DH is in his mid fifties. He has experienced so much loss in his life, I can't quite fathom it and I just don't know what to say to him any more.
He lost his dad and one of his brothers when he was a teenager (not at the same time). He has since lost his mum, two other brothers and a nephew. As a couple, we dealt with miscarriages and secondary infertility. Then one of his oldest friends was killed in a car crash a few years ago.
His younger sister - probably his closest sibling - died from cancer earlier this year, and I honestly thought it was going to break him. He subsequently lost another very close friend - same age as him - to exactly the same cancer around a month later. And then this morning, he learned that one of his closest friends of 30 years, who he lived with for years before we got married, has also died at the age of just 57.
He is very stoical about it all, and doesn't like to talk about stuff much, but I can tell that he is really struggling to make sense of it all. This seems to me a huge amount of loss for one person to have to bear. How can I support him through it effectively if he doesn't want to talk about it? Obviously, I know that just being there can sometimes be enough, but this feels too much now. I don't think he would be open to counselling or anything, but I'm not sure that just carrying on as if nothing has happened is going to help...