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My husband died today

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@gizmo, each year I would make him his favorite dinner and his favorite dessert, chocolate cake. Last fall he told me that he didn't really like chocolate cake all that much, he loved my apple crisp more, he said his favorite dessert was chocolate cake until he had my apple crisp. I had promised to make him some but never got around to it before he died. It's strange that the first day I came home after he died, one of the first things I thought was, "I never made you your apple crisp, I'm so sorry, Tin."

Of course, I've been making him chocolate cake for the past 20 years so....I think I'll continue with the chocolate cake thing this year. He loved meatloaf and on his birthday and Valentine's Day I always made him a heart shaped meatloaf. So I will do that again, with mashed potatoes. I personally do not like meatloaf and he always found it so fascinating that I would eat it just for him on his special day. He once told me that I didn't have to make it for him but I told him it was His Day and he should be able to eat His Favorite meal. He used to brag to people that I always did this for him. I think it meant so much to him because I made "sacrifices for him" on his day, I gave up my needs for his.

I miss him so much. I could really use his hugs right now.

That was sometimes his gift too because he once told me never to try to get him anything related to his hobbies because they were too specialized (he collected knives, constructed models and collected coins). I think it was because he knew what he wanted, what he had and what things were worth collecting. I would never have been able to figure it out. I usually got him a card and a gift card for a sporting goods store because he was always an avid camping gear guy. I always complained about how non-romantic he was with me (I had to pick my own gifts, never got a gift on the appropriate day because he never thought ahead and if I wanted to go out, it had to be somewhere that didn't require reservations because he never planned ahead) but now i would give anything to have him here to complain about again. You think stupid things like, "if he was back I'd never complain about him again." But you know you would.

He would have been 53 years old. That is so not old and yet, he moved like an 80 year old because of his years of injuries, many of which he never sought treatment for because, heaven forbid he lose time from work. Work was his life. Everything he did, if it wasn't for me, was for work. He spent so much money on belt clips, belt accessories, the newest pen, pouches, seat belt cutters etc. etc. He searched youtube for better ways to handle emergencies, newest techniques for intubation etc. He subscribed to emergency journals and was always looking to learn the latest and greatest in the field. I noticed about a year ago that he was becoming tired of this kind of thing. He was starting to complain that the things he'd done for years on his own were now being Expected of them and he was starting to realize that work was taking a lot from his time off. He was getting tired. He was starting to wear down....but he'd often worn down in the past. It comes in cycles, every five years. It hadn't been five years yet. It had only been about two years since his last "bad spell".

How did he not survive this phase? How is it that he didn't get out of this one? How in hell did this all add up and suddenly kill him?

I read a story about a woman who lost her husband and was in counselling. She said her counselor told her her husband died from "Impulsive suicide". I'd never heard that there were different categories of suicide before. All I ever keep hearing is that people who commit suicide have an undiagnosed illness and that they are mentally ill. My husband wasn't mentally ill. The day before this all started he was in complete control of his faculties, he was happy, he was well adjusted and there seemed to be nothing seriously wrong other than a constant stress, until he spun into crisis the next day. The sad thing about this woman's story is that the counselor told her that his impulse was triggered by their fight that they were having at the time - does this poor woman not want to die now because some stupid counselor just told her in a round about way that his death was her fault! A depressed mind will extrapolate on the negative. A suicide survivor will look for reasons why it's their fault.

I cycle repeatedly into the "I'm a bitch and he died because of me." phases. It's so easy to fall into those. It's so easy to beat yourself up.

I miss him. I don't know why he suddenly wanted to die. I wish he could just come home to me again.
 
You think stupid things like, "if he was back I'd never complain about him again." But you know you would.

I understand how you are thinking and feeling on this one because to this day I have my litany of regrets as well that goes back years. I do not have a useful tip in how to deal with the thoughts that come because I still do that with my husband and see myself as some sort of shew.

I am aware that if I had him back I would change so many things about me and how I treated him. I can relate very much. But I am slowly coming to terms that I did what I thought I knew at the time and of course I have to deal with the realities.

I cycle repeatedly into the "I'm a bitch and he died because of me." phases. It's so easy to fall into those. It's so easy to beat yourself up.

at least you are aware that you are beating yourself up. That is half the battle. I do not think we need to punish ourselves anymore, I know easier said than done. But you made me realize that I see myself in this light as well and I think I need help with this one. It is like being in hell for what reason?

Many hugs to you as you prepare to celebrate your husbands birthday and I sure hope that it is a good thing for you in the end.:hug::hug::hug:
 
I broke his laptop. I feel like he just died all over again.

His laptop was always broken where the screen attaches to the base, one side came out when he dropped it for the third time on the floor. So the sad thing is, it was already broken so I was being so careful ever since he died because only we knew how to close it so it wouldn't break. I tried to close it in the dark. I wasn't careful. The "arm" popped out and now it won't close, the plastic also cracked and I'm not sure if the screen will ever work again. :(

Only he knew how to fix it when it popped out that badly. He never showed me how to do it and he never explained to me how he did it when it originally happened. God, I'm so sad. There was nothing wrong with the computer it was a perfectly functioning laptop. Why did I even touch it!? It has been sitting beside the bed on the floor since shortly after he died. I didn't get to transfer anything onto a separate hard drive!

Uggh. He loved that laptop. It was his biggest most treasured and desired purchase. It was an Alienware gaming computer, not the most powerful but good enough. He just loved that stupid computer, to him it was a status symbol....and I just f'd it up.

God, I feel so stupid right now. I just feel so stupid, especially since I wrote a bad note to him on the computer the night before. I've been having some extreme neck pain, to the point where it hurt to just turn my head to the left in any capacity. It hurt when I'd rise from sitting. It hurt when I'd be driving and on the third day of this extreme pain and starting to develop a strange all over body ache (including my skin!), I thought, "This is what he was going through, wasn't it? Months of this. This is the pain he was feeling last year and I treated him badly because he was 'being a drag' and not 'sucking it up'. I was a bitch to him." and then I thought, "Why am I suddenly hurting like this? Is he doing this to me? Is he paying me back for not believing him?" So yeah, I opened his laptop that night, started a file on it intending to write to him each night and I asked him if this was him making me feel the pain he'd been suffering. Specifically I asked him if he was angry at me and he was "doing" this to me to get back at me.

And the laptop breaks the next morning.

Uggh. I feel so stupid. Especially since I was looking through old emails and found a picture he'd sent me in an email of him in his winter garb, bundled up, sunglasses, black hat low on his forehead and a scarf pulled high to his nose and the note on the email says, "See, even scary guys love you." If he loved me, why in hell would he be reaching out beyond the grave to hurt me? I'm just being ridiculous.

God, I wish I could fix that laptop. :(
 
Specifically I asked him if he was angry at me and he was "doing" this to me to get back at me.

I believe that this is a lie, as you have written so many wonderful things you did for him. I think you are beating yourself up when instead in truth I think you are being tormented with bad regrets. It is such an easy thing to do, I have done it and do it to myself still and it is three years later!

I am so sorry that you are having bad pain and maybe a trip to the doctor to see if this can be fixed? To get some treatment that you deserve instead of punishing yourself.

I am truly sorry that you broke the laptop, it was an accident and you did not do it on purpose. Here is a suggestion or food for thought to consider. Take it to a repair shop and let them fix it so it is not broken anymore, something he should have done I think. Just toss all of this if it does not work for you.

I was wearing my husbands gold with diamonds wedding ring and it slipped off of my finger into the trash and I could not find it and I grieved so hard so much for so long and still regret not putting it in a jewelry box for safekeeping, but I was in your position living alone so fresh from his death. These things just happen, we do not do them on purpose at all proving that we are not the villians that we make ourselves to be.

You are grieving and not in your right mind please do not take this the wrong way. You are normal in your grieving process and these things just are a part of life and you surely must be beyond exhaustion at this point in my opinion.

I will continue to stand by you and be a support to you if that is okay. :hug::hug::hug::hug::hug::hug:
 
I'm considering writing an email to the company that makes the laptops and explain to them what happened and let them know that he died and this means a lot to me. I don't know though, I feel like I'm begging for charity. I also don't know if I want to spend the money it will cost to get it fixed. Uggh. This is just so bad.

This whole thing is a disguised regret. I regret not being nicer to him when he was in pain but, I'm sorry, you have to understand, he was ALWAYS in pain from the day I met him, I used to think he was a bit of a hypochondriac. Of course, that kind of thing really hurt him because his own family doc said this to him and treated him like crap every time he went to see him for something. In the beginning, I was worried about the sheer amount of OTC pain meds he was consuming - then my career really got underway and I fully understood, there isn't a day you don't come home with something aching or strained.

That being said, I was worn down when it came to caring for other people, what do they call that? Compassion fatigue? After PTSD it hit me pretty hard when it came to assuming that caretaker role for my husband, I would get supremely irritable and easily worn down by his "demands". Uggh, and he wasn't a demanding patient, he was a sullen patient who would say things like, "Just leave me alone." and I wouldn't know whether that's what he meant or if he was just depressed because he wasn't feeling well!!! I would just sit and worry that I wasn't doing right by him and the more I worried, the more irritated I would get and the more I would resent his being ill.

He was in some pretty bad pain in those last few months before he died. In my opinion nothing worth dying over, he could still move but he complained a lot, every single day, every hour, every movement something was hurting and he let you know about it. I was tired. I was upset because I couldn't take it away for him. I tried to encourage him to keep moving and exercising because I was worried that if he stopped moving he would get hurt worse. I also had to walk the fine line of not sounding like I was not believing him and treating him like a hypochondriac because he was so sensitive to that. His doc accused him once. His coworkers accused him once when he had a kidney stone episode. His mother accused him when he was a kid. The physiotherapist he was seeing last winter was starting to question his complaints and he felt he was being accused of making it up - he was VERY sensitive to people not believing his complaints.

His neck was the worst. It was the longest. He hurt his neck shortly after I hurt my shoulder at work (and was getting early treatment for the PTSD). So that was 8 years ago in August 2008 when he got thrown in the back of the ambulance and hurt his neck. He wore a collar for a week. There was no fracture, but he was never fully convinced of that. His pain never really went away. His neck was his "go-to" complaint and excuse for not doing things after that. We stopped hiking like we used too. We stopped exercising daily and eventually just stopped altogether. He bought specialty pillows, He bought specialty ice/heat packs. He had a neck traction device (which incidentally started causing him dizziness and nausea so he had to stop using it). If i ever tried to help his pain, selfishly I think because I was tired of hearing about it, he would tell me no, he didn't want anyone "messing" with his neck. It was really frustrating because every offer of massage, heat, pain rubs that I gave him he refused. I felt like he wanted to be in pain, like it gave him some kind of odd purpose or something.

I was tired of it. I was tired of him always being in pain and not being able to LIVE with me. I think he lost touch with life a long time ago. He was too obsessed with the pain he had and I'm sorry, but he seemed to enjoy being in pain. I don't know why I say that, but its how I was feeling at the time. I was just so happy when he finally started doing something to seriously address his pain in December of last year, getting physiotherapy and seeing an osteopath. I had hope. He had hope. He even said to me, "I'll be so glad when this pain is finally taken care of, we can go back to being outside more again, we can get back in shape." He was dead three weeks later!

He had hope to finally be better. He was picturing himself better. Stupid physiotherapist had to go and hurt him! After that he didn't trust them, he was afraid to report what happened, he was afraid to get in trouble with workers comp, he was obsessing on the pain again, it was getting worse and not better. He cried in pain one day. Then the last straw that stupid physiotherapist told him that his x-rays showed he had an enlarged heart!!!

Like F!!!

This was his other worst health concern. He developed an arrhythmia a year after we started living together, his doc treated him like a hypochondriac, made him feel like a crazy person because every time he went to the doc they couldn't catch it. He was having episodic PVCs, his heart was skipping beats but in long runs not short ones. He was worried because when it happened he could feel it, his heart felt funny, he felt out of breath, he was having symptoms. He went through ECGs and heart monitors and then finally during a stress test his heart went into PVC couplets and he finally had his proof that he wasn't crazy. His doctor labelled them benign but the second that happened it started to affect his licence to drive the ambulance - every three year recertification he had to go through tons of tests in a limited time frame so the DOT wouldn't pull his licence! So yeah, his heart was a HUGE concern for him for the past 19 years!!

He'd just finished running the gauntlet of getting his heart recertified to keep his licence and hearing someone then tell you that your heart is enlarged!? He was destroyed.

You know everyone I told this story, every single medic who spoke to me at the funeral or the visitation said to me, "So? Everyone throws PVCs once in a while." Well, not everyone goes into bigeminy, repeatedly and gets symptomatic because of it. He hid it really well so he could stay working. It was a HUGE concern for him. No one understood how someone telling him his heart was enlarged could cause him to shoot himself.

I guess none of them have ever been faced with any hardship in their entire lives.

He'd just received the approval for his licence three days before he died. He was so worried about going through all of that testing that he was looking for naturopathic ways to suppress PVCs! That's how worried he was that he was going to lose his licence this time. The more stress he was under, the more episodes of bigeminy he would have. It was a really stressful thing for him to have to go through.

And then someone told him something ELSE was wrong with his heart. 20 hours was all that news took to kill him.

I wanted that guy dead. I prayed and prayed and prayed that he would get hit by a bus or something horrible would happen to him. I even called on the fates to excise my revenge. There was one person to blame in my husband's death, a physiotherapist who should NEVER have made a diagnosis - that was NOT in his scope of practice. I learn AFTER my husband dies that ALL hearts appear enlarged on x-ray and will read as such! Everyone I spoke to about it acted like this was common knowledge - well, maybe he and I were just supremely stupid then, right? This is NOT common knowledge unless you're an x-ray tech or a physician!!

My hubby isn't in pain anymore. He doesn't ever have to worry about his heart ever again. I never have to hear him complain and watch helpless and angry that he's pushing me away when I just want to find some way to help him. I never have to worry that he'll drop of a sudden heart attack or develop cancer or die from emphysema or kill himself over his never-ending pain.

I worry that I will kill myself over the regrets, the self blame and my inability to find purpose in my life anymore. I had started to come to terms with no longer being a paramedic. I was starting to accept that I can no longer handle even a fraction of the stress I used too. I was starting to come to terms with my true disability and inability to hold down a job. I was just accepting my new role as a house wife. Now I'm no longer a wife. If the house fell down around me no one would care. Hell, if a plane crashed through the roof right now, I would be grateful because it would take the burden of "decision" away from me.

I regret not being nicer to him. I regret not being able to function like the soft, caring person I used to be - does that regret change the person I've become? Nope, it just makes my inability to be that person I once was more glaring and painful to me. I wasn't the same person he fell in love with anymore....and he still said he loved me. He was always the person I fell in love with. He was always in there, no matter how sour his mood, I could look in his eyes and see him, that hurt little boy who just needed to be loved. I loved that man with everything I had. I've got nothing left. I don't know if I ever want anyone else...maybe I have to start finding ways to love me. (that makes me want to say "barf")

I am not the person i once was. I can't love me because of that. I liked the person I used to be. I don't know how to love this person, she hates, and rages, and fears, and cries and hides and gets numb and demands attention and gets so easily irritated. She can't defend herself without breaking down. I don't know how to like this person. I don't know how to even start loving that. This person sees no use for her in this life.

How could HE have left? He still had purpose. He still had meaning. He still had worth. I had nothing, why am I still here? It makes no sense. I don't like this book, I want to skip to the end. :(
 
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@seedling yes, I did google it. There are a million and one youtube videos of people completely disassembling these laptops, why I'll never know, but there are no videos of how to fix cracked screen / hinges on his particular laptop. I wouldn't even try it if I could. The sad thing is, he has stickers with his name on it on the back of his screen, so if I just replaced the whole screen I would lose those things that were his, that idea just tears me up inside. I'm seriously considering sending an email to the company to see if they can help me (older model no longer for sale) either by fixing it for me for free or I'll pay for a new screen, or if they can download his hard drive for me so I can keep it / "him". I don't know. Maybe I'll just toss all of that info in the email.

Uggh, my heart is just broken over this laptop.
 
@scout86 I'm at a loss, my husband would have known, he was the tech guy, he had his people he could reach out too. It's also an older model Alienware from Dell, so I don't know if anyone in this area would have been into those, they're not exactly common. Uggh, wish i could just show it to him and ask him what he had to do the last time this happened.

I'll see what I can find from google in my area but I still think emailing Alienware might be the better choice, maybe they can point me to a local tech.
 
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