This is life (after the passing of DH) Thread two

[Hisredipad]

Gosh. We filled the other one up. Here’s a new one for us to continue our support of one another.

here is a link to our previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/bereavement/5308661-this-is-life-after-passing-of-dh?page=40&reply=152421290

This bit was hidden away in the main website:

https://www.moodcafe.co.uk/other-mental-health-issues/bereavement/

This might be of interest to those of you suffering the tragedy of early widowhood:

https://www.widowedandyoung.org.uk/

I also use "one foot in front of the other".

Sometimes that's the win of the day.

WAY really helped me when my first husband died, the events were extremely helpful to my children too as they were able to meet other bereaved children.

If someone is asking me how I am doing, I tend to mumble something about "ups and downs". It seems to cover everything, so they can take what they want from that!

I used “not bad considering” after I lost my first husband, which worked OK until I met a school mum who hadn’t heard six months later and I had to explain in a crowded shop. I think a stock phrase can be quite helpful in general.

Hi just came across this. Long time member of MN but only 10 weeks since I lost DH. Feel totally bereft and alone. He was my soulmate and my bestest pal, absolute love of my life. Already people are backing away and pretty sure I'm just expected to get on with it. Just me and my son and we have no family nearby.

I am trying really hard. Met with a couple of other widows recently and I have counselling through a local charity. GP has been brilliant at keeping an eye on me but I feel like everything inside me is broken into a million pieces. I worry that the few people that are left for me will just get fed up.

I feel like the one person that truly loved me has died and that's it for me now 😕

Sorry for your loss @maxybrown this really is the club nobody wants to be part of.

Until you actually find yourself in it, it’s really difficult to appreciate what somebody is potentially going through. Bereavement of my loved one is nothing like I ever imagined. I’m 19 months in now. Recent bereavement counselling has definitely helped and I wish I’d started it around the six month mark.

I think you just have to be really kind yourself and take it one day at a time and at your own pace. I had these markers in my head that I thought those will be the points in time when it all just sorted itself out, but that isn’t the case.

I agree with Hisredipad, @maxybrown . I'm sorry that you're part of the club.

It's nearly 6 years for me and there really is no time scale to it all. Things are not as raw as the early days, thank God, but it does still come up and smack me in the face. Nevertheless, I'm still here and unexpectedly find moments of joy, moments that I want to share with DH.

Yes I remember thinking in the first year, that I wished it was the second year. Just so things wouldn’t be so bad. Well, the second year has been worse really. For me, the acuteness and shock has given way to a realisation that he’s actually gone.

The "realisation that he’s actually gone" phrase has struck such a chord with me. I have just started doing this. It's really starting to hit me (after nearly 9 months) that I will actually never ever see him again.
I feel so guilty when I throw something out but then I realise that no-one will ever use/ need it again (it was shaving gel this morning) and then the despair hits again.

Can I ask how people found counselling and how you chose the right one? I'm not sure whether I do/will want to do it and am a bit worried about opening up to someone and then feeling they were the wrong person. DH died about 10 weeks ago but after a year long illness.

@maxybrownoh the backing away 😭 it hits different. I want to talk about him, he was the best of me. My safe space. Hes gone 11 months now and I’m reliving last October. Every single message and photo

I’m currently seeing a therapist. She was recommended to me by a friend. I’m finding it helpful to have somewhere I can unload, perhaps more freely than I would with friends. I started seeing her about two months after my husband died, which was probably too soon, as I wasn’t very coherent - the usual advice is to wait six months, but I’d misremembered that as six weeks.

@Sunnyphoenix a friend who is a psychologist has said she will look for someone when I feel ready, DH died in May and she said she wouldn’t recommend having counselling so soon, she did think something informal like a bereavement cafe would be useful. I am moving house this week so plan to try one in my new town.
Having done a basic counselling course myself I know it’s important to be sure they are BACP registered.

On the subject of feeling they are “gone” the New Year after my first DH died was very hard, his death was last year and I felt as though I had left him behind and each day was taking me further away.

I started having counselling shortly after DH died. It was through a local hospice, and it was limited to 12 sessions, which I paid for.
The final one was last week, and on Saturday it will be 6 months since he died.

Perhaps I should have waited longer - who knows 🤷‍♂️?

But I did find a lot of it very useful, although very repetitive - then again, perhaps that's why it was useful 🤔.

It mainly gave me tools to use to manage my grief and my guilt. It helped me understand that I did do everything I absolutely could to help DH, and that his death from very late diagnosed stage 4 lung cancer/stroke was inevitable and way beyond my capability in terms of medical knowledge - so therefore feeling guilty - while understandable - wouldn't help me in the long term. That decisions made about his care were made with the knowledge that we had at the time, which wasn't necessarily the whole picture.

It also gave me tools to manage relationships with other people - when to say no, and how to ask for help. And gave me 'permission' to just cut people out if I didn't want to interact with them, which was strangely liberating.

The counsellor also helped me see that although I feel so alone and adrift, I do have a much wider support network than I realised, albeit not necessarily the most visible or noticeable. But acknowledging that there are neighbours keeping a quiet eye out (I had a random text from a very kind neighbour whom I barely know, asking if I was okay and if I needed any help, as she had noticed that my bin wasn't out) and work colleagues who discreetly check in every few days, has vastly helped me deal with the anger that I feel towards those I had regarded as close friends, and who have now disappeared.

Of course it's not the same as having DH - how could it be? But it did help. In a small way.

This is how I feel as well.

When I met DH we lived a long way apart, and so we would spend weekends travelling by train (5 hours each way) to see one another.

I feel as though I'm once again on that train as it pulls out of the station, waving at DH on the platform. And that every day my train moves further away, and he recedes more and more into the distance. Still waving, but getting imperceptibly further and further away from me

Thank you for the replies on counselling, I feel as if friends suggest it as something I ‘should’ do and I am finding it difficult to detach that from what I would find helpful.

Do you know ‘Freya Ridings’ ‘lost without you’? That has the singer on the platform watching the trains pull out and it’s been one of the songs that has resonated with me for exactly that reason- watching him pulling further away

@Sunnyphoenix I think the problem with grieving is that everyone knows what we “should” be doing apart from
us. I think we have to do what is right for us, and that is different for everyone.

@Sunnyphoenixmy 20 yr old niece sang that at my husband’s funeral

What do you all do to pass the evenings,especially now its getting dark early. I feel like I dont want to do anything: dont watch TV much,can't concentrate on reading,tried colouring in and jigsaws. So I just go to bed and doomscroll in the silent house,bored and lonely. Its been nearly 4 months now since dh died.

I got a cat. I also have DH dog 🐕. I do go to bed early anyway though but the animals forced me to get up, the early months in particular. I found tv hard because i can’t focus. I even cancelled sky. One year ago me would not have considered that

I put the TV on for background noise in the evening and just doomscroll. I find it impossible to concentrate on anything.
Every so often I will find a series that I half watch but really nothing interests me. It's such an empty sad existence.