One Year on and still feel devastated.

Hi, I'm So Sorry for you, I no how you feel, I lost my husband 18 months ago to gullet cancer,  it still doesn't feel real, I struggle so much him not being here, life is so very lonely now, sending hugs to you xx

Hello

Its 22 weeks tonight since I lost my husband. We’d been together since 1974, married just two years later. I feel as if I’ve lost part of me and Mondays are just so very very painful. I still have moments where I think I’m going to wake up from this nightmare, but they’re getting fewer. Although this evening while on the phone to my stepmum, I swear I heard him walking around upstairs. 

Like you, FSM, we were retired and had plans that we never realised, nothing grand but things we enjoyed doing together. It makes me sad that we never got round to doing them. 

I know he wouldn’t want me to feel like this but then I don’t think he appreciated just what an important part of my life he was and still is. I did tell him all the time but he had huge self confidence issues, never realising how loved he was by so many people. That makes me so very sad. 

Sending hugs

x

Hi FSM

All of us on here know and feel your pain. Everything you say, everything you describe we all feel it. We wouldn’t have come on this site if we didn’t. 

Nothing any of us can say will help to ease the pain but I do hope that having us all here and listening whenever you need it gives you some strength at least. 

I’m only 3 weeks in after losing my husband and the pain is all consuming. I don’t think it’s possible to put a time limit on how long we’ll feel like this, grief is so personal. We all feel that same terrible loss but how we battle through, how and when and if we’ll ever feel ok again I’m realising is anyone’s guess. 
That might not sound very positive or reassuring but I’m just being honest in where I’m at. 
All I do know is that I don’t know how I’d have managed even just these past 3 weeks without this site. 

I read posts from people who have been on here a long time ago, then suddenly re-appear needing some strength from others again so it’s a good lifeline to have. 

Xx

Hi FSM, 

I feel so sad for you and for your loss and your story resonates with my own and so many others on the site. Myself and my wife had also been together for nearly 40 years and it would have been our 35th wedding anniversary today but without my soulmate my life will never be the same again and just like you I can’t even imagine life without her as she meant everything to me as well as being my best friend. It was only five weeks yesterday for me since she passed away but my life seems pointless without her too. I feel your sadness and I wish there was a magic wand and everyone on this site had never heard of ‘Bereaved Spouses and Partners’ but alas that isn’t the case but what we do have on this site is a common alliance and understanding of what we’re going through and I feel very lucky to have people around me like you special people who find it in your hearts to reach out to each and everyone of us that need help. So thank you and I hope one day we all find peace xx

Hi Everyone

Its coming up to 18months for me, but seems like yesterday, never ever thought i would get this far down the line without him.

i found the start of the year very hard and i went down hill, took me of my guard, i phoned the Hospice where Tom was and asked for counselling, if he was here he would not believe it, i was always the strong one, but when needs must.

So much was going threw my head and i was making myself ill, have not started counselling as yet 1st April.

Something the counsellor said to me really helped.

You will always be Ellie and Tom, as you have children and grandad children and that is what you as a couple have together, and that will never changed.

I also have Cancer incurable and Tom was always with me threw all my treatment , when and if it comes back could i go threw that again. as she replied yes if not for you for Tom as he kept you going and with out him i would not have got this far,

We where married 53years and and a week and that is when he left me a week after our anniversary.

Its a hard journey and this lockdown does not help, it has drove me mad at times, but hopefully we will all get threw this , every thing i really do for him, as yesterday in his garden digging and i told him always let him know what type of day i have had.

Loved him at the beginning Loved him at the end, always have and always will  my first love , my last love my only love.

You all take care and this group is a saviour for people in our situation.

Take Care Ellie x

Hi FSM. Your story sounds incredibly hard, thank you for sharing it, it certainly resonated with me.

I too lost my wife to a returned cancer. It's a real double whammy, even nearly three years on. I wish I had a magic phrase to give you from this side of things but all I can relate to is something I was told just after being widowed that really helped me. A counselor suggested that I think of my loss as point in my life rather than a line to move along. Over time this point is circled by things happening in life - big things, small things, happy things, sad things - and, although it is always present, and always important, it is softened to a point where it is bearable. And she was right. I stopped trying to move past the pain and the loneliness and the grief and the anger, I lived kind of 'around' them. Some days are still hard, really hard, but things are definitely better.

If these words work for you, then that's brilliant, if they don't that's absolutely cool too. I hope it helps, even a little. I wish you the best and I wish you peace and comfort. Take care.

Hi ErnieScot

I like those words Ernie. I will try to keep them in mind. Its early days for me having lost my husband only 3 weeks ago but this pain is so hard anything I can start to try to do, to think, to help me feel this pain even just a tiny bit less I'm willing to try. 

Thank you for that. 

xx

Oh MP, 3 weeks is just so short a time to be sure - though I can only imagine that it is also the longest 3 weeks of your life too? This journey is just such an individual thing, you gotta do what's right for you, absolutely. I wrote a lot of things down, phrases I heard, positive quotes etc, just short things that I could repeat like mantras when my brain started to freefall. It really helped. I wish you peace and comfort as well.xx

Hi FSM,

I am so very sorry for your loss. And I am glad you have found us here because we all have experienced a similar devastating loss and can therefore understand.

I totally get what you are saying about not having too big a social life because you are enough for each other. We were the same. and even though I feel that it would have been nice to have a couple of really close friends around the time Paul died in 2018, I also know that I wouldn't really have been open for friendships especially while he was still alive because we were enough for each other and we wanted every single moment to be together and another person would have been distracting if you know what I mean.

I know the sense of the loft one being around. Sometimes when I am on my own I could swear that I hear Paul.

no unfortunately it is not a real nightmare. But we are all in this together and can support each other on here.

lots of love,Mel

Hi FSM,

I felt as though I had to reach out to you too. I feel your loss and your pain. We mourn not only the person we lost but the future we will never have with them; the plans that will fall by the wayside or that we will end up realizing, but differently. It's true, everyone else goes on with their lives, even the person's parents and siblings. I remember my mother-in-law telling me about some family get-together and about how much my husband's brother and cousins enjoyed themselves. It was about a year after my husband's death and I felt cheated and betrayed in some way. It's now two years and three months for me. The searing pain has subsided, wells up at times, but in-between, there are little things that happen that help, that make me smile, that let me forget for a short while. It will get better, not right away, not completely. I still ask myself that question: will it get better, but on reading your post and looking back to where I was a year ago, it has got a teeny-weeny bit better. By "it", I mean the pain. If I can say that, you better believe it. Like you, like Mel, it had always been just my husband and me, not much socialising, very few friends that we rarely saw. We'll go through the motions probably for a long time and search for meaning in this new life we didn't want. I can only hope we'll find it. I'll just end by saying that for me, I will never have better than what I had and I've resigned myself to the fact that now my life will just always be different and less than...