AnnC

Thanks for the replies, they make me feel better (less crazy?) I remember you too, kayc. You are always so compassionate. I experience much the same as you describe, I live my life and an generally happy with family and friends but am always missing my love. I guess that's just the way it works. It occurred to me that my own birthday just passed, and since he and I were the same age, it does sadden me as I grow older and he doesn't. He was 50 when he died, and I just turned 65. I met him right after his 18th birthday. Can't believe it's been so long. Maybe that triggered the grief attack. I talk to him in my mind too.

Hi, I was on this forum years ago when my ex-husband died (2004) and when my brother died (2012). I have been doing well, but for some reason this year, starting with New Year's, I have been obsessed by the loss of my ex nearly 14 years ago. He was the love of my life, but after 12 years together, he stopped fighting his nature and came out as gay, so we divorced. We remained in contact for years after that, sometimes in close contact, sometimes distant. He became ill with liver disease, and we became very close then. He died 19 months later and I was just shattered. Now it seems like I'm going through it again. Today I was nearly as miserable as I was shortly after his death. Is this weird? I know you can have grief attacks around the birthday or the anniversary of his death, but he died in June and his birthday was in September. I find myself reading all my journals from the time just after his death, and I spent most of today crying hysterically. I don't get it.

My brother died suddenly in a car crash last August. I have also found it hard and surreal to have lost a sibling. It's very different from when my father died. I was sad when my father died, but you know you probably will outlive your parents. You expect that your brother will always be in your life, and it's a huge shock when someone dies too young. I miss him all the time. I went to grief groups but they were far more focused on parents who lost children and people who are widowed. It seems hard to find people who take sibling loss seriously. I do have a coworker whose sister died last year, and she and I had a good talk and at least I feel a little less alone. It's really helpful to post and read in this forum, and we are always here and you can post anything you are feeling, any time. Take one day, or one hour at a time, and cry when you need to. Many people don't know what to say, so they say the wrong thing or they change the subject. I hope you can find someone who will understand the magnitude of your loss, and even if you don't, we do understand here on this forum. Be gentle with yourself.

I celebrate these also. The turning of the seasons is the earth's way of reminding us that as the year dies and is renewed, so are our loved ones. That's how I feel, anyway.

Thanks, Anne.

Thanks for reading it. Yesterday I started crying and have not stopped since and am crying as I post this. My "poem" just came to me and needed to be expressed. I have a final verse running through my head too: I wait for my niece. I wait for her Facebook posts, her photos and jokes, her friends, her likes, her teenage dreams. She has long blonde hair and her father's blue eyes, my brother's eyes. I wait for her texts and her phone calls when we laugh and talk and she shares her life. I wait for next year when my sisters, my mother and I will fly to Hawaii where my niece was born and raised to see her graduate from high school, because my brother cannot be there. I wait for next year when she will come to the mainland to go to college. I wait and I know she will come. I know somewhere my brother is smiling. I know he waits for me, when it is eventually my time, and then I will come to him.

It's not really a poem, I hope it's ok to post here.

I have wanted and waited for a brother for as long as I can remember. When I was five, I told my friends I had a big brother. But they knew I was making it up. When I was nine, I told my mother that my two little sisters were cute, but I wanted a brother too. She said she was too old to have more children. When I was 14, my parents said they were having another baby. I waited confidently for a brother. On a cold November night, he came. I adored him, so tiny, so perfect. I helped to take care of him. I held his little hands as he learned to walk. I taught him to count. When he was three, I went to college. When he was nine, I got married and moved to the east coast. When I was 39, I waited for my brother at the Boston airport when he flew from Oregon to visit me before moving to Hawaii. When I was 42, I flew to Hawaii to go to his wedding and dance. Sadly, like me, he ended up getting divorced. I waited for my brother in Seattle, where I had moved. He came and lived with me for a couple of months as he started his new job. We talked and laughed, went out to eat and bought a kitten. He changed jobs a few years later and moved near our mother in Oregon. On holidays I went to my parents' house and waited for my brother. He always came. He watched over my mother after my father died. Last August, I went to my mother's and waited for my brother to bring a U-Haul and move some furniture for us. He did not come. The police came and told us about his car hitting a pole at 60 mph. They talked about the car bursting into flames. My family cried together all weekend, and then I went home and waited for my brother. A few days later, the funeral home called, so I went to pick up his ashes. I kept him at my home for a month until it was time to take him to Oregon for the service. We put his urn next to my father's in a mausoleum where four generations of my family are laid to rest. Now I am 60, and I could sit and wait for my brother. But he will never come again.

I had a dream after my brother's death that he and my dad (who died 6 years ago) were in my mother's house, getting out tools and preparing to repair something. I woke up and felt that it was a message that they are together and watching over my mom. It was comforting. They looked well and relaxed and happy.

I found it hard too, even though it was my ex-husband who died, still, I loved him and we had separated because he was gay, not because we didn't love each other. It took at least two years before I stopped crying every single day, and people really didn't get it, the usual comment was, "Why do you care, he was an ex." My father died in December 2006. I believe my mother was in shock the first year. The second year she developed a great deal of anxiety and digestive disorders (evidently stress-related.) She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. We spent a lot of time with her and on the phone with her. A few months later she met a woman who was recently widowed, and they seemed to help each other, since they both understood how it felt. It took my mother years to start to move ahead with her life, but we never pressured her. I had been through grief support, and knew this was normal, though it was hard to see her suffer. It has now been 6 years. In the past two years, my mother joined a pilates class which she enjoyed. This year she has also started mah-jong classes and games. She is much more social, though now she is 85. I tell this to show that it is normal to take years to adjust and create your new normal, your greatly changed life. But slowly, it does happen. We still talk about my dad, we never avoid the subject. And she still wears her wedding rings. My parents were married for 56 years. Such a huge change in a life, to be widowed. Just this past December, my aunt, who is 90, said how she hates to have Dec. 14th come around again. That is the anniversary of my uncle's death. She still feels it, though he died 15 years ago. Of course we never forget those we love.

I'm so sorry for your loss. My brother also died in a car crash, on August 24th. Not quite six months ago. He veered off the road for unknown reasons (maybe passing out or falling asleep) and hit the big exit sign at 60 mph. He was killed on impact. The autopsy showed nothing in his system -- no medications or alcohol or anything that would impair his driving. He didn't even have his phone so he wasn't talking or texting. But he had been working 12 hour days, and had had some bad days at work (which he most likely tossed and turned with worrying during the night), so he was probably exhausted. He had driven 3 hours by the time he crashed. Also it was mid-afternoon and the M.E. said he had recently eaten. That's why we think he fell asleep. It's frightening that only falling asleep for a very few seconds can have fatal consequences. I'm still nervous whenever I drive on the freeway. I know that feeling of going to the crash site (where you said you found the chocolates.) I felt I had to go, I live closer to it than the rest of the family. I walked it and walked it, picking up anything I could find. I found his burned extra pair of shoes and some tools that were in his glove compartment, and a partially burned Rand McNally road map book. The car had burst into flames, though he was pulled from the car by other drivers and they attempted to resuscitate him but without success. I guess it's part of what grief therapists call "searching behavior" -- we are looking for our lost love one. Looking for something, anything, that tells us what happened, why it happened. My brother was 15 years younger than I am, and I took care of him a lot as an infant and toddler. I never had children, so he was the closest I had to a child. He was only 44, and left a teenaged daughter. These are such tragedies and they do change your life forever. And although I also have support from friends and my Compassionate Friends group, still, I think we each travel our grief journey essentially alone. But this web site is also of great help, we are always here to "listen".

I'm so sorry for the loss of your grandfather. The saying is that time heals all wounds, but you are right -- time softens the edge of the pain, but we are not "healed" -- we don't go back to who we were before our loved one died. We are changed forever. I feel that way about my brother's and father's and husband's deaths -- I never get over them, I work over time to adjust to my changed life and learn to live with the losses. I will always cry, but as time goes on I cry less often. That's the best we can do.

Sadly, no one knows how long grief will last. Even for me, each loss is different. I felt recovered fairly quickly when I lost my own father, but he went through a rough year of chemotherapy, radiation, and misery before his death, so there was a lot of relief as well as grief when he died. I cried a few times, but was not devastated -- I think I was expressing my grief throughout his treatment, since we knew he was terminal. But with my ex-husband, I cried daily for two years, then every other day for another year. Sounds odd for an ex, maybe, but there was a lot of guilt and unresolved issues, so that prolonged things. I seem to be recovering a bit now in the sixth month since my brother's death. His was sudden, a car accident, so the shock made it different. I was shattered, but with my other losses I had a lot of grief therapy, so I didn't fight the process this time -- I gave into it much more and let my emotions run wild, not suppressing anything, and I think that helped. The raw edge of pain is a little dulled now. So even my own grief reactions can't be predicted, it depends not only on my personality, but the nature of my relationship with the person who died. And I couldn't ever predict how it would go. For all I know, I may hit bottom again about my brother's death. Wish I could give you a timetable, but unfortunately, I doubt even your girlfriend could. I think it's good you're keeping in touch the way you are, so she knows you still care and are still there -- I would think that would make a big difference. Hang in there.

It's feelings, it's not thoughts or logic. Grief over a close loved one is overwhelming. You have times you just can't be around people. My sisters and I are very close, and we are processing the same loss, but sometimes I can't handle talking to them, or when I want to talk to one of them, she doesn't want to talk. Because we are sisters, we know the relationship will last, so we let each other alone when that's what is needed. I can't explain what's happening when I need to be alone -- I have used up all my sick time with my need to be alone and skip work. I have to show up a lot when it's the last thing I want to do, just because I need to keep my job. If I could, I would just sit in my apartment and obsess, or sometimes go out with others who aren't that close so that little is demanded of me. Why? I can't explain it. It just gets too overwhelming to be around people who have expectations. It's an emotional response, based on my grief, not on anything anyone else has done wrong. You asked if someone on the other end could explain it, and that's all I am able to offer. My friend's 5 year old nephew died last week because of medical negligence. Sometimes he needs to talk. Sometimes he disappears. I know to some extent how it feels, so I let him alone. Trust the relationship, and let her go for now. Your instincts are correct that "stalking" her won't help, and may make things worse. I know you are suffering through your own grief at the (temporary, hopefully) loss of the relationship. How you feel now is no doubt very similar to her feelings of loss of her father. It's overwhelming and hard to concentrate on anything else. I don't know if that helps.

It's hard when it piles up. I lost my aunt, cousin, and brother all in one month. My other aunt is 90 and feeble. I just turned 60 last week and am feeling very morbid about death, my own and that of loved ones. Maybe because my brother's recent death at 44 is a reminder that we never know how long anyone will live. Feeling very depressed today. At five months, I have more good days, but still have these very black days, and probably will for a long time, just not as frequent.