the way. Everyone in my personal life knows what I mean when I say "The boards...." because of how vitally important this community and you all have been for me. Last night my mother and I went to visit and have dinner with Tim's mother and grandmother. He's been gone long enough now where we're starting to get the sense that soon we'll be the only one who recognize and grieve a little extra on 4/6. I'm grateful that I still have her in my life and that she tells me that I'll always be "her girl" even as I move forward and try to build Chapter 2 existence with a man who's not her son. Again...so many thanks and hugs back to you guys. I'm so grateful for you all as well :*)

Three years ago this morning, I left for work and said good-bye to him for the last time. I was concerned and commented on how tired he looked. I asked if he'd be okay doing his Friday night DJ shift. He smiled (with those horrible purple bags under his eyes) and assured me he'd take an energy shot and be okay. Less than 24 hours later he was gone. Crashed into a tree with a car full of DJ equipment - likely (although there is no way to ever be sure) because he had dozed off behind the wheel. Had I gone with him to karaoke that night (like I did 90% of the time), either he'd still be alive because I helped keep him awake, or I'd be dead too - crushed next to him in the passenger seat. Makes me think of The Smiths song There is A Light that Never Goes Out" .... To die by your side, Is such a heavenly way to die .... Spent a big portion of my morning commute today listening to music with tears streaming down my face. Expect the same thing to happen tomorrow, technically his actual "death date." Holy hell, do I still miss him....love him and miss him so much....

Being a widow is full of ugly, awful truths. I'm three years out this Wednesday and I've gotten fairly lucky (although using that word in any context now seems rather perverse) with the whole "putting my life back together" and I STILL spend a decent chunk of time mourning the future I never got to realize with Tim. Hell, I still shed at least a few tears every day because - separate from any romantic or sexual longing - I just miss my best friend. I miss the understanding and the comfort and the mile-long list of shared interests we had, many of which were developed during those formative years between ages 19 and 27 that I spent as his girlfriend, fiance and then wife. So please Jen, if it helps keep sharing. I know I can't blame you for still feeling bitter, angry, sad...whatever...because I know those are emotions that I'm still very well antiquated with. ((hugs))

I'll add my own "fuck you" to the month of April. Tuesday sometime during the 6am hour will be 3 years since the last time I saw his wonderful face and told him that I loved him. By 2am the next day he was gone :'(

Hi All - as per CW's request above I'm locking this thread from further updates but leaving it up so others can still read all of the advice and discussions contained therein.

((HUGS)) to you SVS. From the ways you've lovingly talked about him over the years, I know your T was an amazing man and I hope you and your children are able to reflect on him and his life today with just as many laughs as tears. You have been an amazing beacon of love and support for all of us here, and while I wish you didn't have to be here with us I'm so grateful for all of your advice and your empathy. You have shown both incredible strength and gentleness. I hope you don't mind me saying that I think your T would be proud.