Losing my partner

I'm so sorry for your loss. Your partner was so young.

Please be kind to yourself, being present, showing love and compassion to your partner right to the end is all we can do. It's an image that will over time not be as punch to the stomach painful. I'm nearly 6 years on and as awful as those last minutes hours days were there is nowhere else I would rather have been. 

It's very early days for you, just do essential jobs, eat and sleep if you can.

Talk on here, we all understand. 

Best wishes 

Hey Jenks!

Yes as Ruby Diamond says please come on here when you feel you need to. I am sure we can all relate to what you are going through with us all being there. Yes its horrible to watch them pass away in front of you and going through the dying process I did this with my husband 7 months ago and it still feels very raw. He fought his bowel cancer for 2 years at one stage going into remission and then it decided it wasn't finished with him and decided to come back for him. We were together for 40 years and were each other's `rock` it really is a shock to the system to find out someone you were with so long is now no longer here some days I still can't comprehend he is gone. Please go on to the MacMillan helplines also for emotional support or use their chat facility this can then lead you to get some kind of counselling if you feel you are going to need it and they will point you in the right direction. I am currently on a bereavement support programme where someone phones me each week just to see how I am. I have been ok but still feel I need that little bit of support. Good luck and Best Wishes to you going forward. 

xx

Hey mate,

You are two weeks in, please just be kind to yourself this is still so raw to you. Feel how you feel, there is no right or wrong.   Like everyone on this forum I’ve been there too and you are right,  the events of that night will never leave you.  I realised probably a year on that I’d never actually get over the trauma that we went through, and that’s okay, I don’t think I actually need or want to.  I’ve build so much strength out of what happened and I’ve become a better person because of it. You can too.   I changed my career and I hope I’m making my wife proud by going out and saving lives in the ambulance service.  But its taken time.  I did nothing for eighteen months. I remember not being able to get out of bed and just lying there in tears.  You are not alone.  But it will get better, you will find your way and you will smile and laugh again.  There is no rush.

Also it’s taken me three years to feel that I can get back on this forum, it wasn’t right for me to start with.

Take care

Carl

Why was she your responsibility. I cared for my husband until he died. I have wasted many hours on if only in the past four years but I have never felt it was my responsibility to save him.  I couldn’t. That’s the reality. I couldn’t. Grief stomps on you without care or concern. You can try to make sense of it but it lashes your heart when you least expect it. Your grief is new and raw and you have a hard and painful road ahead. I wish you strength and light when the darkness comes and please remember no matter what you are not alone. Never alone x. The 

I am so sorry to hear about your partner. I lost my partner 16 months ago to Bowel Cancer, Laura was 40 when she was diagnosed.. we have 2 little boys who were 5 and 3 at the time. We too like you had our life planned out. We had only just moved into our first family home together and were making it ours., Then in the space of only 8 months, following what we thought was a stomach bug brought home from school , Laura was diagnosed and sadly passed away..in those 8 months we got married and were husband and wife for 5 weeks. Truth be told I always thought it would be me that got ill due to my family history.. losing my dad and sister to cancer. I never thought it would be me trying to carry on and raise our beautiful boys alone... but thats all you can do and you are doing.. carrying on. 
2 weeks is a very short space of time after everything you have been through, its a very traumatic time and I went through the same thoughts as you.. how do I deal with this? I know Laura wouldnt want me to give up..on anything.. she was the most courageous person I know and I felt a little bit like 'how dare I feel this way or that way' after what Laura went through and you start being hard on yourself.. but sadly it takes time. I met other partners at various stages of grief and we all said the same... grief comes on waves... some days are huge waves to get over.. others are a little easier to deal with... over time the bigger waves get further apart, they dont go away I wont lie, but the waves in between get slightly easier to deal with. Like you I tried to keep busy.. I decorated the house from top to bottom.. anything that would keep my mind active.. then when it was done I just wanted to show Laura.... crazy I know but thats what grief does to you. 
One thing you have to do is look after yourself.. I went through a few months of very little sleep (still dont have a great nights sleep), bad eating habits, no exercise. .. I made sure the boys were well fed and looked after but not me.. then I came to realise Im no good to anyone if I dont care about myself... so I started eating more healthily, going to bed at 9 not 1 am because I couldnt face going to bed alone., and joined a gym just to walk.run and row (Im no bodybuilder!). Not only does it keep you busy and focused its good head space time.
I found at the start lots of people would message me daily at all hours to check I was ok.. then daily became weekly, became monthly then it became those 'special days'.. her birthday, her passing etc.. 
People getting telling me it will take time but it will get easier.. never easy, just easier.. and I didnt believe them. After 16 months I am beginning to see what they mean.. you have good and bad days even now..  I am taking our boys away on holiday this year for the first time alone.. God knows they deserve one they been so affected by all this..  and even booking what should be a wonderful family event is so very different when you type in 1 x adult. 
This is a long winded way of saying you are coping and you are doing so well just coming on here and getting things out. I had counselling which really helped... talk , talk and keep talking.. you'll be surprised it helps just saying exactly how you feel.. the guilt, the anger (yes even anger), resentment, wishing you could have helped, wishing she had gone sooner to the doctors... all that comes out.. 
Am I 'moving on'.. no. despite people saying 'you're doing so well.. you're moving on'... you dont.. you just learn to cope.. you find whatever it takes to get you through each day and you do it... I for one know I will never let Laura down by giving up.. and i've learnt how precious time is past, present and future. Its ok to be sad and its ok to be hard on yourself.. its part of the grieving process and you will come out the other side... not over night but you will get there, we all owe that to our partners who battled so hard for us. 

Hi TIMO24!

I can resonate so well with your post. I lost my husband Jay to bowel cancer in June last year so I am just over 7 months in. All the things you say about not getting a nights sleep going to bed at 1a.m. etc that sounds like me to a `T`. I don't have youngsters to bring up though. I've done all that I'm a gran to lovely little girl and my son and his partner live not far from where I live. Jay only got to see the first 2 years of her life more or less hoped to see her going to school but sadly not to be. I have been having some bereavement support over the phone the last couple of weeks and it has helped. As you say, just being able to talk to someone who understands is a great help I try and reach out too to other organisations  if sometimes I get very overwhelmed.  I too have rejoined the gym and go a couple of times a week that was something Jay and I did together when he got a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes we decided to work on it going to the gym and healthy eating etc. Then covid happened and everything just shut down. Then at the end of 2020 his cancer symptoms surfaced which according to the surgeon the tumour had been sitting there for 3 or 4 years previous. He retired in 2019 and just never got to enjoy it. Worked 50 odd years without the need to see a GP or be in a hospital for anything other than maybe A & E for a work related injury. Retires, and it was like an everyday occurrence with oncologists, clinics, specialists etc. The girls on the desk at the gym remember me and were so pleased to see me back and so nice they were asking after me I thought. It felt weird going back without Jay but I'm slowly getting back into it again. I take his towel and gym bag so it's like part of him still comes to the gym with me. We played badminton too a couple of times a week but a bit awkward one person trying to play that by themself.

I've not been that adventurous yet in doing any decorating but hopefully it's in the pipeline somewhere down the line. It's trying to do the things he used to see to i.e. M.O.T/insuring the car etc but I got it through it's first MOT last August and I was quite chuffed with myself and it didn't cost a lot so that was a bonus and today I had a slow puncture in one of the tyres and I always feel scared at seeing to these things as with being a female I'm always very cautious now of these places trying to rip me off. But took it to a tyre place today and got it fixed for the princely sum of £10 so felt really good again after that. 

Yes it's just the `meals for one` now you get and cooking for yourself.  Jay loved to cook and he would cook for an army even though there were only the two of us so in a way my waistline is feeling the benefit now there. You would eat it because it was there and sometimes he got offended if you didn't because he thought you thought it was no good when there was just too much of what he made. We used to go out regularly for meals too but that's all gone now.

Yes sometimes the silence can be deafening too. I just see the future stretching out in front of me and sometimes I fear where it will take me. You're right too people are so kind at the beginning and there is the `if there is anything I can do` etc but as time goes on this fades into the distance and everyone just goes back to their normal lives and you are just left to get on with things. Things for me still feel a bit `groundhog day` where the days just seem to morph into one another but I really do hope things will get easier or as you say, I can learn to cope better. I have an older sister who has learning and mental health difficulties and I am her nominated carer. She lives within walking distance from me in Sheltered/assisted living accomodation. She is independant to an extent but needs me for a lot of things in authority like doing her banking, insurances etc. My dad looked after her until he passed away 12 years ago. She comes and stays over with me for a few nights from time to time but though she's not that great company, she's still company for me as I am for her. She too has just come through a bowel cancer diagnosis. She got this only two months after Jay passed but her's was not as severe as his and she is at the moment recovering well.   I just could not have her living permanently with  me just now and feel there are times I  feel I need my own space. I have a little dog a Border Terrier he was Jay's my son and I got him for him at Christmas 10 years ago. We made a plan with the nurses at hospital when Jay was in his final days that we could take `Jack` to the hospital to see him but unfortunately this never happened as Jay passed just before we decided to take him in.  He gives me a reason to get up everyday because he needs walked and looked after. I also get roped into looking after my little grandaughter more now too. My son and his partner work shifts and they sometimes clash so gran is `on call` when that happens. 

It would have been his 70th birthday this coming Monday (12th February) so don't know how that will go. I will probably just spend the day reflecting. It's a milestone birthday I hoped he would see but again, not to be. I have been told the greiving will get `easier` it may never leave me but been told you can learn to build a life for yourself around it. I really do hope so. My best wishes to you and everyone else here going forward and hopefully we can all learn to cope with things in the future. Take Care.

Vicky x