My husband died in my arms on the 2nd May (2009) - what happens now?

Ailsa is right. This is the most special time in the world for you and your beloved, and nothing and no one else counts. I am sorry her parents are not being as they should be in these heartbreaking circumstances, but it could be becasue they are out of their minds themselves. But do not try and 'carry' them as well - this is your time with your beloved, and you will carry these precious, infinitely precious, memories with you all your life.

Talk to her, be with her, hold her, touch her. Hearing is the last sense to fade, and no one can ever be told too much that you love them.

With kind thoughts, at this time of such anguish, Julie.

Good morning. I think today is not going to be a great day. I have woken up with a wooly head. That happened on Monday and I had a dodgy day on Monday. Luckily I don't have to do too much today but there was a lot I wanted to do. Chris made a video 3 weeks before he died. I watched it in bed last night. It was wonderful to see and hear him again but it upsets me to see how ill he looked. I slept okay but I think the video could be contributing to my mood today. I won't be watching it any less often but I need to pick my moment better.

I got good news yesterday that even I can be happy about because it was one of the things Chris was so concerned about - the mortgage insurance have agreed to pay out and I should get it this week. That will make the house safe and pay for Chris's funeral. He would have been pleased. Ailsa x

Ailsa - that's great news about the mortgage and you must be so relieved. In a way, I find it outrageous that here we are, stricken with grief, our lives destroyed, and then we have to worry about money as well.....

So it's wonderful if that has been sorted now.

I know what you mean about watching videos - I have some on my computer, downloaded from the camcorder, and they are infinitely precious. Sometimes I watch them and I feel so reassured and cheered, because there we all are, just like we were, happy, a normal family. Even the ones taken when the cancer was already here still cheer me, because it shows we were happy to the last - especially the one from our last family holiday in the summer. But sometimes they can be just too emotional to watch. I took some, which perhaps is a little goulish, I don't know, when my husband was near the end. I wanted to for two reasons - first because it was still 'him' even though he was so, so ill, and also because I wanted to be able to remind myself, afterwards, like now, of just how ill he was - in other words, seeing him lying there, looking so old, so ill, immobile and just about unconscious, and when I make myself watch that, then I know that to have wanted him to stay longer would have been cruel, that I had to let him go, and be glad that he wasn't trapped in that sick, sick body any more.

I think we HAVE to be glad for them that they are no longer sick and ill, that they are free of that vile cancer, and it can't hurt and harm them any longer.

I hope today turns out to be a little easier for you. You are still so, so raw, and I do think, in all honesty, that we go a little insane when we lose someone we love. Even for me, now over five months, that still hits me sometime.

But it does get easier to bear, I promise. It doesn't heal - how can it, something unspeakable has happened, and that can never be healed - but it does get easier to bear.

All the best possible (at a time when there is no 'best') - Julie.

Ailsa
I can really relate to everything you're going through - I lost my husband, Brian, last year in August. We had been married for 32 years and I find myself not knowing what to do as I've never really been a single person. I too met my husband at 16 and we got married when I was 18. Although it's tough just getting through each day, when I look back on the last nine months I realise that I must have moved on, as I never thought when I was where you are right now, that I could make it through a month let alone nine.
Don't feel you're being disloyal by planning to go back to work. In some ways, it was the best thing I did - I went back after 6 weeks. It gave me something to focus on, if only for the time I was at work. It can be very difficult being at home and having lots of time to think back on things. Some days that is what you need to do though...........you have to give yourself time and space to grieve in whatever way you need to do.
Just concentrate on getting through one day at a time - when it comes down to it - that's all life really is, isn't it?

Heather.xx