Grief and the road to healing

[Willowkins]

I've been thinking of starting this thread for a while and recently had some encouragement that it might be useful to others as a place of support and learning. Everyone’s welcome but I’m equally happy to waffle on alone.
My story is that my DH (known on MN as MrW) died last year after living with cancer for 3 years. I struggled with anxiety and was on Sertraline for a long time. I'm glad to say that a combination of counselling and HRT have brought me to the place where I'm not generally anxious and I feel ready to deal with the grief. Losing the Sertraline means I can actually feel sad.

In the background, is my realisation that I never really dealt with the deaths of my DSis, DMum and DDad (all years ago) preferring instead to keep myself busy. So now I feel that I need to deal with those bereavements too.
I start telephone counselling with Cruse next week. I also have a couple of self-help books to work through.
I’m not sure where this road leads exactly but I hope to lose a lot of luggage along the way.

@chinchin77

I love the pendent idea but I remember a post on Facebook locally of a woman who'd lost hers, I can imagine it would be like loosing them all over again. My BF had some of her DF ashes put into a tattoo so he is always with her. I personally loathe tattoos but think I'm going to go down this route with a small hidden one.

Not a tattoo lover either but am looking this up!

@notapizzaeater my cunning plan is to scare everyone enough with an illness from which I miraculously recover in time for a huge birthday party which everyone, having had the frighteners put on them, attends.
Then a couple of weeks later get very ill and die fairly quickly, within a day or two, time enough for the doctor to give my rellies the bad news and so they can rally round my deathbed but not much longer than that. One can hope...
I have a lock of my Mum's hair in a locker which belonged to her much loved (by both of us) Auntie. And another locket which I think (they were divorced when I was very young so who.knows) has a lock of my Dad's hair in.
Am going to turn one of my Dad's favourite jumpers into a (somewhat lumpy!) cushion cover...

Hi willow I am so sorry about your dh (MrW) dying. It’s uplifting reading about your insight and not just coping but progressing.
I’ve lost both parents over the last couple of years. My mum suddenly without warning (elderly but seemingly fighting for and indépendant) hit me like a tonne of bricks as we were very close. Its crept up on me - over a year later - that I think I have anxiety. Often can’t get on with things due to some unnamed fear that if I do I’ll miss something. As if I’m on alert all the time. All stems from the call I got and the awful shock of it and then dealing with everything.
Your post has been helpful because I think I need some help with this and it’s always good to hear from those who have been helped even in circs such as yours.

I've been feeling really down the last couple of days. It started when I heard that someone had recovered fully from bowel cancer. MrW would have been so happy for them (he cheered everyone on in the treatment room) but I started thinking: Why not MrW? I'm not proud of it but if I'm honest, I felt a little resentful that he didn't get better too.
I've been reading up on something called PTED - Post Traumatic Embitterment Disorder. There is only limited research from what I can see so I don't know if this is a real thing. Has anyone else come across it?

I don't know what happened with my Cruse appointment yesterday. I'd agreed with the counsellor that she would check in to see if I still needed it. Except I think she'd already booked something else because an hour before the call when she texted me and I said: Yes please still want to go ahead - the next available date was next week.

So I'll write it here instead of that's alright.

Grieving is hard. And don't underestimate how long it will take. I'm happy I got rid of some of the luggage but it just opened up mindspace for sadness. Sometimes it grips me - and the hurt is a physical thing.

This is what I wanted though. I'm glad that I am finally not just sweeping it up with everyday life or covering it over with keeping busy.

It's my nature that I'm an optimist so I know I won't stay in this place forever. I will feel better next week or next year.

My wife died 7 weeks ago today and I'm so sad. Very hard to believe that I will ever feel any genuine happiness again. How could she leave? We had 9 years together, and didn't deserve to die of ovarian cancer at 58. Horrible illness. Don't know why I'm posting just want to connect with others who lost a spouse/partner. It's the worst pain I've ever known

@Willowkins thank you for the thread and I'm sorry you've had to experience such a huge loss and gave such a difficult journey to recovery. I have the awful anxiety since day one of my love dying, and understand that the anxiety builds up through resisting the grief- when I give in and express the grief (which is overwhelming and makes me feel as if I'm going mad) the anxiety goes away for a while. I never expected grief to be so complex. I've also had a very new and specific pain in my head that's linked to crying so much.

I'm sorry for those of you that have lost your partners .
My father died when I was pregnant with my 2nd child, and he was 53 . My Mum many years later at the age of 79 . I still mourn the loss of both my parents and agree you never ' get over it ' but learn to go forward in your own life ' with it ' .
Life goes on , but in a different way.

Separated from DH for some years; he died by suicide in May. I am broken inside. The guilt is terrible. It's been comforting to read these posts. Love to everyone grieving and struggling with loss.

I hope it’s okay to post here.

I lost my first DH very suddenly when I was much younger (over 30 years ago now). I am no longer in the depths of despair but I remember when I was and my heart goes out to you all.

I found I had to keep working on the grief and pushing through the feelings. Acknowledging the loss and the pain was all-consuming and unpredictable but the work was necessary in order for me to continue living. The heaviness of the grief was unbearable and it was so hard to make it through the days, the months, the years.

I’ll never forget how exhausting and unpredictable the grief was. It is such a dark, lonely journey.

Now I am a grief counsellor what I try to do,when people are in the deepest of the dark pain, is to 1. Listen 2. Acknowledge 3. Eventually, help to identify the parts of someone’s existence where all is not lost: ‘the exceptions’ (this is not to distract from/dismiss the loss, but to help identify times when there is mental reprieve from the pain - this can help with self-soothing when the world is so dark).

The fact you are all connecting/expressing yourselves here is quite amazing. My love to you all

Hello all - welcome @joystir59 and others.
@joystir59 you are where I am at, will be 8 weeks this week and going backwards but that's ok - we just have to go with it.
@Willowkins how are you doing, thanks for writing your feelings I will post link to a site I am finding of some comfort. 💐

www.lifedeathwhatever.com

@chinchin77 I'm so sorry you lost your husband. Thank you for being hee with me. I stand in the pain with you.

Hello all, I'm joining this thread because something about the tangled nature of grief in the OP resonates. I lost my lovely little brother 6 years ago - which was devastating - and my Dad 2 years ago. I just feel angry about my Dad, and also disturbed by the fact that he was buried rather than cremated; this seems to be a taboo subject so I struggle alone with it, torturing myself with horrible images. It doesn't make much sense as we had a reasonably good relationship when he was alive. I've also not felt any sadness at my father's death, I'm just not going to where I went with my brother, I'm spent. Most of the time I feel happy enough but things feel messy (as is this post).

Hi everyone. Thank you for sharing your insights and stories. I'd like to think that we're helping each other.

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this but I've been trying to process what I learned at my last counselling session.

Talking made me realise that there was a pattern - I felt sad but before I felt sad I felt angry and before I felt angry I had contact with my XMIL. She triggers painful memories.

So I went on my own to a place we both loved - and I cried but it felt good to remember how much I miss him.

Hope it’s okay to join this thread. My husband died 2 months ago and I feel such an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness. Although he had a stage 4 cancer diagnosis- his health deteriorated swiftly and he was suddenly on end of life care. I still can’t believe he has gone. I have put my name down for bereavement counselling and perhaps that will provide a space to unpack all that happened and how to cope.
I think I need a space to talk. In many ways , like when he was ill, I feel (perhaps this is just me though) that people want to hear “positive” things, that I am coping, that all is okay.

Anyway, I would like to use this space to write a bit more .

Absolutely iwantavuvezela. I find writing things down so helpful - and I'm happy to check in as needed. As for counselling, I was recommended to try Cruse and I really did found them helpful.

I'm shuffling over following the loss of my husband just over a week ago. Sorry to hear such tales of love and loss on this thread.

It's early days yet and I am worried I am not grieving correctly...I still feel the horror of his actual dying and the difficulty of caring for him in his last few weeks. I miss him dreadfully. I loved him so. Still do. I've wept at some point everyday.

But I'm not feeling the unrelenting sadness I expected. Most of the time it's a dull ache with the odd wave of overwhelming sorrow. There's been times I've genuinely laughed. There's things I've taken joy from. It sounds utterly perverse to wish I was more depressed.

Then on the other hand, I think, But I'm 33 years old and I don't want the rest of my life to be defined by sadness. My wonderful DH will always be a part of who I am. But is it too soon to be thinking like that?

I have been on a young widows fb page and their grief seems so much more intense than mine feels right now. Or is it that I'm still in shock and it'll come?

We knew he was dying four months ago and I struggled with that a lot more. I know everyone says this, but he genuinely was a wonderful man and a loving husband who I absolutely adored. We were very content as we were and didn't have any huge plans for the future.

I just can't shake the feeling that I'm doing him a huge disservice and failing as a widow.

Hi Willowkins.
I've just seen this thread and read your posts on it (although not the others) and wanted to say I hope you are doing okay.
Each person's grief is their own journey and they each make it in different ways.
I initially had some counselling when John was diagnosed, which helped me come to terms with the diagnosis and expected outcome - or maybe it was time that help me do that, I don't know.

You're welcome here Clash. You're right - it's still too raw. And I think the horror of caring for someone that we love, who is going through every kind of pain imaginable and Having To Be The Strong One causes a particular kind of trauma that runs alongside normal grief and twists it into something terrible and peculiar. So I find that my grief has softened over time and I can focus on the good memories - but the PTSD still kicks in on special occasions. And Squirrels (hi there!) is right too - counselling helps and time helps. I remember actually saying to the counsellor that I hadn't grieved properly over my sister, my mum and my dad and I wanted to get it right this time. It turns out that what that meant for me was getting rid of the guilt that I didn't Fix It and understanding that I really couldn't have done that.

We each have our own story so for each of us our journey will be different. There's no need to measure your grief or compare it to others'. Above all be kind to yourself.

I found this from the excellent Lucy Hone:
greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/learning_to_live_in_a_world_without_a_loved_one

Worth a read.

I’ve just read (available on kindle) on Amazon - Death and the after parties by Joanne Hitchens - incredibly moving and it resonated so much with me about the loss of a partner (although she also speaks about the loss of her father and mother)