This is life (after passing of DH)

[Hisredipad]

I spent a while searching for a post to join in but didn’t find anything like I wanted.

I just want somewhere to pop daily and say things I can’t say IRL.

fell free to join me

today was our big anniversary and im feeling sad he’s not here to celebrate it with but I bought myself something I saw yesterday im sure he would have bought me. Bizarrely opened a drawer just a moment ago and found last year’s anniversary card and the sweet words he’d written.

Happy anniversary DH, xx years were the best ever xxxxx

Thank you, it's good to hear another perspective. I'm so very sorry to hear that you lost your wife. It sounds as though she suffered more than her fair share of bereavement while she was alive and I can see how that would change her perspective on life, it would be difficult not to.

I feel very confused at the moment. My mind keeps jumping about and it's exhausting. I'm in the midst of the admin and organising that goes along with a bereavement and I wish I could skip past it all so that I can just be alone with my grief and my thoughts. It all feels scary and horrible. My husband took a lot of comfort in making sure that DD and I would be taken care of after he was gone, he threw everything into that, and was so organised and diligent. When my parents came over yesterday we were sorting through paperwork and he had been so thorough and labelled everything so clearly that it made my mum cry. There was so much love in all the trouble he had gone to.

DD admitted yesterday that she felt relief that there would be no more hospitals and chemo and suffering and that she felt guilty for feeling that, but I told her she is relieved that cancer is gone, not that her Dad is gone, they are two completely different things. The cancer has gone away but it took her Dad with it.

@Magicpaintbrush I’m so very sorry and send sincere condolences. My husband died from cancer too. He was so brave and strong, cancer is so cruel. I’m further along the bereavement path and it’s a hard path. If anyone else tells me how brave I am, I will scream……. I do not have a choice…….

I am so sorry that you have also lost your husband to cancer MissMarplesGoddaughter. Nobody should ever have to go through this. We have been pushed onto this path, it's not our choice, whether we are brave or not. You have to put one foot in front of the other because there is no other option. It all feels like such a waste. A waste of the lives lost, and a waste of what could have been.

Two more probate jobs to do. One to pay a cheque into the bank that my phone app has denied taking even though I had two exactly the same cheques with two different amounts on them.

The final one will be done launched back to a professional body to deal with, and then I will be done. 18 months I think will be the total I have spent working on this.

DH left me a pension which 15 months later has only just gone into my name. Once it’s all sorted out I’m going to write the financial ombudsman, fortunately I’ve had a job in all of this time. I’ve been able to pay my bills but I hate to think what would’ve happened if I hadn’t. My thoughts of pension companies is they rob us blind. They did give me £300 in compensation, but that doesn’t compare to what that pension could’ve been earning last year. It was the one thing that DH said I would get quickly and would help me get through the first year. Little did he know!

The Sun is shining here today, although it’s a little windy and a friend has asked me to go to lunch close to the church where DH Ashes are in interred so I’ll pop along and make sure that the grave looks ok.

I read recently that lots of people slump in their second year of bereavement and I do think that seems to be true. But I do know I am so much better than this time last year.

For those of you that are at the beginning of this journey, I want you to know that it does get better but probably not as quickly as you would like. Please take time to give yourself the rest. Your body needs to recover.

I have been under some cancer counselling recently and part of that I did a nutrition for cancer course and I was surprised to find that mental exhaustion causes the same effects to the body as physical exhaustion and so it’s important that we feed and nourish our body when we are mentally exhausted.

Re: pensions.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that DH's Added Voluntary Contributions paid for Prudential didn't provide for anything after he died. I do recall that he wasn't impressed with the teeny amount that he'd got and I'm aware that claims have been made against Prudential.

Don't use Prudential, folks!

I did get a percentage of his teaching pension with no difficult - around 4k a year - but I'm fortunate to have my own teaching pension. I didn't realise, but when I get my state pension in a couple of months, I'm actually going to get extra because of DH's contributions. (I think it depends on when you made your NI contributions.)

I was up at the Garden of Remembrance earlier this week. I have Dad's anniversary and DH's birthday in the same week. Might go out to our favourite pub and have a meal with DH, if you know what I mean.

Sending hugs, @Hisredipad and everyone else on here.

My husband died on Friday. He had metastatic bowel cancer that had spread to his liver and spleen. He fought so bravely for 9 months but had a very aggressive cancer mutation which ultimately sent him into liver failure. I have to get myself up every day and be as ‘normal’ as I can for our DD(6), but just like you @Magicpaintbrushi feel like I’m just treading water until I get to be with him again / numb and like it is all surreal. I want to wake up and see that this was all a nightmare and not real life. He was such a good man and so brave, suffering in ways no one should have to.i

@unluckynumber7

I am so very sorry.

@unluckynumber7 oh I'm so sorry, you must be reeling. I hope you have people around you looking after you xxx We're here whenever you need to talk.

Thank you @atiaofthejuliii think adrenaline has kept me going this week so far but today I feel absolutely drained and exhausted.

Oh @unluckynumber7 , I'm so sorry you find yourself here, the pain, particularly in the immediate aftermath is horrendous. It's such a cliche but just break each day down into bits and take it one step at a time.

Thank you @frostyfingersx

So sorry you find yourself here @unluckynumber7 but please rest assured that you can come here and have a good old chat or shout about anything you want. We are all here to support you thinking of you.💐💐💐

Not wanting to derail the thread too much, but here goes anyway

Last year roundabout this time of year life was particularly difficult and my foggy brain really struggled too deal with day-to-day life with my recent bereavement.

This year it’s not much different but I had been better but at that point I hadn’t been diagnosed with breast cancer and gone through a variety of treatments just recently that have floored me and particularly fogged my brain

In an effort to combat cancer causing fatigue, I have been eating oily fish like it’s going out of fashion. A BBC iPlayer just one thing program regarding eating oily fish got me wondering if it would help me in my current situation. Combined with a cancer nutrition course I did recently I decided to up my oily fish consumption from three times a week to a minimum of four or five. Sometimes this just means having a smaller amount with some scrambled eggs at lunchtime.

But I’m actually beginning to feel a difference and the reason I’m writing it here is because when I did my cancer nutrition course they told us that mental health needs just as much nutrition as our physical health to recover.

So bearing in mind that last year my brain was mentally wrecked I’m wondering if those of you that are suffering at the moment mental health struggles due to bereavement would actually benefit from a very heavy diet of oily fish.

For me, the worst part of bereavement literally was my brain being overwhelmed. I will never know if this would’ve helped me but having wondered it I couldn’t help myself but put it here for someone to try if they should want to.

Thanks @HisredipadI’m glad that it has worked for you and it’s certainly worth a try. Thank you for sharing.

I think you are all right about the 2nd year being hard. I think people think oh Miss M is coping so well, she’s strong and her life has moved on. I’m trying to be strong and build a new single life, but it’s hard. I really just want my old life back, but that’s just wishing for the moon. I’m doing things we didn’t do together and feel like I’m climbing a mountain.

@Hisredipad thanks for the dietary info. I’m going to try it.

unluckynumber7 - I'm so incredibly sorry that you are going through this too. You are absolutely right, it does feel like a living nightmare, and it feels like you might wake up and find none of it is real. It's so horrific that processing the reality is really hard. My deepest condolences x

@unluckynumber7 I’m so sorry that you’ve joined us. It’s a horrific place to be. My only advice is the same as I gave Magicpaintbrush (and it’s advice that I was given by someone whose husband had died) just breathe. And there have been many times when I just concentrate on breathing. Looking ahead is a bad idea.
sending you so much support.

I don’t want to make our new friends here feel awful and I do want to be positive but I’m feeling very panicky at the moment. I’m on sick leave from work. I cannot concentrate on anything. I feel like the grief has seeped into my bones. It’s been too long since I last saw him and I think it’s the anticipation of the 1 year mark coming up and parenting without him being hard and being so lonely.

I've just gone back to work this week after 6 weeks sick leave around the anniversary of his death. The anniversaries of all the 'lasts' and the actual anniversary looming hit me far harder than I expected.

But I've processed some things a bit more, had 3 more sessions with my therapist, and I'm feeling a lot steadier again now.

I'm sure there will be future dips again.
Sending much love to you @Sunshineandbluesky - take what support you can from those around you. You will get through this xxx

I think it hits us all in completely different ways and it’s really hard to process the life we are left to deal with.

Last year, I didn’t really want to talk to anyone professionally about my life. I just thought I would process it and move on. That counselling wasn’t for me.

But it actually took a cancer counselling session for me to realise there was a lot more to unpack than I understood. Throwing cancer in the mix really doesn’t help when you’re trying to deal with a bereavement but it’s made me realise there’s a lot more to it than I realised and I have been thinking about strategies to help myself.

I recently had an afternoon with some new friends in the garden and it was really lovely, but every now and again it hit me that DH wasn’t here, that times like that in the garden which we’ve had together were no longer going to happen again and although it was difficult I did feel comforted by the fact that I was here in my beautiful garden surrounded by people that thought a lot of me

every now and again I pick up little sayings from within the posts here and other things that come I across and write them in a little book that helps me to process things and I found myself reading back yesterday and finding this sentence

I need to navigate the adjustment from what was my life to what is my life.

But something else struck a cord and I do find that I’m not being quite so appropriately sad so much (something I had written last year that emptyandsad had described)

I do worry occasionally that my grief has pushed people away. That they don’t really know how to deal with me which is understandable but at the same time when death is so inevitable I find it strange. I don’t seem to come across many people like me.

I try and make an effort now to join in more and I do feel that The joining in actually helps my sadness.

For those of you that are struggling, it’s hard to know what to say because realistically nothing anyone can say will make any of it any better. If I was to send my younger self a message from today, I think it would be that bereavement counselling would definitely have been a good idea.

Sending you all virtual hugs and hope that the sunshine that is gloriously shining down on my garden today is shining down with you wherever you may be 💐💐💐

@Sunshineandbluesky

The 1 yr mark is a tough one. I still get a bit panicky around the anniversary. It didn't affect work for me, but only because the anniversary falls inside the Scottish Hogmanay period.

It’s been too long since I last saw him and I think it’s the anticipation of the 1 year mark coming up and parenting without him being hard and being so lonely.

Yes, all of this will be involved. Even after 5 yrs, even when I've been coping okay and - dare I say it - even finding flashes of happiness, something will hit me in the teeth and all I want is a cuddle from him.

Sending hugs.

Ah @Hisredipad , I recognise this "I recently had an afternoon with some new friends in the garden and it was really lovely, but every now and again it hit me that DH wasn’t here, that times like that in the garden which we’ve had together were no longer going to happen again" very well. I think I still avoid these sort of situations, because my wife was soooo good in them. I would watch her working the room (or the garden), laughter following her everywhere she went. Her confidence and ease infected me and made me become less gauche and I miss both her and the version of me she liberated.

Thank you everyone for your replies. It really does help that others understand and have taken the time to reply. X