Hello Dee,
I am so sorry to hear of your multiple losses in such a short space of time. This has clearly been a very difficult period for you with so much pain and shock involved. It's no wonder you are struggling.
I lost my mum a few months prior to the time when you lost your husband and like you, I found myself struggling too. I didn't manage to find this group until the following summer and did find things got worse for me during the intervening months rather than getting easier. I think this is a wonderful place to be able to come to talk about your feelings and experiences following a loss, because it is filled with people who understand and empathise, so I am glad you have stopped hovering and bravely posted a message for us. That in itself, will hopefully bring you some comfort. I know it helped me and I found myself touched to find a place where others cared and understood and were willing to help bolster me up through what has been one of the hardest times of my life. I hope you will feel the same.
Like you, I find myself living entirely alone now for the first time in my life too, so I understand how you must be feeling in your new 'normal'. It is a painful period of adjustment and an unwanted one and I found it changed every aspect of my world. I became someone I did not recognise because loss changed me so much. I saw everything differently and everything seemed to be turned on it's head! Birthdays, anniversaries and times like Christmas and new year and easter all became difficult and painful, lonely times for me, rather than the happy joyous times they were before. I found I had little patience anymore with other people's focus on trivial matters and still do. I am still struggling with all the practical problems that being bereaved and alone bring too. You have to deal with so many daily problems and irksome frightening realities that you would have dealt with before with ease and are taken unawares by all the red tape and potential impact on your way of life that losing someone brings, even, as Karena says, sometimes resulting in your having to move or find money for taxes that you had not expected to have to do prior to this disaster in your life and through all that upheaval, you are struggling to cope with losing someone you loved as well - several people and your lovely cat as well in your case. It is very very hard and I am not surprised you feel so shell shocked.
I know what you mean about the Victorian images you encounter. Although what Karena says is true, I understand what you mean. You are still grieving and no one seems to care or have any regard for that. I find that too. People who have not been through a loss just don't understand and can't really expected to be. I don't think anyone can imagine the anguish and pain and confusion and upheaval that loss causes unless they have been through it themselves and people don't know what to say, so either say nothing or, as you say, you find yourself saying you are fine to save them the embarrassment of having to struggle to think of something to say or do if you told them the truth. That too, makes you feel isolated and alone.
Like you, being alone and grieving and having to somehow go on dealing with everyday life, I found to be almost impossible. There were things that helped however, so I will tell you what helped me and perhaps some of them will help you. I found it helped to put flowers around the house, because their beauty and scent lifted my spirits a little. Also, floundering with how to make any decisions or what to do, I made a written plan and a list. I made myself sit down and look at the various outcomes for what I might have to face in terms of my home and my future and how they might impact my life and circumstances and considered options for dealing with each eventuality. This made me feel I had reclaimed some control over my future and that I had a way forward, whatever happened over the coming months. That in itself made me feel calmer about the future, if still scared. I made a list of short term practical things that had to be dealt with and worked my way though that. I also made a list of longer term plans for protecting myself and my future, both financially and on an emotional and personal level.
On a personal level, I knew I was gong to go into a deep depression unless I did something to head that off, so I thought about how I could do that and knew that I needed to have something to distract me and give me some relief from grieving and get me out of the house, if only for a couple of hours a week. Staying in, I just thought about all that had happened and got more and more distressed and upset, so I needed a distraction and something to take me out of myself.
With no one else to have to consider anymore but me, I thought about things I enjoy doing and things I had never had time to do before and decided that I would try to do some of them. For me, an interest I had shared with my mum, but had never had time to do anything about before was learning ballroom dancing, so I found a local class and took my courage in both hands and joined. For me, this was better than I could ever have hoped or envisaged. I found I loved it and it gave me something to look forward to each week. It took me out of myself and made me focus on something other than my grief and brought a little joy back into my life and distracted me from all the practical problems I was having to deal with for a couple of hours a week at least. I also found some lovely new friends there and have found them to be a better emotional support than remaining family members or long time friends. It seemed to be a destination activity for quite a few bereaved people and I could chat to them and found they understood and were prepared to talk about the experience of being left alone after a loss and we now support one another. So for me, that was the best help in learning to cope with life on my own and has brought a lot of fun back into my life and that really helps me. It counterbalances the pain and sadness and the worry and I feel less alone and have found something to live for again. So if you have anything you have always wanted to do or learn that you have not previously had time to do before, this is your chance, Dee. In a way, you can use this new circumstance to turn a horrible negative into a degree of positive and use the unwanted opportunity this awful experience has given you to do something that will be good for you.
The days are still hard and life is still a challenge, but life is, to some extent, what you make it, as well as being thrown into circumstances over which you have little control, so you probably need to have a think and see what you can do to make it better. If there is one thing I have learned throughout all this horror, it is that it doesn't get better on its own. You have to put in the effort to make that happen and find strategies to use to do that for yourself. Your time is your own now, so use it to do what helps you and build a new life for yourself that has some joy in it.
Also like you, I am far from being at the end of this grief journey despite being about the same length of time into it as you, but doing the things I have done, I do feel I have a future again and a way forward. I have not lost the connection to the past or the people I have lost. I still revisit places we went together and smile at the memories that brings back. I still talk to the pictures of those I have lost at home and tell them about my day and my worries and listen to the replies I can hear in my head for what they would probably have said and advised. I still feel lonely indoors, but having an outside interest and knowing I will be going out to do something I enjoy and seeing friends and engaging with people I like gives me something to look forward to and I try to look on the bright side and turn this new phase in my existence into an opportunity to do things differently and use the time to do things I enjoy and am interested in, instead of letting the negative aspects of loss overwhelm me. I think you have to do that to survive it.
Grief and loss are overwhelming and can lead you down the roads of despair and complete misery if you let them and whilst you are bound to look back and will never stop missing those you have lost or wishing those wonderful days were back again, you can choose your future and can choose other paths and can still look forward. Nothing is forever and life is a journey with good and bad times throughout. It is up to us to make this terrible time into as good a time going forward as we can. It is what those we have lost would want for us and despite all the pain, life is still a gift and it is up to us to make that time as good as it can be and we have control of that and owe it, both to ourselves and our lost loved ones, to do that.
You are not alone here, Dee. It is fine to still be lost and upset and in shock and to feel helpless, but you are not. You can move forward from this. You just have to find ways that will help you do that. As I say, this is something that doesn't get better on its own. You have to work at it and make things better in whatever way you can. I am living proof that it is possible, not easy, but possible and it is an on-going process and not an easy thing to do, but if you are to survive this, you have to work at it.
Keep talking to us here, Dee. You have taken the plunge and as someone else who did that, I know it helps. When I was bereaved in October 2017, the last thing I could have envisaged at that time was that in less than two years time, I would be dancing my way through my grief and facing life with determination to make life good again! Anything is possible! It is up to you to make it happen. Good luck, Dee!