AnnC

I also lost my ex-husband, Don, to liver disease. We were very close friends after divorce, and became closer when he became ill. He collapsed on Thanksgiving night 2002, vomiting blood, and the friends he was staying with rushed him to the hospital where they did emergency surgery to put a shunt around his liver. He died and was resuscitated three times in surgery. They did a biopsy and found that he had Hepatitis B which had caused the cirrhosis. He lived for 19 months, but had several comas and was on the Lactulose and Interferon and something else I have forgotten, and had to have a low sodium, low protein, all natural diet. By May 2004, he was exhausted and still fighting, but frustrated. A friend had offered to be a live liver donor, but it didn't work out -- insurance wouldn't cover it, and the friend realized it was a much bigger risk than he had thought, and his wife didn't want him to take the risk. Don had a rare blood type, so that meant fewer livers would be available. At his last hospitalization and coma in April 2004, they said the shunt was clogged and needed to be cleaned out, no problem. But that didn't work. So they said they would replace it. Again, the cirrhosis had progressed to the portal vein, so that didn't work either. As Don said, Plans A and B didn't work, I need a Plan C and they don't have one. They got him stabilized and released him, saying he would need a reassessment for the placement on the transplant list, but his enzymes looked good. After release he called every day to ask his doctor to do the reassessment. But his doctor kept reassuring Don that there was nothing to worry about, his enzymes looked good and they would get him reassessed, don't worry. Don, though, kept saying, We don't have much time. He knew, on some level, that although his health looked good, he didn't have long. Then he had another collapse and went to the hospital to have his ascites drained again. While he was there, they reassessed him, and put him at the top of the list, and a liver became available. He was flown to the hospital where they had the transplant unit. But he had a staph infection, so they were trying to stabilize him. The liver was there, the transplant team was ready, and then his kidneys failed. They also said, no problem, they would put him on dialysis to jump start his kidneys. Well, the dialysis did not succeed at that. They said they could not keep him on the list when he also needed a kidney, so the liver was given to someone else. He died June 23, 2004. No, I do not believe you did anything at all to cause his death. For a long time, I blamed Don's doctor, that he didn't get the reassessment set up sooner. But what else could have been done? Don harassed him every day, but the doctor looked at his test results and said they were fine. Things can go south so fast with liver disease, you never know from one day to the next where you are with it. Don's doctors were all stunned when he suddenly went downhill and died. He had looked like an excellent transplant candidate up to about three days before he died. I did a lot of research after he died, and found that a lot of what I was upset about would not have helped. I was upset that he wouldn't go to the doctor for regular checkups before he got ill. But it turns out that even if they had found the Hep B years ago, there was no treatment to stop the progression of the cirrhosis -- maybe it could have been slowed, but maybe not. And once someone has liver disease so severe that it causes coma and ascites and all the other nasty side effects, eventually the liver transplant becomes their only real option. And it is not a cure -- lots of things can go wrong with the transplant, as unfortunately you discovered. So many many things have to be so carefully balanced when a person has liver disease, or is living with a transplanted organ, that any even very minor decision might tip the balance -- or nothing at all that you can discover may end up tipping the balance. There is no way to know if that second doctor was right or wrong, since you don't know what would have happened had you followed the first doctor's recommendation -- there might have been a problem with that, also. You are not God, and neither are the doctors. We are only human, with human limitations, doing the best we can with what we know at the time. Someone wrote something that meant a lot to me while I was still obsessing on these thoughts of blame and guilt. She wrote, You loved him. You would have done anything, ANYTHING, to save him. No sacrifice would have been too great. If you had the power, he would be with you now, well and happy. But you do not have the power. You are only human. You did the best you could, of course, because you loved him so much. Ann

I'm so sorry to hear of your husband's passing. Three weeks is so short a time, you've hardly even realized your loss yet. My ex-husband, who was still a dear friend, also died of liver disease. He had a mutated form of Hep B, which does not go to cirrhosis as often, but when it does it's aggressive and difficult to treat. He had 19 months after his initial collapse. He had ascites too, and lapsed into coma, but always kept fighting and working towards the transplant. They finally reassessed him for the transplant list in May 2004, and he was put at the top of the list and a liver became available. Everyone was so excited, and he was transferred to the hospital with the transplant unit. But he had a staph infection, so they were stabilizing him. The transplant team was standing by, the liver was ready. And then his kidneys failed, and they took him off the list. He had left a DNR should he not get the transplant and his wishes were followed, and he died June 23, 2004. So it is going on five years. Even though we were divorced, I loved him so much I also wanted to follow him. I couldn't believe he had gone somewhere that I couldn't follow him. Over time, much time, that feeling faded, and although I still miss him and always will, I slowly became reinvested in life. Much as I wanted to be with him, I knew I would put those who love me through this same kind of hell if I hurt myself, so I didn't. I know he will wait for me until it's my time to follow him. As far as a timetable, I cried for two years. Then the third year I cried every other day. It's true you never get over it, but you do incorporate the loss into your life, and it is part of your story. It gives you compassion for the grief of others -- if you let it. I have also had friends say the most unfeeling things -- my mother in fact was the worst. But I know it's not said to hurt me -- it's in ignorance of what you're really going through. People just don't know what to say, and they're trying to make you feel better. As a psychologist I work with says, that's not what you need. What you need is someone to walk beside you on this most difficult of journeys. And we on this list can do that. We know how it feels. Ann

I do hear my husband talk to me sometimes. I see him out of the corner of my eye. A song of ours will play when I most need it. He visits me in dreams that are so real I might call them visions instead. I know he's always around me. His nephew greatly misses him, and has found that a photo of the two of them together will fall off the shelf whenever he is missing him most. We know he's here walking beside us every day. I can feel it in my heart. Ann

Well, I am the oldest here, I am at 4 years and 8 months this coming Monday. Moving on is so subtle. You don't really realize you have moved on, in your own way, unless you go back and maybe read your journal that you were keeping, or old posts on this website. Then you realize you really have done your griefwork. At nearly five years now, I no longer cry every day. I no longer think about him every waking minute -- I can now concentrate on work for awhile, have fun with friends, enjoy a movie. Memories of him now bring a smile as often as tears -- frequently both. But I still have his things on my shelf, I still look at his picture before I go to bed, I remember him every day, all day. It's just that now there is some room for other thoughts, also. I think it will always be like this, and that's okay. I will always miss him. But I have come to a kind of peace that maybe is as close as I will ever get to acceptance. I know that there was nothing I could have done to prevent his death. I researched his illness and learned that there was no way at the time to diagnose his illness any earlier than it was found, or if it had been found earlier, there was no treatment available to halt the liver damage caused by his mutated form of Hep B. So those "what if's" have finally been mostly silenced. I no longer torture myself with "if only's", knowing that because he was gay, we needed to end our marriage for both our sakes, but that the loving friendship we established after much upheaval was a gift and a joy in my life, and I would not change anything. I told him I loved him before he died, I told him everything I needed and wanted to tell him before his death, so there is no need for the "if only's". That is my main progress in moving on -- for years, my brain spun constantly with the what if's and if only's -- and now my brain is quieter and more peaceful. The often wrenching pain of missing him is still there, but softer and although it brings tears to my eyes, I at least do not break out sobbing in public anymore. I realize, I can live like this. I really don't want to get to a point where I don't miss him. How did I get here? I didn't have a plan. I just felt my grief, and explored it, and confronted it, and hid from it, and confronted it again. I wrote endlessly in my journal. I talked to whoever would listen about it. I found this website so I could write about it. And slowly, so slowly, it eased a little, then a little more. I would say, don't worry about moving on. You will. The main thing is to do that hard work, that is, feel your grief. Don't numb it with substances or too much busy work. You need breaks from your grief, but if you are feeling it, then you are already doing the work. Just keep on. Your mind and body know how to heal. You move ahead without realizing it. Then one day you realize you can go for a few hours without crying. Then maybe a day. Then maybe a couple of days. Then you go through a week of sobbing every day again. This is normal. This is not backsliding. You will have those times when it hurts again all over, as if it happened yesterday. But they will become less frequent. The progress through grief is hard to see. Just keep going. You will be surprised in a few months, a few years, at how far you have come. You never forget. You never stop feeling the loss. It becomes part of your story, part of who you are. You are a person who has had so deep a love that the loved one could not die without leaving a mark on your life. Of course. But you learn to live with and honor the loss. Ann

That is the hardest thing, I think. Being lied to is the worst of betrayals in my book. But yes, like grief brought on by death, the pain of a bad marriage softens over time, and it will one day be a distant sad memory. Ann

Teny, I did do this. I work at a college, and a well known professor of psychology teaches a class here on death and dying and grief. I took the class, and it helped me a lot. Some of it was difficult, but the professor was wonderful to me, and I am very glad I took it. Ann

Kath, I wanted to highlight what you said here. When people ask if it gets better over time, if they will always feel the pain, it's hard to describe. Because the pain doesn't go away completely, and when you say that, to someone freshly bereaved, it's hard for them to imagine anything but the overwhelming pain they are feeling. I just loved what you said here: "It's easy to feel the sadness today." I have never heard it put so well. I always feel sad that he is gone, but as time goes by, and when you have the happy memories, it becomes easier to bear the sadness, to carry it more lightly with me. I lost him 4 1/2 years ago, and I don't feel the constant, crushing pain anymore except on rare occasions. But I often feel sad, and I don't want to lose the sadness entirely, because it marks the love we had and the impact he had on my life, and it feels right that my life should have been changed when he died. Sadness feels right as a part of my life now. I have much joy and happiness in my life now, but the sadness will always be there, and that is okay with me. It's my new normal. Thanks! Ann

There are differences in our situations, of course. And it took a long time before my ex and I were able to come to an understanding of what happened. You are in a very different situation with your husband, and unless he is able to be honest about his failings and sincerely apologize, there isn't much you could do about having any kind of relationship with him. You are obviously a strong and wise person too, because you understand that you need to keep your boundaries strong and not accept being treated with less respect and care than you deserve. Since you were in a relationship where you were being used and lied to, the only solution is to leave, hard though it is, and you are wise enough to know that. But I do understand how the love is still there, even when the marriage has to be over, even when he has treated you badly. And it's so very painful. It's good to be able to come here and talk about it. Love doesn't just disappear. But it will get easier to bear as time goes on, like grief. But it's a different kind of grief, too -- more complicated in some ways. Ann

When I hit that six month mark, I felt worse and worse, so I sought out a grief counselor. She told me it's classic that you hit that worst point at six to 9 months, when the shock wears off. She also said that if you had had a heart attack, you would be resting and healing, and not expecting yourself to accomplish a lot of work. She said losing someone you love breaks your heart, and is as devastating physically as a heart attack, only since it's not visible we and others don't treat it that way. She told everyone in my grief group they need to slow down and give themselves healing time just as they would if their heart had been physically damaged, because the emotional and spiritual damage needs just as much care and healing. Ann

Kay, We love whom we love, we can't change or control our feelings, just what we do about them. Time went by after my own divorce, and I moved past it and could see what happened more clearly, and understood that my husband never intended to hurt me; but he needed to be who he was, and knew he would only hurt me if we continued our marriage. In that way, it was an act of love that he pushed for divorce, because he knew he could not truly be a husband to me as a gay man. When I understood that, forgiveness naturally followed, because although the action may hurt, intention is also important. I used to worry that it made me look like a loser, still loving a man who had left me; so I stayed away from him and moved on in my own life. Which I did need to do, in order to heal and learn to live on my own. But when he became so ill, I knew it didn't matter whether we were still married or not. We can't help who we love; some people we love we just can't live with, for various reasons, and we may, over time, move on and recover from the disappointment and hurt that the love could not develop into the relationship we envisioned and hoped for. And you're right, it's an awful lot like losing someone to death. Except they still live, and that can make it even harder, because it's hard to get past the hope that things could work out after all. We just have to go day by day, because things only seem to be clear in hindsight. Ann

I just wanted to add, I didn't mean to highjack this thread, but I found Marty's post so beautiful I had to respond, it hit me so deeply. Kay, I am so sorry to hear of what you have been going through. As a friend of mine said when I was getting divorced, you are mourning the death of your marriage, and all that you thought it was and hoped it could be. John took that away from you, but none of that was your fault -- he took advantage of you. Your friends should be supporting you, not criticizing the way you are handling it. Plus, you are handling it so admirably! It's obvious to us all, I am sure, that you have great strength and you will come out of this even stronger, but it's such a difficult path you are walking and I wish I could offer something to help or to diminish the pain! But it will get better. Don't blame yourself for any of it; as you said, if he could fool therapists and lie detectors, what chance did you have? And I appreciate your candor in posting all this -- those of us who are bereaved often dream of finding love again, but your story reminds us to be careful -- not everyone is as they portray themselves to be, and it's not at all easy to tell the difference between those who are sincere and those who are so good at the con game. All the best to you -- I am keeping you in my thoughts. Ann

Wow, I can't believe the timing on this! I feel I just hit that Awakening this past Saturday! I found out last week that a woman I grew up with in a different state just recently moved to only 15 miles away from me. We met when we were 9 and were friends into our 20's, until marriage and moving and families filled our separate lives and we lost touch. Now we are many years older than we were when we met on the playground, and I believe we were both nervous to see the reflection of ourselves, grayer, wrinklier, and with middle aged spread, in each other's eyes. But what we saw when we met for lunch on Saturday was that we were the same people we had always been. Yes, grayer and saggier and plumper, but so what? The important parts never changed. And we spent hours telling each other about the years since our last talk -- so much, both joyous and tragic, has happened to each of us. And somehow, during that afternoon, I found a peace I don't think I have ever felt in my life. I realize that I have tried to reinvent myself at each life change. I met my husband and wanted to be who I had always pictured I would be -- beautiful, married, successful. So I distanced myself from all my childhood friends, wanting to move on and not be the dull wallflower I felt I was before. Then, my baby was miscarried, my husband came out as gay and we divorced, and I changed myself again, cutting him out of my life after awhile, and chasing after this new man, or that new man, believing I had to again distance myself from the "loser" I believed I had become, and again prove I was worthy by finding someone else to love me, to marry me and make me look "right" to the world. Then my boyfriend dumped me and I was laid off from my job the same month, and I moved across the country and again cut off contact with everyone I had known, to reinvent myself yet again in a new city, with a new job, and prove I was worthy, and not the loser I was before. And one day I sat in my living room and realized I had divorced myself from my feelings. I had an indifferent contentment, or perhaps numbness, about my life, but no depth of feeling. I knew, on an intellectual level, that I had cut off the feelings of pain and loss, and in so doing I had cut off any feelings of love or joy. And I had come to believe that I had not yet found the right reinvention of myself, therefore I did not deserve feelings of love or joy. I did not know how to dig myself out of that rut. I went on crazy diets, I dyed my hair, I changed jobs from one I loved to one I hated because it had more money and status, I chased after men, trying to become what I thought I had to become to be worthy. Then one day, my ex husband contacted me because he was terminally ill. And to hear his voice again blew all my priorities out of the water. I didn't care that we were divorced, that he was gay so we would never again have the "proper" husband and wife, socially-approved relationship. I loved him, I had always loved him, and I was happy to hear his voice, and I knew I would be there for him no matter what as he struggled with his health. And I found myself as someone who did know how to love -- I had merely temporarily forgotten. And I had that feeling again when I met my childhood friend. Why had I cut these people out of my life? Because the relationships were not perfect, were not as I had envisioned them, because they did not fill my needs as I thought they should? This says it so perfectly: Though I needed to walk away from my marriage, yet I still had a fulfilling loving friendship with my ex. He could not be to me what I had wanted him to be, but once I saw him as the person he was, he greatly enriched my life by being a part of it. Thank God I found that relationship with him before he died. It was the same with my childhood friend. She was older and heavier and grayer, as was I, but in her eyes was the same twinkle I had seen nearly 50 years ago on that playground, and we laughed together as we did back then. I suddenly saw clearly that we are who we are, imperfect and aging and showing all the damage that life has inflicted upon us, and if we accept that, we are the richer for all that we have experienced, and all those we have loved in our lives. Our griefs and losses teach us compassion and the inestimable value of love, both old and new loves, all kinds of loves. Finally, my life is all one piece, one tapestry of everything I have experienced. No need for reinventions. And I love my life, even with all its pain. Thanks for posting this, and for maintaining this site, which has helped me to find such healing. Ann

Keeping on trucking is the key. I remember well my "summer from hell". It began with being rear-ended, giving me a whiplash and totalling my car. Two weeks later, my ex-husband died within hours of getting the liver transplant he needed. When I got home from the funeral, I had to have a biopsy to see why I had some scary symptoms, and then learned that I had cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. A few months later, my mother was diagnosed with the same exact cancer, and had to have the same surgery -- but being in her late 70's, it was dicier. Fortunately, she came through well, but a few months after that, my father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of the esophagus. He died ten months later. Then, my sweet kitty got into the antifreeze and his kidneys shut down and I had to have him put to sleep. Sometimes it just keeps coming and coming, and all you can do is scream and then put your head down and just get through it. For the past year or two, things have quieted down a little and I have had a chance to try to heal a little. I hope it continues, though like you (and like many all over the country) there is the economy and layoffs and who knows what to come, that adds to our stress. Take a deep breath, a hot bath, and pamper yourself -- we'll all get through it somehow. Ann

I happen to be the kind of person who picks at the wound -- I do tend to seek out reminders, people, places in order to continue to process the grief, to meet it head on. I tend to run into my grief full force. But that's just me. I guess I do it so that it doesn't sneak up on me and bite me when I'm not looking (although it does that anyway.) That doesn't work for everyone. Some let it come -- some set aside time to feel the grief. It's what works for you. But using pills or alcohol or denial to try to escape the pain is what doesn't work, except temporarily -- that just sets the pain aside for later. Even then, denial sometimes is the way some people handle it, as least for awhile. I knew a woman in my grief group who lost her husband very suddenly when their daughter was only six weeks old. She never really got out of the shock phase. She pushed the feelings away and held them off because she needed to take care of her infant daughter. She went through the motions and did everything to keep the house and the baby and her life going. Finally, after about 4 or 5 years, she began to date. And that started to break through the shock and denial, and she began to realize something wasn't right. She found our grief counselor, and the counselor gently told her that she had a delayed grief response, and that she needed to process her grief. But, again, the counselor did not tell her that she had been doing anything wrong -- that evidently she had needed to put her grief aside for awhile. The counselor only said that eventually, in order to be able to connect fully with life again, we need to process our grief how and when we are able to do so. As for communicating to others, I think you need to not keep it all to yourself. But be aware that some people will not respond in a way that is helpful. Keep in mind that our society does not teach people how to deal with grief. We are led to believe that it's best not to "wallow" in grief, as if feeling it were somehow dysfunctional. Which is not true, of course. I am definitely a talker. I needed to talk about my grief. I'm sure it got so that the baggers at the grocery store and my coworkers started to duck when they saw me coming! So I found a grief group, and this list, and any outlet I could for expressing my grief without alienating all my friends and family. My friends did listen, but I didn't want to wear them out! Fortunately, my ex's best friend and also his boyfriend, both needed to express grief as well, and we wrote long, long emails to each other going over and over our grief. Because we were all feeling it about the same person, we never got tired of it. This was of unbelievable help! We told endless stories about him, we each expressed how we thought we should have done more and then the others would say, but you did so much already, you could not have done more! We shared what our grief counselors said. It was wonderful. I hope everyone can find some outlet like that. I don't need it as much now, nearly five years later. But sometimes I do want to talk about him, and I do. People who are your true friends will understand, or at least realize that this is what YOU need, even if they process grief differently, and they will let you have your time to express this, just as you let them talk about some things that you are not really interested in. This is what people who love you do. When you are grieving, you often find that people you thought were friends really are not, and others whom you might not have ever talked to otherwise turn out to be the best friends you ever thought you could have. It's worth the occasional rejections to find those gems who turn out to be lifelong friendships for you. Ann

I have had a lot of dream visits from my ex-husband, and some from my father and grandmother also. I once read that if you look at a photo of your loved one right before you go to bed, it helps you to dream about them, and I have found that to be true. You can gaze at the photo and ask them to visit you, or ask God to send you a dream (whichever feels best to you), and if it doesn't happen that night, keep doing it until the dream comes. It works for me. Ann

I know I was brought up to believe that you have to "stop feeling sorry for yourself" and "not wallow in your grief". But that's all wrong. I am lucky enough to work at a college where a class on the psychology of death and dying and grief is offered. I took the class, and it was very helpful, and the professor pointed out that it's ridiculous to think that talking about your lost loved one is wallowing, or will "only remind you" of your grief. He said, "Do you think a parent who has lost a child or a wife/husband who has been widowed EVER forgets that for even one minute?" Ann

January 2005, I turned 52, and I cried all day long because my ex-husband had died the previous June and would never turn 52. Then that month my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. At least with her, the cancer was Stage I, and she is still alive and doing well at 80. I'm just now coming out of my holiday funk -- not only missing both my ex and my father who died in Dec. 2006, but also I spent all the holidays alone because we were snowed and iced in, and Seattle did a crappy job of clearing the streets so I was housebound the whole time. Ann

We had a really nice nursing home for my dad, it was a memory care unit so most of the patients had Alzheimers. My dad didn't, but the cancer had spread to his brain so he had some dementia so they accepted him. They took good care of him for the most part, but when hospice sent them his pain medication, they refused it because they wanted the medication in blister packages instead of a bottle (to help them keep track of how many he took, but in my dad's case it was hospice who would give the pills, so the rules should not have applied). So when my dad started having bad pain and the hospice nurse (who came in from a hospice association outside) wanted to give him his pain meds there wasn't any because they had rejected it for the packaging! It was awful, my dad was writhing on the bed in pain and no meds for him! My sister ended up calling around to find a hospital who would have it in the blister packs the nursing home demanded, and my brother had to drive over there and pick it up -- the staff did nothing. And then it took extra time because he was so far gone in the pain for the hospice nurse to give him enough to get the pain under control. It was horrible, and especially because my mother had to sit and watch all of this, and she was so upset when she had said all she wanted was for him to not have to feel pain, that was the point of the hospice care! It's so hard -- I know the caregivers are only human, but it's so infuriating and upsetting when our loved ones' pain is made worse by incompetence and stupid rules. Ann

I laughed so much at the description of the perfect people whose pets never shed and they don't get BO! We have relatives like that. Their Christmas card is always like a brochure, showing how they took cruises and look beautiful and their children graduated from Harvard and have jobs in law firms, on and on! I joked one year that they played up their children so much, were they trying to sell them? All I can say is that you never know what's REALLY going on at home. My life didn't turn out as planned and is far from picture perfect, but I am happy, even though my cats not only shed but have recently taken to peeing on the carpet -- thank God for Nature's Miracle! Ann

Paula, Actually, I think smashing that mask was a really healthy thing. Very therapeutic, I would think. My grief counselor said the hardest part about grief work is just letting yourself feel the feelings, screaming and wailing when you need to. Somehow, it eventually does bring healing. I learned from her to go ahead and throw myself into the grief when I felt it, scary though it was. I once cried so hard I threw up. I felt that I would never stop crying. But I did, and I felt better for having given in to it. People encourage us to be "strong", which usually means to be stoic and show no feelings. It's actually scarier, therefore stronger, to feel the feelings and get through them. It's the road to healing, even though "healing" does not mean you go back to who you were before, or that you forget, but instead that you eventually adjust to your loss and find meaning in life again. Ann

Teny, hang in there. It has been 4 1/2 years for me, and we weren't even married anymore, but I still struggle at times. My grief counselor said I have both complicated grief and disenfranchised grief, so that is probably making my struggle last a long time. But also I think I am just a person who processes things slowly. It took me about 6 years to get through the grief of my divorce. It just takes as long as it takes. I don't talk about it with friends or family anymore, because they make it clear they think I should be WAY past it. And it's not nearly as bad as the first two years. But especially around the holidays, or the anniversary of his death, I become sad again. You are not abnormal at all, you are just going through the grief process which is long and difficult. Ann

I think it's normal to feel jealous and even bitter about what you have lost and others have not. I get upset when I hear of someone getting a transplant (my ex husband died on the liver transplant list). I saw a story on TV once where a woman survived 5 years on the transplant list and then got the liver -- my ex died after only 19 months. I even had this really bad moment when my father was diagnosed with cancer. My parents were very cold about my grief about my ex-husband. They couldn't understand why I cared. Then my mother was so upset that she was losing my father, and I caught myself thinking, Why should she complain, she had 58 years with him! Of course I didn't say it. And of course I was unhappy that my dad was ill, and I mourned him when he died, and I know it is very hard for my mother to deal with the loss after all those years. But I was jealous because they had all those years together. My dad died at 78. My ex died at 50, and although we were divorced I lost my best friend. It's just not fair. I think that is the problem. It's never fair, and that's why we are so angry and bitter. Like any other emotion, it's best to let yourself feel it and acknowledge it. Eventually, the feelings do pass. Although I can still have moments when I feel so upset when I see an elderly couple hand in hand, or see an "inspirational" news story where someone survived liver disease. Ann

Thanks, everybody, for your loving support. It's so wonderful to be able to say how I really feel and be accepted, not looked at sideways with people wondering why I still cared about him, and wondering if I "made him gay". KayC, I did go through a period of lots of anger. I think it's a natural response to being hurt. Whatever the reason, my husband did want a divorce, and that hurt. He was struggling with coming out back in the 1980's, when there was less acceptance than there is now, not that there is that much acceptance even now. He hid parts of his life from me at that time. I knew he was lying, and that was bad, too. When you get divorced, you mourn the loss of the marriage, and even if it is, or has become, a bad marriage, you still mourn the marriage you thought you had, or you hoped you would have. We had a great relationship during the years we dated and the first several years we were married, but when his orientation became too strong for him to ignore, things became very difficult. However, after divorce, through all my anger and bitterness and pain, he kept contacting me and assuring me it was never my fault, that he had truly loved me, and he apologized for all he put me through. I wasn't ready to hear it, but he persisted. Although he was afraid I would hate him if I found out he was gay, he kept in touch, knowing that I would eventually know because he was now openly gay. I did find out, and confronted him, and then he was honest with me. I actually was rather relieved, realizing it wasn't a personal rejection. We had our ups and downs over the years, but we kept in touch, at least minimally, and then were very close again during the last couple of years of his life. The fact that we were able to maintain this kind of relationship was due a great deal to him, that he was so supportive of me, and so loving and respectful of my feelings. He wanted me to meet his boyfriend, but I found that too difficult, and he understood. I can't express how wonderfully he treated me. The hardest thing was that I still wanted to be married to him, but that was not in the cards. I would not have wanted him to have to live his life pretending to be someone he was not. I learned from him that the heart is big enough to hold more than one person. I thought after divorce that I would need to stop loving him in order to move on and love someone else. But when we each fell in love again, it was different and it didn't invalidate our feelings for each other. I began to feel he was family rather than my husband. But a part of me has never forgotten that he was my husband, and I did feel widowed when he died. His boyfriend became my friend -- he's a wonderful man, and we supported each other through the grief. We joke that we would be scratching each other's eyes out if he were still alive, but who could better understand the grief now that he is gone than someone who also loved him? And his close friends, a lesbian couple, have become close friends of mine. They have been of great support as my niece has been struggling with her own coming out. I feel so honored that I was the first family member (after her mother, my sister) my niece felt able to come out to, because she knew I would have no problem with it. Dusky, I am always so touched by your love and devotion for Jack. I know that is how my friend Bruce feels about my ex. Love is love, and grief is grief, no matter what society prefers to think. As for my connection to the gay community, you are right that it evolved over time. I work for a college, where the atmosphere is more tolerant, and my boss, two of our vice presidents, and numerous faculty and staff members are fairly openly gay. Plus my sister and my niece -- this is evidently a theme in my life! This is long, but it's such a treat to be able to tell our story to sympathetic "ears"! Ann

Kayc, I'm so sorry about your divorce. You're right, it's mourning the death of your marriage, and you love your husband even if there are good reasons for the marriage to end, the love is still there. When my ex and I divorced, I was devastated. Just one friend who was also divorced recognized the pain and said that I was mourning the death of the marriage. That did help. Over the years between, my ex and I, with much difficulty but much love, managed to establish a friendship and deal with the problems in our past. Ultimately, it was a blame-free divorce because he was gay, but there was still hurt involved. We dealt with it, and he was still the man I had loved since I was 18, and when we did establish a close friendship, it greatly enriched my life. Sadly, two years later he died of liver disease. And I was confronted with people who said, Why do you care, he was just your ex? People can be so clueless. I found a wonderful grief therapist and grief group, which helped a lot. My sister was helpful and supportive, and my ex's friends and boyfriend totally adopted me. But the rest of my family, my parents, other sister, and brothers-in-law, were very unsupportive, and don't like it when I talk about my ex. I persisted. I needed to talk. And I know that, being conservative, they don't like it that I am a strong supporter of gay rights. I persisted with that, because I knew what they have only just found out this holiday season -- my niece just came out as gay. Divorce, for whatever reason, is as shattering as death. Personally, I find it hard sometimes to believe the world could be so cruel as to make me lose him twice, to divorce and then death. Ann

It's been 4 1/2 years for me, and the holidays are the hardest. It's also been two years since my Dad died. This holiday season has been really rough. Especially because, due to miscommunications on Thanksgiving and bad weather on Christmas, I spent both holidays alone. And I was simultaneously relieved to be alone and resentful not to be included. I find that I am much like my Dad, who was a real homebody. It took my Mom to get him to get out and do things, and my husband did the same for me. Most of the time I am happy alone with my cats and my books, and I have a few very close friends I see, plus the wonderful people at work. But I do need this site, too, because other people don't like to talk about those who have died. I need to talk about them sometimes. In the first year after my ex-husband died, I talked about him constantly. I still miss him terribly, even though we got divorced many years ago, he was my best friend after that, and I miss him. Most of the time, I do well, and am happy. But the holidays will always be difficult, I think. Especially since my Dad went quickly downhill beginning Thanksgiving night 2006, and died Dec. 7th. Ann