My husband died today

[Deleted member 12723]

I understand what you are feeling right now. I am sorry that it is so rough on you now. It is hell. And to wake up to it each day hurts so much.

 

[NarcSis]

Today I couldn't decide between preparing for my friend's visit tomorrow or running away to go to the park - I woke up upset and sad so I decided that the park would serve me better. It didn't really do much to make me feel better. When I was on my way home, I met up with "his car" and I started to cry. I almost had to pull over because I started to hyperventilate, I was crying so hard. I think I was trying to hard to just push his memory away today and carry on as if everything were "normal".

You know, the whole time I'm at the park alone, it's in the back of my mind that he's at work because last year when I started being brave enough to go on my own, he was always at work. I have to fight not to text him and tell him how my day is going. My head still wants everything to go back to "normal".

I got home and again, expected to find him in the house, as though the entire last four months was all just a ridiculous mistake. Our floors creak so when I was walking to the kitchen to refill my water bottle, I heard the floors upstairs creak as though someone were walking on it - my heart jumped and I instantly thought, "It was a mistake. It was just a bad dream! He's home!" After I scolded myself for being so dumb, I actually had to go upstairs to check, if only just to make sure that there was no one else in this house. I half expected to see him lying on the bed watching movies on his laptop.

Sigh. It's so hard some days. The logic just doesn't permeate. The heart seems to cling onto delusions and tries to make everything seem okay and normal again.

I made my sister cry when I told her about hearing the noises upstairs. There are just so many days where I convince myself that it's all been a mistake and that he'll be coming home some day soon. I see why his great grandmother convinced herself that her husband had just gone "back to war" after he passed away, it helped her to think that because he was away for so long. It helps me to think that he's just at work, and then, on a training course, or working late but nights are bad because I know he's not here, so that's when I hug on his blanket and shirt and pretend that he's actually with me - some days I don't want to get out of bed and "leave him there alone". In my mind, he now "lives" on the bed, in our bedroom.

I had a shower when I came home from the park and then went on the bed to "hug him" for a while before coming down to start the preparations for my friends visit. I burst into tears when telling him about my day. That intense sad and reality struck me while I was hugging his blanket and I asked him, "How come you left me? I'm so lonely without you, how could you leave me?" I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life. I never wanted that. I cried pretty hard for about 10 minutes but figured that I didn't "have time" to be sad, I had things to do.

So tonight I baked a cake and decorated it; made a potato salad and took the ribs out of the freezer to prepare for tomorrow's BBQ. I'm exhausted now. I keep crying. I still have to make another green salad tomorrow and tidy up this place. It's my friend's birthday today, so I wrapped up a present for her, just something I've had hanging around the house that I intended to give to someone as a gift, so that worked out well. I keep thinking of him.

I keep going over something my sister keeps saying - "Why do people do that? They just don't have any clue how many people they hurt when they do that." First off, it annoys the crap out of me that she can't say suicide but even worse, she makes it seem like he gave this a lot of thought and that she's somehow blaming him! He didn't think about this and I'm sorry but deciding to take your own life is so not about Other People except in that we think that Other People will be better without us. I'm just holding my tongue on it now because I've blown up about it so many times already that it's useless, she'll just never get it. I'll just have to endure the insensitivity for the rest of my life.

I mean, I don't care how evil an act you think it is, he was still my husband, he was so lost, he was in so much pain, how could it not have been a probable reaction to what he was going through? I still love him. I feel sorry for him. I feel so sorry for him because I couldn't help him. I couldn't save him from his own mind. I did everything I could do and it wasn't enough - sometimes it's never going to be enough, people die. Shit happens. I just seem to be swimming in so much shit in this life, don't I deserve at least something good to happen?

I loved him so much. If love alone could prevent a suicide, then there wouldn't be such a thing as suicide now would there?

I keep thinking of him in that car with that shotgun. I didn't see anything. I never saw him but my mind has filled in the gaps with things I imagine. I can't find his favorite baseball cap, he must have been wearing it that day. I wish I had that cap but it never came back with his possessions, so likely it was destroyed. My poor baby. My poor, poor baby. Why did he do that? Why didn't he just stay? Why didn't he just come to me and cry it out again? My poor baby must have felt so alone in those moments - he was never alone. He was never alone, I was always with him. I'm still with him.

I hugged on his shirt today while I was crying and I said, "You don't have to be afraid, okay? I'm still here. I've got you. You don't have to be sad anymore. I love you forever, no one can change that, nothing you've done will change that. If you're worried that I'm mad at you, don't be, I forgive you for doing what you did, please don't be mad at yourself. We can't change it back anymore but I still love you. I've got you here with me, you're never going to be alone again, okay? I've got you, my Tinny."

God, I'm missing him so much today.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I continue to wear my wedding ring and still consider myself married to my husband in spite of the fact that he has been gone for three years.You are doing the best you can with what you know in my opinion.

Missing your husband is so valid, having questions is normal and talking to your husband is not unique, many people do this. Please keep on taking good care of yourself and I am so glad you went to the park anyway and are having a friend over. I felt like I no longer fit anywhere anymore for a very long time.

I hope that tomorrow gives you a measure of peace for that time. I understand the deep hurt and aching inside of your heart. :hug:

 

[NarcSis]

My friend came to visit today, we had another good long visit, she stayed for close to 8 hours. We just talked, I talked a lot about him and she didn't mind at all, she was a great listening ear. Near the end of her visit we started talking about suicide, she spoke about how her mother had previously attempted suicide and couldn't stop nodding her head when I spoke about what it is like to wrestle with the beast that is suicidal ideation and how quickly that intense drive to end your own life can take you over. She said that the way I describe it is exactly how her mom described it and she said words like that can only be used by someone who truly knows. When I say I've been there, it's not just a platitude, I have actually been there several times in my life.

I think I had my suspicions validated today, not in so many words but she told me that her mom was sexually assaulted as a child and I'd suspected that on some level since I first met her mom over 20 years ago. She always described her mom as "nervous" and "skittish" with an intense fear of birds. I always wondered what trauma led to the behaviors that I witnessed in her mom and I had suspected PTSD, the story of being attacked by a rooster when she was little didn't quite fit. After I was diagnosed with PTSD, I saw a lot of those same behaviors her mom had reflected right back in me. She still insists her mom has "depression" and "anxiety" but I wonder if she hasn't simply just been misdiagnosed all these years.

I was able to finally talk to someone about being suicidal and how it goes against everything you believe in and your entire values system but at the same time in some weird bastardized form of logic, the want to die in those moments is so overpoweringly intense that it makes sense to you. It takes a really strong person to be able to fight back against that and quite frankly, not everyone is that strong, we're humans after all. I almost hate saying that too because in the back of my mind comes the echo that says, "you're calling him weak." Maybe in those moments he was weak and yet so brave at the same time, but he was otherwise a person of such strong character, morality and value.

I hate to say it, but even though you feel weak and worthless and hopeless, to go through with an impulsive act is sadly a very brave thing to do - in that way, I'm a complete coward because I can't reach that end. I could say, "I don't want too." but that's just an automatic response. In those moments, I want nothing more than to die, to end the pain I'm in permanently. Sure the pain is temporary but in those moments it is everything, it is now, it is then, it is future, you just see nothing but the pain and you just want to escape it. I swear, the urge gets so damned strong when I'm at my lowest points that it takes every ounce of my being just to fight to NOT move because all I want to do is to move to end my life. You're holding on by a figurative thread. You're not reasoning properly, you're panicking completely and you're thinking in error loops. How I'm still here is quite frankly remarkable - not to toot my own horn but I honestly don't know how I hold on sometimes.

I just wish husband knew that part of it. I just wish he knew about succumbing to the panic and acting out of panicked desperation. I wish we'd talked more about that in the weeks after that cop killed himself. I wish I'd stated more strongly how you just have to wait for the panic to die down, because it does and then you can think again and if your thinking starts to spiral downhill again, you have to redirect yourself toward self care activities. Just let the world disappear for a little while and indulge yourself completely in something that helps to bring you pleasure or just force yourself to lie still until it all blows over. It always blows over. It's a storm, an emotional storm, it will run it's course and go away.

When we were talking today I said something to her that had been bothering me. He had been troubled by the death of the cop two weeks before he took his own life. He said, "That's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. How could he do that to his family?" and I'd said to him, "Now hold on a second there, that's a judgement statement and I don't agree with how people automatically judge those who commit suicide. Don't get me wrong, it is hell on families but try to put yourself in his shoes, what he was dealing with and wrestling with in those moments when he decided to die was beyond his capacity to reason. There is no logic in it because logic can't be a part of that. In those moments what he did made perfect sense to him and everyone else in the world had nothing to do with it and no say in it because committing suicide is about that one person, not their family or anyone else. Yes, his issue was temporary, but not to him, that requires logic and like I said, logic has nothing to do with it."

Anyway, I'm pretty sure my speech was way more long winded than that but what I've been struggling with is, did I make it okay in some way? Did he think at some point over those 20 hours that I would be okay with his death if he decided to kill himself? Did I just make suicide an "okay" thing to do and understandable? It's not. My head gets it, my heart never will and the heart is where all the pain comes from. His death had nothing to do with me, yet everything to do with me - his struggle was not mine to judge but my reactions to his death, yeah, those are all about me and in that respect, his death is all about me. (if that makes any sense).

I remember my sister reacting to that suicide that week too and her standpoint was always adamantly, how could anyone do that to their family? Didn't he think of his kids and what it's going to be like to grow up without a daddy? I told her that his death was not about his family, it was about him and his life. So she just dug her heels in and said, "Well, they're part of that life." She had no concept of people being separate entities living alongside one another. I am me. No one else can dictate what I can think or feel or be because I'm already me and I'm not you. She still didn't get it. Then she went for guilt and I said, "You can't guilt someone into staying alive. In their minds their life is hell, so you want them to continue in hell for YOUR sake, so YOU can feel better?" I know how difficult it is to pretend you're okay. I know how easy it is to want to die and I know how easy it is to convince yourself that it is the only and correct option.

But because of that knowledge and my efforts to destigmatize suicide, did I somehow lead him to believe in those moments that I'd be okay with it? Like I said, logic plays no part in the thinking, right? So although that seems like backward logic, it makes sense to a mind in crisis, "She understands, she'll be okay, she'll get through this." Sadly when you do understand and logically you get how it could happen, it's hard to hold it against the person, so yeah, I forgave him almost immediately for not being able to think his way out of it - not everyone can. What I don't know is if I've completely forgiven him for leaving me. I forgave the act, not the result.

I still needed him so much. He was so important to my life. If only...

 

[Tinyflame]

Dear @Medic72 , one can never know the answer to most questions, but I think with those fears of yours it's more about knowing the questions. Could it be seen as giving 'permission'? Well, maybe one could argue that around a coffee table, but as you said, highly unlikely if not impossible with constricted thinking, panic & backwards logic.

I learned today there is actually scientific evidence, irrespective of experiences, that some people feel more deeply. Unfortunately, it's feeling everything more deeply, the good, the bad & the ugly. It's no small wonder then, that some people really can't understand the extent to how it feels. It doesn't mean one is better or worse as people, but they are hard-wired very differently. One person has to work at feeling more, the other has to work at feeling less.That is why you understand though @Medic72 , & why what you've written is candidly honest, brave, & yet despite this tragedy, loving. Your sister sounds like she underestimated Tin's love & loyalty to you, then, but now as well. Not caused by a lack of love, but rather the tragedy of an illness. :(

((((((((((((((Medic)))))))))))

 

[Hope1969]

I am very sorry for your lost.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

:hug:

 

[NarcSis]

I'm so weepy today and yet, I'm afraid to really just let go and cry full out because it starts to hurt so badly, and I mean physically, when I do that exhaling almost-scream, it feels like my entire chest just tightens up and starts to cramp. It's ridiculous, but I feel like I won't be able to breathe in again if I don't cut that wail short and terminate that release. It just feels like there is something stuck so deep inside of me and it needs to come out, I just don't know how to get it out without feeling like I'm dying.

I was at the park today, sitting on the bank of the river fishing and I was thinking about just last summer when we were both there and he was sitting in the shade listening to his podcast on a fold up chair. I had looked over at him and he smiled so I waved at him and he waved back. I kept thinking about how it actually made him hurt to sit there all day but he endured it so that I could be out of the house. If I ever asked him, he'd say that he didn't mind - I always wondered if he was just saying that so I wouldn't get upset, I was upset anyway, I hated seeing him in pain and I hated being the reason he was in pain. Anyway I was sitting on the bank of that river and I just started to tear up. I choked back some sobs before I heard a noise behind me, and there was this couple walking by looking at me smiling. They stopped smiling when they saw my tear stained face. I breathed through the urge to bawl. It's hard to think that it was just last summer we were there like that.

As I was driving into the park I remembered how we'd parked his car at the gate just five days before he died and we'd hiked in with our coffees and sandwich through the snow. We'd walked on the ice and pretended we were skating on an area someone had cleared off. He smiled and laughed at me as I slid around on the ice, then I went over to him, looped my arm through his and we continued on our hike. He'd slipped twice that day. He was already in more pain from his physio and when he was getting out of the car he slipped and slid right under the car at the driver's side. I remembered a guy nearby had run over from his truck and said, "Hey, are you okay, buddy?" I hadn't even seen it happen. I had said to him that we didn't need to go hiking, we didn't need to go in because he was already hurt and that must have hurt him even more. He got angry and said we were going in, he was always stubborn. He insisted he was fine. I was watching him like a hawk after that - again, my worst fear was for something to happen to him. Of course after we played on the ice we went back to shore and along the shoreline some of the depressions along the beach had frozen over too - he stepped on one and slipped again, falling to the ground. I almost cried. I said to him that we could leave, we didn't have to keep going, we could just go back right then. He was always a "man", got angry again, said he was fine, got up and continued walking. I could tell he was in pain.

I was thinking again today of the idea that people keep saying that I should spread some of his ashes at the park. I have this weird thing about spreading his ashes - I am afraid to leave bits of "him" alone in places. He hated being alone - even though we loved those places and we spent a lot of time together there, leaving him there alone just seems wrong. It was like the interment idea, it just seemed wrong to me to bury him in a place that, although dear to me and a place he loved visiting, I would never get up there enough to "be" with him and I would essentially abandon bits of him there. That's not right to me. I want him whole here with me. It makes me so happy that his mother hasn't yet claimed her share of his ashes because he's ALL here with me.

I still can't wrap my head around the "he's everywhere I go" thing. He is and he isn't. I don't FEEL him. Sometimes I feel the warmth and other times I feel nothing but empty and alone. His memory is in my head in everything I do but my heart refuses to feel anything but sad and lost without him. I want to do the things we used to do together, like go for breakfast at our favorite place before going to the park, or go to the park in the city where we used to go when he had his dentist appointments. It's like I'm searching for him in some way, trying to feel him with me again or heaven forbid, trying to find him even though I know he doesn't exist anymore.

The other day I saw a man walking along the street, he had on khakis, a brown jacket and a tan baseball cap. My head snapped back to look at him because he looked exactly how my hubby did right down to the body profile. I passed by his car again today and started to cry again. I see him everywhere, I see that car everywhere. I keep hoping - four months after the fact - that this was all just a stupid mistake or a hoax of some kind; that he got some top secret job and he had to fake his death so that he could go away and the man I buried was only someone who looked like him, a wax figure or something. Completely ridiculous, huh?

I don't know how long this will go on. Will I wake up one morning and just be okay with his being gone? Will I one day just suddenly realize that I need to do things for me alone? Will I ever just be okay with being alone?

I haven't had a haircut since he died. I think this is the longest my hair has ever been in my life. I'm not sure if I want to cut it until the one year anniversary. We'll see. Maybe I'll feel different in a few months.

My sister is coming to visit for the weekend. I am not going to be alone. We've made plans. I hope I can function okay. I'm in a sad phase again.

 

[Heather]

I remember when my cousin unexpectedly died. My aunt said to me a couple of years after her passing that she's a big believer in time. I don't think it took away her pain completely but I think it lessened. After awhile we were able to watch family movies with her in it and laugh.

Hopefully time will ease your pain a little and each day will get a bit easier.

I'm sorry you are hurting so badly. I think it speaks to how much you loved your husband.

I really feel for what you are going through.

Hugs.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I hope that the weekend is a good one for you @Medic72. When my son died, I saw him everywhere as well, it was so eirie. My husband had a braid down to his waist so I never saw him at all.

You will find your answers to your questions with in your self as time passes. This will also be a learning experience for you as you already know. The first year is the hardest. I am so glad that you do not have to deal with the holidays for a long time.:hug:

 

[NarcSis]

There are two dates coming up this summer that I am dreading - our Anniversary and the hearing date in early September. I feel like my life is almost on hold until the outcome of that stupid legal case. I'm trying to find ways to "move on" but nothing in my life can actually be decided upon until my former employer gets their sh*t together and just settles the damned lawsuit. It's a fight I never asked for, they pushed it on themselves. I hate fights but all of my life has been an unending exercise in standing up for what is right. I'll keep doing it until the day I die if they want, I'm sorry, I'm aboriginal, we don't back down from what is right and we've had centuries of practice doing it.

Our anniversary is going to be tough. We were supposed to go to a resort this year, we hadn't decided on one but we were intending to find somewhere private and peaceful to spend a weekend. It would have been our 12th wedding anniversary - it's hard to think that we didn't even make it 12 years as a married couple. We were supposed to have champagne and share quiet time together. Do I go on my own somewhere or do I just try to pretend it's another regular day? It so is not a regular day though, it's the day that I married the man of my dreams, my best friend in the whole world and my other half. I'm missing my other half.

I was lying on the bed in the spare room with my sister tonight, staring up at the ceiling and as we were chatting and giggling I was struck again with the realization that he was dead. I stared up at the ceiling and thought, "My husband is dead. He is not here and he never will be again. He died. I no longer have a husband." It just hits me so bluntly sometimes, it's like an echo of shock washing over me again. And then comes the second realization and this one is deeper, more intensely shock-like, "He killed himself."

i mean, it wasn't a car accident, it wasn't a heart attack, he didn't choke to death, he didn't slip and fall or get crushed by anything, nope, he took his own life. He. Took. His. Own. Life.

It had to be a mistake. It had to be, because the man I knew wouldn't consider that an option. The man I knew never hinted at wanting to die. The man I knew spoke out against suicide and the man I knew, he was the most level headed, logic driven person on the face of this earth....and he still died by his own hand. It makes no sense.

Sigh. Things I can never know bother me each and every day. I see a pale, lifeless face, mouth agape, eyes staring blankly as if frozen in shock, head lolled to the side - things I never actually saw but this is what I see when I think of him in that car. Maybe I'd actually seen that face at some point during my career - I know I'd seen it in car accidents but in this memory, I'm looking into the driver's side window and I'm seeing him, pale, lifeless and dead. None of that is real but it helps to imagine it because it reinforces the concept of his death as a tangible occurrence with no possibility of a mistake having been made. It shows me him Dead, the word that no one on that scene could use with me. It gives this the sense of finality that it needs....and yet, I still refuse to believe on some level that he is truly gone.

I hate to say it, but I think I needed to see him that day. Not allow me to go near the stupid "crime scene" but just allow me to see him from a distance, just show me the "dead face". I needed to see it. I needed to finalize him in those moments. Had I seen him that day, would I now be struggling with this odd sense of a mistake or would it have been enough to close that chapter for good? Would I have just been struggling in a different way now?

I can't answer those questions. All of them call for speculation and assuming facts.

Fact. He is dead. Fact. I can't change it. Fact. I am alone. Fact. I am terrified to be alone and not so terrified at the same time.

Fact. I miss him like crazy; like I've never missed anything in my entire life. I loved him so much.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes I 'get it', @Medic72 , I once said (In response to some question I couldn't avoid) that a family member had died & the person , a relative stranger, totally unaffected by their death, as I recall said, "DIED! Why do you say DIED, that's a terrible thing to say , why don't you say Passed away??" :confused: So from then on I 'cleaned it up' for other's sakes & their feelings (always their feelings) & said that. (What I was really thinking was because they died. At least I felt supported. :rolleyes: :( )

I'm sorry @Medic72 . :cry: I hope you say whatever is better for you to say. I know I'm listening. :hug: :hug: