Numb

Hello Cazza123!

First of all my condolences to you on your loss. This is the place to come if you feel you need to let off steam, are feeling lost, or just want to shout and scream as we have all been there but most of us I think just wish we didn't have to be here. Everyone here `gets` what you are feeling and what you are feeling just now is normal. People grieve in different ways some get through it ok some don't and some just learn to live with it. Yes you will feel numb and just feel you are on `autopilot` and feel it's not real and not really happened and you're right you get the people who come to the funeral and get the well meaning `if there is anything you need/anything we can do's` but these quickly wane the phone stops ringing etc and as you so rightly said people do just go back to their normal lives but you're the one who needs to try to find a new sense of `normal`. I have just passed the one year mark of losing my husband Jay to bowel cancer. He fought it for 2 and half years at one time going into remission at one point when they cut out his tumour but within months it was back and decided it was taking him this time. He passed last June 2023. About 2 months after he passed my older sister also got a bowel cancer diagnosis after doing a home bowel screening test. People had been saying to me that she looked very pale and had lost a lot of weight which she could never afford to do but of course with me in the early stages of grief for Jay I would never have noticed. Her tumour was very small but she became very anaemic and had to have blood tranfusions before they did her operation. She has made a good recovery though she has learning difficulties also and I look after her. She lives on her own in sheltered housing accomodation which is within walking distance from where I am. She is independent to a stage but needs me for a lot of things like things in authority banking, bills etc. 

You said you have short burst of crying I wasn't even able to do that after Jay passed and thought that wasn't normal but just a few weeks before his `anniversary` the `floodgates` opened and its as if it was a release for me as if it was something I had been waiting on to happen. I never stopped crying when he was going through his treatment I thought I'd never stop but after he had gone I just found I couldn't cry for him at all and now one year in it's happening. I could be sitting watching TV or something and just burst into tears for no apparent reason but as I said it feels like a release and good to get it all out and after I feel that little bit better. Have you tried counselling yet? Here at MacMillan they can put you forward for so many free telephone counselling sessions with Marie Curie. I did these in January this year and just having someone check in you for a few weeks just to find out how you are and have a chat is good. I at one time got to the desperate stage when Jay was here I knew he was dying and my attitude was if he wasn't going to be here then neither did I. I had the incentive though to reach out to different sources. I used the website CALM and the text service SHOUT and I used a website here in Scotland and there is the NHS24 website who can put you in contact with counselling services and Cruze Bereavement. So lots of places you can go and just keep coming on here and talking when you feel you need to as I said we all `get it`. My best wishes to you moving forward. Take Care.

Vicky 

Hi, 

I felt that I needed to reply to you message not sure why but just to say I feel exactly the same as you both and I am a bit relieved that I am not alone. Thank you for sharing.

Hi Hg1

so sorry for your loss. Sending love and hugs

Hello. My husband died on the 17th June from bowel cancer. Like PattyK says, I too, have been on ‘autopilot’ and adrenaline in equal measures. There was no funeral, as he donated his body, and so it’s sometimes still like he’s just ‘somewhere else’ although, obviously, I know that he’s dead. I haven’t cried much, although I have seen the psychologist from his palliative care team twice now, and each time with her I have wept and wailed - which has felt quite cathartic. I feel like I’m waiting for a collapse.... maybe it won’t happen? I don’t think there’s a one size fits all to this. Wouldn’t it be easier if we knew what to expect.

Sending you my best wishes.

Hi DaisyD22

I took my husband's clothes to local Salvation Army recycling and couldn't even get out of the car, because if I had done that, it's like admitting to myself, he doesn't need them anymore! I can't even bring myself to use the empty drawers.

In the past I have never understood people keeping loved ones ashes  -  now I do, I'm not ready to bury them just yet.

A 'one size fits all' kind of grief would definitely be easier.

Love and hugs, so sorry for your loss.  

xx

I still have my husband's ashes 14 months on. and like you I used to think it was quite `creepy` to keep someone's ashes but I do get it now. We owned a static caravan in Argyll in Scotland just about a one hour drive from Glasgow where I am and where it was, was absolute paradise so quiet and so calm and peaceful it was Jay's (my husband) `happy place`. I had to let it go though because the upkeep of it by myself was too much to continue with financially so just had to cut my loses and sell it. Before I did though, when over there arranging the sale and collecting all my personal belongings from it I scattered some of his ashes there so a little piece of him can be there always and I have some here too. A lot of his clothes I sold online as he was a terrible person for me buying him things to wear that would just pile up in his wardrobe with all the labels still attached. These I could get rid of no problem because I never ever saw him wearing any of this stuff its the clothes I saw him in that are harder to part with. I still have drawers with a lot of his `clutter` he was bit of a hoarder and was always buying stuff that were maybe a good idea at the time and then the notion would wear off and the items whatever they were would just get chucked in a drawer. It is hard but you will eventually get there I am still trying to `get there` 14 months on. Things are very slightly easier for me now but I'm still trying to find the `new me` after 40 years of someone being at my side and now having to navigate life on my own. My best wishes to you. Take Care. 

Vicky x

Hello Cazza

So sorry for your loss. I understand your numbness as just having to process this enormous shock - those so short 19 days must go through your mind. Our bodies do a lot on their own to try to process all this and the numbness is like a flu or something giving our bodies time to heal a little before we then have to deal with our grief in other ways. We are all on this journey learning so much about our bodies, souls, life, death and love in such a condensed amount of time. 

I attended my husband's funeral in March - a burial - just with our son.  My daughter stayed at home and cooked us a meal for when we got back. I completely cocooned and have hardly even spoken to my friends since as I try to figure out who I am again. After six months at least my body is feeling more normal and not as 'numb' again and now I am wondering what else is around the corner with this grief thing and processing this loss.

I also lost my best friend very suddenly from a heart attack about six months before my husband's death so grieving for him too (and that is still ongoing) so these are not short journeys. Anniversary's, birthdays etc are always quite a shock.

You might like reading Nick Caves's letters  - a lot responding to people on grief - https://www.theredhandfiles.com/

Take care of yourself

Florence xxx

Hello Cazza 

Condolences for your loss.  My husband died October 2022 and still have bouts of crying.  Got a part time job locally February 2023 to get me out of the house as I can put on a face which is totally different to how actually feel. Can go and come from work in tears as still hurts he’s not around.  Have still got his ashes in the house and have no plans to bury them.

totally agree that everyone at funeral say they will keep in touch but don’t if it wasn’t for my two children don’t think I’d still be here.