I like to listen to joe south’s song walk a mile in my shoes. I watch the red zone for updates on my team the Green Bay packers. I get up in the morning and do stuff during the day. Some days I can’t be bothered getting up. I talk to my dog Trevor. He agrees with everything I say and waits patiently for me to get up so he can chase squirrels. Sometimes I look at the dishes and I can’t be bothered. Sometimes I clean the house scrubbing from top to bottom. The rawness of losing him has dulled but my life is dull now I’ve lost him. I chase life affirming moments such as holidays, new groups, meals with friends, family gatherings. But in my heart I am so lonely for him. I want to talk to him. I want to feel his strong arms around me. I just want him to come home. He’s been gone 4 years and it’s time he came back home to me.
I am glad i'm not the only one who still thinks he will come home. Just been away to our daughter for the night and expected him to be at the station to pick me up, or even be in the house when i returned but of course he was not, i just wish the pain would stop because i do not know how much more i can take.
It's so unfair. Try one day one hour one minute at a time. Even one second because that's all we can do when our hearts are breaking day after day. I'm looking at his picture on the wall thinking he can hear me and come home and talk to me. That would do me even for a few seconds every night. It's crazy to think like this but how else do you keep going.
I do get what you are going through. I'm 5 months in this week since my husband passed and although I have been trying to keep busy and active, I just feel empty. The time of year doesn't help either with the days being so short and the nights so long. I'm 61 tomorrow and this is my first birthday in 40 years without him. He never really was the `hearts and flowers` or `big surprises` type his typical line would be `there's the bank card, just go and get something you want`. He was rubbish at present buying but I think it's an inset male thing in some cases anyway. It's only been 5 months and has gone quick but feels longer? Christmas I haven't even given any thought to. That will be spent probably on my own with my older sister. She lives alone in sheltered housing and has learning and mental health difficulties and has just come through cancer treatment herself. This just came about two months after my husband passed. So far she is fine and for now in the clear. I say `for now` because it's `once bitten` on that score. My husband got his tumour cut out in January 2022 but the cancer was back within 5 months then it was sheer hell for him from then on with 4 bouts of sepsis thrown into the mix and I think it was the last one he had back in June along with his advancing cancer that took him in the end along with that the cancer was just everywhere and his body just gave in. He put up a good fight though, almost two years. The silence can be deafening at times. As much as I try to push myself to do things I sometimes find I just don't have the energy and my sister relies on me for so much. She can do for herself to an extent but sometimes it's a case I think of just hoping i'll do it for her. She can't cope with authority so needs me for stuff like that I have to get her money when she needs it things like that because she can't work a cash machine as much as I've tried to show her but she's just not interested and gets all flustered about it and doesn't like going into the bank herself and asking for money over the counter. I have my son and his partner and my little granddaughter they have roped me into looking after her that little bit more and she is a little ray of sunshine for me at the minute.
At night I go to bed and still can't sometimes get to grips with me being the only one there now and that `this is now my bed` and not `our bed`. I still see it as mine and his wardrobes although I am going through a gradual process of trying to get rid of some of his stuff. He was an awful one for me buying him clothes which would just lie in the wardrobe in wrappers and still with tags so these have no sentimental value to me so have started to sell these on selling sites. It's the clothes I have seen him in which are just that bit harder to part with just now but I know I will get round to it eventually. Drawers full of his junk as well he was such a hoarder of random stuff I haven't even tackled those yet. I find it hard still to get out of bed in the morning but like you I have a wee dog who needs walked. He is a Border Terrier and was my husband's dog we had made arrangements with the nursing staff just before he passed that we could take the dog into hospital to see him and they agreed but unfortunately that never happened and he passed before we got to take him in. Yes the housework too is another thing. I too look at dishes in the sink and wonder if it's worth a bother doing them and my spare room has become a laundry room at the minute I have one of those air dryers as it's a flat I'm in and it's not the weather for getting stuff outside so I dry all my laundry in there and when it's dry just pile it up then `think of putting it away`. You are just so lost without them aren't you?? but then you have been there longer than I have so you'll know better. I have began driving again I was unable to for a long time due to illness and it was his wish that I go back to it again before he passed so I can be independant so that it what I am doing got the ok from the GP etc so now it means that at least I can just go out for a run somewhere if I feel things getting too much. Sorry if I am ranting on but your situation sounds so like mine just now and I can relate to a lot that you have written. I wish you well going forward and hope things will get better for you and for me eventually. Please take Care.
Hi V I can feel everything you are going through. I only gave away clothes that were new with tags still on that we had gotten for holidays that he never got to wear. We had 3. holidays booked as it would have been our 30th wedding anniversary in mid July. I can't bear to give away anything I remember him wearing. Never made it. He died at beginning of May. He was years younger than me. He shouldn't have went first. I have a long pillow on his side of the bed that he used to put his feet on when dealing with the side affects of the chemo. When I put my foot over in the morning it's not him. I'd say some of my family think im crazy but so what they are not dealing with this heartbreaking pain. I make plans everyday to do one little thing. Most days I don't manage to do anything. Just getting food down is a chore. House is a mess. No matter how ill he was he always kept on top of house chores. Even when he went into hospital in April that last time he cleaned the house and cooked the lunch before he went to the hospital. Even when he was in hospital getting brain radiation he was asking me was the house cleaned. He thought he was going to make it through again and get home. I know this sounds mad but there are times just for a split second when I think he's not.gone. He was so fit and healthy probably the fittest and healthiest in his family. He probably had the cancer for years. Looking back over the ten years before he was diagnosed with the cancer in his kidney, liver lungs and ribs there were signs. Breathlessness, drenching night sweats, bloating, cough that wouldn't go away. little pains here and there. But as he was an athlete put it down to old running injuries. His bloods and prostate checks came back clear every year. How did to his happen to him. Died at 53. All his family 10 20 30 years older than him and still alive. Is so hard to bear.
Good to know I'm not going mad and what I am experiencing is normal. Yes it's the same with me my sister as I said has beat cancer twice she had very early stage breast cancer 4 years ago just before my husband got his diagnosis and with her it was just a case of going in getting it cut out and 15 sessions of radiotherapy sorted that for her along with Tamoxifen which she had to take for 5 years to keep it at bay. Don't know where the bowel cancer came from with her but the signs were that she was very tired and breathless and it was picked up at a colonoscopy after a home bowel screening test came back positive- she had never ever done one of those before! but there so far she is fine. My husband never smoked and drank very little although years ago he did have a drink problem long before I met him. He had a friend who could drink until the cows came home and he went the same way and said if it wasn't for his friend going to Australia he would have probably been dead. He was first diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes before he got his cancer diagnosis. He was your typical male and would never go to the doctors for anything. Worked 50 odd years retired 4 years ago and then hospitals, GPs etc became just about an everyday occurrence. He did like his food though and just ate a lot of the wrong stuff at the wrong times of the day. He was a `workhorse` as well more or less working 24/7 thinking he was indestructible. He lived to work, not worked to live. We were the opposite there was a nine year gap with us so he never got to make his 70th birthday in February next year. It is just so unfair. Yeah stuff just lies around the house now he was never a one for housework but when he retired we got a wee system in order that we would do certain rooms on certain days he would clean the kitchen I would do the bathroom and the two bedrooms and he would do the living room. That went on for a while but once he got ill it more or less went out the window. Just some days I don't see the point of tidying up or anything no one is coming to see me or the house. So I've just had my first birthday today in 40 years without him. It's just felt like any other day and nothing special. Take Care of Yourself.
sometimes I feel he is home. My oldest dog died a couple of weeks ago. She was 13 a chocolate lab. We spent many years holidaying in the Lake District with our dogs. It makes me smile remembering how much trouble that dog got us into. Chocolate labs are definitely not wired right but so clever and artful. Now it’s just me and our youngest lab. But every time I’m out walking on my own with him I feel a heavy arm across my shoulder saying how’s things. How strange it is to be both desperately lonely and at the same time wrapped in love.
Your birthday is special. It is the day the world welcomed you. And he is there with you today as he has been for the previous 40 birthdays. Remember every single one of those birthdays and smile for what you had. Lucky you. And even tho it’s November and you may well not be Christian I wish you a contented Christmas x
By now we would have had put up our Christmas decorations so we could just sit back relax and enjoy the dark evenings with all our Christmas lights on. We would have all our Christmas presents wrapped by now. Just don't see the point of doing it now. I looked on line to see what foods to eat to make you dream. bananas cheddar cheese etc. But nothing worked.Only dreamt about him twice months ago. I think how really lucky couples are to have each other into real old age. I have relatives that lived well into their 90s and then went shortly after their spouse passed. That's the natural order of things. Not to loose your husband to cancer at 53. My Mam had cancer and died at 72 but she had dementia and heart problems so that seemed a bit more like the natural order of things. Still young though. I'm told when I relax and settle down I will feel him around me that he won't come back to me yet it's too soon. Can't believe that.he died 29 weeks ago. at 1.45am this time 29 weeks ago he was still alive when they came in to check his morphine pump. I was beside him in a chair looking at the tv dosing holding his hand. At 2.40am I felt one hand still warm and one hand cold. I ran out to the nurse and she came and said it was the final moments.he was still alive at this time 29 weeks ago. I believed right till the end he would come back. For the days before he died everyone I spoke to on the phone told me to tell him it's ok to go. But I didn't. I kept telling him not to leave me pleading with him to come back from wherever he was that I needed him. For the last 11 days and nights I was with him mostly on my own it that hospital room. He never got to come home. We had discussed it and that had been the plan rather than go to the hospice. But they decided to keep him in hospital to monitor the steroids for the swelling in his brain and until he had completed his 10 session of whole head brain radiation. he had gotten 7 up to the Friday and was due the last 3 the following week. But he took a turn on the Saturday night and never really came back after that. Most of the time I can't believe it.House full of stuff and plans that seem such a waste now .
