A year on....

Hi Sarah,

Lovely post. I only lost my favourite person 4 months ago and am trying to ignore (failing) key milestones.

Every best wish to you in finding whatever happiness is out there for you - for me, right now, I just focus on spending time with people I really like and frankly ignoring people who I don't!

Take care, every blessing to you.

Hi that was a remarkably  frank post Sarah thankyou. I'm glad you have some positives and things to look forward to. I'm not at that point yet but yes your right. In my mind til death us do part love til my dying day. You sound like the day was family and your needs and private too. Best wishes 

Hi Sussex & wife of 26 years 

Thankyou for taking the time to reply.

it’s so very hard isn’t it? I am a long way from adjusting to this  new life,  we should have been getting old together. But I think that even when I don’t have the energy to carry plans out or feel like it’s too much trouble it’s progress that I am even thinking of doing things... 

I still feel married. I don’t want to feel any other way. I am getting more used to thinking of myself as a widow though so maybe what I’m trying to say really is that a year down the line I am beginning to accept it more. looking back I can see that I’ve made some progress & a year ago that didn’t seem remotely possible.

I am so very sorry for your losses both of you. And I’m in total agreement with you Sussex when you say to ignore those you don’t like!!

Take care, with love 

Sarah xx

Hi Sarah.

I'm alittle head of you and I am so proud of myself and our children for surviving. We have had holidays, got a dog, and started to live again. I'm also contemplating sorting and giving away some of my husband's clothes. He really isn't coming back and I am able to see them now as just clothes, the memories attached remain with me.

I also have been surprised by acquaintances who are now very good friends and have been there for me. My husband's family have let him and us down massively. I have had 3 phone calls from his mother in 14 months! They were when she wanted his death cert, to tell me she was going on holiday and to tell me her sister has been ill. She never asked about me or her Grandchildren. 

We will never forget Rob and my son's are so like him it's lovely. 

Hopefully we can give hope to those struggling. We will forever be changed, wish he was here, miss him and love him but he wouldn't want us to give up and be miserable forever. 

Take care everyone 

Hi Sarah,

my wife died of breast cancer 2 and 1/2 years ago.  We were together 31 years.

I could have saved her. My cousin Laura who is a nurse called us up from Boston

when my wife was 40 saying she needed a mammogram at 40 because my 

wife's mother died from Breast Cancer.  The Doctor in Scotland said no mammogram

until 50.  A year later we found the lump. I sent her to Boston and she had a

radical mastectomy, radiation, and then she had the chemo in Scotland.

I could have saved my wife if I had understood the urgency of the warning and

immediately sent my wife to Boston in 2003. My wife was Stage IIb when she

found the lump in 2004. I managed to keep her alive for 12 and 1/2 years.  She died at

54.  The Grief and the Guilt are horrific, and not getting even slightly better.

Love to all.

Daniel

Hi Sarah,

So sorry for coming in on this so late. I have been meaning to reply to your post sooner but somehow each time I decided to sit down and write a reply something else happened. So here goes:

I relate to every single point you make in your post.

I am glad you got through the week and the anniversary the way you did and that it felt right for you.

Do you also feel that something has changed a little after the anniversary? At first I thought I only had a couple of good days but that the intense pain would come back the way it had been before and that surely the first anniversary couldn't have made a difference, but somehow it has. I still feel all the same things as before, but somehow it has become just that tiny little bit easier to bear it.

Love, Mel.

Hi Ruby Diamond 

You have every reason to be proud of yourself & your family & I’m sure Rob would be even prouder of you all. You are fighting to keep going & that’s not an easy thing to do. I’m glad you are moving forward from existing to living again. 

Sounds like you’ve made some real progress too, with your new canine addition & the holidays. They aren’t easy, I took the kids away at Easter & I had some anxiety about doing it. I wasn’t really looking forward to it but it felt the right thing to do & I felt I was sending them the message, look it’s ok to laugh, have fun & enjoy yourselves again, your dad would want that for you all. He loved his holidays...& we had an ok time actually, it was never going to be easy but we all felt better for having done it.

It’s a hard job sorting out clothes etc but I think we know when it seems the right time to do it for you. I moved things to one wardrobe fairly early on & only kept the clothes that held memories... he had loads of T-shirt’s etc that I gave away. I’m beginning to view them differently too now, as you say you keep the memories, so I may thin the collection down in time.

I also funnily enough feel a bit different about work. I always found it hard when the kids were little to leave them & go to work, although it’s only part time . My husband always felt better me doing a few hours as he was self employed, he felt it was a bit of ‘insurance ‘ in case we needed to fall back on it - oh the irony!  Anyway, over the last year I have felt on occasions, thank goodness I’ve got work tomorrow, because with the kids at school if I’m just at home the lack of structure doesn’t do me any good. 

Im so glad you can see your Rob live on in your boys. One of the hardest things for me is knowing how much my husband has missed out on since his death, he was an awesome dad always. 

Tahe care of you now

Sarah xx

Hi Daniel 

I am so very sorry to hear about your wife. It sounds as if you both fought so hard, the unfairness of this disease is brutal. 

I feel so much for you knowing that you carry around this guilt that you could’ve changed the outcome but can any of us ever really know that for sure? Is it possible that you both may have known about it for longer than you did & yet the outcome would’ve been the same? I don’t know, but I do understand where you’re coming from.  My husband had been written off with back pain for sometime due to his job, we’d had scans but they all Centred around his spine & I will never know if they were missing what was going on & the cancer was growing just out of camera shot or whether it did just grow incredibly quickly as some cancers do, doubling in size in just a few weeks.... it was incurable at diagnosis either way. I have beaten myself up over this many times, could I have asked for different scans of tests? Would it have made a difference? but in the end I have to accept I just don’t know. 

But your love & care DID make a difference, a very real difference- it kept her going for another 12 & a half years. It was never going to be enough but it’s testament  to your love & care that you had that time together. And despite everything that’s happened, that was time that was worth having, time you had together that the cancer couldn’t take. 

Have you, would you, talk to someone about this? Guilt & grief can be so destructive & it might help you to get some perspective. You have done your very best by your wife, Im sure now she would want you to do the best by you. 

Wishing you brighter days ahead Daniel 

big virtual hugs 

Sarah xx

Hi Mel, good to hear from you 

I was dreading the anniversary for a long time before it happened-  being our wedding anniversary too it was like a double whammy & I felt I’d gone backwards a few steps, sleeping badly, reliving things at the end last year.... I’m sure you can relate, beforehand.  I worried about the kids & how they were coping too. I accepted it was all part of it but as I said, I was glad to get through it & into the next day. Apart from the funeral it means I’ve been through everything once, although I don’t think that necessarily makes things any easier.

I do feel though that maybe it makes things less intense as you say. Maybe I am kidding myself, I guess time will tell. It feels like another slight shift & I think maybe it feels good not to have any more “firsts” to face.

I’m glad that you are feeling a little more positive. It’s a hard, painful journey we are all on. I hope in time it becomes easier for all of us here. 

Love Sarah xx