I realized today that I could happily kick someone to death. I wouldn’t even care who it was–just someone on whom I could take out my anger. Sometimes I think I will explode from the force of it. It feels superhuman. I never knew I could feel rage like this.
Why? I want my husband back. It has been three months since he died and I am tired. I want this to end. I just want my baby back, so we can have our happy life back. We loved each other so much, and his death was so unfair. How can this continue? Why hasn’t this wrong been righted? Surely this unrelenting sorror, this guilt, this loneliness was meant for someone else.
I know this is crazy even as I type it, but I DO want him back. I want I life back, even as I know that it is impossible. I can’t stop wanting it, even though the wanting makes me angry and sad. How do I stop wanting the love of my life back? How do I stop wishing to relive the happiest moments of my life?
I can’t tell you how much my heart aches for you. Whatever the reason your beloved passed away, it wouldn’t mean much to you. You’ve suffered a great loss and you have to give yourself some time. I don’t know how long you had him in your life, but 3 months isn’t long enough to get over anything this monumental. I don’t know what you believe, but I believe that when anyone dies, they are still here. Death is just another stage. We will all have to do it no matter who we are. Perhaps you will need some help and guidance in the future and he would be able to better help you in spirit form. I know that’s not good enough. It never is. We want to touch and feel. But please know that just because you can’t touch something, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Your love and pain are all too evident and I can’t physically touch them, but I feel them squeezing my heart. You will heal. Remember that you wouldn’t have wanted your husband to drown out all the possible light and happiness in his life if you passed away first. You have loved deeply. You have loved like many on the Earth will never do. All love comes with a price, but it’s worth it. And maybe you’re not ready to be comforted yet. You might need to go throw a carton of eggs one by one off of a building. You might need to scream and cry, I mean ugly-cry. You kick and punch and yell and get it all out. Don’t hold back. You need the release. You’ve got to feel every once of that anger before you can get any comfort. Take your time and don’t let anyone push you. This is your pain and you know your body, mind and soul better than anyone else.
I’m so sorry,Brynda, for your pain of loss, and the anger now coming is of right mind, really, it’s the proper emotion now coming out after the shock of loss. You should be angry, you should be immensely sad, you should ache with all of your loving heart. It’s absolutely normal to be feeling the anger you have now, emerging from a shock period. Why??? No one has that answer, and you will have to find it in your own heart. I do know that I saw here on the SD that your love bloomed, and you both were delighted with each other. A Love like that is a treasure, and, perhaps you can think of it this way: If he was to go onyond young, he had such a Great Love with you, absolute and, his heart was pierced with your love so deeply. Whatever the results beyond body are, we have the ability to love and cherish past death, so, well, why not be angry, too, and say it out loud.
I am no expert, but Here’s a good site on the Grief Process. Brynda, just go through it at your own pace, and be righteously pissed, bang on things and let it out. He shouldn’t have died that young and it really sucks. IT SUCKS!!! What you are feeling is frightening in intensity, but normal reaction. As said in the last post, you have to process that as your mind is able. Be gentle with yourself, healing and grief is a process, and, a Love like yours deserves a period of lament, taking a long reflective period of time to detach from your Beloved. Part of that is Anger, and shake it out intensely, rather than feel embarrased and push it away. What would your Hon do if the situation was reversed? Imagine him in that situation if you had died. Shake that anger out with his mind.
I don’t know what else to add to the wonderful words already given, except that I’m thinking of you and wishing I could take away some of your pain and anger.
I’m sorry for your loss, and sorry for what you are going through, and sorry for what you will yet go through with your grief. It will take time. If you’re not already doing so, please consider talking to a grief counselor. Your pain is your own, but someone may be able to help you bear it.
The only thing that helps, sadly enough, is letting yourself feel this way. And every way you are going to feel every time you feel it. Time won’t heal it unless you allow yourself to be incredibly angry, brokenhearted, utterly consumed by your grief. Cry, scream, rage, rant, do it all. If you feel like you’re almost there but not quite…turn on the right music and let it push you over the edge into a sobbing heap.
It’s only by feeling it that you will ever be able to get beyond it.
And I am so sorry that you have to do this, I know intimately how draining it is and will remain for a long time. All I can wish for you is what I’ve just said: that you have no restraint when it comes to allowing yourself to feel it and to express those feelings, because in that lies your healing.
And I’m sad to report that some part of the grief and sorrow and longing will always be with you, because he will always be dead, and if you are at all like me, some part of you will always be incredibly pissed about the very fact and finality of death itself. How can it be possible that people we love so much leave us forever??? How incredibly fucking unfair and cruel is that? Who thought that up?
I am so very sorry to hear of your profound loss and your continued suffering. I wish there was a pill for this pain but, alas, there is none.
It’s so hard to let go and stop wanting what the heart wants, to recognize a new normal must come. All the while knowing it must.
You may find this helpful, I know I did. Close your eyes and relax, now imagine all the other poor souls on this earth, in this moment, who are suffering just as you are, the very same loss and heart ache. Now, with your breath, manifest compassion for their suffering. Who better than you, who know the pain so intimately? Breathe deeply and slowly and let that compassion swell in you and send it out to them with your out breaths.
This works because by manifesting compassion for others our spirits spill over some of that compassion for ourselves and our suffering. The lesson of compassion is only half about compassion for others, after all.
I know it sounds a silly little exercise, but it only takes a couple of moments, a few times a day to practice. But sometimes it’s the littlest things that can turn the tide.
You will be in my thoughts and prayers, Brynda, good luck!
Ride the rage. Let it happen. It is completely natural. Punch a pillow. Scream at the wall. Cry, wail and moan. You have to let it happen, it is all apart of returning to normal. NOT the normal that you had when your beloved was with you, that you can never return too, but a new normal.
As long as their is sun shining upon your face, Rick is with you.
Thanks, everyone. I was feeling a bit better, and then this latest wave hit and it has taken my breath away.
I sob, I wail. I feel what I feel, and don’t distract myself or push it away. I talk to others, I cry alone. I have a grief counselor who is great, and a support group, who are wonderful. It STILL hurts. I am doing everything I can, being the best I can be (the story of my life) and it STILL hurts.
I know, I know. Sometimes things suck even when we do our best. Being good doesn’t keep bad things from happening, as I should well know. But some deep part of me is desperate for this pain to end, and is trying all it knows. I feel like a wounded animal who is bewildered and in pain. I feel like an infant screaming for someone to make it better, NOW.
Rick and I had a wonderful love. I know that, and try to use that to comfort me, but that sentence still ends with “but now he is gone and that love is gone, too.” I want to end the sentence with “and I am so grateful I had that” but its hard. The anger pushes its way through.
God, I hate how trite this sounds, but it’s true so I have to say it: no, it isn’t. The expression and experience of that love with Rick not only remains with you in your memory, what it has written on your spirit remains with you, and that will be experienced and expressed again. Because what you really got from that amazing relationship wasn’t the love he had for you, but the love you had for him. You discovered this amazing ability in yourself to love so deeply and truly, Rick awakened it and nurtured it and it felt so incredible. That’s why it hurts so much…you love loving him and giving him that love and experiencing that with him and now your love is all bottled up with no place to go and that joy you experience is cut off. It’s kinda like learning to dance a perfect tango and now you have no partner.
But you will be able to experience it again…that much more richly because of the way you loved and will always love Rick. The love you’ve experienced with him, and this horrible loss, will make the love you experience over the rest of your life that much sweeter.
A great line from “Six Feet Under” in response to the question “Why do we die?”: to give life meaning.
And I’m sorry none of this helps today, but maybe it will down the line.
You’ve done all the right things.
Because you had such a wonderful relationship, it’s going to take time to get over it.
But it will eventually get better. This is a difficult but natural process.
Sweetie, it’s only been three months. Of course you’re going to feel bad and mad and sad, sometimes all at once. It’s a testament to how much you loved each other, that the pain is so great.
Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to make the pain go away. You just have to ride it out, and know that one day, you will smile again.
Talk to Rick. Tell him how pissed off mad you are that he left. Tell him how much you miss him, and how you don’t wash his clothes because you don’t want to wash away his scent. Talk about the good times with him. But keep coming here, and keep going to counseling, because believe it or not, one day it won’t hurt this bad anymore.
Brynda, my heart goes out to you, and I am so sorry for your loss.
What you’re going through is horrible, horrible, horrible. I’ve never experienced the death of a partner, but I have experienced dreadful grief.
But the “good” news, from everything I’ve read, is that the anger is part of your psychological survival mechanism. It means that you aren’t going to curl up in a ball forever, but that your subconscious is fighting back against the dreadful circumstance that you have had to endure.
The Kubler-Ross model makes it seem like the stages are linear, but they aren’t always - most people move back and forth between these stages.
Get as angry as you like; it shows you are recovering. It will be slow, but you will recover, and this is part of it. You’ll always miss him, just as you’ll always love him, but the pain it makes you feel will get less and less.
I can’t say my advice is accurate, as I’ve never been in anything like your position, but in the aspects of my life that can in some small way relate, all I can tell you is: time. Time is what will make it hurt less, is what will allow you to look back with joy on the parts of your lives you were able to share instead of with bitterness at the future that didn’t happen.
And three months is not very long at all, when you’ve lost such a huge part of your life. It’s going to be shitty, it’s not going to just up and disappear tomorrow, but it won’t always be shitty.
Brynda, I feel for you. I know grief. People tell you that life must go on, but that’s meaningless when you lose someone you love deeply and you feel as though part of your gut has been wrenched out. What you are feeling is normal, and I’m glad to see that you’ve got grief support. However, you’re the one feeling the pain, and nobody can tell you how long it’s going to take to reach the point where it’s no longer tearing you apart. You will never stop loving that man, he’s a part of you forever, but you will recover to the point that you will find life beautiful again and cherish it.
People are all different, but when my husband died suddenly I was 37 years old; he was 38, and it took me 7 years to stop feeling married to him. It happened 25 years ago, and I still think of him every day, but the ache is gentler.
I guess I shouldn’t have posted as much, and I didn’t want to make this about me, but the right words are so hard to find.
Don’t forget, knowing and counselling others through this doesn’t mean you’re immune to the feelings yourself. It’s easy to think that the grief and pain are things other people have to deal with. You can’t rationalize them away.
And maybe, think about joining a gym that has boxing equipment. Hit the heavy bag over and over until you’re worn out.
If you’re angry, you’re alive. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t miss my mom or my sister, but one does go on. I’m so sorry you have to go through this, Brynda.
i wish i lived closer to you, i have a lot of cape cod glass wear that you could smash, hurl against the walls, and just scream as you do it.
sometimes you just have to smash something. other times you have to cry for hours. then there are the times you could sleep for days and dream dreams that are so real you don’t mind if you never wake up.
it is all part of it and you get through it any way you can. keep telling us how it goes with you, we do care and will support you.
a woman was quoted saying that the price of love is grief. it is so very, very, true.
Just reading this thread brings tears to my eyes, making me remember all the pain I felt in the months after I lost my sweet girl. I used to have dreams that she was alive and then wake up crying. I felt like someone had scooped out everything inside of me, and just replaced it with emptiness and pain.
Friday will be two years since she died in my arms. I still think about her almost everyday, but it doesn’t hurt that much anymore. I can remember her most days with happiness and not tears.
About two months after she died, I had the first letter of her name tattooed on my ankle. I always think of it as sewing a piece of her onto my soul.
After she died, people said it would hurt less with time. I didn’t believe them, but they were right. Just focus on getting through until tomorrow. Good luck.