Author Topic: It’s a different kind of loneliness  (Read 1741 times)

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Offline Dee64

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It’s a different kind of loneliness
« on: May 16, 2021, 04:54:13 PM »
My husband Martin, suffered a heart attack back in March. He was a young 60 years old and so conscientious about his health that it make it so hard to understand how or why this has happened. We had so much to look forward to and he was so relieved to have navigated the tricky route of avoiding covid. It feels almost cruel that after the months of being so conscientious about all the restrictions that I should lose him anyway.
The emotions and pain is so confusing and unbearable. I wish it had been me that went first. I would happily swop places with him in a heart beat. He loved life, was a real people’s person ..... I was the plodder in life.
I have had so much support and company, everyone making sure I am not lonely....... I don’t think they understand that I could be in a crowded room and I would be be lonely...... lonely for my soul mate. I really can’t imagine spending the next 20/30 years without him.
Thanks for letting me rant!!

Offline Emz2014

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Re: It’s a different kind of loneliness
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2021, 06:06:52 PM »
 :hug:  :hug:
I think it's hard for people who have not lost people to understand- you've explained it really well.  You're amongst people who understand  here  :hug:
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. 
Hold on in there xx

Offline Karena

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Re: It’s a different kind of loneliness
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2021, 10:07:54 AM »
 :hug: I used to find and still do sometimes that it can sometimes feel less lonely to be alone than to be with people  without that special some-one by your side - things like weddings or familly events but it used to be everything even  the every day and banal things shopping.
I also felt like you why him not me - me who now has no purpose or use to anyone else - at the time i also had just got an empty nest - and he was no longer here to care for either in fact after a life of pretty much being a carer for others to having no-one who needed me except the dog - i had no idea how to be anything else.My job wasnt particularly useful to anyone but the company and it wasnt as though i was not replaceable there either.He was the confident one - the one people were drawn too the one who could entertain others,the one who solved practical problems round the house and the one i came home to knowing i was unconditionally loved.

I went from flying through fridays work so i was ready to leave as soon as the clock allowed me to rush home for the weekend, to being the last to leave - dragging out going home looking in closed shop windows to avoid the moment of opening the door to the empty house.

I started making friday night treat night - not  anything big but chocolates a film a candle lightt bath buying myself flowers -  just little things that could never replace him being there  but made friday nights a little less awful.

At some point i imagined a conversation if we ever met again in another life - the one where he asked what i did with the rest of my life and my only reply was i mourned for you. - It would be a short conversation but if i couldn't see a point to my life maybe i could at least try and live it for him - be his eyes on the world - so  the alternative conversation was one where i could say "i went back to the places we loved to go - the dolphins are still around the bay - the one you adopted for me has calves now  - remember we said we would walk up cader idris - well i did that and i wished you were next to me  the views were amazing -and  the ridge was terrifying so i wont be doing it again . Remember when we saw that gorge zipping on tv  and you said you would love to do it and i said you were on your own with that one - well i did it for you - you would have loved it - i didnt but i saw the rainbow in the waterfall i always wanted to see not from the angle i envisaged but thankyou for making that happen for me . - i havnt changed that much   i dug another pond and your stig of the dump nickname came to mind when i was doing it but also when i went and swam in morecombe bay and came out plastered in mud. Work still does my head in but i am using the skills i learned there to help a schools garden project in Africa and thats where all your tools went that i couldnt use i knew you wouldnt mind if some-one else could use them .- You would have laughed when i learned how to clear a u bend i was so full of pride  then tipped the water back in  the sink before i put it back on - what a fool . little -x  (grandkids did/ said this - and older one is trying to get in the brigade now remember when he sitched the outside tap on hosed your car and tried to clean it with a pan scrub."   

Its like an ongoing conversation in my head even now - and its not about "living in the past" or "not letting go" being unhealthy as some people  think we all find different ways to cope in the end and for me it is taking him forward with me and  increasingly with some of this stuff i  started to feel i wont need to tell him what i have done because he has been by my side in some way all along and thats ok too - because the conversation will be shared experiences as they once were and its still better than the one where i have nothing to say except i missed you.- Maybe there will never actually be a conversation and maybe i have been fooling myself all along,  but its still not wasted because it is what eventually got me out of the house restored some self confidence forced me to make some kind of life for myself and still drives me even now 10 years on.

Offline Ian Haines

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Re: It’s a different kind of loneliness
« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2021, 03:49:41 AM »

How can those with intact hearts possibly understand what it was like when one soul accommodated two people?...and, how could they comprehend what uninvited, undeserved bedlam is like when one of the two passes on, to the next frequency, in wait for us?

Somebody up there keeps taking our special people from us, and it's just plain cruel, and wrong!

Offline Karena

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Re: It’s a different kind of loneliness
« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2021, 01:40:43 PM »
This was the second time being widowed for me -  i lost Mark cancer then later Keith  to a stroke and Keith had also lost his wife to cancer. it was our younger children being at school together and that shared grief they had through losing parents that created the friendship between me and Keith. sharing  the more practical things in bringing up those girls and support for each other in grieving  because neither of us felt we could really talk to others about our experiences and that entwined our souls  eventually turning to love. - We both knew that in any future relationship the same would happen again either too us or to the other person - it was one of the first conversations we had long before it turned out that the other person would be one of us. No one knows when or how it will happen but once you have gone through it you become more aware of it and it is frightening but  also you are more aware  of the value of life and the time you do have together.

In the first year after he also died i was talking to a lady in our village who had  been widowed twice as well and she said what  a lot of people do - that we must have done something "bad in a former life" to be punished like that in this one -  and in our case we must have done something doubly terrible and what she said was what i was consciously thinking or even that i was some kind of jinx not just a black widow but my parents and some of my friends all taken too early - but then  when i opened my mouth to agree thats not what came out out of it - and i dont know where it did come from to this day but what i said was we have no way of knowing  but isnt there  a very different alternative to that in which if there is an entity that determines these things maybe rather than being punished we had been rewarded because  we had shown that we could not only love some-one and care for them and put them first but had strength enough to do that again and again meant we could be trusted with another special person not only to make them happy in life but to be the right person to care for them at the end of their lives - and that thought grew in my mind long after that conversation - that we are either really lucky or have somehow earned being loved by some-one really special and it isn't something everyone has  had in their life and while them moving on seems cruel, and undoubtedly it is -  it rips us apart ,but no matter how painful it is now the real question is would we have preffered that to avoid this pain they were never in our lives at all -  and the answer is a resounding no so when the time comes we have learned to live with this pain what we have to do is take that love and continue to wrap ourselves in it, and take what we learned from them and let it make us wiser.


Offline Ian Haines

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Re: It’s a different kind of loneliness
« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2021, 09:00:14 PM »

If I lose someone to the grave, I grieve them - it's that simple.  Having them taken from me is grossly unfair and, quite frankly, vicious of whatever is up there, doing this to us.

I don't need my favourite people to die, for me to feel blessed in having the capacity to love somebody, and be a carer to them.  I can do all of that, and more, without having the savagery of Creation mercilessly rip the person from my life!

Offline Karena

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Re: It’s a different kind of loneliness
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2021, 02:41:07 PM »
That wasnt what i was saying sorry it came across like that - everyone has the capacity to love and care for someone my blessing was not in that, but in having had those people in my life at all. Having them taken away is cruel and of course i have grieved i still do grieve.

Everyone who grieves does so for some-one just as special to them, and everyone eventually finds their own path to coping with that loss, and that's a very steep rocky path. Sometimes you fall off it, sometimes it takes you round in a circles and either way you end up back in  that pit of grief and there is nothing wrong with resting in there but eventually you can chose to start again and try another path.
For me it is to not try to leave them behind and "move on" because i will always grieve for them - but to cope with my grief by taking them with me, and for me, yes part of that does mean being grateful and seeing it as a blessing that they were ever with me  at all.But its not just a case of  looking back too them or forward to another plain they may be waiting on but feeling them by my side . They are the voices i listen too still and the ones who guide me when the path gets tricky again,inspire me to do something with whats left of my time here, and the ones i celebrate with when the path runs more smoothly or i walk over a hill and come across a view that takes my breath away.