My husband died today

[NarcSis]

I really love my mind, today I stood staring at a note pad and wondering what in heck I was supposed to write down for things to do today - WRITE THE EMAIL ABOUT THE LAPTOP! Instead I wrote, sweep/wash/vacuum. Uggh.

One woman on an online support group went over the details of her husband's coroner's report (he shot himself) because she didn't understand it - it was very disturbing to me and no, I didn't have to read it, I had the full option of just shutting down the discussion but for some stupid reason I read half of it. I'm dumb sometimes. It got me thinking about my husband again and how he died. I also watched a movie where a man took a shotgun blast to his side, near point blank. I watched in horror as this man on the screen went into shock, tried to speak as his blood spilled out and down his body onto the floor, then he started to choke and struggle to breathe before he movie style died. I know it's just a movie and they have to play it up for entertainment purposes, but God. God. What did my poor hubby go through in his last moments?

That haunts me every day. Every day I wonder if he was afraid, if he was sorry, if he wished he hadn't pulled the trigger and if he took long to die. How long was he like that dying all alone? All alone! We were never apart from one another! He died alone. I never wanted him to die alone. I wanted to be with him, know he was loved - it wasn't supposed to happen like this, he was supposed to be old and concluding a long life surrounded by love, not alone, not in pain, not way earlier than he was supposed too!

I took the dog for a long hike through the trails today; trails my husband never got to see, trails we were supposed to explore together this winter. We hiked for an hour and a half, I wanted to do a 3 hour hike but the dog wasn't used to the hills, so we turned back half way. (VERY steep hills) Every time I'm out there in the woods I'm looking for him. I'm searching the woods, looking to see if he'll come out from behind a tree or be on a distant ridge or sitting on a log somewhere waiting for me. I miss him that much. I feel closer to him in the woods, I don't know why.

Early this morning I went to a local conservation area because I was invited to watch my niece at a running meet - I drove around an empty conservation area for a full hour checking parking lots, all the while, the coffees I'd bought for everyone were getting colder and colder. As it turned out, my brother forgot to mention in his message that the meet isn't until SATURDAY!!! I was very unhappy. On the way home I cried because I was so frustrated and wishing my husband was with me to keep me calm. I get so supremely frustrated and angry without him to help me anymore. I don't know how to let things go, they just swim around in my head bothering me and I have no one to redirect me. He used to be so good at that, helping me see things in a different way, a less aggravating way. I was driving and I just screamed, "I hate my family! You were the only real family I had, Tin. We were a family! How come you took my family away!?"

God I miss him so much. How could he have killed himself?

It will be 8 months on Friday. I hate the end of every month now. It's the end of Suicide Prevention Month. I won't have to be constantly exposed to How to See It Happening or How to Stop It articles that just irk me because, well, give me a f'ing break, sometimes you just can't see it. If those articles were true, then they insinuate that I am stupid in some way.

A friend of my mother-in-law just lost her son to suicide, so now they've bonded. Of course, the second woman had her son living WITH her and my husband's mom hadn't seen her son in 11 years when he died...but they've bonded because of a shared experience and they're helping each other through it. I don't actually know anyone else whose husband killed themselves, other than online. I can't have someone over for coffee to just chat about how I'm feeling; I don't have anyone who can actually say to me, I get that too. It'd be nice to actually hear those words, they'd probably make me cry and lift some of this weight off my shoulders.

Everywhere in the US this month there were repeated Out of the Darkness walks to honor the memory of those lost to suicide, raise money for suicide prevention and help to bring attention to the stigma surrounding suicides......meanwhile, here in Canada, we still stick our heads in the sand and refuse to be vocal in any way about suicide. You know, stiff upper lip and all. Do you know we don't even have a single National Suicide Prevention Hotline!? It's 2016!! For my province, Ontario, there isn't a single hotline that covers all of the province - nope, if you're in crisis you have to refer people to this Provincial website where you click on your area, then you click on your local jurisdiction, then you go to their website and maybe then you will actually find a number to dial!! Like how ridiculous! You send a person in crisis, clicking through some stupid rat maze!? Sometimes being anal retentive is inappropriate. I'd love to just see One BIG NUMBER at the top of a central website that I can call when I can't think straight and all I want to do is die - I don't know, maybe that's asking for too much.

I'd also love to be able to walk with other survivors and share the frickin' experience by standing up and honoring my husband in some small way. A walk to a candle lighting ceremony or something. If these things exist here, they're not public knowledge, they're only known to locals in that local area.

I'm depressed. I'm having some really bad days. My moods swing from content to sad to angry to intensely depressed and beating myself up. I'm feeling numb toward other people again, like when people say they care for me, I think to myself, "I feel nothing for you. It's just blank again and that makes me sad." I smile and it's not real. I went to lunch with old coworkers the other day and kept thinking, "Listen to them, be present, engage, laugh." like I was running a script or something. I just wanted to say to them, "I'm not okay. I don't feel okay." but I can't. I don't know them that way, besides I don't want to burden them, we're not that close anymore.

I need therapy but I'm in a panic state too because of the amount of cash that's just slipped through my fingers this month. I can afford another session but I can't afford to add to the panic right now, so I have to hold off on therapy sessions for MY sanity. How does that make sense!? I need it but I'm too afraid to pay for it. Hubby could have talked me down, he could have made it all look better. As it sits. my therapist called to say she has to submit a report to my doc for the disability application I filled out and she'll have to charge me 2.5 hours for that!!! I almost wanted to jump off a bridge because of the panic of just hearing that and then she asked if I wanted to book a session!! Wow. Just, wow.

I don't know how to control this issue I have with panic over my financial future. I should be okay for at least 10 years. I should be. I hope I will be. Ahhhh, to be honest, I don't really know if it will last me 10 years. Uggh. See? Panic. Racing thoughts, unknowns, fear and panic. I SHOULD be okay. I can't change that to I will be okay because I don't know. God, even hubby was having trouble with this with me in his last year. He didn't know how to calm my money paranoia. One day we were out shopping and he said, "Will you calm down, we HAVE money, I MAKE good money, if you want the name brands, buy the name brands! If you want shoes, I'll buy you shoes! Just stop this worrying." I stopped pointing out things I liked because he started automatically buying me whatever I liked. Now he's gone. His income is gone. Mine is limited. Ugggh! How do I control that?

I still needed him so much. I still needed him here to help me get through my days. How could he have left me? How could he have taken my "family" away? I still needed him.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

:hug:

 

[Sandstone]

Isn't good therapy the best thing you can give yourself? How long is it since you had a session with your T?

 

[NarcSis]

@Sandstone, it's been a month but I really have to take a serious look at my financial situation, I've got more "big expenses" coming up (vehicle) etc. Sadly one thing I've learned over the past 8 years is that no psychologist can wave a magic wand and suddenly you're better. Since I can only afford one session a month I'm doing most of the grief work myself anyway with online resources. I just wish there was more "real life" support. I miss hearing conversations. I miss real people. I want to be in a group where I can readily say, "I want to die" without people starting to run around flailing their arms and screaming.

I just need to back off on spending money for a bit until I can regroup and get a hold of myself.

 

[Gadgie]

just wish there was more "real life" support. I miss hearing conversations. I miss real people. I want to be in a group where I can readily say, "I want to die" without people starting to run around flailing their arms and screaming.

Yea! I know exactly what you mean, I really miss being with "real people" and being able to talk to someone who understands.

Yet, at the same time, I get scared and anxious if I'm in with a lot of people, or in a crowded room. I really miss talking to the therapist I used to go and see a few years ago.

I'm rooting for you, along with everyone else on this site, keep smiling, good luck.

 

[NarcSis]

@Gadgie, exactly, crowds I can't do, group seems highly intimidating and anxiety provoking to me and my counselor is only available via telephone - I long for a one on one sit down with someone who actually understands. My counselor gets all agitated and overly concerned if I start to mention suicidal thoughts or pre-occupation with my husband's suicide, like I said, I don't want to cause undue panic, I just want someone to say, "Okay, I get it, keep talking." or "I've been there and I know what you're going through."

Uggh. I just finished an online course in Counselling on Access to Lethal Means and it made me think things like, when my husband took his suicide intervention course last fall, did he take it for me or did he take it for him? I know he was highly disturbed by the course, simply because of how callous the cops who were taking it were. He said some of the participants were super highly naive about the reality of life and suicide, while others were just ridiculously callous and found suicide scenes far too fascinating. He said a lot of the cops were quite immature about it and a couple were just too interested in learning more about methodology. No one was actually assessing the students in that course for their personal suicide risk, it was just assumed that everyone was there because of their job and their willingness to help others.

This online course, sadly, taught me things I did not know before and for someone who experiences suicidal ideation, some of this knowledge I probably could have done without, for example, lethality of means. It just made me think, did the course my husband took teach him these things too? Did it help him refine a silent unspoken "future" plan or idea of what suicide options could exist for him? He already owned his weapons - WITH me in this house experiencing high stress, suicidal ideation and begging him not to keep weapons in the house for MY sake. The plan we made to keep me safe was not a plan that is suggested by the course I just took. The weapons should have been stored elsewhere, removed from the house - worse yet, should never have been purchased because he already KNEW about my suicide risk.

He never talked about that course other than to repeatedly mention how disturbing he felt it was to him. He said he did not need to be exposed to the traumatic recollections of his peers who attended suicide scenes. It was a typical gathering of public safety professionals - who attended the worst call - with each one trying to one-up the other with their stories and he said the zest that some of them repeated their stories with, he doubted they'd actually been at the scene.

My husband had many stories of suicide scenes. I'd heard them. I also had enough of my own scenes I'd been to. How many suicides had I seen in my years on the road? 40? More? I'd hazard a guess of At Least 40. Well, my husband had more years in than I did, so....there was one I heard repeatedly year after year that really disturbed him. He recounted it just 14 days before he died. To be fair to him, we were discussing the suicide of a police officer friend of my brother that day and of course, it naturally triggered the memory of that suicide scene he'd been on.

It dawned on me tonight as I worked my way through that course, if I wanted to "be serious" about suicide and I was an intelligent person who did not wish to be stigmatized, I would take the courses to learn as much as I possibly could in order to ensure lethality. Isn't that completely ridiculous!? It made me think, is this what my husband did? Was he trying to help himself hoping the course would help him and it inadvertently refined his unspoken idea?

I don't like to post-humously judge my husband as a person suffering from depression or suicidal ideation or any other mental illness but he's not here to tell me how long he'd had thoughts of suicide. I know we'd talked about it before, on several occasions as a matter of fact and he did admit that he'd thought about suicide when things were really tough for him when he was much younger, (teenager) but he surmised that everyone went through that point. I had told him that my "if I were ever going to do it" thoughts only started AFTER I graduated University and felt trapped in a life I thought a degree would save me from. That wasn't true. I'd had thoughts of it before, as a teen, or younger.

I learned tonight that 40% of suicides are impulsive with no previous plan. So I learned that he was actually quite "normal" for a suicide. I also learned that firearms are the most commonly lethal method - duh, who doesn't know that, it's a feakin machine designed to kill. (If anyone is suicidal and has access to weapon, GET RID OF IT) I learned that impulsive suicides often arise from things like feeling trapped, physical altercations, arguments, arrests etc. Highly charged emotional situations from which the person feels there is no escape.

Like potentially having a bad heart.

Impulsivity is next to impossible to forsee. Implusives don't often pre-threaten. For some their previous inclinations will never have been toward suicide. Impulsives are in crisis - this is the only indicator. impulsives aren't always successful. Crises pass and this is the key thing to help someone impulsively considering suicide or actively threatening, the emotional pain will subside.

I know this. I've been there so many times. Gotta wait for the wave to hit the shore and it WILL dissipate.

But to think suicide, don't you have had to have a suicidal thought before? Unvoiced? I think you do. I like to think that every human being does because it's a natural thing to think of death and what it would be like to die. We live a long time. In those years we face trials, sometimes, in our pain, we wish we were just dead so that we didn't have to face whatever it is we're facing.

I remember as a child, running away from my home, not wanting to go home, like going back home was the absolute worse possibility in the whole world - I would have rather died than to have gone back home...and I thought about hanging in a tree, but I had no rope...and I was too little to climb most trees. I was LITTLE!! 8? 9? 10? I was little.

My husband was a teenager when he said he was so upset he wanted to die, not necessarily kill himself, but not care if he got hit by a car. Was that a disguised thought? A lot of people will deny it to themselves because of the power of stigma. I was honest with him after I had no choice, only AFTER I admitted it to my therapist, did I fight against the stigma and shame and say to him, "I tried to kill myself twice already." He cried. He told me, "Please don't hurt my Medic." He told me his life was better because of me and he would be nothing without me.

I told him how it wasn't about him in those moments, it was completely and utterly about me, my pain, my inability to see clearly, my struggle. There is no room for thoughts of others and if there is, those thoughts are of how things will be better for those other people "when I'm dead".

It's not better. It's worse. I at least knew when I was in trouble and I devised my own safety plan and I used sheer will to face that struggle and survive each damned time. I always ask myself, did he even listen to me when i tried to describe to him what it felt like to be in that mind trap? How could he not have seen he was in "the box" and that all he had to do was lay low for a bit until he could climb back out? I'd been in that stupid box so many times. I'd told him about those times. I tried to explain it to him so he could find a better way to help me out when it happened again.

He let himself get stuck in that box. Now he sits in a marble box upstairs.

It really makes me guilty but I'm mad at him and I just want to say, "How could he be so stupid? I told him what to look for. I told him how it felt. How did he not recognize that in himself!?"

How did he not stop himself. I've stopped myself so many times and so many f'ing times since then! We never should have had access to firearms. Never.

It'll be 8 months tomorrow. :(

 

[Deleted member 12723]

:hug: I hope that you have plans to decompress tomorrow and take really good care of yourself

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Thinking of you today and wishing it to be a good day for you through the tears.:hug:

 

[NarcSis]

I wrote this first thing this morning;

"8 months today. 8 months and one day ago, I woke up, kissed, hugged, smiled and laughed with the man I loved. That happiness would only last a few short hours until a physiotherapist told him he had an enlarged heart on x-Ray and destroyed his entire view of the future. His crisis lasted 20 hours and then he shot himself.

I made him bacon and eggs that morning. He had his coffee in his big mug, the one I now use every day so I can feel like he's still here.

There were no arguments in our home, no screaming, no violence, no alcohol, just two paramedics who loved each other and did what we could to help others until we had no more to give.

8 months and one day ago I held a warm hand in mine. I looked into eyes that were filled with love and life. My soul was connected to another.

8 months and one day ago the future was fresh with countless possibilities. Why did it have to be that particular one?

I miss you every day my sweet lost husband, I don't know how I keep going without you. I want you to be "just at work" like it should have been had fate landed on a separate possibility of the myriad available in those few short hours that morning.

I miss you with every breath. I miss you with all that I am. It was Our Life, not just yours. "

I thought it was going to be an okay day but I burst into tears over breakfast so the dog got afraid of me, as a result, our attempts at walk today have been nothing but endless fights.

I figured I'd get out of the house, go hiking like hubby and I used too. So I drove almost an hour to a forest park and once there the dog refused to go through the gate. It was a 30 minute tug of war match as I tried to get him to just walk through the stupid entrance! Finally I gave up, frustrated beyond belief as other dog owners walked past me laughing. I drove 15 minutes around the park to a less used entrance, he fought another 15 minutes before finally walking into the trail for about 100 yards - then he turned and started fighting me again.

I wanted to hike that trail today, it's easy, flat, follows old roadways and railways! I wanted that one because husband and I only went there twice. I wanted to hike it "with" him today but the f'in dog just drove me insane. I fell down at the side of the trail in tears. I was so angry I just wanted to kick him. I screamed at him and just gave up.

I just can't look at him now. I'm still so angry. He's been a miracle for walking the past week and now all of a sudden it's like we're starting all over again!! I don't understand what is wrong with him.

I'm so angry I just want to break things and scream. I think I'm going to drown myself in a bottle of wine.

I'm never going back to that trail. I'll never go back there. I wanted to show my hubby the easier way to the cliffs this spring but we didn't get back there, instead he killed himself.

He killed himself and he left me here to handle everything on my own.

I never wanted to be alone. I never imagined this.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I know what I am about to say is that I have found it amazing at what I could do with no choice.

A huge part of your life as a we has been amputated away and I think it is so much shock at first that seems to last for such a really long time.

The only thing I can think of with the dog is that maybe there was a bear around and he was trying to protect you especially since he has previously been doing so well.

I remember when we lived in the mountains and the moon was out and I wanted to take my dog into the dry creek bed and she refused to go and kept trying to go back home so it was either coyotes out there or a black bear or even a mountain lion.

I understand some of your frustrations with him, I really do. That night I really needed to walk in the moonlight so bad.

Hang in there one day after another. You are coming up to the first holidays without your husband and that is very difficult and hard to face alone. You have been pretty wise about making plans beforehand. I hope that you plan ahead for these. I know that most likely this will be the second holiday that I stay home alone. I am trying to make plans now.:confused::(:hug:

 

[NarcSis]

Thanks @gizmo, the dog and I are still on shaky ground with one another he knows I'm angry/upset so he's keeping his distance and watching me with sad eyes. I need sleep. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.

A woman made comment today in a discussion how she feels unsafe mentioning her level of depression to her therapist because her T starts to freak out and act with extreme prejudice. Yes, she's a survivor of suicide, that doesn't necessarily mean she's going to kill herself, dealing with that aftermath is inexplicably difficult, of course you consider dying, of course you doubt your purpose, of course you can't see a future, of course you feel cut off from life - life just bit you in the ass with the ultimate betrayal of your trust! This does not give people (T's) carte Blanche to start committing people! How ridiculous!

I know what she's going through. On the way home today, I was angry, I voiced some thoughts and then actually said aloud to myself,

"There's nowhere safe in this world where I can actually say these things without people flying off the handle - no forum, no group, not even a therapists office or a friends place. I am not allowed to say these types of things aloud unless I'm locked up and under supervision! How stupid is that!? I just want someone to hear me! This is what I'm thinking right now, help me normalize it!!"

Then I thought, even though husband was scared, he didn't ever over react. He helped me to talk through it. He listened and validated my thoughts. He helped me to understand that I was just being human. He didn't call an ambulance. He didn't want me locked up. He just sat, fighting his own fear and helped me to feel like I was normal again.

He did that for me. He couldn't do that for himself. I couldn't help him see it the way only he could. I didn't have his perspective, I had mine and mine was lost behind a veil of swirling emotions.

I found the shells he used in his gun. I held them in my hand; two missing from the package. Only 26 pellets per round. How could only 26 pellets kill someone? (Gaseous expansion, I know) How could he have even owned those?

He kept them in a lock box in our room. I never knew. 5 shells in a box, neatly tucked into a cordura pouch, disguised so I never would have known what they were had I never opened that pouch. He also had rounds for a 35; sentimental I assume from his days as a cop when he carried a 35 revolver.

I held those shells in my hand. 26 tiny pellets crammed into a green plastic sleeve bedded with gun powder. The source of my husbands end. In my hand. Ridged under my fingers. Stamped. Ready for firing. Useless without their rifle (unless you're super creative).

In my hand. Nothing I can ever do to right what happened. I can't just place that shell back into a full box and hear my husband puttering around down the hall...there will always be two missing. Three of you count him.

I also found a secret compartment in one of his lock boxes, inside was a watch I'd never seen before. Old. Silver wind up watch with digital date screen. Bezel, silver lined with gold detail. I flipped it over, an inscription, tiny font barely readable, "Happy 25th, Love Beth"

Beth was his first fiancé. When I met him he said they were still good friends...uh, yeah, she was his financial advisor and still had control of all of his money!! She resigned as his financial advisor after meeting me. She was a real witch to me over dinner one night, so I subtly verbally attacked her repeatedly through the night. When subtlety didn't get her to back down, I point blank insulted her in front of her new (more her age) boyfriend.

He was going to marry her. He was going to marry her until he found out she'd been lying to him about her age, she was MUCH older than him and always claimed to be his age. Deceitful and manipulative is the first impression I got of her....but such a young boy, did he love her? Was she his first love? Is he waiting for her in heaven? (Lord knows she'll get there soon on her own). Will he be waiting on me or was she his true love?

I wanted to stomp on that watch and throw it in the garbage but I put it back in the compartment and closed it up. Maybe next year I can get a few bucks for it at an "antique" dealer.

The whole while I sat on the floor tearfully looking through his things, the dog lay a few feet away on his bed looking at me with almost sorrow filled eyes. I couldn't go to him. I would have only made him more uncomfortable with me. It was like he knew what I was doing, taking my husbands treasures and holding them one by one, wondering what some of them even meant anymore. Voiceless objects. It's what they are now.

He gave them life, now they're just objects.

He gave me life. What am I even anymore?

 

[NarcSis]

My husband used to tell me that when he was a kid his dad would tickle them until they couldn't breathe and he would get scared and have to actually fight back because stop didn't work but STILL he would try to continue tickling them. He said being tickled was a scary thing when he was a kid and as a result, he just taught himself to not be ticklish. Like, how insane is that? My husband taught his nervous system to become numb to soft touch. It was one of the things I noticed shortly after we started dating and we were being silly one night so I started trying to tickle him - his whole body stiffened up and he got serious and said, "I'm not ticklish." It wasn't a silly I'm not ticklish, it was a dead serious warning. I tried so many times over the years but every time I went to what are normally ticklish zones for others, his muscles tensed and he didn't feel it. It was like he shut everything out.

You know he did it to me once. We were fooling around in the livingroom of our new apartment and he threw me on the floor tickling me. It was fun at first but the longer it went on, the less fun it became and the more angry he seemed as he tickled me. I couldn't breathe. I got scared. I kicked him off of me and he got mad and went sulking to the bedroom. He never said a word to me, just went to bed. I remember thinking, "You hated when your Dad did that, why would you do it to me!?"

When we were first living together, we had our screaming matches - mostly it was me. I'd let things build up and then eventually I'd explode after about six months of not communicating properly. I'd usually have a screaming fit and then I'd run out and drive away for hours because I didn't want to hit him, mostly because I knew his temper and if he ever hit me back he likely would have killed me. I remember the last time I did it, he said to me, "When you run away and disappear like that for hours it reminds me of what my Dad used to do to us and one day he just never came back! I don't want you to run away from me, it hurts me!" I remember screaming back at him, "If I stay I will hit you and its not right to hit people!" He started crying and said, "Hit me! Beat me up, I don't care, just don't ever run away from me!"

He ran away from me that morning. He left. He didn't tell me he was leaving. He just left. He never came back. He never came back, just like his Dad did to them.

We never fought like that again, not ever again. We had disagreements and we resolved them or we agreed to disagree, we never screamed again. He started hugging me every time I left the house and every time I came back in. That stopped a year or two ago. I don't know why. I'd go away for a weekend, come home and he wouldn't even acknowledge me coming through the door. Not even a "Hi", he just sat there playing his video games. The last time I went to my sister's place just before Christmas last year, I was so anxious to come home to see him again but I walked through the door and nothing. I hadn't seen him in three whole days and he didn't even say, "Hi". He didn't even look at me coming through the door. It was a half hour before he even said a word to me and it was, "What's for dinner?" :(

I don't like that the bad times are the things that stand out in my mind. I search and even the good memories seem sad now.

I'm really sad today.