My beautiful wife Margaret passed away July 23 this year.We were married for 33 years and together for 36. I was her full time carer for a little bit over 7 years.
It's only been 7 weeks since then, but my whole world has become so much smaller, greyer, duller and everything just feels out of focus emotionally.
Our 2 sons, their wives and kids have handled things far better than I have. The kids, I expected them to rebound quickly. They were heartbroken when their nanny passed. They cried. They screamed. They fought. Then they calmed down and accepted. And then they remembered. And then they smiled. And laughed. And remembered more. And smiled more.
Would that I had the wisdom of children.
I'm booked in to see a psychologist shortly as my sleep patterns have become a joke. Typically 1-2 hours a night - a horrible blend of a half an hours sleep abruptly ended by horrifying nightmares of someone in my family dying. 2 hours to calm down then back to the half hour sleep. I've never really had nightmares since I was about 6 or 7, but nothing my childhood mind could imagine comes close to the horror of waking in a totally terrified state.
I'm currently seeing a grief counsellor to help me try and adjust to the day-to-day activities of normal life. I think I've forgotten what "normal" looks like. My IT skills are now so out of date that I don't know what I will do for work from this point. My social skills have evaporated - crowds do my head in and talking to more than 2 or 3 people at a time is simply beyond me at the moment.
Whenever I do go out, within 10 minutes of getting wherever I was going, I feel the most urgent over-riding need to be at home. It's like my gut is screaming at my head, "Why aren't you at home? Your place is at home. You have to be at home. Go home!!". Sure enough, I find myself in the car on the way home.
Our local supermarket is literally 65 metres from my front door. Last week it took me 4 hours to do the weekly shopping. Go to supermarket, start shopping, get the first handful of things into the trolley, over-riding need to go home takes over, pay for handful of things and rush home. Calm down, unpack handful of things (luckily this doesn't take long ;-) ), and then go back to the supermarket for the next handful of things. Repeat until I've gotten enough of the shopping list done to make the remainder into the beginnings of next weeks list.
Cancer is an insidious bastard.
Not content with taking my darling from me, it is now stripping me of any worth I had.
I hate what cancer did to my wife and my family.
I hate what cancer is still doing to me.
Ewen 
