MrsT85

I starting dating my Tim at 19 too, MG. I lost him at 27, right as we were about to start moving on all of those "next step" life things, like starting a family and buying a home. I thought I had decades with him, and since we started dating when I was still so young, I thought "what's the rush?" And now I'm filled with so much regret because we had that "what's the rush?" mentality. He never got to start the career he worked years toward, never got to be a father, never got to own a home. All because he thought there was "no rush." I'm not saying throw caution to the wind in the face of potential danger, and I'm not saying we should use our sudden losses as excuses to do harmful or foolish things. I'm just saying that there IS a flip-side to taking things slow or holding out for the "perfect" next partner. Life can be cruel and short. I might be dead by the time the sun goes down tonight. If something is good and I know it's good (even if it's not perfect), I'm going to do the work NOW to be as happy as I can be with whatever time I have left. So yeah, I agree, rushing into things can be dangerous and have serious consequences. And I agree with the comment you make about this particular situation. But I have a very visceral reaction when I hear people say that there's "no hurry or rush" when trying to find happiness and love again (if that's what we want) because I know how quickly and suddenly everything can be taken away.

Uh, well, unless death is waiting around the corner of course. Hmm. I wonder if this is a difference in mindset caused by a sudden loss vs. a loss from an illness. Like you Mizpah, I'm a car accident widow, and I feel the same way. I married Tim when I was only 23, which I know is quite young nowadays, and I'm so very glad I did. And now, after losing him, I don't want to "hold out" for a new, perfect love because I know any one of these days could be my last. I'd rather try to be as happy as I can with a good-but-imperfect love now, because who knows how much time I have left.

So I'm in Chicago - I live in one of the more affordable residential areas, and take the train daily to my job downtown. And now that it's getting near summer and vacation time, there are new ad campaigns going up for various states/cities/etc to try and attract tourists. Unfortunately for me, one of the cities that put up a couple new billboards at my regular downtown train stop is the (very lovely) Galena, IL. Galena was our home away from home. The very first vacation we ever took together was to an amazing B&B there, and we fell so in love with the place. We ended up returning to that same B&B 7 or 8 times over our 8.5 years together. We dragged our whole families out and had our beautiful wedding there. We already had our cabin reserved for our yearly early-May trip when died. We loved that little town so much. So many amazing memories we made there. And now I every day I see a picture of that quaint little main street that we walked down so many times over the years. I recognize the goddamn stretch of street. I can picture us walking hand in hand down the sidewalk. And it just hurts like hell. I'm considering getting off the stop before mine, so I don't have to face this daily emotional kick to the gut. If tradition held, Tim and I would likely be there this week. Maybe we'd have to rent one of the bigger cottages at our B&B, so we would have a place for the baby we had hoped to have by now. We'd maybe carry little Morgan or Ian down to the field where we set up the tent for the wedding, and dance around with them on the same patch of grass that our dance floor was set up on. Where we danced to Iron and Wine's cover of "Such Great Heights" for the very time as Mr.&Mrs. Tim. The end of this month would have been our 6th wedding anniversary. And I just can't face the Galena billboards right now. And I needed to tell someone, and knew you'd all understand. So thanks for reading.

BAG = beyond active grieving

Personally I'd keep that stuff forever. I likely will, although it's causing a little clutter that's making my New Guy a little crazy. I live in a big city, and apartments tend to be small and expensive. Hopefully sometime in the future we'll be able to afford a house of our own so we'll have the space we need. I just wonder what will happen to it all when I'm gone. I thought we'd have a child to pass all his wonderful collections to.

I'm over two years out at this point, and I'm still having a real problem with getting rid of things that meant something to him. Recently (in prep for move #3 since I lost him), I was able to part with a few things - his school reading material that just had highlighter marks, some of our old bedding, his jeans and old work polos - but anything even remotely sentimental is still at my parents' house, stashed in their basement. Hell, I even still have every piece of paper with his handwriting on it that I could find - doodles, signed receipts, school notebooks.... I'm not so good at the purging either. The man loved his things and was so proud of his various collections - all the CDs, all the records, all the movies, all the books. I'm still at the point where I think it would feel like I was throwing a piece of him away if I was to part with any of those.

Tim's cousin got married on 4/10 (4 days after my sadiversary...I was kinda a mess at the ceremony) and I wrote the same thing on the card I got them. "Love each other. Take care of each other. Cherish every moment."

It's been over two years and three moves now, and I still have a whole bunch of his stuff that I haven't either gone through or gotten rid of. The hamper of dirty clothes that was in our apartment the day he died is wrapped in a giant garbage bag and sitting in my parents' basement. I have a couple bins full of every scrap of paper I could find with his handwriting on it - notes, scribbles, signed receipts, etc... I've only recently been able to part with things I have less of an emotional connection with, like his school papers with just highlighting, or pairs of ratty old pajama pants. But every time I've started to go through his things - either to sort or throw away - it gets the tears going. Every time. And I suspect that will never change. I wish you the very best of luck with your move! My mother keeps reminding me, ALL moves are stressful, but these kinds - the kinds when it's just "me" packing up all of "our" things - are a special punch to the gut,

CW, I wish I had some advice. I've noticed too that my emotions have become rather supercharged since losing Tim, and I think of it rather like this: my overall level of sensitivity had already slowly but gradually been going up my whole adult life. I was one of those teenagers who scoffed at the thought of commercial or song or a poem or whatever making me cry. But then I met Tim, and suddenly those songs that mentioned finding "the one" started hitting me in a tender spot, and I "got" why people sometimes shed happy tears. Then after we married, art that evoked the idea of losing him after decades together started to get me. I was one of many who cried at the beginning of "Up," when the old man has to say goodbye to his wife and best friend and companion of many decades. The thought of losing Tim, even as an old man, hit that tender spot. Then we started talking about when we should start a family. And suddenly those damn "watching your kids grow" commercials would bring the tears. (They still do, since that family will never ever be) It seemed like every major life event wore away a little bit of my emotional "buffer," and I would eventually turn into one of those oversensitive old ladies who would cry (happy or sad tears) at the drop of a hat. I think losing them so young (and maybe in our cases, also so suddenly?) accelerates the loss of our emotional "buffer," at least for some of us. It's maybe a combination of just plain fatigue coupled with a real emotional loss-of-innocence, but I know I've already become that oversensitive old lady who cries at just about anything, decades ahead of schedule. And since I've only dated one person since being widowed, I'm fairly certain my rollercoaster is more due my grief than a relationship. I think my emotional callus had simply been worn away and I've become one big, heart-on-my-sleeve raw nerve. And I have no insight as to if/when it may start to grow back. I'm sorry you're having a rough time ((Hugs)) I wish you the very best of luck navigating this confusing and often treacherous time

I wonder if this might have something to do with both of you being widowed. I imagine there's a lot more that you just innately emotionally understand about each others mental states because it's a path you've both walked. Plus, since you've both been widowed, you both know at a very visceral level what your priorities should and should not be. What's worth fighting over, and what's not. For me, I often feel like I'm decades older than my fiance. I'm 29, he's 33, but good lord, do I feel like I've "lived" so much longer and harder than my years might suggest. I try to be quick to forgive. I try to not sweat the small stuff. I have this perspective where I look back at my years with Tim and regret every night I ruined being mad at him for something that in retrospect was so petty. Every goddamn moment I wasted not wanting to cuddle with him, or giving him the silent treatment. I *know* that if we both leave for work mad, there's a chance either one of us might never come home and our last moments spent together were spent fuming rather than with an "I love you" and a kiss goodbye. I'll explain why I get so upset when he cold-shoulders me and holds a grudge, and then he'll apologize and feel guilty about it for a while. But then the next week he'll come home from work grumpy, lash out at me for a little thing (I kid you not, one fight recently kicked into high gear when I asked him if I should "stay out of his way" rather than "leave him alone"), and then the rest of the day (or weekend, or whatever) will be ruined. Sometimes I envy you wids who find other wids. I think that even though my NG intellectually knows what I went through and tries his very best to understand and be patient with me, he just can't be on the same page as me in terms of the life lessons being widowed has taught. Hopefully he'll find out one day, a very long time from now.

MAW, first of all, many congrats! I'm so happy to hear your relationship is going so well Secondly - wow, do I know exactly what you're talking about here. I was with DH for 8.5 years instead of 20, but being a bit younger than you it's probably proportionally about the same. I didn't really have this reaction "mismatch" when NG and I moved in together, but there definitely was one after he asked me to marry him that I felt (feel?) rather guilty about. He and his family were all giggles and nerves and hugs and wanting to jump right into planning a storybook wedding and I (while happy) was very subdued. We hadn't yet moved in together at that point, and didn't even want to start thinking about weddings before we had done the apartment-hunting and moving thing: And Trying, I could have written large chunks of this pretty much word-for-word (from one Tim's widow who starting dating way too early to another ) NG hasn't ever been married, so when he talks about our relationship as his "best ever" it similarly gives me pause. My marriage to Tim wasn't perfect, but it was very strong and we constantly talked about how we were looking forward to spending the next 40-50 years together, crafting a family and a life. I had been with Tim since I was 19, so like you, he helped shape me into the adult I am today. It's no one's fault, but being with Tim was usually just effortless in a way I can't fathom ever finding again. But NG loves me and I love him and even if it ends up being a less "perfect" match, we make each other happy and want to build a life together. Which, considering how short and unpredictable life can be, is more than enough for me.

I'm so sorry you've had reason to join us here, but I'm glad you've found us. I cannot begin to tell you how helpful this community has been for me - I lost my husband when I was just 27, so I can't really relate to most other widows either. I don't really want to hear about the decades they shared with their spouses and grandchildren and retirement and the like. And it only makes me feel worse when I hear about people reminiscing about marriages that lasted longer than I've even been alive. The life we've been thrown into is absolutely infuriating. Especially when the time we had with them was so very short. So welcome. Please post and rant and rage as much as you feel comfortable with. We get it.

TS, you'll enjoy the hell out of them I've seen them a few times, and they put on a fantastic show. Stuart Murdoch is probably one of the most charming and charismatic performers I've seen - such a gifted frontman!

"God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys I may not always love you But long as there are stars above you You never need to doubt it I'll make you so sure about it God only knows what I'd be without you If you should ever leave me Though life would still go on, believe me The world could show nothing to me So what good would livin' do me God only knows what I'd be without you God only knows what I'd be without you (repeat verse 2) If you should ever leave me Though life would still go on, believe me The world could show nothing to me So what good would livin' do me God only knows what I'd be without you (repeat to fade) ----------------- This is one of those songs I've known for years that gained an entirely new facet after I lost Tim. The lines "If you should ever leave me/Though life would still go on, believe me/The world could show nothing to me/So what good would livin' do me" - I think most of us can relate. No, our lives (sometimes much to our surprise) didn't stop after they died. But wow, did the world lose all of its color, all of its joy. Life goes on, but why? I'm not a believer, but when they repeat (layered with such beautiful harmonies) "God only knows what I'd be without you..." I lose it a little bit, still. When he was alive and we'd talk about the song, it was such a wonderfully hypothetical question. But now I cry, because now I know :'(

Oh my, did I struggle with this A LOT at the beginning. And still do, although to a lesser extent. It bothers me so deeply that I'll be a better wife the second time around because of the perspective I've gained from losing him. Tim absolutely deserved the "best" version of me, and I spend a lot of time being ashamed that by dying, he's made me better for the NEXT guy. And I also struggle with blaming myself. I usually went out with him those Friday nights, and the night he crashed was one of the few times I didn't. Maybe I could have helped keep him from dozing off. Maybe then he'd still be alive. But I have to remind myself that no one FORCED him to get behind the wheel that night. He knew how sleep deprived he was, and could have napped in the car in the parking lot for a few hours rather than chugging and energy drink and "powering through" the exhaustion. And maybe he would have fallen asleep even if I had been with him, and then I'd probably be dead too. I don't know. It's all so complex and emotionally murky and the level of guilt I feel can vary wildly from day to day or even hour to hour. But I've been around this community long enough to know that's not too unusual.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think I may end up very happy in my Chapter 2 with my fiance, but I'll always miss my Tim. I'll always love him and want what "could have been." And I too hold back a bit with Fiance - he's never been married and hasn't had a relationship longer than ours since he was in college. He's never experienced the connection you can have with a spouse, so sometimes I feel like there's a lot that he can't understand about both HAVING and LOSING a solid marriage. So I keep a lot of my emotional turmoils to myself, saving it for the boards here or my own "quiet reflection time" during my daily transits to and from work. He's patient enough as it is with all of my baggage, I don't want to also weigh him down by admitting how much my grief still impacts me :-\

I don't think it's TMI at all, either. The day Tim died, I moved out of our apartment and back in with my parents. I just couldn't face spending time in our apartment without him. Luckily, my old bedroom was just being used for storage, so it (along with my old bed) was ready for me to return to without much work. Unfortunately, it meant that our old bed needed to be gotten rid of. I made this compromise with myself - I'd get rid of everything but the headboard and the featherbed/comforter set. That way, I wasn't parting with every piece of the bed we'd shared. At two years out, and in preparation for moving into a new apartment with my New Guy, I finally felt ready to let the headboard and the bedding go. MIL and grandmother-in-law have taken the bedding, but the headboard went to the curb. And even though I had made the choice to throw it out, it still made my heart drop and stung like hell to see it there in front of the house, waiting for the garbage truck to come pick it up....

I guess I didn't answer the "guilt" question either. The very first YWBBer that I met in real life passed this priceless bit of emotional framing on to me, and I've clung to it ever since - by wanting to (and now making plans to) remarry, I'm not disrespecting Tim's memory, I'm actually honoring it. I loved Tim so much. I loved being married to him so much. I would do anything (still!) to get him back. But as much as I'd like it to, that's not how reality works and now I have to figure out what the rest of my life will be without him. But our relationship showed me just how amazing marriage could be, and because of that I knew almost immediately that I wanted to be a wife again some day. I knew that I was happiest being some wonderful man's "other half" because of how happy I was being his. Having the experience of our marriage under my belt gave me something to aspire to in the future. What can I say other then it all happened a lot sooner than I thought it would? But I like to think Tim would approve. We never talked about what we would do if one of us died (we were just 27 and 36 when he died so unexpectedly), but we would talk all the time about how bad we both were at being single. About how much better we both were when we were in solid and loving relationships. So I hope he wouldn't begrudge me the fact that I leapt at this second chance to find that again. As for burial arrangements - the day he died, I decided that I wanted to be cremated and put into his urn with him. If I ended up remarried, I would want to split my ashes so half of me could go with Tim and half could go with New Husband. It's been just over two years and I haven't wavered from that thought one bit. On a similar note, I decided that same day that if I were to be remarried, I'd hyphenate my last name. I took Tim's last name when we married, happily leaving my maiden name in the past. But since I never chose to stop being his wife, I decided I'd never abandon his last name either. Same with my wedding and engagement rings - they've been resized and I now wear them on my other hand with no plans to ever stop. Right now I wear an engagement ring on my left hand, and the rings Tim gave me on my right, and after Fiance and I marry I'll have a full set on each hand. And wonderfully and amazingly, Fiance is fine with all of this. One of the many reasons I love him.

I met Fiance and started dating very early in my journey. I met him at almost exactly the three month point (he's a friend of a very dear friend and we met at a gathering), got to know him through several hours of Skype conversations for 3 weeks or so, and then went on my first date since late 2004 around four months out. Over the next couple months, we'd see each other every couple weeks (he lived about an hour away) and continued to have frequent very long, very honest conversations on Skype in between. I was sure I was so raw and such a mess that I'd scare him away. He told me my honesty and how "real" I was with him was refreshing. He'd previously dated a girl who had lost her sister to bulimia, and she had kept her emotions bottled up, which led in part to their eventual split. He actually liked that I put all my cards on the table right away and let there be no mystery to any of the battles going on in my head. At one point, during one of these conversations, we were talking about being in love with past partners. I met Tim when I was 19, so I don't really have much of a dating history as an adult. Fiance was 32 and had several relationships under his belt. I said I'd only been in love a few times, and once now was with a dead person. I loved Tim, and hell, I still did. He told me flat out, "I expect you'll always be in love with him. He was your husband." I think that's when I knew I'd found a good guy. That I found someone who I exposed all of my scars to, and who wanted me anyway. And that he's also someone who will let me keep Tim in my heart without being jealous. I still think that if such a thing exists, Tim was my "soulmate." I was basically still a kid when we met, and I grew into an adult with him being the most important person to me and the strongest influence on me. There's no way someone can "fit" me that well again, but that's a concept I'm relatively at peace with. My relationship with Fiance isn't as easy as the one I had with Tim, but I think it's because we're both coming into it as fully formed, independent adults. We don't have all the same interests like Tim and I did, and we don't want to necessarily want to spend every waking moment together. But he's probably the sweetest, most patient person I've ever met, and I love him for it. He loves me, makes me happy, is so good to me, and deserves happiness as much as my dear Tim did. So I'll do what I can for the rest of my life to love him back and make him happy. Because in my opinion, life's too fucking short and too scary and uncertain to want to do anything else.

I'm probably in a different stage of my life then most of you all - I'm 29, no mortgage, no kids - so for Fiance and I the answer is no.

All of his t-shirts. All of his CDs and records and DVDs. Every piece of paper I can find that has his handwriting on it.... It's a lot of stuff. My old bedroom at my parents' house is absolutely stuffed with bins....

His name was Tim. I met him when I was just 19, and fell in love with his wit and his passion and his humor almost immediately. We really were best friends in addition to spouses - we loved all the same music (and my lord, did we love our music), had the same political views, liked all the same books and movies...I could talk to him forever and ever and never once get bored. One of our favorite topics of conversation - usually while listening to a mix CD we had put together while making dinner, or some similar situation - was how goddamn lucky we were to have found each other. How absolutely confident we were that we had found our "other half." The man fit me like a glove. He could be stubborn and sometimes let his pride and ego get away with him, but I think that's really quite common for people who were as wickedly intelligent as him. I miss having a true partner. One who not only loves me, but also loves all the same things that I do and wants to be by my side for everything - just how I felt about him. I'll miss him until I'm just a pile of ashes mixed into his urn with him.

I can only speak to my experience, but I've always been an anxious person. The night he died wasn't the first night that he was late coming home and I thought he was crashed somewhere on the side of the road...it was just the first time I was right. And now that my anxiety has been shown (in one instance, but holy hell, what a terrible instance) to be justified, I feel like I'm constantly holding my breath, waiting for another distaster to strike. I'm always - and pardon the expression, as a car accident widow it leaves a bad taste in my mouth but it's the best I can come up with - bracing for the next impact. For the first several months, I felt like I spent every waking moment in a state of fight-or-flight. And while I don't live there full-time anymore, it's so very easy for even a small obstacle to send me right back.

I remember that I used to far prefer the company of my single friends in my earliest days. It's not something that I'm proud of, but I felt better knowing that they were going home to a cold, empty bed - just like me. The worst feeling of "third-wheelness" would come when I was hanging out with Tim's brother and his wife. The way they would interact, the way she would comfort him in his own grief - it hurt in the very pit of my heart.

I've felt this way with both of my serious relationships now. Tim was 8.5 years older, Fiance is 4 years older, but I have an incurable chronic condition - I'm a type 1 diabetic and have been for over a decade now. "On average" (which I know in individual cases means very little), having this disease shaves a decade or more off someones life. Tim's most serious chronic condition was eczema. Fiance doesn't have any. Tim's dead. Fiance's medical hiccup (whatever it is) is scaring the hell out of me. Meanwhile, I've been plugging along with an insulin pump, without any serious complications and just one hospitalization over my dozen years with this stupid disease. I used to think (and it gave me much comfort), "at least the diabetes will kill me before he goes" too...