Struggling after losing my mum

Hi Cardiffian,

Glad you found this forum and it is a good place to come when you feel as you do. Firstly what you are going through is normal. It will feel very surreal and as if it not happening to you but to someone else this is exactly how I felt. There will be all sorts of emotions going on in your head just now. Shock, anger, disbelief to name but a few and it is understandable that you will want to shut out the world just now and just be on your own. I am 18 months in from losing my husband to bowel cancer and sepsis in June 2023 some days for me it is still hard to comprehend that he is gone. Worse with it being this time of the year. Last year was my first Christmas without him and it came and went in a blur and I really didn't feel much but this year with it being a full year without him, i feel it a lot more. He fought his cancer for almost 2 years and at one time going into remission when they cut his tumour out in January 2022 but 5 months later it came back after blood tests showed his CEA markers had risen and a further scan confirmed it had returned. From then on it was a downward spiral for him and going back on chemotherapy damaged his kidneys and the chemotherapy had to be withdrawn completely 4 bouts of sepsis happened after that and it was on the 4th bout along with his advancing cancer that finally took him in 2023. Two months after his passing my older sister also got a diagnosis of bowel cancer but luckily hers was caught very early and was treatable she has now gone on to make a recovery and is now an outpatient at our local hospital for continuous monitoring.

Please keep coming on here when you feel you need to because we will all `get it` and there will always be someone who will relate to what you are going through. Please phone the MacMillan helplines also you will get their number here they can arrange for some telephone counselling if you feel you might need it. I had that done last year and it helped just to have someone check in with you each week really helped to see how you were and if you had any problems etc. This counselling I think can still be arranged at a time that suits you too be weekly, fortnightly, monthly you decide and when I done it it was 6 free sessions by telephone may still be the same or may have changed but always worth a try. 

I can't say if things will get better for you because people grieve in different ways. Some get over it quicker than others and some finally learn to live with it. I am only now I feel starting to accept my husband is not coming back. I try to keep busy and occupied but you still have the empty feelings at times and the dark days//weeks for me still drop by from time to time but they leave eventually and I try to push forward again in moving on. On those days I just let them take their course until they go. I just `go with` the dark times now. Some days I don't want to be home and have to go out somewhere but then when I'm out I want to be back home in my `wee safe place` so everything can be a mixed bag of emotions at times and there is as they say no right or wrong way to go through it. You will find your own way and do what you think is right and what seems right for you. My best wishes to you moving forwards. 

Vicky.