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Adjusting to the loss - how long?


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4 hours ago, mittam99 said:

That's probably the real issue as time moves forward in our grief journey. When do we get beyond "doing things to get through the day" and graduate to doing things because they bring us pleasure. My Tammy died on March 6, 2015 and I still just try my best to find things to do to fill time until the next 24 hours of "my sentence".  Sometimes, it does feel like we're imprisoned in our own grief.

I wish I had the magical answer but I don't. Here's hoping that we all find that answer in time, sooner rather than later.

I'm afraid that I often regard the rest of my life, without Susan, as "my sentence"

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17 hours ago, mittam99 said:

I still just try my best to find things to do to fill time until the next 24 hours of "my sentence".  Sometimes, it does feel like we're imprisoned in our own grief.

Such an amazing way to put it. It is so very much like serving time. I was living the high life and had everything I had ever wanted. Then, in the blink of an eye, I am in prison for the rest of my life. Serving a sentence for a crime I didn't commit. Sometimes I wish the executioner would just flip the switch.

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3 hours ago, Eagle-96 said:

Such an amazing way to put it. It is so very much like serving time. I was living the high life and had everything I had ever wanted. Then, in the blink of an eye, I am in prison for the rest of my life. Serving a sentence for a crime I didn't commit. Sometimes I wish the executioner would just flip the switch.

Well put!  My feelings, exactly...

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On 7/10/2017 at 7:37 AM, Eagle-96 said:

Then, in the blink of an eye, I am in prison for the rest of my life. Serving a sentence for a crime I didn't commit. Sometimes I wish the executioner would just flip the switch.

I so relate!  Now we know what it's like to be on death row and they won't flip the friggin' switch!  30 years of appeals and still waiting!

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3 minutes ago, kayc said:

I so relate!  Now we know what it's like to be on death row and they won't flip the friggin' switch!  30 years of appeals and still waiting!

The terrible part is that we're not sitting in solitary confinement with no windows. We actually get to suffer in this prison cell while being able to see out the window to society. We get to see everyone else go on with their lives with their spouses. We see the births, engagements, marriages, holidays. All of the moments and times that we so desperately long for that we cannot ever have again. It's torture magnified. 

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9 months since I suddenly and tragically lost my husband of 25 years. I am worse than I was the first months. I lost him , my way of life. Everything i hear touch and see takes me to my knees. My heart is screaming in pain. First post, just so ya know ?

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3 hours ago, kayc said:

I so relate!  Now we know what it's like to be on death row and they won't flip the friggin' switch!  30 years of appeals and still waiting!

I didn't ask for the appeals either. Dam lawyers out of control!

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Cookie, it has been almost 8 months for me... lost John a month after he underwent surgery for an aneurysm. Married almost as long as you at 23 1/2 years. I am so very sorry you lost your husband. I think our senses are heightened as a result of grief. That's why it is such a gift to be able to numb out at times. The fact that everything you hear, touch and see takes you to your knees is familiar. The first few months after John died, I was mostly numb, with the occasional emotional outburst of falling apart. I agree, it is worse now. I am told by others that that is typical, but who knows? I don't think there is a "norm" when it comes to all of this. Grief is so individualized. I am glad you found this group, though, as I am as well.

Journeying along side of you,

Mary Beth

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Cookie I'm sorry you are one of us walking wounded. 112 days since my other half departed on a day she'd been told she might have pneumonia but was in overall good health. What I have is alternating grief waves & OK moments, changing about hourly. Susan called me panda bear & sometimes I think I died too on 3/31 & am now panda ghost, very detached from this world. But I did see that I can still enjoy the ocean on my recent vacation. 

I'm sure everyone has their own timeline. I have a friend who started dating & recently told me he is in love after 18 months. Just sayin'. Don't let anyone tell you what yours should be. I sure don't know mine. This is the time for "one day at a time", easier said than done. Hugs Tom 

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4 hours ago, Eagle-96 said:

The terrible part is that we're not sitting in solitary confinement with no windows. We actually get to suffer in this prison cell while being able to see out the window to society. We get to see everyone else go on with their lives with their spouses. We see the births, engagements, marriages, holidays. All of the moments and times that we so desperately long for that we cannot ever have again. It's torture magnified. 

You couldn't have put it more perfectly.  I like my neighbors very much.  Lately, tho, I have noticed thier laughter and activities make me feel worse.  I hardly talk to them now because I feel so isolated from even sharing in thier enjoyment because I have to come inside my emotional house of all the opposite feelings.  It's hard for me to even read emails from people about their plans.  Everyone is so excited about the summer.  I woke up to maggots all over my kitchen floor and thought....how fitting.  It explained all the dead flies I kept finding in there.  I got a notice yesterday from an account Steve opened and now have to change that.  I feel surrounded by death yet again.  So while others sit in the sun laughing I'm sweeping up maggots and have to once again drag out a death certificate.  I've always believed never say it can't get any worse because it can.  

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20 hours ago, Eagle-96 said:

The terrible part is that we're not sitting in solitary confinement with no windows. We actually get to suffer in this prison cell while being able to see out the window to society. We get to see everyone else go on with their lives with their spouses. We see the births, engagements, marriages, holidays. All of the moments and times that we so desperately long for that we cannot ever have again. It's torture magnified. 

That IS how prison is!  I used to do prison ministry.  I'd visit the maximum security prison in Salem, OR.  They could look out the window of their cell and see people going by on the street, cars going by, people going on with their lives.  It reminds me of a Robert Lewis Stevenson poem, "Bed in summer", which I memorized as a child.  I used to make a card for the inmates with that on it, and a picture of a little boy glumly looking out the window.  They could really relate.
 

Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night 
And dress by yellow candle-light. 
In summer, quite the other way, 
I have to go to bed by day. 
 
I have to go to bed and see 
The birds still hopping on the tree, 
Or hear the grown-up people's feet 
Still going past me in the street. 
 
And does it not seem hard to you, 
When all the sky is clear and blue, 
And I should like so much to play, 
To have to go to bed by day?

 

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17 hours ago, Cookie462 said:

9 months since I suddenly and tragically lost my husband of 25 years. I am worse than I was the first months. I lost him , my way of life. Everything i hear touch and see takes me to my knees. My heart is screaming in pain. First post, just so ya know ?

Cookie462,
I am so sorry you also lost your husband.  Welcome here, I hope you find comfort knowing there are others that relate to what you're feeling.

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17 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

You couldn't have put it more perfectly.  I like my neighbors very much.  Lately, tho, I have noticed thier laughter and activities make me feel worse.  I hardly talk to them now because I feel so isolated from even sharing in thier enjoyment because I have to come inside my emotional house of all the opposite feelings.  It's hard for me to even read emails from people about their plans.  

Me too. I lied & said I had something to do to cancel sailing on a perfect day when my friend wanted to bring his wife. I threw $ on the table and left lunch with friends without speaking after one went on about his plans with his wife who is also a Susan. I now have "couples radar" and am acutely aware that everyone seems to be paired up. I ask myself "how did you both live?" I noticed that beach chairs are paired up on my recent vacation. The lonliness is overwhelming.

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2 hours ago, kayc said:

 I used to make a card for the inmates with that on it,

My daughter was a group leader as the nurse at the parish correctional jail.  It was a woman's group and in tough situations, women can be tough.  In our situations, in our homemade prison, we can and we have to be tough.  What an intuitive thing for you to do Ms. Kay, who writes and makes cards for different occasions and different people.  A very nice thing to do, and somehow, I figure those cards are still carried by many inmates........and they fit our situation also.  (Although I try to stay physically away from that bed.)

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22 hours ago, Cookie462 said:

Everything i hear touch and see takes me to my knees. My heart is screaming in pain. First post, just so ya know ?

So many new ones.  Hate to see that others share our misery, but somehow, and I don't know how, we all come here for some sort of solace.  Sometimes we find it.  Some are looking for length of time it takes, and there just really is no answer for that one.

I just heard from a friend, nothing earth shattering, just took me back too many years to even calculate in my brain.  All he said was that the young me, he never knew as a coward, that I was tough. (Of course, this was before I found and lost Billy).  That is all, and I started crying and have probably cried almost constantly for 30 minutes.  Fixing to be 21 months for me.  Where is that tough young girl from so long ago.  I have cried because I lost her.  I have cried, not just tears, but buckets.

Now, I have to pull the old girl together and take my granddaughter to her doctor's appointment.  I think the red hair made me tough.  It's not red anymore.  

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5 hours ago, Marg M said:

 Where is that tough young girl from so long ago.  I have cried because I lost her.  I have cried, not just tears, but buckets.

Now, I have to pull the old girl together and take my granddaughter to her doctor's appointment.  I think the red hair made me tough.  It's not red anymore.  

I'm sorry Marg, I do understand you. I too cry for the same.

I must have died too, I don't recognize myself in old but not so old pictures, pics from 3 years ago. Was that me? I had that life? He existed? 

There is an ocean-length distance between my ex life and my new life, I felt so radically different that I wonder if it was ever different. My new life seems to have existed forever. I cannot believe that this new me has been in a love relationship. 

It is very very very hard this grief.

I've the feeling that nothing from my old self,,,,,and from him....was left in my present. I don't understand how nor why I feel this way. 

Maybe it's called trauma.....

I'm tired.

 

On 7/11/2017 at 11:41 AM, Eagle-96 said:

The terrible part is that we're not sitting in solitary confinement with no windows. We actually get to suffer in this prison cell while being able to see out the window to society. We get to see everyone else go on with their lives with their spouses. We see the births, engagements, marriages, holidays. All of the moments and times that we so desperately long for that we cannot ever have again. It's torture magnified. 

I don't own the following, although it`s about a different kind of loss, I think it's accurate for what is being said about witnessing:

"New Me watches silently from the sidelines. I imagine a referee telling me I’ll never compete. I might as well head to the bench. He says I can watch the others play. I assume I’ll cover my face, but I can’t resist looking through my hands at the life I should have. I quietly leave the field, alone, head hung low in defeat. “Life is everyone else’s game to win,” my inner voice says.

That voice used to say, “It’s your turn now! You can do this.” Cora was alive and thriving; my textbook pregnancy felt invincible.

Now, I only want to hear the voices of those who also live in this infinitely cruel domino effect of sadness, who also gnash their teeth at Mother Nature. I can’t relate to the more innocent voices, the ones who think small problems are problems at all, or who think there’s a reason for my tragedy, or who are experiencing life the way they planned it".     [Source: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/2017/6/04/sad-but-true]

Edited by MartyT
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I was never conscious of appearence but I think I've aged 10 years since 3/31.

Sometimes I feel like I died with Susan and am now a ghost, not really here, no longer concerned with "small problems", moving among the real people but half way to the other side. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 7/12/2017 at 0:44 PM, TomPB said:

Sometimes I feel like I died with Susan and am now a ghost, not really here, no longer concerned with "small problems", moving among the real people but half way to the other side. 

 

For me, I still feel like I am stuck in someone else's life.  This can't be mine now....but it is.  I've never had to make such a conscious effort to move in any direction as I do now.  I was just talking to a dear friend whose husband is late stage Lewy Body disease and the discussion turned into how shaken our confidence in ourselves has become.  I used to know where I was headed in life; now it seems to have swallowed me.  

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1 hour ago, Brad said:

For me, I still feel like I am stuck in someone else's life.  This can't be mine now....but it is.  I've never had to make such a conscious effort to move in any direction as I do now.  I was just talking to a dear friend whose husband is late stage Lewy Body disease and the discussion turned into how shaken our confidence in ourselves has become.  I used to know where I was headed in life; now it seems to have swallowed me.  

I understand how you feel Brad. 

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12 hours ago, Brad said:

 I was just talking to a dear friend whose husband is late stage Lewy Body disease and the discussion turned into how shaken our confidence in ourselves has become.

That's what my mom had, that and Leukemia.  It's a hard disease, kind of like the combination of Alzheimers and Parkinsons, not only memory loss, but lots of falls and bruises. :(

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Hi all..

Yes- the walk of the wounded...

Yes -my heart is screaming in pain

Yes -I have aged ... I am now seasoned with grief...

Ohsosad, Vicky , Cookie.. you are among friends. Only those that grieve can understand the journey..

Gwen, a special hug to you..,You are a beautiful person- Steve loved you.. we love you.. Cyber hug..

Kay- loved that poem - that was me in the summer as a child for sure...

perhaps it's me now looking back at the summer of my life...

My son and grandson spent the evening with me recently... oh how that made my heart happy for a little while...

Everyone: Thinking of you all and sending thoughts of love, peace and a measure of happiness.. your way.. even if it's just a beautiful memory that brings happiness... I pray it comforts you with the hug of friendship and with the gifts of love ...

...Marie

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