It’s been 6 months. Most days are much better than they were a few months ago. I still cry most days, though, and when I am sad, I am miserable. Fortunately, those times are less frequent than they were and don’t last as long.
I continue to have a hard time not thinking that no one cares. I know they just don’t get it, but part of me doesn’t understand how people who supposedly care don’t seem to care or notice that I spend days on end alone. I get maybe one personal call a day, less than one email a day. In the last two or three months, if I have done anything with anyone, I have had to plan it (with one exception–hi, there!). If I talk to anyone, I usually have to do the calling. I honestly don’t know what to do. I have stopped telling anyone how miserable I am, thinking that I don’t want to overwhelm them and make them avoid me. But that hasn’t worked, either. So I am trying to get used to being alone. I am a social person, though, so it is hard. As I said in another thread, it is hard to go from being loved so much to being so far down on everyone’s list. I think the relationships I have haven’t changed, it is just that now that I need them more, no one has stepped up. I thought they would.
What I am doing: I am participating a weekly grief group and going to therapy. I have also signed up for the Race for the Cure (walking) and am training for that. On Monday, I start dance lessons at the place where I go for the grief group. I have also agreed to do a jewelry workshop for them, and have been making lots of jewelry.
I wish I felt better. I am trying as hard as I can.
I think it’s great that you are doing Race for the Cure, Dance lessons and the jewelry workshop. Although you will never forget or replace your husband, you will feel better. It takes time. How much time, I can’t say.
I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but I can share what I’ve observed of my mom. Dad died suddenly 2 months after their 50th anniversary. He’d had health issues for a lot of years, but there was no lingering illness - he just had a heart attack in the shower and was gone that fast.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed about Mom is she’s been very involved in lots of things. She used to have a catering business, and she still does small parties from time to time. Dad was a member of the Knights of Columbus forever, and she was still included in some activities. She sang in her church choir till her voice failed. She’s very involved in her AARP group, and she loves to go on cruises whenever she can find someone to go along. I know she misses Dad - when I call, she talks and talks and talks - but between her gardens and her activities, she seems to be doing well.
Your frends may be afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they don’t say anything. And maybe for some in the back of their minds, there may be an irrational fear that what happened in your life may happen in theirs. It’s illogical, but who knows?? And I’m no expert on grief, but I’ve read many times that we all grieve in our own way and our own time.
My unprofessional opinion is that you’re doing the right things with the lessons and the workshop. You can also try out things you never tried before - broaden your horizons and make new friends. Or move to southern Maryland, and we’ll take you sailing! OK, maybe that’s extreme. But I do hope you feel better soon.
Brynda, my heart goes out to you. I remember, after my mom died, how people were so concerned and involved immediately after it happened. But then, life goes on, you’re still grieving but you’re alone in it. It’s hard.
Please start making some fun plans with people for the holiday season that’s approaching. That’s the time of year when that alone, unloved feeling has always been worst, and when I found myself feeling most bereft. This is your first holiday season without your husband. Resist the temptation to withdraw. Trust me on this, as much as you might think you’ll want to be alone, being distracted and in the company of family and friends is much more salutary for you.
I’m sorry about your husband. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced what you have, but your description of it evokes my empathy for you. Sometimes people are afraid of people in mourning, and you have to reach out and ask for what you need. Sorry about that. People are weird. Feel better soon.
Brynda, for what it’s worth, I care. I think of you and Rick often. It’s very difficult to believe he’s gone. I’m not very eloquent at the best of times and I’m really bad at this sort of thing, but I hope things continue to improve for you.
Echoing Alice’s comment, people are especially “weird” when it comes to death. Six months is not a long time and I imagine some of the people you know are hesitant to “intrude” on your grief. Seek out the ones you know really care and let them know how you feel.
I’m so sorry, Brynda. I’m dealing with something similar, but it was an SO, not a husband. I know people care, but as **ivan astikov **said, people are weird about death. Some people have made some incredibly insensitive comments, my own mother included.
I’m looking into a support group, have thrown myself back into work and am just trying to keep myself occupied.
You’re right - it’s hard, and when the sadness takes over, I’m just miserable.
Thanks, everyone. It helps to know that people care. I know the people IRL care, but they can’t take Rick’s place. Kyla, I am touched that you think of us. I remember having fun at Cranky’s with you. Rick loved those gatherings.
BiblioCat, the group is definitely the best thing I have done for myself in all of this. I hope you find one. My sincerest sympathies to you. Check your PM.
Brynda, I was just thinking about you and Rick the other day. Actually, all of the Dopers I met at the Nashville Dopefest.
I lost a good man a year ago in March. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if we had been married. You have my sympathies.
Anyway, give me an e-mail if you want to get out of the house to do something during the week sometime. I’m off Mondays thru Thursdays, so I’m pretty flexible and ready to do something.
My heart goes out to you Brynda and I do know what you’re going through as virtually all of my immediate family bar one are now deceased(And no I’m not a pensioner)
I have no cite but there have been reports that counselling for traumatic events actually makes things worse for the sufferers,instead of healing and moving on the therapy keeps the wound open long after it would have naturally reduced to normal bearable conditions.
I might be wrong but I suspect that your grief group could well fall into this category.
Alcohol doesn’t work,medication doesn’t help and therapy doesn’t help.
Grief is a natural reaction to berievement but artificial remedies only prolong it not heal it.
As another poster upthread said the only cure is to get on with living, which you seem very bravely to be doing,finding new activities, making new friends and so on.
But I would seriously consider dropping the therapy and the Grief group as I think that they could well be the equivalent of twisting a knife in an open wound,they in themselves are forcibly reminding you of your loss much more then your natural awareness would naturally be.
You will never forget nor stop loving your husband but you will be able to carry on living if you allow yourself to do so and being with other people in mourning isn’t really the best thing to do.
Misery not only loves company but ends up in prolonging itself.
If you are able to try to get a change of scenery for however short a time,a quiet holiday is ideal but if you cant afford it maybe staying with friends who live in a different area for a short while might be possible.
New people,new hobbies,new past times are the answer.
I wish you all the very best in the world and I just KNOW that things will get better for you even if you yourself do not believe it at this moment.
My thoughts are with you,now get out there and LIVE,starting right now.
Lust4Life, I am going to respectfully disagree with you about therapy and my grief group. For me, they have both been very healing. No one else really understands, and we end up laughing as much as we do crying in my group. I am just not someone who can keep a stiff upper lip and go on. It’s just not me. I have no doubt that your approach might work for you, but not for me.
missred, thanks for the offer. I might have to take you up on that.
Brynda, it sounds as though you have good plans. Kudos to you.
In my case, it took me 7 years to feel “unmarried” to JC. He’s still in my thoughts, and I remember all the anniversaries, birthdays. Often I feel as though I’ve just heard/seen/realized something that he would be the only one to appreciate.
As for the grief group, if you feel it’s helping, go ahead, but when you decide it’s draining you more than it’s helping, you might decide to move on. There are no rules or guidelines for coping with grief, we are all different.
Do all your friends and family have kids, Brynda? I was talking about this a little bit with Jimbo, sort of trying to make sense of it (because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, either), and it occurred to us that if you had a kid, people probably would have kept calling you and inviting you to everything (play dates, birthday parties, whatever), but since you don’t have any, they sort of don’t have a hook to hang you on, so they have overlooked you. Which absolutely isn’t right, but it might be where they are coming from.
Brynda, grief is a weird thing. Mostly it makes people who are untouched by it feel uncomfortable. Plus, how long are you supposed to grieve? You hear these stories of people who are widowed and then are remarried in a year. How does that happen?
So I think for your friends it’s probably a combination of vague discomfort coupled with uncertainty as to how long you’re supposed to grieve. (I should point out that when my cat died I was pretty much a basket case for six months; it’s been a couple years but I still miss him. So I’m certainly not suggesting you’re malingering.)
You’ve also hit on the best and the worst part of being single. I’m no one’s priority; and no one’s my priority. That’s nice, in that I only have to think about what I want, but it’s also unfortunate. There’s a character in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who’s immortal, but not really reconciled to it: “In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”
That describes, to me, so well the loneliness that sets in as a single (I also like what seems to me the allusion to Dorothy Day’s the Long Loneliness). Anyway, it’s a long rambly way of saying that you’ve hit on the essential problems. It’s hard to reach out to others, but you have to. I won’t say it will get “easier,” but hopefully it will begin to feel more normal.
Many people are too afraid to intrude. They don’t want to bother you. They’re like the coworkers who see someone stumbling along on the hallways and know that someone has been pulling 16h days, but who don’t want to say anything because it’s an intrusion on his privacy and it might get him in trouble.
I’m rude, I don’t have a problem calling people and asking “how is it going” and listening while they tell me but most people do. I’ve also been known to shut off a colleague’s computer and tell him “you’ve been here since 3am because you were covering Europe, the rest of us are here now, go home before your wife divorces you. No buts, I can’t hear you, I want your little boy to know his father’s face.” (the boss backed me up but she too had been “not wanting to intrude”… helloooooo?!)
When Dad died, I found that wearing black had an advantage (none of us did): it was a good shorthand for telling people “I’m still in mourning.” Of course, that advantage didn’t work if you were socially required to wear black for every second cousin for a year, but that’s a different problem.
My mother had always wondered how come the widows always seemed to hang out together. Now she knows. Lots of people think of their group activities as their “couples stuff,” a widow is automatically “not a couple.” Sucks, but hey, sadly there’s a lot of widows her age. Now she wonders how did young widows manage, because being alone with kids is bad enough, being alone with no kids ain’t no walk in the park, and then you add to that having no “social peers.” Well, the ones I know managed by learning to do what they wanted with whom they wanted and by being the ones calling their friends until the friends got over it. It can take quite a while.
Brynda, you’re very much in my thoughts as I watch my sister (who lost her husband of 39 years three months ago) go through this whole wrenching process.
Hang in there.
Sorry – no better advice or words of wisdom than that. I know it’s painful as all hell, but hang on to the thought that the pain will, eventually, abate to manageable levels.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Sometimes the on who cares the most is the one who doesn’t say anything simply because they just don’t know what to say. My wife died six years ago this past July. She was 38. It took me a year before I could start thinking straight. We had children, so while that made it difficult in a lot of ways, it also gave me a sense of purpose to help me move on.
but most people do. I’ve also been known to shut off a colleague’s computer and tell him “you’ve been here since 3am because you were covering Europe, the rest of us are here now, go home before your wife divorces you. No buts, I can’t hear you, I want your little boy to know his father’s face.” (the boss backed me up but she too had been “not wanting to intrude”… helloooooo?!)