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Offline Rumar

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #30 on: October 17, 2019, 07:05:45 PM »
Thank you Karena, it is so nice to know there is someone there when I am so low, I have been referred for counselling but the first date I can be seen is 10th Dec! The pills I am on are Fluoxetine (Prozac), I will try and keep battling through but really I just want to give up.  Thank you again for your time x

Offline Karena

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #31 on: October 18, 2019, 11:04:39 AM »
 :hug: 10th decenber feels a long way off but still worth going for.
I think for me the problem with trying to care for myself was that i didnt, i didnt see the point in my life any more i wasnt needed any more - and that then pervades everything else because then there is no point in doing anything so we dont.

I was lucky i did have the dog and he got me out of bed he had  to be fed and let out and he was grieving too he would sit behind the door and whine in the evenings and i would cry even more because of his sadness -the whole house was filled with our sadness.But I would walk him at night so as not to be seen, isnt it odd that we long for company but then avoid i,t in part because the one person we long for most isnt here, and in part because we dont want to speak - saying anything in response to sympathy is affirming in our own minds something we overwhelmingly want to not be true, so we just say we,re fine and move on or avoid them altogether.

Obviousely where you live very much determines whether you can go outside after dark from a safety point of view but maybe it is something you could try even if its just the garden ofr ten minutes or so -take a hot chocolate and a blanket and make it a thing  -just looking at the stars can help calm your mind it doesnt make it go away but offers a bit of respite.

I really do believe the act of caring for something makes a difference to our ability to care for ourselves - we have to survive so that  the thing we are looking after does.
I was on autopilot feeding the birds it was just a thing i did anyway -i didnt think it was because i actually cared at the time - yet looking back i cost myself a lot of money putting off the move because the robin i rescued years before came back in winter then disapeared in summer but he was still coming back and then the spotted flycatchers who nested in the virginia creeper over the door every year arrived and i knew the landlord intented chopping it all down so i waited until they fledged.

I am not suggesting you get a dog, but caring for the birds in the garden or even just some plants in the house seems like nothing but can be very therapeutic.

After i did move there was one very memorable moment when the clouds lifted -i had determined i was going to recreate the garden we used to have -just smaller scale I had been digging a pond and was crouched down struggling with a root when i was suddenly aware of the sun on my back and a robin singing and he absolutley wasnt going to let me ignore him it was so loud and so persistant it wasnt much more than a moment or two but a moment that did stay with me whenever the clouds engulfed me again.
I heard him and looked up because for a mad second i thought my robin had followed me - but also suddenly became aware of the significance of me digging a pond at that moment, something that had been such a joke between us, because when i said i was going to create a pond at the old place he thought i meant a little preformed pond - came out to bring me a cup of tea and was greeted with something about ten foot round and me covered in mud in the bottom of a hole - so after that whenever i disapeared into the garden for any length of time he would come out to make sure i wasnt digging a pond ( i did dig two smaller ones and a waterfall later so he was justified in that ) but looking back that moment was a first,  the first time i laughed and meant it - i just looked at the sky and said -out loud -something along the lines of still interupting my pond digging i see - the first time i started talking to him and thinking of him not always as something lost but as something precious that could never really be lost.
Its all little things but they do count even if we dont recognise their value at the time.

Offline Rumar

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #32 on: October 19, 2019, 07:35:05 PM »
Hi Karena, everything you say makes perfect sense.  I have avoided the garden too many reminders of the time we spent creating the garden together, perhaps when I can get myself out of this bed, I could try going into the garden for a short period at night. One day perhaps I can start feeding the birds again, that was my other half’s great passion but I have avoided it as it hurts so much. I must tell you that we had a pair of robins nest in the garden, had one chick that survived, J had almost managed to get one to feed from his hand. They all disappeared about 2 weeks before J passed away. As you know I am virtually living in the back bedroom to avoid reminders, but each morning when I go down to make a cup of tea, I look out the window and a robin is always in the garden.  One day last week, I said out loud “look J your robin is in the garden”, as soon as I said it, it was as though a cool breeze went right through me.  It wasn’t just feeling cold but an actual breeze, no windows or doors were open. I wonder! x

Offline Karena

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #33 on: October 21, 2019, 12:38:42 PM »
 :hug:I think with things like that if we stop listening to the logical brain saying it is all co-incidence and listen too our hearts we find the logical brain eventually catches up and agrees that there cannot be so many co -incidences without substance -because the evidence says otherwise.

I know reminders are painful but there is nothing that is not a reminder and even out of sight of them your mind is always on him anyway but its always on your loss and those reminders are not always painful, sometimes they remind us much more of the joy we shared rather than that we can no longer share them in the same way.
Winter is coming and even if its a few steps into the garden in the dark maybe it is time to start feeding the birds, then in the spring ahead thinking about keeping the garden going because he was so proud of it and enjoyed it so much it is a way of carrying him forward with you.
So even though you cant go out now and you cant face doing it now perhaps now is the time to start planning how you could do it and how to get over or round the hurdles that might be stopping you  - look through those plant catalogues and think back on what you learned from him and what you might need to know and how you would have made him so proud by not letting his work go,but honoring his memory by continuing it.

Offline Rumar

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #34 on: October 26, 2019, 04:42:28 AM »
Hi, had another lousy week, the pills I am taking make me feel numb during the mornings, I still get the flashbacks and feel incredibly sad but am unable to express emotion.  By the afternoon, the floodgates open and I cry uncontrollably. Although I have a counselling session 10th Dec it is such a long time away, Dr said that if I can’t wait I will have to go private.

When I am having bad memories, I have been trying to think about good memories, the awful thing is I can see the place and what is going on but J is not there, it is as thoughI was there on my own, no matter how much I try to picture him there it doesn’t happen.  I have photos around the house but nothing in my mind, it is very upsetting.

I spent another three days in bed, there still seems no point to life. I have taken on board what you said about the garden Karena and hope that I will be able to enjoy and maintain it one day.  Yesterday afternoon I did manage to go into the garden to fill up the bird feeders but the price I paid was an overwhelming grief, I could not stop crying.  When I went into the shed to get the feed, I noticed that J had my photo pinned up on the wall, I have not noticed it before, it broke me.  I feel as though I try and take one small step forward but take ten huge steps back. I am so unhappy   :cray: 

Offline Karena

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #35 on: October 28, 2019, 11:26:44 AM »
 :hug:Its ok to cry , give yourself permission to greive and its normal for these bursts of overwhelming grief and that in itself is exhausting it leaves you drained so also while you feel emotionally numb at other times its your brains way of protecting you - recovering from the energy that outbursts create.
bad memorys are also something that happens a lot and does fade in time and replacing them with better ones takes practice - maybe you are in an in between place and you will start to see him there over time.
You did well to go to get the bird seed i am sorry it caused you distress though - but remeber its a symbol of his love for you that he kept a photo of you there. :hug:

Offline Rumar

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #36 on: November 05, 2019, 01:22:39 AM »
Hi Karena, another trip to Dr. She insists on seeing me every two weeks. Now wants me to take 2 antidepressants, one that will make me sleep, read the info, horrendous write up, really don’t know if I want to risk it but I hardly sleep, my mind won’t stop racing over everything that happened. The feelings of guilt at not doing more for J, not making sure the hospital investigated his pain more, still not had notification from Coroner as to cause of death, just makes everything harder. Now, the last days of my mum and dad are coming back to haunt me as well, it’s all overwhelming me, there is not a day that I don’t cry uncontrollably, I cry so much, I feel physically ill. I still can’t get myself out of the one room, still in bed most of the day.  I know that I am not the only one who goes through this, I just feel so helpless and hopeless, thank you for listening, take care. X

Offline Sandra61

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #37 on: November 05, 2019, 10:30:10 AM »
Hello Rumar, I am sorry you are still finding all this so hard and painful.  :hug: I am glad your doctor is at least keeping an eye on you, but don't use the tablets if you are not confident that they will help. I had trouble sleeping too for months. I ended up taking Nytol sometimes to help me sleep and it did help, but there is a herbal version of it, so it did not have any bad side effects. Maybe you could try that instead.

I think everyone going through grief has a problem with sleeping. You can't switch your mind off and as you say, you have a tendency to keep going over everything that happened, but I am afraid that often does only lead to feelings of guilt and self-blame and just makes you more upset and makes it harder to sleep. Try not to go there. What you have to remember is that whatever you did at the time was the best you could do in the circumstances. It is very hard to know what to do at times of crisis, so we do the best we can with the information we have and just have to hope for the best, but it is unlikely anything you could have done would have changed the outcome. We can all find things to blame ourselves for when we go over what took place, but that doesn't mean we are right to blame ourselves. We did the best with what we had at the time. No one ever does less. You love the person in trouble so you make the choices that make sense at the time, but you still can not always do anything to prevent the worst from happening. There is no point to keep going over it and blaming yourself, Rumar. It isn't your fault.

Please try not to dwell on past losses either. Life unfortunately involves loss. No one lives forever. No one has their parents with them all their life usually either. I read somewhere that grief is the price we pay for love and loss is an unavoidable part of life. Try to focus on the many happy years you spent with your lost loved ones, not the end of their lives. That time only accounted for such a small proportion of their time and none of the legacy they have left you in the memories they helped create with you. Try to focus on that and realise that you have a treasure of happy memories to bolster you up into your future. Those will never be lost to you and the love you have for those you have lost will always be there too.

I don't think myself, that either the spirit dies or that love dies either. I think those we have lost may no longer be here in body, but that they still exist on another plane and that they still love us just as much where they are now. If you hold on to that thought, it may give you strength to realise that they would still want the best for us and want us to move forward with our lives, supported by the knowledge that they do still love us, even if they cannot be with us and knowing that, you know you owe it to them to try to make the best of this new phase of your life. You have to work on making it the best it can be because that is what they would want for you and it is up to you to do that for them now.

Try to have a plan to take tiny steps and achieve little goals each day. Maybe go into one of those rooms you are avoiding for a few minutes and just let yourself recall the good memories you have of the times spent in them. Pull back the curtains and let in the light. Dust the ornaments, put some flowers around and make the room look nice. Use the space. It belonged to both of you and is not something to be feared, but used to help you remember the good memories and stop you living with the bad ones that your mind is full of now. It may make you sad, because it is just you now, but it was yours and j's domain, so it will help you to live in that sphere, not in the sphere of nightmares, shut away in one room and locked inside your worst memories. I am sure J would want you to own your space and be proud of all the good memories he left you with.

Getting through this is going to need bravery and effort from you, Rumar. It has happened. You can't change it and you can't turn back the clock. All you can do is try to move forward one step at a time. You will fall down and have to keep getting up again, but you have to try and keep trying. Shutting yourself away won't make it so that this never happened. You have to look after yourself now, as I am sure J would want you to do. Let go of your guilt and accept the new reality, however unwanted. It is how it is now and you have to try to move forward. There is no way back, but you have a lovely path behind you. The path ahead is yours to choose and to navigate. Try to move off this bad path and onto a better one.

We are here for you. Sending you love and strength.  :hug: :hearts:

Offline Karena

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #38 on: November 05, 2019, 12:18:40 PM »
Its fairly normal for a new rief to trigger old one and of course it makes sense that its your parents because they were the ones who would have been there for you and supported you through this no matter what but the whays or the logic of it doesnt help at all when your going through it i know that.
try the Nytol,  try lavendar sprays  a hot bath and miky drink -  there is a pukah night time tea that wiped me out when i first discoverd it.

Much of it is also about routine -go to bed and bring up those happy memory cards in your mind - something else i used to do was to think of five things that were better about today - five things you achieved seems a lot but seeing better things is the achievent itself whatever it is and however small it is so as Sandra says you have to let in some light and even though you might not be ready to leave the house yet you have windows, so a colourful autumn leaf falling, a dog running down the street, a bird sitting on a bush the colour of a late flower the shape of building or a tree - go have a look right now.

If you go to sleep and wake up with a nightmare take your mind out of it immediately and think again about those five things or your happy memorys -

I think based on experience its possible you dont sleep because you are afraid to sleep and have the nightmares so you get into this freefall cycle - the only way out of that cycle really is to learn to accept they happen but that there are ways you can recover quickly from them then go back to sleep. -

one thing to help you do this is something as simple as a solid object you can hold -

 I have a crystal - crystal is something which many belief has healing propertys but in folklore quartz crystal holds memorys  and it can communicate and that isnt quite as far fetched as it sounds when you consider crystal radios - the science part wasnt developed until 1900 so why did people believe this long before that was known.

People might consider this is all mumbo jumbo but the point really is that you create a ritual  so to put that in modern terms - if you take the sleeping pills you will have a ritual with them you will take them at a given time, get up fill a glass with water to swallow them rinse out the glass put the tablets back in the cupboard etc etc - its still a ritual our lives are filled with them except this one is more of a conscious one which might help without you taking the pills.

So anyway if you want to give it a go - you get reasonable sized clear quartz crystal you can get them online if you dont want to go out.

first cleanse the crystal - now once again there different ways to do this and you beliefs might dictate which you chose and thats fine.

Crystal cleansing could involve lighting candles, smudging with burning dried sage and chanting something, a tibetan sound bowl, or placing in brown rice for 24 hours or it it could be simply putting it under running water - in my case it was a shallow part of the local river because the river has meaning to me anyway , but it can actually be your tap.The point is to rid it of negative things it might be holding from its past.

Next stage is charging it - ideally on a full moon leave it in the light on your windowsill.  but again it could be any moon phase  it could be leaving it in the sun or burying it in the garden (dont forget where though) the point is fo it to receive energy waves - just as a crystal radio received radio waves.

So now you take the crystal hold it in your hand and sit quietly and go through your best memorys start with your mum and dad they dont have to be of just one person - imagine you are transfering them into the crystal through your hand visualise it if you can  but dont let any bad ones in there, stop them before they get there and throw them away - when you have done this you seal them with running water again but think of it sealing it not re-cleansing it. Once its sealed you can cleanse and recharge without putting the memorys in again you dont have to do either but actually just doing that every so often is a reminder of the ritual and the ritual is important.

Now you put it somewhere near the bed within reach - i literally went to sleep holding mine -so as soon as you aware you are having a nightmare or have had one hold the crystal again in your hand - and visualise the things, the memorys you put in there then let yourself go back to sleep.

Ok i may sound like a complete fruit loop and maybe it is nothing more than the simple ritual, or a form of mindfulness, and having something solid and tangible to hold in your hand when you have a nightmare perhaps it could be anything solid with no meaning or ritual attached - but it worked for me, and i actually dont mind how it worked, - although actually  i personally  do belive it is something special  - and i believed in it strongly enough to get another one -but this time for my memorys, 

it isnt permanantly sealed yet because they are still going in there, it travels with me,it records concerts,and places and trips and sights and sounds all positive things to hold onto when i fall back down and go back to thinking there is no point in my life -holding it reminds me there is.  That feeling and that need is rare now, so this one has in a way become  a different ritual thing, rather than the need to do it to keep myself sane, its become a moment just to pause take in something amazing make it more special and appreciate things i suppose but still my insurance just in case i do slide back. 
 
 - it has been cleansed in the indian ocean on a stunning beach along with a bracelet of gems i wear all the time it has been in the irish sea in my
 haunt in wales - under a full moon - charged under an african sun seen a rainbow in a waterfall and it contains all those other moments  which were not necessarilly big events but litle things that add up to a positive whole.       

Offline Rumar

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #39 on: November 06, 2019, 07:02:26 AM »
Hi Sandra and Karena, thank you both for your replies, as usual you offer comfort and ideas of ways to cope with this grief and all that goes with it. Unfortunately, I have now been diagnosed with depression, there is such a long wait for any kind of therapy, as I explained previously, my first appointment for counselling will not be until 10th Dec. Because I have got so low, even the simplest job seems like a major event, my mind is just shutting down, I find hours pass and I have just been sitting, not doing anything, all motivation has gone, every single step seems like running a marathon. I have moments when I tell myself today I will do this small thing, sometimes  I manage to get washed, or dressed, or feed the birds, then everything comes flooding back and I shrink back into my shell and the safety of “that room”. I am aware that nearly everyone on this site has suffered terrible grief, I have no children, since the funeral J’s family have faded away, I have a brother I see for an hour a week, a sister who phones daily, apart from that I am totally isolated and alone.  I do hope that you do not get fed up with my negative messages, mentally I am not in a good place and I get some relief posting on this site. Thank you x



Offline Sandra61

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #40 on: November 06, 2019, 09:35:06 AM »
I am glad it helps you, Rumar. You can say whatever you like here, however you feel, so don't apologise. It sounds like you have slipped into the pit that I felt myself sliding into at one point a couple of months after my mum died, but I somehow managed to scramble back up the slippery slope before I fell so deeply into it that I couldn't get out on my own anymore.

I think grief is like quicksand or treacle or mud. You sink slowly deeper and deeper into it and then it sucks onto your feet and starts drawing you down and you just keep sinking unless you make a huge effort to drag your legs out from its grip and claw your way back onto solid ground. It is a vicious and destructive force and takes a lot of fighting against. So start fighting, Rumar!

Your life doesn't have to consist of misery and depression. It has contained love and a lifetime of companionship with a man you clearly thought was wonderful and that is more than many of us ever have! You have so much to be grateful for and so many great memories to look back on and treasure. Use all of that as your strength now. Let J help you with this. He is still your strength, even though he is not here in body anymore. Imagine what he would advise you to do and follow that advice. He had your picture up in his shed. How greatly he treasured you then! Clearly you were his strength too!

Start pulling your legs out of the mud, Rumar. Use anything you can to help you climb out. Stop relying on 'that room'. You have a whole house of wonderful memories waiting to be reignited. I told you to dust. As you pick up each object, it will have a memory tied to it. You will remember where you got it and what you were doing that day with some things and comments you both made about it when you decided to get it. As you handle it, you can recall all those wonderful memories and yes, they may make you cry, but they may also make you smile and most likely, both at the same time! You have a wonderful past to take strength from, Rumar. Use it now, when you need it most. You don't have to live in grief. You can learn to appreciate your luck in having had so many wonderful years with your lovely husband and your parents. These are things to rejoice in, not weep over, and the future is an open book for you to make your way back to and keep on writing, for all of you.

Sending your strength.  :hearts:

Offline Karena

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Re: New to this site.
« Reply #41 on: November 06, 2019, 12:37:12 PM »
i can only really repeat what sandra said and i also slid into that pit -and i already had seasonal adjustment disorder so winter was so much worse anyway.
Dont see not doing much as a failure,but instead see doing anything at all as a success and give yourself a pat on the back for doing just one simple thing because thats the first move to pulling your legs out

This is a bereavement site and if you cant be honest here then when can you be - its why we are here so no we will never get fed up of your
negative messages because we have all done the same -  It helps no-one reading through who is new if we do exactly the same as we do out in the world and paint on a smile because if everyone is doing that all the time here as well then it looks as though they are more alone in what they are experiencing  and in addition too that, one thing you do find over time is that when you read them back you realise you are moving forward even when you think you are stuck again, so believe it or not they can become a form of self help in the future. :hug: