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My husband died today

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So far the grief support organizations I've gotten in touch with have directed me elsewhere and the one that was supposed to be researching local resources for me hasn't bothered to contact me again.

Hi @Medic72. I wonder if you have contacted any churches or seniors organizations to ask about grief support groups in your area. Maybe you answered this question before, but where I live, several organizations join to offer support. Even nursing homes might know of free resources.

And you should take your time about the dog. That was just a suggestion. I kept my daughter's dogs for her long enough to realize that I slept better at night, kept a better schedule with them in mind, and had somebody to talk with when no people were around. And shelter dogs are not super expensive when you consider the prices charged by private kennels for puppies. Some mixed-breed shelter dogs are generally smarter and have fewer genetic problems from inbreeding.
And a lot of them have been gentle family dogs whose owners simply can't keep them any longer.

Sorry, I'm almost talking myself into getting another one!

As far as the DIYs are concerned, you may have friends whose kids would be perfect for some tasks. Especially the electronic stuff. Kids love to show off how much they know about sound systems, programming, hard drives and gadgets. It is their art in a way, and I think they get a superiority trip out of doing stuff that baffles a "grown-up". And they do it in a fraction of the time it can take an adult to research and guess. Worth looking into, unless you simply want to learn all the details. Electrical wiring is a more serious matter. You might even think about some form of barter (cooking their favorite desserts?) in trade for their help.

But it sounds as if you have time to consider all of these things (or NOT?), now that you have so competently handled the immediate financial matters. You are right that you are stronger than you have realized, and we admire your tenacity. Take care.
 
This morning I woke up and I was quite lonely. I puttered around the house trying to keep myself busy but I just couldn't keep my mind off of him and how he just is never going to be here anymore. No one to talk too. No one to joke with. No one to laugh with or tease. It made me feel very alone and resentful to the people who claimed they would stand by me and see me through this. No one has bothered to call or message me in at least a week and when I reached out, I got no replies...okay, one which seemed a little like a brush off. I admit, I was feeling sorry for myself this morning. I was feeling alone and abandoned again, just like with the PTSD stuff all over again.

I moped around for a bit, laid on the couch on the verge of tears and then my phone pinged and there was a message from someone I hadn't heard from since that first week - my husband's former partner. It seems we were both feeling lonely for him. We ended up chatting back and forth and making each other feel so much better. He told me of stories that they shared with one another, I told him of my husband's dreams for retirement and we shared some laughs. This man made me feel happy again when I felt like I was completely alone in this world and I thank God or my hubby for making sure that someone reached out to me in those moments when I needed them most. It was just so enlightening to speak to someone about him and the things we shared.

Shortly afterward my sister called me and we talked over the net for a bit and then she made a split second decision to come down overnight - again, providence, making sure I was not alone and feeling abandoned. We had a great afternoon out and we even went out for dinner. We have a big breakfast planned for morning and then we're going to go out to get some supplies for a quilted memory wall hanging that I have planned for his mother. I want to use her tartan for it and incorporate pictures of him from when he was a baby to adulthood.

I am still having some difficulty adjusting to being alone. I'm a little paranoid every time the doorbell rings - more so than normal. I am worried at night since most of my neighborhood now knows I'm alone...I can hope they'd look out after me, but no one ever really knows their neighbors these days.

On a good note, his life insurance came through, so my mortgage will no longer be a worry. Things are starting to look up. I still may need a seasonal job or something to carry me through but now I can relax a bit. It honestly feels like a huge weight has been lifted from me. I am starting to consider school again, whether or not to try to get a graduate degree in psychology or an MFA in writing. I'm thinking more along the lines of the MFA , something I can actually enjoy. I had also considered consulting with a financial adviser about perhaps the development of a scholarship fund in his name, just a small investment from the start but eventually looking for donors to help grow the fund. Big Ideas right now that I will have to write down first and then seriously plan. This is the one thing that would mean most to me other than making the memory quilt.

With the insurance money available now, I'm able to think seriously about an emotional support animal too - cat, dog, bird, I'm not sure, but I will likely get an animal in the foreseeable future. Fingers crossed that I can start to make some actual decisions in my life now. Please, let's hope it works out. I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out of this whole thing.

I connected with another survivor of suicide loss yesterday and she is also a bereavement counselor, so she wants to connect with me live this week. It will be nice to finally have someone to speak to in real time that also understands the complex nature of a suicide loss. I wish I could "share" her with all of my husbands colleagues who are still struggling to come to terms with his absence but no, this is for me. I have to be able to be stingy about meeting my needs first.

It still hits me hard when I think about it. It's not even that he chose to end his life, it's that he didn't say goodbye and that actually hurts me. It wasn't a stereotypical textbook suicide loss, in fact, I think that these patterns that people have you believe in are just a load of crap. He had no overt prior behavior, no prior threats or attempts, no expression of sadness with his life (at least, no more than anyone) , no plan, no severe depressive phases, no giving away possessions, no emptying of bank accounts, no note, nothing. He just got out of bed, left our house at some point and was found dead.

Uggh, and he wasn't a violent guy. He never threatened anyone's life. He had weapons but never indicated an intent to use them other than target shooting and possibly duck or goose hunting. We'd looked it up. Yes, he knew a lot about weapons, he was a military fanatic who'd never been in the military...more a historian of military weapons and battles. My hubby was a book smart geek. He used to be a cop, so yes, he knew handguns and shotguns, he was trained in both. His weapons had never been fired other than at targets and I was one of the ones who'd fired them! (Powerful). He was trying to teach me not to be afraid of them but I wanted to stay afraid of them because of the PTSD and my tendency to fall into suicidal ideation so quickly.

It hurts me to think that he could not find an answer to his dilemma that day. He was so smart. He was an student of engineering who dropped out of university because he was bored. He found his niche in paramedicine. In that field he could demonstrate how smart he was both intellectually and practically. What he did that day in his car goes against everything that he stood for. It made no sense. He was way smarter than that. I'd never seen him so lost as he was in those hours leading up to his death. I thought that morning would afford us either a reprieve back to his logical thinking phase and he would no longer be upset or I would be continuing in comforting him and helping him through his crisis...I never imagined he wanted to die. I never imagined he'd ever get "that sad".

He'd said to me the afternoon before as we laid together on the floor, "I'm so, so sad." and I kissed him on the forehead, put my forehead to his, hugged him and said that "sad was okay but we were going to figure out this out." and I told him I loved him and I rubbed his arms and hugged him. He cried for a while but then he seemed to settle after that but maybe he just withdrew deeper into himself and hid the depressive thoughts from me. Did I say something wrong? Did I do something wrong?

That morning when he was leaving the bedroom early, he said, "Do you need anything?" I just said, "No." and I remember thinking at the time that it was a really odd question for him to ask me so early in the morning....why would I need anything, we'd literally just woken up? And I didn't want to make him feel like I was over burdening him by asking him to make some breakfast for us. I just figured he go downstairs, open his computer, play his game and decompress the way he always did and then I'd get up in about an hour or so and make us breakfast. He was already gone from our house and dead by the time I woke up.

It bothers me to think that perhaps I misheard his question, maybe his question actually was, "Do you need Me For anything?" and my answer was No. I pray that's not what he asked me but even if it was what he was thinking, my answer would still have been way out of context. How could I have known what he was thinking? How could I have ever figured that he would kill himself? That just wasn't what we'd worked so hard for the past few years, to just throw it all away on a whim??? What was the point in saving me from all of my suicidal inclinations then? Honestly, what was the point?

He was trained in suicide intervention. His actions made and still don't make any sense to me. No sense whatsoever. I've been there, I know how it can take you so fast, but I've always come back and fought it, why couldn't he? What was so different about us that he succeeded in completing suicide? I thought I knew him inside and out. I thought my love was enough to have rescued him from the hurts he suffered as a child. I thought that pain was gone from him. Was I wrong? Had he always regretted his life? Was this just an extreme fight/flight reaction gone horribly wrong?

Answers I can never have because the only one who can answer them with any definitive clarity is dead.

Why did my husband have to die? How did I not know he wanted to die in those hours? How did I not know him like I thought I did? I feel betrayed again.
 
Even if he was, that was something only he could know. It was not for us to know. I know what it's like to have your soul wounded. He had a rough childhood.. I always encouraged him to reach out and try to rebuild (or build a new) bond with his family because I could never understand how blood relatives could treat you like a complete stranger and detach so easily from one another. He needed them because I couldn't fix that part. I loved him but I could never heal that part

I got into his iPod today. I found a note from 3 years ago that simply said "I want to kill myself." My heart sank. He bought that damned first gun that year.

He wrote another note after my mom died saying he didn't feel like a part of my family..I also found another note written only days after that first one that said he was a happy baby born to a sad family.

Dear @Medic , they may have been signs he couldn't bear you to see.

Is this me blaming myself?

Possibly, though I hope you won't. As @joeylittle said:

Is also true. I don't know if he actually chose to not share with you, and I don't think he would have been aware of his choice to leave you. The fact is, he wasn't able to think, and his illness got hold of him.

Hugs, +++. :hug:
 
It bothers me to think that perhaps I misheard his question,
I can see why that would bother you. It would bother me too. But don't go there, ok? From what you've learned since his death, it sounds like he'd been thinking about this for a long time. And he was protecting you, in his way of seeing things, by not sharing these thoughts with you. Unless, at some point, he had chosen to come clean and get help, there wasn't much you could do, I don't think. If you'd said the magic words to head things off that day, there'd have been another day. And, since you had no way to know what was going on with him, it would have been totally luck, every step of the way.
I wish I could "share" her with all of my husbands colleagues who are still struggling to come to terms with his absence but no, this is for me. I have to be able to be stingy about meeting my needs first.
I think looking out for yourself first is the right way to do this. But it also sounds like there's a need for some kind of support for the people who have to deal with this sort of situation.

I'm glad his old partner called you! It sounds like that conversation probably helped him as much as it did you.
 
Well ma'am you had some good things happen today, and we're so glad for you. That contact with your husband's partner, and your being able to talk and laugh was great medicine. The plan to meet and talk with a bereavement counselor who's had experience similar to yours is very timely too. I hope you can continue to talk with both of them often.

And having the insurance come through is bound to free you of many worries!

Of special interest to me is your thought about going back to school. You have such an incisive mind that you will do well with either the psych or the MFA route (or both?). With your writing talent, you might easily write some very important pieces. Say you've been an artist? Wow, what a combo of possibilities!

I'm just certain that you are making your own "breaks" here, fueled by tragedy and self-knowledge, AND stubbornness to survive. Yes, the loneliness and turmoil are horrid, and we empathize with every word, but we are cheering loudly for each of your successes.
 
My sister left again today. I'm alone once again. It's so hard to get used to. I just keep getting stuck in that "he's at work" thing and then I realize he's not at work....and he's not here and I will never speak to him again. Uggh, it's just so circular.

We drove by the spot where he died again today. I kept getting this creepy feeling up my spine as we were approaching the area. I kept thinking to myself in a tour guide voice, "and if you look to your left, you will see the spot, right there by the stop sign where my husband blew himself away. Thank you for taking the this tour of the real and macabre."

As we were out shopping around today it struck me that I feel like a "normal" person when we're out, in fact, I'm suppressing my anxiety so well that I can tell I'm more at ease in public than my sister is...I'm more practiced at looking normal. It also struck me that my husband is dead and shouldn't I look and feel different? How is it that I feel like a normal person shopping as though nothing has happened to me? It just feels so wrong that things just keep moving on....my life is carrying on. I am going out to get groceries, I smile and small talk with the cashiers, I have the constant smile on my face...Uggh, I open doors for the elderly! It feels wrong and I feel guilty for feeling normal.

Is it normal to feel guilt for having your life carry on? Guilty for smiling and laughing? Guilt for having periods where you even forget about him and act like he's been gone for a very long time already? 51 days. How is it that I can be adjusting so well to this? How is it that I'm okay with just resuming my regular routine - as if nothing has happened in the intervening months???

I keep waiting for that deep desperate depression to strike me where I don't feel like looking after myself...so far, things seem like they're just going to carry on as they always had been. I sit and watch tv. I write in my journal, in my blogs, do some reading and then go to work cleaning up the house again. I've paid bills, taken care of other expenses and I'm trying to be the organized person I used to be because now I Have To be again. He's not here to watch me and have my back anymore.

One thing I'm going to have to work on is getting out for exercise. I may go to the park for a hike next week if the weather cooperates. I'll pack a sandwich, cocoa and some kind of dessert. It will be a huge step for me toward taking back my self confidence and reclaiming my independence. I Have To do these things now.

I feel like he's watching me and judging everything I do every second I do it now. I remember feeling like that after my mother died, embarrassingly enough, I stopped making love to my husband for a while because I was afraid that my mother could see us!! It's like that in this house for me now, I feel like if I do something, go to the bathroom, or look through his private things, that he is right there keeping an eye on me and watching everything I do.

It helps me to talk to him. I've been joking with him too and saying things like, "I'm sorry, but if you don't like it, there's not exactly anything you can do about it now, right? You gave up that right when you left." or "hey, if you don't like me seeing this stuff, you shouldn't have left." or "You have no say in this anymore." It sounds kind of cruel but I don't want to develop an attachment to his things and put them aside for pure sentimental value like he did. I mean, your cute little certificate for completing junior kindergarten? Your first driver's licence? Your first CPR certificate? None of those things actually mean anything anymore. We were going through one of his file folders last night and I found two awards he'd won at work and it struck me then too that those plaques were now completely meaningless and of no value - we don't have kids, there is no one to pass them on too. I was going to give them to his nephews but his nephews couldn't even be bothered to come to his funeral!!! He has no meaning to them, he's no more than a stranger to those boys.

I was trying to tell my sister a story today that my husband used to relate to me all the time and I couldn't remember a section of it and I automatically thought, "Oh I'll just ask him when we get back to the house." Then I realized that I can't and I was a little upset that I didn't listen more carefully at the time or write the story down. So strange. It made me think of his family and just how estranged they are. Emails? My hubby only ever emailed with his mother, he preferred that method because when he'd call her she'd dominate the conversation and he wouldn't get to talk much. His brother and his family moved twice while we've been here in our house and we were never notified nor were we ever given his new addresses. I was amazed when his brother gave me his phone number to "keep in contact"....again, it's up to me, there's no reverse effort. This is why we stopped driving the two hours to go visit them because they never made the effort to come see us and they'd sometimes be in the area and not once drop by to just say hi!! I can't understand that kind of family - and yet, my hubby loved them. In their minds, their relationship was fine....but I saw the hurt in his eyes when he spoke of them. No one can wound you more or deeper than your own family.

My hubby was everything to me and I tried my best to be the family he always wanted...that's why I was sorry when we couldn't have kids. I wanted him to have his own family and demonstrate to the world that he would not be his father and his kids would grow up happy and healthy and connected to one another. We never got to do that. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. I'm kind of glad that I'm not trying to heal kids through this too though. Small mercies.

I miss him...but he's no longer complaining about how sore he is anymore, where ever he is, he's healthy and strong and no longer in pain and that makes me feel okay with his decision and his being gone.
 
Is it normal to feel guilt for having your life carry on?
Yes, I think it is. I think that's just part of the process.

I think talking to him is good. Especially joking with him. My friend who committed suicide a couple years ago, one of the first things I did was fire off an angry email that began with "YOU IDIOT!" LOL I still talk to him and write to him. I've got a close friend who's been dead 30 years this May, and I still sometimes expect him to show up. Much less than I used to, but it's there. (And, you'll remember the story, I'm sure. When you do, maybe you should write it down.)
 
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