My partner died in a car crash six months ago. I am going to the burial of his ashes this coming week.
His father asked me if I wanted to say anything. But I don't think anything I have to say is shareable. Here is why.
When I met my partner he was suicidal. He was anorexic. Had lost any interest in life whatsoever. He was like that because of a failed business and a failed relationship he kept mourning even after meeting me. She had left him, moved to a different state without telling him, and he followed her, as he had followed her beliefs beforehand and changed whom he was I still loved him, because I could see through his depression, but it was a lot of work. He got better in the three years he was with me, he was imagining life plans again et cetera, but he was not healed when he died.
As they are preparing for the ceremony, they are going back to their memories of whom he was 7-9 years ago because he was very active and doing stuff at the time. I did not know him before everything crumbled for him. However, although he used to speak of those times with the pink eyeglasses, whenever I asked about his happiness back then, he would say he was not as happy as I made him out to have been.
No one seems to want to know how he actually felt. And to be honest, none of the people at the funeral had seen him that much. Some of them hadn't seen him in ten years or more. He was a bit closer (although geographically continents apart) to his immediate family, but from what I gather there wasn't a lot of talking about feelings. I was the only one who was with him basically every day since we met. I did not get to see only his "representative side." I held him and wept with him and protected him when he wanted to die. I have stood by his side when his depression made me feel like I was completely worthless because he claimed his happiness depended on external factors. I have spent every day of my life with him caring for him, trying to support him in his depression because he kept refusing treatment. I already was a trauma sufferer back then, but I did not know it.
My therapist thinks he may have been, too, because he showed some of the signs of victims of abusive relationships. One of the women who abused him (I have seen him being yelled at and I have seen her passive aggressive behaviour, the endless strings of text messages even when he was with me, her constant acting as if she was always in need of help, the way in which she humiliated him in front of me talking about her lovers - she had cheated on him when they were together - the way in which he would make a 180 turn in his ideas if she was speaking so he could agree with her, and the fact that she had completely isolated him from his family, which is one of the reason why most of the people at the funeral have no idea who my partner actually was or had become) and who kept forming financial ties with him is still keeping them up with his family.
He was in pieces, and no one wants to remember that. I get it, but that's what reality was. And also, that's the only reality I have known of him. I did not have their luck of knowing him when everything was fun and games. I got him into my life when his life and frankly a bunch of *****es had taken advantage of him (he was super easy to manipulate) and loved him as he was and stuck by him no matter what. Now I feel like everyone else wants to erase the last years of his life because they don't want to remember him unhappy. But in those years I was there, 24/7, when no one else was, trying to keep him alive, and to give him all the love and tenderness he had not received, the care he had always given others, and had never gotten in return. No one wants to know about the life he had with me. And it makes me feel like my life with him was useless. Compounded with the fact that he died in my arms because he chose to be with me in that car trip when I had told him not to, this is intensifying my feeling that my life was worthless, and is worthless now, and it is doing nothing good for my suicidal ideations.
I just wanted the funeral to be a last chance to be alone with his ashes for a few minutes. Not something that would stoke my loop that tells me that my life did nothing good for the man I loved. I was there for him from the moment we met to the instant he died. But because it wasn't fun times, no one wants to know about it. And this reinforces those voices in my head that say that if I had been as good as his exes he would have been as happy and active as he was in the fun times everyone cares to remember, and that yes, I really had no business surviving yet one more time in my life.
I don't really have questions. I guess I just need someone to listen. Maybe I am just selfish.
His father asked me if I wanted to say anything. But I don't think anything I have to say is shareable. Here is why.
When I met my partner he was suicidal. He was anorexic. Had lost any interest in life whatsoever. He was like that because of a failed business and a failed relationship he kept mourning even after meeting me. She had left him, moved to a different state without telling him, and he followed her, as he had followed her beliefs beforehand and changed whom he was I still loved him, because I could see through his depression, but it was a lot of work. He got better in the three years he was with me, he was imagining life plans again et cetera, but he was not healed when he died.
As they are preparing for the ceremony, they are going back to their memories of whom he was 7-9 years ago because he was very active and doing stuff at the time. I did not know him before everything crumbled for him. However, although he used to speak of those times with the pink eyeglasses, whenever I asked about his happiness back then, he would say he was not as happy as I made him out to have been.
No one seems to want to know how he actually felt. And to be honest, none of the people at the funeral had seen him that much. Some of them hadn't seen him in ten years or more. He was a bit closer (although geographically continents apart) to his immediate family, but from what I gather there wasn't a lot of talking about feelings. I was the only one who was with him basically every day since we met. I did not get to see only his "representative side." I held him and wept with him and protected him when he wanted to die. I have stood by his side when his depression made me feel like I was completely worthless because he claimed his happiness depended on external factors. I have spent every day of my life with him caring for him, trying to support him in his depression because he kept refusing treatment. I already was a trauma sufferer back then, but I did not know it.
My therapist thinks he may have been, too, because he showed some of the signs of victims of abusive relationships. One of the women who abused him (I have seen him being yelled at and I have seen her passive aggressive behaviour, the endless strings of text messages even when he was with me, her constant acting as if she was always in need of help, the way in which she humiliated him in front of me talking about her lovers - she had cheated on him when they were together - the way in which he would make a 180 turn in his ideas if she was speaking so he could agree with her, and the fact that she had completely isolated him from his family, which is one of the reason why most of the people at the funeral have no idea who my partner actually was or had become) and who kept forming financial ties with him is still keeping them up with his family.
He was in pieces, and no one wants to remember that. I get it, but that's what reality was. And also, that's the only reality I have known of him. I did not have their luck of knowing him when everything was fun and games. I got him into my life when his life and frankly a bunch of *****es had taken advantage of him (he was super easy to manipulate) and loved him as he was and stuck by him no matter what. Now I feel like everyone else wants to erase the last years of his life because they don't want to remember him unhappy. But in those years I was there, 24/7, when no one else was, trying to keep him alive, and to give him all the love and tenderness he had not received, the care he had always given others, and had never gotten in return. No one wants to know about the life he had with me. And it makes me feel like my life with him was useless. Compounded with the fact that he died in my arms because he chose to be with me in that car trip when I had told him not to, this is intensifying my feeling that my life was worthless, and is worthless now, and it is doing nothing good for my suicidal ideations.
I just wanted the funeral to be a last chance to be alone with his ashes for a few minutes. Not something that would stoke my loop that tells me that my life did nothing good for the man I loved. I was there for him from the moment we met to the instant he died. But because it wasn't fun times, no one wants to know about it. And this reinforces those voices in my head that say that if I had been as good as his exes he would have been as happy and active as he was in the fun times everyone cares to remember, and that yes, I really had no business surviving yet one more time in my life.
I don't really have questions. I guess I just need someone to listen. Maybe I am just selfish.
