12 months!

AlyG,

 Hi, it's 16 months for me on Monday.  This second year is hard, it's different.  Reality hits. The loneliness seems harder.  You try and do different things, they might or might not work.  We try and move on at our own pace,  it's not a race. As I feel we will always miss them. Just please try and look after yourself. 

Take care. 

AlyG said:

I’ve heard that for some people it gets harder from this point,

From my youth - a long time ago, now! - I have a Burmese friend who lives on the opposite side of the planet. When she found out what had happened to me, she cautioned me with the saying that 'Grief is a dragon with a very long tail.'

It is an apt quote. My wife died almost two years and seven months ago, but I struggle every day, and nothing gets easier. (It never will.)

Still - I know that we all have to carry on, and try to live valuable and productive lives. It's for sure what we would have expected our partners to do, had the situations been reversed. So we owe it to them.

It's the relentlessness of this life that is so hard to bear, knowing that it won't get better, that it's just plodding on day after day with no real light at the end of the tunnel. How can it get better? We can never have what we want, what we need. It seems to me that it's like having to live with a chronic illness; no hope of a cure, just learn to deal with the ever present symptoms. 

I haven't got any answers.

All I know is what I would have both wanted - and expected - my wife to have done had I died, rather than her.

That doesn't help me, of course: she was a much better person than I am, and she would certainly be handling this situation much better than I am.

But still - I know what I have to _try_ to do.

I wish everyone here both strength, and resilience. We have to carry on.

That saying is amazing, and gives context. I get flashes of happiness, the occasional smile appears every now and then. I still feel completely devastated, and well up several times a day. It will be 2 years on the 4th August. I just have to keep going, and hope it gets easier with time. 

I can understand grief being a dragon.  I suppose I spend so much time trying to deal with it that the heat and smoke and fire of it just engulf me and sometimes run away from it but never manage to.

Im so scared of being alone too.

How do we train our dragon eh 

We practice every day to make it our friend. Then hopefully, the heat and fire are not directed at us. 

Sometimes people say something gets worse before it gets better but I think with grief it's a whole different ballgame. It's constant, it's there all the time. Yes I get that you will be `completely broken` just now Aly- it's only been a year but there are more `years` on your own to come and I don't mean that as a crass comment its just something we are all facing up to here. Only you will know when and if you feel different if there is a shift in how you feel and no one can tell you any different because everyone's grief is different. Just take your time and do what is right for you. We're all here for one another and you know just to come here when you need to. Take Care. 

Vicky x

Thank you. I know Ade wouldn’t want me to wallow but I seem to have lost my identity. I’m sure in time I will regain ‘me’.

While I had practical things to sort I don’t think I allowed myself to think of the reality, now that I am it’s so hard. 

I am due to start counselling soon so hopefully it will help xx

We are changed by our experiences, however underneath I am still me. This is starting to emerge, more. I wrote a note to myself, when my husband Paul was diagnosed. It was that, ‘I will not lose myself’. This is my focus.