My husband died today

[Heather]

@Medic72 Wish I had words to erase your pain. You are grieving (I know I'm stating the obvious)....I read your posts and you ebb and flow.....that is to be expected....it's a process.

I wish you peace. I feel for you and I hear/feel your pain through your writing. I hope you find it's a release to write it out. I feel like I'm babbling so i'll end here.

I just wish there was something we could do for you to make it easier.

 

[NarcSis]

I think that you are far better than you think you are and not as bad as you think you are.

I honestly don't know where I stand on a day to day basis. It's like navigating the beginning of the PTSD all over again. I can feel great, almost normal and dare I say positive about a future, and then the very next day I could wake up crying and wanting to end my own life. It's a roller coaster that I want off of. There is no end to that lump of black that I seem to be dragging just below the surface that I know is still there even when i'm smiling. People describe it as a hole, it's way more than just that, it's completely indescribable this shattered feeling I carry with me, not even PTSD was like this.

I just wish there was something we could do for you to make it easier.

There is nothing anyone can do, short of just being here. I have no choice in this, he took that choice from me when he put a gun to his side. People say things to you like, "You don't have to suffer like this, just change the way you look at it." Well, when their husband shoots himself, then they can give me advice, right? I can't play happy, happy and just pretend he didn't die. I can't just "not think of it" and suddenly everything in my life will improve. In fact, when I don't speak of him or have an opportunity to be sad and shed my tears then I end up with this twisting feeling in my guts and I just want to put myself through a window or jump off of a bridge because it NEEDS to come out. It NEEDS to.

I think that is what's tough about being with my sister - being sad is the buzzkill she does not want. She even said the other day that I just need to keep busy - no, that's totally not what I need, the more I'm busy the more I don't deal with the sadness and the emotions that keep popping up...and the harder it gets to find anything to be happy about and the harder it is for me to find the happy memories of him that I know are somewhere in my head.

But with her everything is full speed or not moving, so for the past two days we've been doing nothing - sitting on the deck in the sun and then hopping in the pool to cool off. The thing about doing nothing with her is that she doesn't speak, there is not conversation, she just has her head buried in her phone, head down and if she does talk, it's about her work and the gossip drama among her coworkers - people I don't know and don't really care about. Worse yet, she's IM-ing with someone else and having a huge "conversation" with them instead of me, yet if I start to do the same, she puts her stuff aside and says, "Who are you talking too?"

You know, one of these days I think I'm just going to say, "My boyfriend." because the tone she uses when she asks who I'm chatting with is actually quite accusatory....like one my mother would use - but that's a tangent, I think the reason it bugs me so much is that I look at her and I see him. This is how he'd been for the past two or three years. Shutting me out, constantly burying his head in his laptop or ipod and completely ignoring me. I was the one who was usually chattering on and I'm not sure if he was ever really present with me or just living in his own head for the majority of the time these last few years. He'd always done it. He was a "gamer" when I met him and that never changed but he used to talk to me. He hadn't been present with me in a very long time when he died, just from time to time and that is not enough to save you. It's not enough to give you something to hold on too.

I was just trying so desperately in this last year to find something to get him out of his own head. To just get him to join me here in the land of the living instead of lost and stressed out about everything. He chose to shut down. He chose to withdraw. He chose not to speak about what was going on in his head. He let it eat him up, chew him up and spit him out. He died because at some point along the way he chose not to connect with life anymore - a thing I have struggled so hard to keep doing all these years.

He went against everything I was standing up for. I know his actions don't reflect on me but I feel like I'm a hypocrite now. Here I blog about suicide and how it's okay and how it's so individual and sometimes not even a choice rather than a reaction, (and this was before he died), and I'm telling people that it doesn't have to end in death, and that we are just temporarily blinded by overwhelming emotions generated by our brain - and then my own husband goes and dies by suicide.

He never read my blog. He never wanted to. He felt it was private (yes, privately on the internet for all the world to see).

All my blog ever wanted to do was to help people understand their own often confused brains and to put at ease those who blame themselves after a suicide. Well, guess what? I'm blaming myself. I'm understanding and not understanding at the same time. I'm screaming because I "didn't see it coming" and I'm angry because people make me feel like I should have seen it coming. And I feel like an idiot because here I was speaking from my own personal experience with struggling with SI and then I get hit with a suicide and I am reeling, no longer feeling "fit" to advise anyone anymore.

How do you stop asking Why? How do you stop blaming yourself? How do you take what you've been struggling with and surviving and make it okay in the context of losing the one person you never suspected of being suicidal?

How do I move on without you, Tin? How could you do this to me?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

:hug:

 

[Heather]

I agree with you...you NEED to talk about it and get it out otherwise it will eat at you and eat at you. That is what you are doing here. Pour it out....every last bit....hopefully it will offer some relief. Because when you stuff it/ignore it....you feel like you're gonna implode.

I get that too with what happened to my daughter...people (mother especially) think I should just move on. It's only been six months. I NEED to talk about it, rant about it, rage about....that is what helps.

People (may mean well) but they say such stupid insensitive sh*t that is NOT HELPFUL AT ALL.

You have every right to write about your process and keep doing so....it's like getting the poison out.

Hugs to you Medic.

 

[Heather]

I also think concerning your sister and people in general are uncomfortable with emotional stuff, painful stuff, agonizing stuff. She needs to know that YOU need her to listen because that is the best thing she can do for you right now. Be there when your sad, when you're an emotional crying mess....that is how you're gonna heal. These strong emotions....people (especially family) don't like to deal with it.

Ok I'm rambling again.

 

[NarcSis]

The night of our fight, a week ago tomorrow, my sister wiped my face with a cold cloth (I think she figured that would snap me out of it), helped me to the bed and offered me a bottle of water and then left me completely alone for hours. I may have been struggling to survive in those hours but I was fully aware that the last thing you should do with someone who is in a severe emotional crisis, especially after the loss of their spouse to suicide - no matter how many months have passed - is NEVER leave them alone!!

The only thing I got out of that fight is that the only person I have left to rely on to keep me alive is me. No one else is going to come running to help me stay grounded or in touch with life itself. No one is going to be here to tell me I am needed or loved or valuable. No one is going to do what my husband used to do for me and what I feel I could not do for him in his final hours.

Today was a bad day for me - a good day for my sister. We took a drive to her place. I was tired. I woke up upset and crying and severely missing my hubby but we had planned to take a road trip today so I didn't want to let her down, so I sucked it up, did some deep breathing and off we went on another of her whirlwind journeys. I will admit it was a peaceful day, we stopped in at two particularly beautiful parks near the crystal clear water, we ate lunch at a beach, but despite all of that I had this intense missing of him inside of me. It was an ache that wanted me to break down at a moments notice. I said to her at one point that I was missing him really bad today and she said, "Me too." I don't think she realized the difference until we were on our way home and a song on the radio had me pouring silent tears and struggling to contain the sobs.

I miss him so much today. I just miss him so much, I just wanted to be here at home in my room, hugging on his shirt and crying all day long. I just wanted to be snuggled up against his blanket and taking it easy, not thinking, not "doing", just lying there being "with him". After a time, I need my time "with him" and not with anyone else. He can't just be replaced. No one can just step up and fill that void that used to hold him. She can't give me new experiences to over-write the old ones and just make me suddenly happy, that's not how it works and with PTSD screwed up memory encoding system, it's never going to work that way anymore anyway.

I had 20 years of day in, day out with this man. I loved him beyond mere words. I can't just let go of all of that and move on to "bigger and better" - there is never going to be any better, just different. Everything from here on in will just be different - and I've never liked different.

I want him back. I want his arms around me. I want his hand in mine. I hate this universe that would take him from me when I needed him in my life so much. What happens to me now? Who do I become now? How do I function on my own? How do I identify with anything on my own? Everyone I know is paired now - hell even my perpetually single older friend is now paired with someone, a miracle in itself we all thought the guy would die alone. Ugggh. Where do I even belong in this world anymore?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

It is such an intense time of adjusting to the being single part of life after depending on a soul mate for so many years in my opinion. I hate that it takes time and I wish I could offer you something that would comfort you and bring some closure and real peace to you at this time.

It takes time and it is a baptism of fire you have to walk this path and eventually enough time will have passed that you barely notice that you are going to have more and more good days, they come later on. The first year is the hardest and it really sucks so much Medic. Your entire life has been turned upside down and you are trying to regain your balance which is so complicated by such a huge loss that is so complicated in itself.

Just keep on taking the best care of you that you can and go ahead and grieve no matter what anyone around you tells you what to do. Let it all out so you can become healed with a peaceful closure later on. Hang in there, You are doing your best each and every day.:hug:

 

[Heather]

I'm sorry you feel like you have no one to rely on when emotionally you are at your lowest. I'm not that spiritual but do you believe in that "footprints" (is it a poem, I don't know). Does that offer any comfort?

Take it moment by moment if you have to...you are doing the best you can...

Hugs to you medic.

 

[NarcSis]

I had him, that is why he was so damned important to me, he was the only person I'd ever met in my entire life who just got me, who stood by me and who held me up when I was down. I needed him so much after PTSD and now that he's gone, there's no one that even gets me, who even tries to understand and when I'm feeling at my absolute lowest and looking for someone to tell me I am worth something, everyone disappears. I noticed this in the early stages of PTSD, there was no one here for me but him and even though he really didn't fully understand what was happening, he stayed, he made the effort and he fought for me. I needed him.

I don't know how to do this alone. I know, there is the "but you're doing it" thing that I've already heard from my old partner but I can't even describe just how tough this is to push through. PTSD was tough but this is on a completely different level. Instead of waking every day to fight demons in my head, I'm fighting to find reasons to stay alive. Every single day the internal debate in my head is whether there really is any point to life. I mean, after he died, the whole fiasco was rendered pointless to me. Why do we bother filling our heads with knowledge because after you die, that all disappears into the mist! Why do we work so hard for anything, because all of the accolades and kudos are rendered null and void of meaning once you die. All of the things he did in this life are completely meaningless now - his police service, his paramedic service, his education, his diplomas, his exemplary service medal, his letters of commendation, his pin collection, his family heirlooms, the clock that a coworker who died gave to him, all of the paperwork about a complaint he'd once filed, his record keeping of his treatment by his superiors - all of it only held meaning to him but he doesn't exist anymore....so it means nothing to anyone else, not even to me. I mean, who am I going to pass that stuff on too? We have no kids. His legacy died with him. The whole life we had together died the day he shot himself. It all ended.

I don't like life with just me in it. Life is supposed to be shared. Sharing it with my sister is not the same. Sharing it with anyone else in the future would just not be the same. What is going to happen to me when I'm old? Who is going to be here for me when I'm sick? What is going to happen to me if I ever pass out...or fall down...or break something? Will they simply find me melted into the floor weeks after the fact?

Even if I ever take my own life for crying out loud, will it be weeks before anyone even notices I'm missing??? My neighbors won't notice, I could be gone for months and they still wouldn't notice, I mean, I hardly leave my house, my vehicle rarely leaves that driveway, so what would be amiss for them to pick up on? Nothing, that's what. The only one who would worry would be my sister but even then, we've gone weeks without speaking or chatting or IM-ing one another in the past. Who is going to be here for me as I get older? We had no children. We have no close family. We have no close friends.

I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out of this friendship thing that is going on in my life - my old partner, my "buddy", my new hiking friend....his partner hasn't IM'd me or texted in about a month, so I'm wondering if that was the stereotypical One-Time-Check-Up-On-You-And-I've-Done-My-Part thing, like his old former partners did. My buddy won't make an effort to contact me as long as he's got someone in his life to pay attention to him and do things for him (new gf), so we're back to the old me being the one who makes all the effort to keep that connection open - I don't know why, his life still goes on without me, it's not like he'd ever notice me missing either. My new hiking friend hasn't contacted me other than to ask about group hikes that I couldn't make it too. My old partner is still here and this one I'm afraid of the most because she is so good at making you attach to her; she's caring, empathetic and a skilled listener, so if she suddenly disappears on me again something is going to break.

How do you survive completely alone? or do you? I mean, I'd rather be out in the middle of nowhere with self-imposed isolation and needing to actually survive than to be here waiting for the bottom to fall out of this life, surrounded by people and still feeling disconnected and alone.

My sister is going to a coworkers party tomorrow, I wasn't invited so she's going alone which is great because I can finally collapse like I've been wanting to do all week. I can have my quiet alone time. I can do my household chores that need to get done. I can pay bills and enjoy this little thing I kinda miss called privacy. I can lay in bed and cry just for the sake of crying and I can speak to him aloud again. You see? I've already created a life without people, so much so that I get all disrupted when people are here. The sad thing is, is that I feel like I also need people, but only when I need them and not all the time. Can you just be here when I need you and go away when I feel okay again? If only....

It's not like I was that way with him either. I needed him and wanted him with me all the time but as a couple, we disliked being around others for too long. We were looking forward to retirement and it still seemed so far away. We had our little dreams that likely never would have panned out because we'd both have been suffering from too many injuries to enjoy life the way we'd always envisioned it. We wanted to buy a place in the country, with some land to walk on, maybe a forested acreage, a fishing pond, a granny flat for his mom, a stone cottage, a barn where he could learn how to blacksmith, two dogs, some chickens, goats and a garden to keep me busy. We just wanted a simple life. A place where we could learn the value of hard work and feel worth something because of our hard work. We wanted to watch the sun go down together and eventually die together, in our sleep, hand in hand, loving each other like the day we first met. Pipe dreams.

I've lost faith in dreaming. There seems no point to it now. Each day the sun rises and sets and I just drag myself through it, no future, no hopes and sure as hell, no dreaming. What has dreaming ever gotten me in life other than to teach me that often dreams are not attainable. Hubby was the same way, he never became the cop he wanted to be. He never became the manager he wanted to be, or the recon guy he wanted to be...he never won that lottery he planned for. I guess he lost faith in dreaming too.

There are no lessons to be learned from his death. There is no "reason you were left behind." There is nothing in store for me, other than the culmination of 4 years of fighting with a bastard of an employer who took everything from me, including my husband. I see no point, maybe this is why I'm not worrying about my finances anymore - its just money, I can't take it with me when I die...he couldn't.

People say, "think about what he would want you to do". Well he wanted me to write a book and become a famous author....I'm waiting for this pain to stop interfering with my ability to write concisely. I'm waiting to be motivated. I'm waiting to start and stop procrastinating. I think really I'm waiting to be okay again and for my life to just stop being flipped into the air. He would want me to....go on living? I don't even know about that one because I know he hated being alone ( yes, I can hear it now, "he's not alone, he's got family and loved ones with him." sure if that's what makes you happy, right now it doesn't help me to feel better). We belonged together and this is NOT FAIR!!!!

I miss him. I'm waiting to see if I can take a course in memoir and begin my journey on paper. I'll do it for him.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

@Medic72 I had secretly planned to take my own life whenever my husband died, because I truly believed that I would have no life without him. But Hospice was there at the end and I had family support for a short time and I guess I chose life because I did not go through with my plans.

It gets lonely at times for me living alone and I have made arrangements with my manager and his wife to contact my daughter in case something happens to me. I even have a neighbor that checks up on me, The last year has been an interesting adventure with many ups and downs.

I tell you this because I think you are going through such an intense mourning time, because your husbands death was self imposed upon you and quite sudden. It was like that for me when I was nineteen years old and my mom had been killed in a plane crash. The crash was on the news right before we got the phone call.

I will hang on to life and believe for you when you cannot.

I have made my own buriel arrangements right after my husband died and I also made a living trust for my daughter so she will not have me as a burden in the end. I am also writing in journals to my daughter and my two granddaughters many words of love and comfort to leave them when I am finally gone.

This is how I chose to best take care of me in the unknown future. There are things that you can prearrange when you are ready to help yourself for the sake of who ever is left behind that really loves you. Maybe it is not for you what I have planned for myself but I feel a sense of peace knowing that my loved ones will not have a burden with me while they are dealing with their grief of loss.

I understand where you are coming from. I thought about all of these things when my husband got so sick and I was taking care of him. So in a way I was more prepared but it was still a shock to me. I chose life. There is something inside of me that refuses to give up on life no matter what.

I sure hope all of this makes some sort of sense to you and helps to answer a few of your questions.:hug:

 

[scout86]

There is a lot of meaning left behind when people die. At least some of the time. With your husband, the fact remains that there are people alive because of him. And they move through the world and change the lives of others, because of him. There are all the people he trained, out saving lives, because of him. You know what it feels like to be loved and accepted because he lived. The world is a better place because he was in it, even if only for a little while.

I suppose this stuff only has meaning if we choose to see it that way, but I see it that way.

 

[Heather]

@Medic72 hugs.