Still feel unreal?

[Carey]

I'm sitting at my desk at work, and I have a couple pictures of Chad here.  There's one of him leaning against a jet engine with his best friend on his last day of the job here that led to the downward spiral and demise of my world and his life.  He's  got his shades on (inside! ugh! lol), his ball cap, arms crossed and a smirky grin on his face. And I'm SO SO bothered this morning, and really most any time I really concentrate on a picture of him.  The hairs on his arms, the freckles, his mustache and goatee....the clothes he's wearing. I have that shirt.  I have that hat. Why do those things exist when he doesn't? How is it possible that he's just GONE.  Like there one minute, gone for freaking EVER after?  I'm 16 months out and it just bothers me that this basic concept of death and grieving still eludes me.  I just still can't wrap my brain around the fact he is not out there SOMEWHERE working on a jet engine.  Last night for some stupid reason I was reading back on my own facebook posts from like 5 years ago. He commented on them. He poked fun at me for having so much Christmas crap, he bragged on something I fixed him for supper .... He was a total ASS sometimes and he hurt me over and over and over.  There were actually times I wanted him to just go away but I never actually took even a baby step at walking away from him. HOW the f*ck can he just be GONE?  I guess I just want to know if it's normal to still feel this way.

[Mr C]

At 13 months out it still feels unreal and it is hard to wrap my brain around it. I have even found myself pausing while reading this forum and thinking, "WTF, why am I reading widow stuff..... Oh yeah, my wife is gone." 

[marjoe]

Carey - I think my whole second year was variations on "WTF happened??". It truly sucks, but it's "normal". Marsha

[ATJ]

?How is it possible that he's just GONE.  Like there one minute, gone for freaking EVER after?  I'm 16 months out and it just bothers me that this basic concept of death and grieving still eludes me.  I just still can't wrap my brain around the fact he is not out there SOMEWHERE?

HOW the f*ck can he just be GONE?  I guess I just want to know if it's normal to still feel this way.

 

(((Carey)))

 

"You do not understand even life.

How can you understand death?"

 

~~ Confucius

 

As to understanding death in general, people have struggled with this question from time immemorial. And when it comes suddenly, out of the blue, it is an even greater shock and seems surreal. -

 

Although my husband was very sick for a long time, one morning I discussed with him our plans for going to the hospital later in the day for treatment. Then I was ready to go grocery shopping and told him that I would hurry back in about an hour - would he be OK? He calmly nodded and smiled. When I came back, he was GONE, and police told me that he had wandered off to a nearby place and shot himself. It felt surreal beyond belief. Here one moment, gone the next! I simply could not believe it, and my sense of reality was turned upside down. I never saw him again.

 

For about three years I expected him to magically show up on our doorstep. I kept looking for him in crowds - simply couldn't wrap my head around it.

 

Someone said:

 

"Dying is not romantic,

And death is not a game which will soon be over...

It's the absence of presence -

The endless time of never coming back...

 

~~  Tom Stoppard  (British Playwright)

 

That's it exactly it. Over time we begin to feel on a deep, visceral level the enormity of 'the absence of presence' - 'the endless time of never coming back'. The initial anesthesia has worn off, and it becomes very palpable - another difficult part of this complex process.

 

It can all become a real mind game, distorting one's perception of reality. The surreal part of it compounds the pain and can challenge one's sense of sanity. - So, is it 'normal' that you 'still' feel this way? In a distorted sense, yes it is, because the actual event deviates so far from what our mind considers 'normal'. It takes time to process it, and unfortunately, it's not the Hallmark movie version, where everything is resolved pronto. I really feel for you!

 

During my time of great desperation and wanting to "feel alive" and 'normal' again, I wrote the poem below. Perhaps it will give you at least the sense that you are not alone in this:

 

 

'When Night Descends'

 

In the still and quiet of the night

When darkness wraps us in its cloak

We hear the timid whisper of the heart

 

Becoming louder with each beat

Its cry no longer silent -

Growing stronger in the dark

 

Revealing our soul's desire

And the pain it feels so deep

Begging to be heard and tended

 

With each pulse the message's clear

Carried by the bright red stream

That keeps coursing through our veins

 

Let this pain come to an end

Set me free from this long bondage

Let me feel alive again

 

I ask the cosmos for an answer

And celestial beings to assist

In my troubled journey hither

 

To light the way ahead of me

And guide me to a place that's safe

To let my heart find peace and rest

 

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

I fervently wish that light will shine on your dark path

and that your troubled heart will soon find rest and peace!

 

ATJ

 

[lcoxwell]

Last night, one of my dogs decided to stretch out on my Kenneth's side of the bed.  The dog just plopped down in his spot, which is something the dogs never do.  Honestly, it gave me a huge jolt.  I am not used to movement there, anymore, and for just a moment, I thought it was him.  For just a moment, I forgot that he was gone, and started to reach out to him, when I woke up fully and realized it was the dog.  Now, I am feeling completely disoriented and off kilter, missing him more than I have, in a very long time.

[mikeeh]

I am just over 21 months and it has never seemed more unreal than it has felt lately.

 

There is the disbelief that anyone this close to me and as integral a part in my life could have died.  That death could have hit this close to me and my life.

 

There is also the feeling that the whole 22 years I had with her was either a dream I had or a movie I saw.  That the security and and feeling of contentedness that I thought I had for all those years with her never really happened.  This emptiness and loneliness has just always been my life.  That time that I had someone to talk to and someone who cared couldn't possibly have happened.  All just a dread, or a very good movie that I have absorbed into my own memory.

[Baylee627]

Yes. At just over a year out, I still cannot get over how surreal this all is. Like my life's course just careened down some nightmarish tangent, and that if I could only "right" my course, I would return back to normal, back to life with Brooks in it, alive. And well.

 

Recently, I was checking out his grandma's FB page, and she'd posted a profile pic with DH in it. That startles me, unexpectedly happening upon an image of him.

 

Sigh.

 

Baylee

[BrokenHeart2]

22 months today and it still does feel so unreal to me as well. How could this be?  I felt him close tonight with good news from my stepdaughter and it was comforting but sad at the same time. It's been a long time. Such a yoyo if emotion ugh

Hugs

[OneNow]

Yes at 18+ months still seems unreal...I guess it always will...I never got to see my husband's body...so I never processed it thru that to have closure.But maybe it was a blessing..I don't think I could have bearer to see him dead. He completed suicide and his mom found him..she begged me to not have a viewing...he was direct creamated. I have the ashes Ive never seen..thinking it maybe time to see them as a way to move forward.

 

Sometimes I still think I have to call him...miss talking to him so deeply. The other day I did have a dream where he told me..I'm happy now..and almost everyday since then I've seem some type of rainbow. That's the only thing that gives me peace and helps me to move forward..that is is no longer "sad".

[Carey]

I look at pictures ... at his face, every hair, every freckle...zoomed way in I can almost touch him. How can I have that hat...that shirt...those sunglasses, I know I keep saying it but how can THINGS have more permanence in my life than he was able to? I saw his body. I laid on it and cried into his eyes. I have a picture of our hands entwined (creepy, I know. But I was compelled).  I just don't know what it's going to take to feel real.  It's just an enormity I cant wrap my brain around.

[ATJ]

 

 

"I learned to laugh, I learned to cry,

 

But will I ever learn to say goodbye?"

 

~~ Unknown Author

 

 

(((Carey)))

 

I wish you healing of your broken heart.

 

May Peace and Comfort surround you today and always!

 

ATJ

 

 

[Jen]

Maybe that's how I've been feeling lately-- I keep telling people it feels as though Jim was just part of a dream, and I finally woke up. How do you miss a dream? It doesn't seem real-- none of it. Our life together, our Nicholas Sparks-style love story, his sudden death. Is it just my brain putting a layer of mental bubble wrap around it so it won't hurt so much? That's the only thing I can figure...

[anniegirl]

Nearly ten years on, none of it seems like my real life anymore. LH and I seem to me like a movie I watched once.

 

As Jen suggests, it could simply be self-protection. We can't grieve constantly. We'd die.

 

And our brains have a way of sorting and organizing things that sometimes appear to act quite independently from our conscious thoughts.

 

For months after LH died, I'd drive by the hospice and it felt like I should stop because it seemed to me he should still be there. But that feeling faded.

 

I moved away the year after he died, and the change of setting eliminated any of those nagging feelings that he might be/should be still around. The upside of moving.

 

But, we let go - imo - when our lives reach that tipping point where life is more now and tomorrow than yesterday and what if. And because there is no closure, this "feeling" that he or she is "somewhere" lurks though it springs out at you less and less as times goes one.

 

I wish I could be more helpful but some things just simply "are" until the "aren't"

[Virgo]

My mother in-law and I say this to each other all of the time, "it still doesn't feel real." I wonder if it ever will? I still half expect to see him to come around the corner in his squad car just before our youngest daughter gets on the bus in the morning so he can give her a hug and a kiss. I suppose I 'see' him everywhere. I miss him so much.

[jlp]

I'm glad I stumbled upon this thread.  I'm at nine months out, but I can totally relate to this.  Early on, my nearly 30-year marriage to DH seemed like a dream:  was it real? Did it really happen?  Once the shock wore off, I was able to more appreciate our time together -- feel comforted by looking at pictures of him, etc.

 

But now recently, I'm back into "was this really only a dream" mode, but for different reasons.  My grief is starting to lessen and now I feel guilt that I'm no longer devastated by his death.  Does this mean that I didn't really love him?  Am I forgetting him?  My mind says, of course not, but it weighs on my heart just the same.  No, we can't intensely grieve forever, but I'm finding the transition difficult, awkward, and unsettling.  As always, it helps to know that this is a fairly natural progression of grief.

 

Still, it bugs me that the loss of my soul mate and the love of my life will someday not hurt so much.  I can't help but feel it's disrespectful of him, but I also know that I would end up in a padded cell if the grief didn't lessen.  Ugh!  Grief sucks!

 

 

[JeanGenie]

I'm glad I happened upon this thread because feeling "unreal" and what you've all voiced is exactly how I'm feeling. Just under 24 months and last night I sat and cried like I did in those early days.  Gazing at his picture, it feels like I'm staring at any picture you might see anywhere.  Was he real? Are my memories real?  Or were they all a dream...some wonderful life that I read about in a book or watched in a movie.  And how can something so wonderful just end.  But as we know, it does, every day for so many.  I still cannot grasp how a person can be here loving and alive one moment and gone the next.  Was it all real or something I made up in my imagination.  The practical side of me knows it was very real and our love was very real.  But last night that practical side gave way to the grief and the pain returned.  God I miss him so.  His voice, his touch, his love. 

[moncoeur]

So 20 months.... there are some days I think I am going to open a door  walk into the room and he is going to be there.

That this was all some horrible dream, or some mistake.

 

But I open the door and of course he is not there, it is hard to imaging that he is never coming back.

I have to wear his wedding ring around my neck so I can prove to myself that he really was here and not a dream.

 

 

[SoVerySad]

At just shy of 25 months, it does still feel unreal at times. Perhaps not the actual fact that he died, but more the fact that he'll never be back here with our children and I again. All the "things we'll never do together again" seem completely unreal at times. I rarely am able to let myself think about them for more than a second. It is hard enough to miss him so deeply in the present day.

[hikermom]

At just shy of 25 months, it does still feel unreal at times. Perhaps not the actual fact that he died, but more the fact that he'll never be back here with our children and I again. All the "things we'll never do together again" seem completely unreal at times. I rarely am able to let myself think about them for more than a second. It is hard enough to miss him so deeply in the present day.

Substitute 33 months and this could be me. It is not a constant thing. I can go days without this feeling, dare I say weeks, but when those moments of surrealism hit it can knock the wind out of me. I can still look at pictures, much like the OP reflected on, and see tiny little details that bring him right back and leave me breathless with the reality that this man has been gone for close to 3 years. How can this have come to pass?

[Mr C]

The unreal feeling that I get often is that she can't be gone. This weekend, the other unreal feeling of our life together being made up came over me suddenly. I was driving past our high school and I just had to pull in to see proof that we existed as a couple. When they renovated the school several years ago, they had a fundraising campaign where you could have your name put on a brick by the flagpole. Sure enough, I was able to find the one with both of our names on it. Those wonderful memories of time together in that building and thereafter just may be real.