fraublucher2

I truly loved this story. It is so comforting to believe I will see my Tiggy Boy again. He is so terribly missed. I wish I could have seen him like you saw your beloved animal. When I read things like this I just wish they would happen to me. But for some reason they don't. I see pictures of him around my home with his sister, Luvi, and it hurts. I can only write out the pain and cry and try to recover from it.

Thank you for your post. My Jon played football also. He was 230 lbs. in April 2007 and l50 lbs. in April 2008. He went through Vietnam as a crew chief on a helicopter and door gunner. He was the love of my life. I hoped and prayed and believed up until the day he died that he would be miraculously healed. I was very angry at God, and even my church and the members. It has taken me a long time to start going to church again. We have 3 sons. Everytime I kiss one of them, I realize I am kissing a part of Jon. I still go back to the very beginning into disbelief that it really happened. We were married in l964 when he was 20 and I was 18. I hope your heart can heal and that you will meet many angels without wings on your path. Sharon

I started posting here this week. I need to list some things that happened, all within the last few years. 1. My husband was diagnosed with kidney cancer in April 2007. I was his caregiver for almost a year. 2. My 37-year-old son was diagnosed with mesothelioma of the abdomen in 2008, 2 months before my husband died. He is in remission, thank God. 3. My husband died with cancer on April 6, 2008. 4. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in March of 2009. I am now in remission. 5. My beloved pet cat, Tigger, died on March 6, 20l0. I know I could not have gone through all this without my faith in God. I come from a very abusive family of origin and have been in recovery for a long time. I was told in the 90's that I have PTSD and was treated for it. Perhaps that treatment healed me of it. Without the things I have learned in l2 Step programs and church I would have imploded long ago. This is a great way to express all this. I am grateful someone gave me this website address this week.

It is so hard to part with my old friend of 14 years. His loving, affectionate actions, his funny little habit of swishing his paws in his water dish, how he would reach up to doorknobs and try to open the door with is paws, how he shoved his fanny at you so he could get pets and scratching on his back. He was adorable. He vocalized a lot. He had so many different sounds he made, it was like catspeak. I love him and miss him so much. I don't know why I am losing so much in the last few years - it just seems so crazy and unfair.

I am new to this, and I'm sorry I read some of the things I read today, because it is overwhelming me. I am in a Grief Group right now in So. Cal. I am grieving the death of my husband 2 years ago and a beloved pet of a month ago. I don't remember grieving for my father or mother (I come from an extremely abusive family) and have been told I have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome by a former MFCC. I had some of the therapy which involves eye movement back and forth (I'm not sure what it is called.) This was from l993 to l996. I am in 12 Step groups, am a fully committed Christian, and am going through a program at my church called Living Waters for those who are relationally and sexually broken (mine was from sexual abuse). I was married to my husband for 44 years, and we have 3 sons. I have had a great deal of recovery time in AA, OA and have just started Al-Anon. I know this sounds like a complicated mess - because it does to me, too. To think about going back and grieving former losses seems very frightening to me. This is what I read on someone's post. Also, I get the feeling PTSD complicates grief or somehow you must deal with it first. As you can tell, I am confused - very! I copied a page from the loss of pet forum regarding PTSD. I know from Program I can only do one thing at a time and the next indicated thing. No one does it perfectly and there is no such thing as perfect. I got a very kind post from one of the counselors, I think it may have been Marty. Just writing this has calmed me down a little. I am going for the most recovery I can possible get. I don't want to be half-recovered. I believe so strongly in God and Christ that I know I will get good, orderly direction on this. I just have to be patient, and it will come. All I need to do is this day's recovery work, nothing more. I don't do this work by myself - the God I believe in does the majority of it. I am so glad to have this place to express thoughts. The grief I am experiencing for my husband is enormous, but I believe I was in unexpressed grief for a long time. I loved weeping willow trees and mourning doves. For the longest time I loved the color black. And I walked around with a lump in my throat from unshed tears. I want to be happy, joyous, and free. That is a promise of l2 Step Programs. I am so tired of sadness. I know that sounds selfish, but this is a life-long thing.

I am so very sad about the loss of my furbaby, Tigger. He was an old friend of 14 years. I had him and his sister, Luvi, since they were tiny. He was a handsome black cat with a few white hairs on his body. His fur was like satin, so shiny. He was affectionate and used to headbutt our leg to get attention and love. I miss him so much. I struggled with the decision to have him euthanized. It was so very hard to let him go, but he had cancer, and he barely moved during the day, and only perked up a very small amount at night. I couldn't bear watching him so still and when he did walk, I could tell he was weak. He was such a strong boy. He used to run up and down the hallway, and dart all over the house, getting exercise and chasing his sister. I love him so much. My husband died in 2008, and the combined sadness is so hard to bear. I am so blessed that I have one of my sons, Mike, living with me now. I also have Luvi, Tigger's sister, and a parrot, Bubba. I am trying now not to go into the abyss of a total denial of anything good in my life. If I list all the things our family has gone through in the last few years, it is emotional slaughter. It has been a brutal few years. I believe in God and Jesus, or my life would have taken me out, for sure. I am relieved to have this space to express pain and suffering over my dear furbaby, Tigger. I like to think that Jon (my husband) and Tigger are in Heaven now, having a spectacular time together and waiting for me. I heard a song on the radio yesterday that started the tears, and I think the title was "Save a Place For Me, I'm Coming Soon." I will go on because I believe that is what I am supposed to do, but someday I will see them again and all those who went home before me. I hold onto that belief, and it comforts me greatly. Thank you to anyone who reads this, and my heart truly goes out to you in your pain.

I am new to this group. My husband, Jon, died April 6, 2008. I wish I had known about these groups sooner. We were married 44 years, when he was 20 and I was 19. I feel like I flounder around, not knowing what to do without him. I sleep very late and stay up very late. For a while after he died I ate a lot and gained 20 or 30 pounds. Thank God, I have stopped that. I was his caregiver from April 2007 to April 2008, and it was very traumatic. He had kidney cancer. After he had chemotherapy and radiation, he went downhill very rapidly, got pneumonia several times. It was hell watching him go from a man 230 pounds to l50 pounds in that time. I took care of him until it got too difficult- I called my sons and asked for their help, and soon after that I got a caregiver to come in for 12 hours a day. I was scared, so scared when I got the caregiver. It was very expensive. But he deserved the best. He was a good man and I miss him terribly. I'm glad I got help. Jon looked up at Chad, the caregiver, one day and said, "Chad, you are a good man." We only had the caregiver for 5 days when Jon died. He was the love of my life. Thank God, I have faith in Christ, or I would be unable to function at all. I also belong to support groups of various kinds and have been a member for a very long time. It seemed for a long time after he died, I couldn't care about anything. And didn't care that I didn't care. It was frightening. My grief counselor explained it today. He said that the loss was such a huge, overwhelming thing in my life, that everything else seemed small and insignificant next to it. I functioned in a way, but only because I had to. I had to register for Medicare, and couldn't even seem to care very much about that. I did it, though. Last month, I had to have a furbaby (cat named Tigger, l4 years old) euthanized because of cancer, and it has devastated me all over again. I have stopped asking God, "Why, why, why," so much, but sometimes I revert back to the very beginning when I couldn't believe it had happened, that Jon was really gone. Thank you to anyone who reads this. My heart truly goes out to you in your pain and suffering.