I have been having a hard time lately. Normally i dont talk about these things I worry people will think that it is attention seeking. I also hate to bring other people down. I am aware that I am far from the only person suffering at the moment but i needed to get this off my chest and found this place.
Last year was bad my mh was bad my social anxiety had trapped me in my home and I am ashamed to say I was self medicating. But I realised that if I carried on as I didn't make a change. So I got support from local team and I quit. At first thing went great I was starting to leave my home alone going on long walks and picking up hobbies and was excited for the future. I was determined that I would fight it and that 2024 would be better. 6 weeks in we found out that my father in law who had been in hospital with a suspected infection was in his last hours of life. That was all we was told and for the next 10 days we spent upto 18 hours a day there by his side. At first we would get hopeful as he lingered longer than the few hours. We also got mixed messages. One nurse told us that if you was still with us the next morning they would start treating him again. We even told his grandchildren this. But it became clear he wouldn't pull through we were walking Zombies and with health issues ourselves. His other son told us he couldn't cope so he never visited the hospital i understood but was frustrated at times. The only other adult who was there was his estranged twin they had never got on but he didnt fight him visiting. During his short visits he was vile to us expecially my partner. Saying we weren't doing enough. We didn't know how we could physically do more. During the few hours we spent at home each day we were racked with guilt that we werent there. I overwhelmed it was important to me that we where there. I said this is his time we can fall apart after as we have more time. It felt important to me that he wouldn't pass alone. Despite this i was scared as though death had already had a big impact in my life. I had never seen anyone die.
We was with him when he passed. I would like to say that it was peaceful and it might have been for him. He had barley spoken during those 10 days but he had been unresponsive for that last day. His eyes open but cloudy. I was holding his hand he had been a private reserved and studdon man not one for touchy feely stuff. I dont know if i was holding his hand more for me or him. He made horrible noises as it was happening they must have only lasted a minute or but seemed longer. I spoke quietly and hopefully soothingly to him that he wasnt alone. That we was with him. That it's okay. About five minutes earlier his son had said go be with Mum. Then with two final quiet breathes he was gone.
I felt like I was being selfish for feeling the pain. We hadn't been close as I said he was reserved but those 10 days the three of us were on a journey together one that we are still on now bur it's nearly at its end. No one helped with the funeral or the house. How are you supposed to go into someone's private place and touch move pack up and throw away a mans life? Because we had no help my partner made a mistake with a mix up of his Dad's father's name. When his twin heard this at the funeral he kicked off. I understand he was greaving his twin brother though they had barley spoken in 45 years and even at the end my farther in law wasn't keen to resolve this it must cut deep expecially as his twin is the only sibling left out of 10. But we asked if he wanted input in the funeral he said no. Passing in December even if it only in the first week can make funerals difficult to arrange and we wanted it as soon as possible. But the director and crematorium where backed up. So we went through Christmas tje two of us with one message from a family member to ask about my partners welfare. Even his adult children stayed away. We dont even know why. So his dad's twin told everyone that we weren't arranging it properly. It's a lot of pressure to suddenly be under. We were both angry and confused when we learned that his dad had died not from copd that had been undiagnosed until that hospital stay and a serious infection but from Metastatic lung cancer that they had found and never told us. This seems cruel as when that nurse said if he survived the night which he did they would restart treating him. Which caused false hope and confusion when that treatment never came. Expecially as we told the kids. They are 17 20 and 23 but it's still awful to give hope then hot even be able to explain to them why this never happened.
Then his basic funeral took every penny he had had so my partner couldn't afford to put his Mum and Dad cremains in a grave in the local cemetery. His mum died of cancer in 2013 but his dad could never face picking them up. So Friday we will collect them both putting a small amount of their ashes in necklaces for his granddaughters before heading to Chapel St Leonards near Skegness here in the UK on Monday to scatter there ashes together on a beach they both loved and had visited for their honeymoon in the early 70s then repeatedly through their lifetimes. His Dad took his wife there just before her own passing. Then though my partners pain will never truly truly go. The Jouney that the three of us started in the last days of November and early December 2023 will have reached it final destination.
I was my mums carer for two years from 11 to 13 when she died and though no one had helped me during that time they took over that last day. So i wasnt with her when she died. It is fair to say that this was a defining moment in my life. When my beloved gran died when I was in my twenties she passed away peacefully in her sleep at 80 and she had often talked able her death happily. She was religious and she saw it as going home. Everyone she loved would be their including my grandad and Mum all reunited. I did my duty to both my partner and his Dad
But this experience was so traumatic and when I try to sleep I sometimes here his final noises.
I didn't relapse during this time and Friday will be my 7th month. And though I have no interest in relapse it's not even something I think about. I also don't feel like I have achieved anything. I am lower now than when I thought it couldn't get worse back last Summer. I don't sleep when I do I have nightmares. On Christmas eve I got a miragrain and for two months solid it never went away. Though they are no longer daily they are anything from 3 times a week to one big one in a month and loads of small ones. I have to have a sleep apnoea testis scares me my mums illness Behcet's syndrome started with migrains. I don't feel supported by my gps or the community mental health service which has suffered so badly like the rest of the nhs so as long as I dont intend to take my life i am not a priority which i understand. So i am on a waiting list. Even my substance worker is to busy for me he has to see and support 80 clients who are on his books and as I am not relapsing he obviously needs to focus on the ones out of that 80 that are. I haven't had an appointment with him in months despite asking for one. One day when i am stable and have got through this. I hope to volunteer at hospitals to sit with dying people who are alone or just so that their family can take a break without being racked with guilt.
