If You're Going Through Hell

[Margm]

You are right Marty.  I think though, unless they have experienced loss, their teachings are not self-felt feelings.  You have had your feet in the coals, you understand,  I don't want sympathy, I want empathetic understanding, like you have.  I have a strong sister widow network, I will find someone.  The thing is, I realize I need help.  I am not at home right now, and I am going to get this fellows name wrong, but Wolfelt, PhD said I might need to go to more than one if it is not a good fit.  At least I am in a bigger "market" than I was in the other state.  I am not suicidal, but not caring if you live or die is not healthy.  I realize I need help.  

[MartyT]

I know you realize that, dear Marg, and I hope you will find it soon. I agree completely with Alan Wolfelt about needing to search for a good fit, and I agree that your counselor should know grief from the inside out ~ but I also know that most counselors who choose to specialize in grief and loss do so because they have experienced significant loss themselves. Bear in mind that when you're selecting a counselor, you have every right to interview that person beforehand. Try writing down all your questions before you make that initial phone call so you'll be prepared to ask what you need to know. For example, ask about the counselor's background, experience, training and qualifications. What led the counselor to specialize in grief and loss? Is the person duly licensed? Certified by a reputable national organization such as ADEC (Association for Death Education and Counseling)?  What's Your Grief has a good article about this, here: Seeking Professional Grief Support: the nuts and bolts

See also Key Questions to Ask When Choosing A Therapist

[TerriL]

SW, you may feel at times like you don't care if you live or die, but I care and so does everyone else on here. While you search for the right counselor, let us keep you afloat. (I have no idea where all my nautical terms are coming from today---Paul was in the Navy, maybe he's influencing me.) I know I want to "catch the ball and live", but I want to do it in a way that will also honor my late husband. Not quite sure where that will take me, but I've started writing in my journal again (it seems to help) and I'm trying to move forward on a few things that are desperately in need of taking care of. I believe my next project will be getting that storage unit emptied out. I've devised a plan and only need to run it by a friend who has offered to help me. That storage unit will be one less albatross tied around my neck, once it's done. Maybe that's when I will finally make an appointment with the counselor since it will be freeing up about $250.00 a month. (Yeah, can you believe it? Just to babysit furniture. Talk about crazy!) I have less money coming in now than when Paul was alive, but I also am aware of how lucky I am. Some don't even have that, plus they have mortgages or car payments and I have none of that. What you said about the RV---Paul and I were actively looking for another house at the time he passed away. We had come close to putting an offer on a home we both really liked. We discovered it already had a contract on it. In hindsight, of course, I realized how lucky we actually were that the house was taken. I can't imagine what I'd be going through right now had I been saddled with a brand new home and mortgage and half the income. It was a slightly larger home, too, which, now that I'm alone, I no longer need. 

Thank you, Marty, for the excellent resources. I do know that one of the key factors for me is that I want a female counselor, around my age or a bit older. I just feel more comfortable with someone my own gender who has also experienced menopause. I'd be able to open up and relate to her more. 

[Gwenivere]

Going to a counselor that has not experienced grief themselves would be useless, IMO.  Someone has to know this road personally to help another.  This is evident to us by people around us that try and offer advice and suggestions that know nothing about how this truly feels.  We've all been thru that.  It would be like going to a grocery store when you need some shoes.  Even in depth training cannot replace knowing what loss truly feels like.

Marg, I am not suicidal in the sense of making plans, but I can totally relate to not caring if I live or die.  People get all in a panic if I express that so its adds to the isolation.  They see I am not having to struggle financially, that it has been almost 2 years (supposedly seficient time to have transitioned from 37 years together) and my favorite....aren't you used to it by now?  What?   That I will never see him again?  Walk around the world and my home getting older alone?  Prove my competency at now solving problems myself?  Not having someone love me and care I exist?  Watching my health deteriorate drastically knowing  a lot is from the stress of losing him?

yeah, a real walk in the park.  No big deal.  

[Gwenivere]

5 hours ago, TerriL said:

It feels like I'm wearing a shroud made of a mixture of fear and anxiety, with depression trim. 

There's a possibility that my realization that in a little over one month from now, Paul will have been gone an entire year, is playing a huge part in these strange, depressed feelings. I'm trying to come to grips with that bec cause there are still moments where it seems like it happened only a month ago. Everything is still so vivid in my mind I don't understand how I've been able to exist this long without him.

He's gone and every year of my life from here on out will have to continue without him by my side. Yet, I still feel the need to have a life. I don't mean romance, but a life where I feel useful and have a sense of purpose. I often think about how things might be if the situation had been reversed. , 

[Gwenivere]

Well, I'll have to put my reply separately from what I quoted from you, Terri.  Software glitch.

i love your analogy of the shroud.  I have one too.  Quite cumbersome thing it is too.

My first year is a blur to me.  I don't know how I did it.  As I near the end of the 2nd, I feel this was far worse because I know the truth now.  No filters, no wishful thinking, no escape from the reality.  Seeing his final weeks hand not faded in vivid recollection as I hoped.  Lost that he's on a trip and will eventually come home.  You and I are close in years together.  Ours was 37 years.

Ive thought many times about if this was reversed.  Steve would not tend to the house as I do, but he would get along.  He was a great dog dad so the kids would be fine.  He had his music and so many friends it was amazing.  I don't know how the grief would affect him, he told me that he would see no reason to put great effort in a life without me.  But he was an amazingly positive person I watched fight a hell of a demon we know would win.  I often feel death took the wrong one of us.  But that is all speculation of course.  Sometimes the strongest people get zapped in the archilles heel that cripples them too.  He had his own inner demons he fought that he only told me about.  I think of things his friends have said to me and wonder how he would react if they said the same to him and he was the one that was experiencing the pain they didn't understand.  I'm sure he'd see them in a different light as I have.  

But we are where we are.  I'm not sure what thinking about these things do, but I have yet to figure out how to make them leave me alone to tackle what I must without sidetracking me with this what ifs.  I only know one pure true thought that will never happen.  I want him back.

[brat#2]

5 hours ago, TerriL said:

There are times I get "quiet" on here, because I feel that strange, inexplicable vibe coming over me, too, and the only way I know how to handle it is to withdraw for a while and THINK. It feels like I'm wearing a shroud made of a mixture of fear and anxiety, with depression trim. I go inside myself, to sort all the stuff out. 

He's gone and every year of my life from here on out will have to continue without him by my side. Yet, I still feel the need to have a life. I don't mean romance, but a life where I feel useful and have a sense of purpose.

Terri, I feel the same exactly.  We haven't been apart this long in the 34 years we were together and it has been almost 14 months for me and I really don't know how I've gone this long. The sense of purpose is not there and I'm not sure how to find it.

Joyce

 

[brat#2]

34 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

My first year is a blur to me.  I don't know how I did it.  As I near the end of the 2nd, I feel this was far worse because I know the truth now.  No filters, no wishful thinking, no escape from the reality.  Seeing his final weeks hand not faded in vivid recollection as I hoped.  Lost that he's on a trip and will eventually come home.  You and I are close in years together.  Ours was 37 years.

But we are where we are.  I'm not sure what thinking about these things do, but I have yet to figure out how to make them leave me alone to tackle what I must without sidetracking me with this what ifs.  I only know one pure true thought that will never happen.  I want him back.

Gwen, this 2nd year is not fun at all and I wish I knew how to make these thoughts go away, so we could tackle what we must.  

Joyce

 

[Margm]

Marty, I made copies of all this to study over.  My sister has someone she wants me to go to and she insists on female.  I honestly would first off seek a female if it wasn't for the men we have on our forum.  They all understand as only a griever (man or woman) can and I think any one of them would make a good counselor, if the counselor I go to has as much empathy as these men.  I won't name them by name because my jumbled up brain will leave one out and remember it later.  I will say all of them though.

Marty, yesterday on Labor Day, Wolfelt quoted you in his book Guilt One Day At a Time. Since it was Labor Day he quoted "It's called grief work because finding your way through grief is hard work.  If you put it off like a messy chore, it just sits there waiting for you." Marty Tousley.  

I like this author very much and would recommend his books if they are not already on the list.  

ADDENDUM: I am going to leave it like I wrote it, but the book is named Grief One Day at a Time but you see what I wrote.  Some Freudian slip. Probably says it all.  This is not the first time I have misquoted this book title.  

[mittam99]

57 minutes ago, Marg M said:

I honestly would first off seek a female if it wasn't for the men we have on our forum.  They all understand as only a griever (man or woman) can and I think any one of them would make a good counselor, if the counselor I go to has as much empathy as these men.  I won't name them by name because my jumbled up brain will leave one out and remember it later.  I will say all of them though.

You're so right about the empathy, Marg. All the members here, (male and female) have so much of it. What a difference compared to the utter lack of understanding we tend to get in our "real lives".

[mittam99]

Marg, that was an interesting slip of the "tongue". Truthfully, "Guilt One Day at a Time" sounds pretty much on-point as a grief title, don't ya think?

[Margm]

Mitch, when I saw that I cried.  I had to go back in to edit, and I was not going to change it because it spoke more of my anguish at this moment than the correct title.

[MartyT]

Bless your heart, dear Marg. I'm so sorry that you're hurting so much, and I hope you can feel my arms around you.   ♥

I love Alan Wolfelt, too. I've read just about every book he's ever written, and have most of them in my own personal library. I have added your recommendation to our Grief Bibliography page (it's #120 on the list). Thank you!

[Patty65]

17 hours ago, Marg M said:

anguish...

Yes, (((Marg))) that is the right word for those moments... or days... or long nights... so indescribably excruciating when its inkish blackness washes over, there is nothing else.  Like a deep well with dark, slippery sides on a moonless, starless night.   I'm thinking maybe many of us here get stuck in those wells of anguish of losing half of ourselves, but maybe they are dug close together, those wells, and maybe we can hoot out at each other so while solitary, we can know we are not the only one, too.

Hoot, hoot.

Patty

[Margm]

Shopping today.  I read their specialties. Alcoholism, addiction, PTSD, anxiety and down at the bottom, grief.  I called a geriatric psychiatrist, I can come in tomorrow, oh wait, I am not an established patient, I have to wait till the 14th, no, what was my birth date again.  I said to just forget it and hung up.  When it comes down to it what can they do for me?  I cannot take medicine.  I have taken my second Xanax today because I was feeling caged in and I don't know to what.  It is simple enough, the year is coming up, my daughter is either suffering or she isn't.  We never know.  But what if she is.  I keep thinking about the tombstone with "see I told you I was sick."  I offered to call her neurosurgeon, who I know from the old hospital, one of his RN's I know personally and this person who always wants my help went into a frenzy of "no leave it alone, I want to do it myself."  We never know.  Mama is gone.  My sister asks for nothing but I help anyhow.  She is to come into some money from Mama's rural electric which saves back a lot of money.  When Daddy passed, Mama got a lot of money.  I have signed everything over to her.  Cannot worry about that.  The thing is, I have to make myself hold it together because of my granddaughter or she will be living in a situation that will drive her crazy.  So, it is normal grief and I have hit an anxiety period.  I tried watching TV, did not help.  I am going to read for awhile.  I know this is my not grieving my mother and the time coming up that Billy passed, he was sick this time last year, and I am just reliving it.  I relived it right after he passed and then I had periods of numbness.  Now Mama is gone, I can grieve Billy, but he has been gone for a year.  Yet it just happened.  I go over what I will say to a therapist and I just said the same thing to you all.  And you didn't tell me my hour was up.    

Addendum:  My granddaughter is in her room.  She won't see me like this, but the agitation has made her seek solitude.  I will have to purposefully calm that down.  I can do it.  She lost her "Dade" and her grandfather, the only daddy she ever knew.  I don't let her see this mood.  I have been too agitated and I hate that, and that is why she went in her room.  She has a TV and as early as we had to get up these past two days, she is probably asleep.  She is the most important thing and the reason I have to straighten out.  I will.  I honestly think I need to go to a pastor, but not the Episcopalian scholar.  

[TerriL]

SW, I know what you mean about those doctors and the initial treatment you receive over the phone, before you've even stepped into the office. I've been that same way----I'll think to myself that if they don't care, it must not be a big deal and I hang up. It's mentally and physically exhausting sometimes just trying to find a good one. If your mind is directing you toward seeking out a pastor, then maybe it's trying to tell you where you will find real help. You should find a compassionate clergyman to sit with you, listen and pray. 

I've had a problem lately when people stop by to visit me. As I've stated before on here, I was diagnosed with Crohn's a few years ago and although I had gained all of my weight back when Paul was still alive (and used to cook for me all the time), since his death, I've plateaued at around 100 lbs. I've always been small and slender anyway, but twice now, people tell me I lost weight and my legs are thin. I'm honestly at a loss as to how I'm supposed to respond to a comment like that! Any suggestions ? I don't think I'm THAT bad looking! 

[Margm]

WW, I think you can handle them.  I get on kicks where I cannot quit eating till I finally throw up and that is not good.  Then I will lay off for awhile and go on the Boost, but a strong wind won't blow me away.  I did that at first but have gained it all back.  No exercise here at all and that might be part of my problem.  Gonna start  walking again.  Figured I was fixing to die so I better be extra careful, but I was walking right after the colon burst (just cannot get too far from the house), TMI.  I get sore from just sitting around feeling sorry for myself I guess.  Maybe if I start my walking again it will help.  But, I only did that when Billy was there.  Guess maybe that is one thing we cannot do and that is just give up.  If I can get over the guilt of not grieving my mom and this time of year about three of us have to go  through, maybe next year won't be as crazy.  I know it will not be having a good time, but maybe we can still keep putting one foot in front of the other instead of being a frozen statue like I am being.  I think pastor it will be.

[Polly]

Marg,

I'm going through the same thing. It was this time last year when Rich started complaining about his back hurting. We both didn't think much of it because we both have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. My oldest daughter messaged me on Monday night and told me that she was really having a hard time about her step-dad not being here. I thought about it and then it hit me. We are coming up on her wedding anniversary and that has triggered her grief. Richard proudly walked her down the aisle. I gave her the number to the hospice bereavement dept. and she called the next day and went and talked to someone. I also signed up yesterday for a grief support group that will meet nearby starting Oct. 5. It's every Wed. evening for 8 weeks. The lady that is running it, lost her young son in a terrible accident about 6 years ago. She almost lost her husband at the same time.

Nicole and I joined a gym a few weeks ago. I have been taking it slow because of the arthritis though. I just figured it was better than sitting here doing nothing in the evenings. It takes my mind off of things......until we get back home.

Terri,

I also have that problem of people saying stupid stuff about my weight loss. It's like we don't know we lost the weight. I usually just say, "I know and my dr. isn't concerned about it." I've lost about 30lbs in the past 10 months. I have leveled off at 120lbs. I had to buy all new clothes and I have a terrible time finding pants small enough!

[Gwenivere]

2 hours ago, TerriL said:

I've always been small and slender anyway, but twice now, people tell me I lost weight and my legs are thin. I'm honestly at a loss as to how I'm supposed to respond to a comment like that! Any suggestions ? I don't think I'm THAT bad looking! 

Terri, I'm 5'11 and have dropped to under 120 lbs.  struggling to stay there.  I dont know why people feel the need to tell us something we know.  They don't understand the physical toll of grief and depression and how food is not a pleasure but a chore.  I had this happen once before under stress and it didn't even compare to this, but I just started telling people that commenting on my weight loss was just as insulting as telling someone they are fat.  No one does that.  Now if someone that isn't close mentions how thin I am I say, I know and blow it off.  The last thing we need is to concern ourselves with others opinions and rude comments.  I will say the worst is from people that say.....I wish I could lose some weight like you have.  If only they knew this is a 'diet' they want no part of.

[MartyT]

43 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

I will say the worst is from people that say.....I wish I could lose some weight like you have.  If only they knew this is a 'diet' they want no part of.

Gwen, to people who would say that to me, I think I would respond with "Yeah, but the way I lost the weight is a helluva way to go on a diet. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy" ~ or words to that effect 

[Margm]

As if we didn't know, there are crazy people in this world.  I lost a lot of weight with the cancer and a woman said she would not mind having cancer if she could lose weight like I did.  Yeah, she should have gone through what I had to go through to lose the weight.  I could not believe her.  But now..........I believe anything.

[Gwenivere]

Ah, Marty, you always take the high road when I want to punch someone.  I want to just like you when I grow up.  

Marg, I would normally say I can't  believe someone would say that about cancer and to someone battling it!  How incredibly dense can a person be?  But then this new world and our new roles just keep rolling out more crazy stuff than I thought was ever possible.  

[Polly]

29 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

Ah, Marty, you always take the high road when I want to punch someone.  

Haha! I can relate!!!!

[mittam99]

I've also lost a fair amount of weight and I generally get three responses from folks who haven't seen me in a while.

"Wow Mitch, you look great" is one. I appreciate the compliment but all I see is my sadness. Then there's the "How did you do it, Mitch?" query. To that I respond either "you don't want to know" or "sadly, my wife died last March".  And then there's the occasional "Are you ok Mitch"?...

That's the one that's tricky to answer. They're asking if my physical health is OK but emotionally I'm obviously not OK. So, my generic answer is either just "yeah" or "I've been working out and dieting".

People sure do ask me a lot of questions!  Inquiring minds and all that.

 

[Patty65]

Yes, me too... the friend whose been frustrated with me for not "being better" stopped by the other day at the shop.  "You're so skinny!" she said happily, three times.  My response is a shoulder shrug each time.  She obviously wanted more of a response.  I have no words for that.  A customer who knew the situation said the same -- I said nothing, shrugged my shoulders, and she said, "grief will do that."  I nodded.

Number one, I'm a normal weight, I was a little over before (and fine with that), and number two, I COULD CARE LESS what I weigh!

I had been holding my own for a few days.  Home hard as ever, but a few small things accomplished, cleaning up after the new water heater replacement flood zone, cleaning out a refrigerator that had not been touched in 8 months.  I actually went home early because work seemed so hard to not fall apart in, despite a day with our biggest shipment in two years, back to full production for the first time, going out perfectly.  Maybe the victory seemed mute because Ron wasn't part of it.

I went home to dig out boxes in two storage rooms for the accountant.  I opened the door to one of them, and I am slapped with Ron's Farmer's Market money boxes, all his stuff, his fishing rods, on and on.  Everything and anything was impossible to even glance at and I curled up on the couch for hours and hours and hours into the night and sobbed at the utter aloneness that this life has become, all the dreams gone, nobody to hold me in my pain.  "You're having a pity party" "You are feeling sorry for yourself" in my head.  I know I'm not supposed to listen to those voices in my head, but it is hard not to.

Maybe that's what you guys call a grief attack.  Seemed to come from nowhere as I was in bad shape and cried all the way home from work about how "successful" I was in raising such an independent, strong daughter who at 21 is charging into her senior year of college about to write and direct a near feature-length "senior project" film (having been given a full tuition endowment for her good grades and because of the situation of losing her dad.  Well, step dad, but really, her dad.)  But we don't talk much, but when we do, it is for an hour, and it is a deep conversation about life.  Her film will be about an older woman who is lying in bed alone, about to die, watching her life flash before her eyes. It's about that life.

Last November she made a short film about grief, having never experienced it before, and before we knew Ron was sick.  It was released shortly after his death, and she won an award for it, "Best Microbudget Film" at her school's film festival, right after she left for a 6 month internship in NYC at an underwater documenatary company.  I am so proud of her, and so, so, SO lonely for her.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1rxKGZpA8LdV29NWnQ2YmNZS00/view