Author Topic: Tim and Debs  (Read 2059 times)

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Offline Dee

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Tim and Debs
« on: July 26, 2019, 08:10:53 AM »
Hi,
I have been hovering about this group for over a year and now I find myself here. I am grieving for my partner who suddenly died, unexpectedly after a cardiac arrest Christmas Eve, 2017. I saved him and he returned, only to get an infection and pass away again on January 3rd 2018. We had celebrated our 21st anniversary in the Summer of 2017.
I live on my own now, for the first time in my life and struggle to know how to continue. I can't make decisions and am floating around, not knowing where to go or what to do. Life seems a bit pointless, no purpose, no future. My bereavement has gone underground, I feel I can't really talk about it now and in the "I'm fine" bracket of my English culture.
Victorians used black armbands a code to go gently. I think its a good idea, I would still be wearing mine and it would help me to be in public. It doesn't go away, does it? It's a permanent condition now. I understand the Victorian Photos, so many women in black, life's widows, floating on cobbled streets.
I lost my mum, then my cat, then my uncle and then my husband over 18 months and I only just realised it's actually happened.  The anaesthetic is wearing off and I'ts scary, so I am here, hoping that it will help me to face the ride.

Offline Karena

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Re: Tim and Debs
« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2019, 11:48:27 AM »
Hi Dee
welcome to the forum. :hug: I lost my husband 8 years ago and had also just had both my daughters fly the nest in the case of one to the other side of the world, also couldnt afford to stay in our house so lost that too - had to move, then lost the one companion i had to keep going for -our  dog.
I think one of the worst things was the feeling of being alone,and also of not knowing what my role was any more - all my adult life i had been a carer for some-one to some level and i didnt know what else i could possibly do - i had my job but it didnt feel at all useful - it paid the money to keep me in a life i didnt enjoy any more, and it made a pile for my Boss but it needed to do more than that if it was to have any meaning. Its so difficult to get out of that floating around inability to make a decision mode and also deal with your grief.

When you look more closely  Victorians did get it very wrong in a lot of ways, it was all basically engineered to suit society and some kind of ettiquette and not a reflection of the real feelings and emotions of the bereaved.what lay under those black garments was no more the truth than any of us saying now "i,m fine" when we arnt.

The code was that a widow could be approached by a man - or pretty much forced by her familly, into another marriage after a year - if her husband had been rich and there was no son or nephew to inherit his estate and she did, (although probably only given an allowance and controlled by a trusted male,) the new husband got it - so there could well be a queue at the door waiting for that year to be up -if she had returned too her family - her father/brother - could pretty much demand she took an offer if it benefitted them for her to do so, or conversly if she wanted to re-marry refuse - as it would mean giving control of her inheritance to another familly    - if she lost a child and she could have another then she should do so after the magic year.

It was all about inheritence - for people in the higher classes and they, along with the church were the ones in control of everybody elses moral codes.


A man could search for a new wife without criticism after a year as well but was under less pressure to do so, and if there were children involved then would be criticised much less if he broke that rule.
Your relationship with the person you had lost had no bearing on it - if your husband beat you black and blue daily and his passing was a relief you still had to "mourn" him outwardly for a year - it even applied to servants - who wore a black armband for a year if they remained within the employ of the same familly- as a sign of respect even if they had hated their employer.

I live somewhere with cobbles in reality we tend not to float above them but twist our ankles and slip over on them, and thats pretty much what the grief road looks like - we have to pick ourselves up over and over again - but the people around us look at the cobbles and have this romantic notion that they should be preserved but that there is a defined path we should tread - they dont see us fall and they dont see that the twisted ankle doesnt suddenly get better when we step off them onto the tarmac.

What society  seems to cling too from those un-enlightened times was the notion that a year was somehow a grief sell by date the moment we step off the cobbles -  so we experience that kind of attitude from those around us and also to a degree, push that thinking on too ourselves -" a year has passed i dont feel better so something is wrong with me" The reality is grief doesnt have a cut off date, its a roller coaster ride and it is a continual looped one but the good news is the steepness of the slopes get smoother over an undefined period of time. It becomes less all consuming and intense  but i dont think we ever actually fully stop grieveing - what we do is learnt to move forward and take them with us - just in a different way.

To fill the time and also because i found it helped me focus for a while and stop drifting all the time, i did some free online courses and eventually found through that, a way i could take what i learned and the skills i had at work and my passion for gardening  use them to help a charity creating school gardens in Africa - from my computer here in the UK - it took a while for that to become anything that slotted together in any way that made sense but it eventually did.

 Another thing that comes from societys need to tidy everything into files is that we " have to let them go" in order to move forward - so we dont move forward because of course we dont want to do that, and in our minds because their loss is the cause of our grief we think  if grief is all we have left of them and we cant let that go either.So even though we no longer want to live with that pain we also cling too it because we think it if we allow it to become less we are letting them go too.
But it doesnt mean that at all,it means that we change the bond between us. If you imagine that bond as strands of something flexible like elastic, just because it is no longer the physical connection it once was,  it doesnt break if we let go of that pain,because what we had was more than a physical connection and  more than that one strand.
Whatever your beliefs whether its scientific based, neurophysics or quantum mechanics or a religion or through creating a ritual  of your own, how you start to find those remaining strands and by doing so that connection, will be different to how others do but it is still there and part of the drifting is like the search for it but when we find them we can also start weaving those remaining strands back together to make them stronger.

My starting place was imagining a coversation if there is ever some kind of afterlife where we meet agin  - how short it would be if i did nothing for the rest of my life, and had nothing to tell him about and how upset he would be if after he faught to keep his life i just threw mine away, but i didnt know what to do with my life, so i figured i should try and live his life for him, and do the things we didnt get round too, go back to the places we loved and do some of the things he would have liked too but didnt get the chance.
We may never have that conversation but if thats the case i have lost nothing by doing it, but have gained direction in my own life by taking a step in any direction.

I still miss my husbands presence every single day, but he is still very much a part of my life - sometimes that missing his actual presence spills over into yearning and tears,but much less often now, more often it is in those other strands, it is in a smile knowing what he would have said or done about something that happened today, its about his legacy -whether he would be proud of something i do,  whether his grandchildren know all about him,whether in returning to somewhere he loved and planting wild flowers there those flowers give some-one else pleasure,even though they will never know the story behind them, and sometimes it is still about just doing something which he would love to do.

Overall I have learned i dont need to wear a black band, because my internal dialogue is not the same as the one i have with other people, but the one i continue to have with him.

Offline Sandra61

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Re: Tim and Debs
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2019, 10:34:35 AM »
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. :hug:

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.  :hearts:

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!  :hug:

Offline Dee

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Re: Tim and Debs
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2019, 04:47:06 PM »
Thanks x

Offline Emz2014

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Re: Tim and Debs
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2019, 05:54:53 PM »
Hope you find the forum a source of support, I know I did.
It takes time to get back on our feet and feel less wobbly, you lost the foundations beneath you.  Bereavement doesnt go away but it does gradually get easier to cope/rebuild your life.  Sometimes writing a diary can be a good outlet, a way to explore what may help you day to day and at times, even bad ones, can look back on how far you've come.  We often forget how many painful steps we have taken and dont acknowledge those little achievements along the way.  If you think back to the early days you have already achieved so much - remember to take small steps  :hearts: xx
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. 
Hold on in there xx

Offline Sav

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Re: Tim and Debs
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2019, 09:35:21 PM »
I truly understand that armour of “I’m fine” I wear it daily amongst customers and friends but inside I am just totally empty , my dogs have been my comfort blankets and their coats my tissues mopping up the nightly tears , it is all soo painful , you have lost soo much bless you , I feel your pain x