Dear Gwenivere, it's been ages since I responded on the forum but I still read and your sad message came up on my emails and I just felt I had to. I'm so sorry. I know. My Pete died in 2012 and I am just as lost and sad now as when he died. I'm 76 this year. I do have a son and daughter and two lovely grand daughters so I am lucky but nothing compensates for the loss of a beloved husband of 50 years who was everything to me. I've got not helpful words for you but like I did I hope you find some comfort from friends on the forum even if we cannot reach out and hug you. The spring is coming (I'm in England by the way) and maybe it will help. A bit? Yours in sisterhood, Jan

Dear Anne

you inspire everyone. Your determination amazes me. Thank you for being here. It's the eve of a New Year and we have to walk into it with courage. As you are doing. I know we all feel such sadness especially when we have to walk alone. But I'm grateful for people like you.

Dear Rachelle

I have been on this forum for three years but mainly just read now. But I had to reply to you. Somehow I just had to. The grief we feel doesn't go away but we do get stronger (a bit) and we all feel the support offered by sharing. Your husband was a very talented man. And I take some comfort from your belief that having had a near death experience you believe you will meet again. I cling to that hope. Blessings and Peace. Jan 

At the moment, three years or more later, I'm feeling this even worse than usual. I do have a son and a daughter and I do have grand daughters, and I know they love me. But to Pete I was the centre of his universe as he was to me. And that wonderful closeness and feeling cherished has gone. I'm lucky that I had it as I'm sure you all feel too, but now we have to somehow live on without it. And it's very very hard indeed. It helps to share even just a little. Jan

Dear Anne, it never would have been long enough, would it? When we find our soul mate we want to be with them always and to have them ripped away either fast or slowly, is against everything natural. For you it was slowly, for me ( 6 months) but either way we have to live on in a harsh world without them near us. I wish I had known your Jim. Not so likely as the fact that we have got to know each other is only as a result of the death of Jim and my Pete. But he sounds so alive, so vibrant, such a wonderful person. Our lives now are a shadow of what they were as part of a couple. We know. Those of us who have to carry on after such a loss understand each other's pain even though every loss is different. I hope you can remember the good times and celebrate them.  A wedding  anniversary is a wonderful thing. And do you remember when Jim proposed (if he did?). I was remembering that the other day, because of a poem I read. Pete proposed to me behind a bus station. Such a prosaic place but to me infused with happiness. in 1962!! 

What you describe about being insane with grief fits me too. Even now, four years next May, my whole being is different and will be for ever I accept. I inhabit a changed world where I have to live as well as I can without my beloved Pete. Around me are people still living the dream when I live a nightmare. And yet I carry on, because what else is there to do? Sometimes I can smile and laugh especially when I'm with my little grand daughters, but underneath I'm mad with grief and loss. For some reason I'm going through a worse patch than usual right now, feeling really vulnerable. I hope I'm coming out of it slowly. But it is very hard to bear. I send my best wishes to everyone. Keep on keeping on. It's all we can do.

Yes Anne. A good quote or poem is like a perfect piece of music.

Wise words and heartfelt from everyone as always. Yes it happens or it doesn't happen. Our feelings get expressed but in different ways I guess. I remember my mother saying sadly that she never cried when her own mother died. I only cried a little when she died. But the feelings of grief I have about Pete's death are so different in kind and intensity. They just don't come out in tears and I have to accept that I think. I do believe it stems from childhood in a home where feelings weren't expressed outwardly. Music does release my tears though. Thanks to everyone. 

The music worked. I'm sitting with tear listening to Bruch's violin concerto, another favourite of ours. Music bypasses the mind and goes straight to the heart doesn't it?

I meant can't cry properly of course

Dear Marty

its strange but I never articulated that before (or at least I don't think I did) as I've written before more than once about how I can cry properly and want to. And we know how as a generalisation men are brought up to hide their emotions and I think I've been raised the same. So it's not my fault lol! But seriously I do feel a need to sob only can't  contemplate doing it without a companion. My heart breaks to think of Anne crying alone. If only we could meet and sob together. So many of us cry alone.

I'm still unable to really cry as I've said before and it hasn't changed. I come from a family which didn't share emotions. I married into one which did but it's amazing how that early training goes so deep. Today a chap came to mend my washing machine. He said he last came when I was caring for Pete after the stroke. He said Pete was in bed in the living room. Thankfully he knew Pete had died and was sympathetic. I managed to tell him about the circumstances (Pete's death in the nursing home while I was the birth partner of our daughter) and managed to hold it together. I'd completely forgotten that he came then (my memories of that first year of bereavement are almost totally lacking). But I guess I've always cried when Pete was there to comfort me and I manage not to weep alone by distracting myself. This sounds odd even to me. Does it mean my grief is shallow? Oh no it certainly doesn't mean that. Tennyson spoke of Grief too deep for tears (or was it Shakespeare?) and I think your grief in that first year, Anne, was like that. And I know you've been able to cry since and I still dare not. It doesn't have anything to do with the depth of the grief but it does with inhibitions maybe. I'm thinking I should just accept it. The inhibitions are still strong in me. We tell each other, don't we? It is how it is. I still feel I could cry if I had someone to cry with. But I don't. Soon after Pete died my son and I sat and sobbed. And it was good sharing. But I don't think we can do it now. I think I have to accept that this is the way it is for me. 

Music may be my way into expressing grief. I'm reading Pete's journal for 1990 (many more to come) and it's totally wonderful. And he mentions a symphony concert we went to so I went onto iTunes and bought the Tchaikovsky violin concerto we heard. And that releases emotions both sad and happy. I think I should do this more often. Anne, I know music is important to you as it was to you and your beloved Jim. We just have to deal with what we are left with I suppose. And I know we are doing as well as we can. And they would be (are) proud of us for our courage.

Dearest Fae

thank you for that wonderful memory of your last Thanksgiving with Doug and pointing me to that email which I didn't read until now. I've been reading Pete's journals from 1989 and reliving happy memories which I can bring into the present to enjoy. I'm thank ful for the fact that he wrote them and now I can read and remember. I still have to live on in the present but it's ok to take the past along too. 

I think that the depth of our grief may have much to do with many things, but I know that mine is very very much the same as Anne's. We had long happy marriages and we are now at an age when we have in some ways been moulded by those marriages in a very good way. This means that the person we are now is a blend of two people and struggling on alone when half of you is missing is so very very hard. I have much to be grateful for, and at the moment I am well. But the pain of loss after three years (actually three days ago it was four years since Pete had the stroke so I count it as four) is just as bad and the only thing which has changed is my ability to cope with it. That is no small thing. People around me have no idea how much pain I am in because I don't share it, even with my dear daughter. I wouldn't burden her. And I still feel that if I let out this grief it would overwhelm me. However I am reading Francis Weller's new book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, which I hope may help me to deal with the grief more easily. I hope. My bookshelf is packed with books about grief but I can't say they often help. It's a lonely struggle but this forum has helped me enormously because talking to other widows and widowers does help me. I've a friend, a new widow, and she is dealing with this on the surface, very differently, throwing herself into activities that she didn't or couldn't do when her husband was alive. But she tells me how she talks to him all the time, and cries alone so I think she is really in a similar place to me. We talk about it a bit but not much. Basically with our grief it is just ourselves in our head and heart but talking and writing about it does help. As does keeping busy. My heart lifts when I have projects to do. I don't want to make new grievers feel bad but what helps me is telling it as it is so I hope that we aren't making you feel worse. Be aware that we understand. We know. We struggle with the loss. And we survive. Jan

Yes, Anne, sometimes it seems that just existing in the world now is doing this hard thing. How we do it I don't know, but we do. And I'm proud of all of us

I can totally relate to that Anne. How cruel and thoughtless and the impact on you wouldn't be understood. I still think of myself as part of a couple, even still. And I've got to a point where I'm going to special places like down my beloved Spurn peninsula alone, and to our beloved field. But I thought only yesterday that I carry Pete along with me.  He comes with me in my heart. Just like the poem that Bill's Mary has often quoted. You know the one. I will find it and post it. But these moments when we are brought up starkly in front of our loss are so painful. 

This is opening up an old wound for me, but I will share it as it might help me. Pete was a vigorous healthy 76 year old, who had all his faculties and took exercise and lived healthily when he was struck down with a massive stroke. The specialist in the stroke ward who I presume had seen the scans was incredibly harsh to me, more or less telling me to give up any hope of recovery. It was the way he did it which totally lacked any humanity and several times the nursing staff had to pick me up off the ground metaphorically and try to help me to cope with this awful awful man. He was of course right. Pete lived on for five months and never recovered and had several bouts of pneumonia because he couldn't talk, swallow, eat etc. And I fought to keep hopeful and managed to get him home and care for him with help but that bloody man knew I was doomed to fail. But he didn't have to be so incredibly brutal. I hated him for it then and I hate him for it now. The nursing staff told me he had upset many people. I can't express what he put me through. I've hidden it from my memory and I'm crying now as I write. My only consolation is that Pete didn't know. One of the side effects of his type of stroke was a kind of denial. Now it's my turn to live with denial. I still feel that I'm denying his death. Four years later. However I listened to Belleruth Naparstek on grief earlier and my tears flowed so that is twice in one day! Good for me. That might sound odd but I can't cry still as I feel I will never never stop unless Pete comes to comfort me. Weird but true.

oh Anne I'm so sorry for your experience. These doctors do so much harm when they could help us so easily. It doesn't take much. Shared humanity would do it.

Just had to join in to this conversation because it says so much about life after a beloved partner has died. The world is a different place and we look it straight in the face and it's hard. Looking back I lived a charmed life for fifty years with my beloved Pete. How lucky was I? I did sort of know it but not really. Now the magic has gone. Our little grand daughter has just visited and she still believes in fairies. Her innocence is so charming and I feel sad that she has to lose it. There is a parallel. Jan

Oh what wonderful news. Something really positive for you. Hugs happy hugs

Dear Margaret I am so very very sorry. Please try not to be so hard on yourself. You loved him for over a half century as I did my beloved Pete. And I wasn't even with him when he died. But I believe he doesn't hold it against me.

Jan

I detest that word closure. My life with Pete lasted fifty years. I've now lived almost four without him by my side. I know I shall never stop grieving for him, missing him, feeling the pain of his absence. My life is so diminished by his loss I can't express it. I live on, I keep busy, I know people around me think I'm 'over' the grief. How wrong can they be? It's just that we keep our pain private because we know that no one who hasn't suffered the loss of their soul mate can understand. Thank you for putting this into words Harry.

Oh Anne, this is so beautiful and so true. I've only read it properly once and shall set time aside to read it again but I wanted to say thank you for sharing it. I too am a different person since Pete died, a more feeling empathetic person I think. I feel more pain, not only for myself but also for others. I also appreciate what I have left (which because Pete was my centre) sometimes seems little but is in fact much). I'm able to enjoy a cup of coffee, my porridge, walks, wine,  my dog in a way which is highlighted by the ephemeral nature of these things. I take nothing for granted. I feel pain (emotional pain) more and I grieve every minute, sometimes in the foreground sometimes in the background. I'm trying to believe that instead of Pete being nowhere he is everywhere.  Sometimes I succeed. An awful anniversary is approaching for me. On 7th November four years  ago ( how could it be that long?) Pete was struck down by the stroke. Such an apt word. And in the May following, he died. The 7thNovember   is when our happy happy world came crashing down. But he would be proud of the way I've survived even though at times I haven't wished to. Anne, your situation mirrors my own. I'm not able to write about it with your grace though. 

It does seem strange to me, yes. When our lives were so entwined how could they not be in our dreams? and when they are so much in our thoughts? Its odd. 

So true, though it's as the sun comes up I need this advice more. I still wake to deep sad ness, even now after almost four years. It's morning here and I dreamed about our old house which I've done a lot lately. I think it's because I've been editing a video about it, but Pete wasn't in the dream and never seems to enter my dreams. I so wish he did. But to return to the quote, I do have many blessings.