debi.williams

It would be a wonderful thought that you could come to Brussels. You must come and stay with me if you ever make it here! Fingers crossed, who knows what the future holds....How long ago was it that you were here? I doubt it's changed much apart from an ever growing population. Time seems to stand still here in a way it doesn't in other places xx

Kay, the Lottery is a rollover so will play again on Friday x

So true Kevin.

Kevin, sounds like you have a pretty cool plan for the holidays. Gwenivere, I totally understand when you say that 'coming home alone would be too much' and there is something about Christmas Eve isn't there? Maybe the anticipation takes us back to our childhoods? I don't know, but I am certainly dreading it. Kay, there can never be a time limit on missing your soulmate. It doesn't matter how long has passed. I wish people would understand that, but if it hasn't happened to them they just don't. I so hope your daughter makes it to see you. It must be even worse not ever being able to be sure because of the weather x

I haven't had chance to check the numbers yet, but I'll keep you posted!

Thank you Karen for your lovely words. What an awful time you had and I can see how you understand the emotions that go into sorting out the remains of a person's life. I had to let go of so much because time and logistics are not on my side. Mum too was a hoarder, very neat and tidy but with so much storage space, so every closet was full! I feel very guilty that I didn't have chance or time to go through every single thing and had to part with so many things I would have preferred to keep, even for a short while, but Max and I were travelling via trains so there was only so much stuff we could keep. It must have been very hard for her (you and Ron too) to be unable to communicate for so long, It is so easy for me to say I know, but you shouldn't feel guilty. What could you do? You were working, Ron was dealing with a devastating situation and you couldn't have cared for her properly at home in those circumstances. How is your son? I hope he has been able to find happiness after such betrayal. You are so right Karen, there are so many hurdles to conquer and just when you feel able to breath, some other aspect of grief rises up. We are doing the best we can and that is all we can do xx

Yours in mine my angel xxx

Hold my hand. I am walking with you on this xx

Oh Margaret I crave the girls! I literally have no one. Of course I have friends, but no one of blood. We are in here for the weather changes too. Nothing as extreme as the US but I was walking home today from work, and my heart was almost bubbling over with grief. Typically British ' never let it go in public' and it was the last of the Autumn (Fall) leaves that triggered me. A season he won't see and he loved it so much xx

My dearest George, I understand. Take some very deep breaths. You are in anxiety. Your heart is searching for her. Would she fly off the handle and be crazy? No. So honour her now as best you can. You are still in deep shock, we all are. In shocking loss. She loved you SO SO much George. You have to hang on for all of it. This is God's choice, your allotted days, not yours. Shalom George and love, love, love xx

You and I Kay will have had a holiday somewhere we never imagined!!! Las Vegas? By the way, Max is pestering me for pumpkin pie (saw a movie). Now I am a good cook but not a great baker, do you have a foolproof recipe? xx

This is going to be so hard this Christmas. Beautiful Kevin, my friend, the part that says 'I am Thankful' really hit home. Missed you xx

You are in MY HEAD Tonight Euromillions is 111,000,000 EUROS I kid you not (played 3 lines) and I was asking Mathew to guide the numbers (not fair or possible but heck!) then I was thinking about what I would do, then stirring the chilli for Max's dinner thought: 1. This website 2. Huge 'meet' for you, me, and everyone, somewhere beautiful (Maldives Kay or maybe Mexico?) 3. Fund the Vets shame governments shame on them who let our very best suffer) 4.Children, always children, our future 5. The 'Afterlife' more research needed and more 'silence' stopped. So many people are scared to voice an opinion because we live in such a material world. What would be yours Kay? xxxx

Yes with you all the way. All along this road we don't know the end of. Nor do we know(truly) the destination. Just over 3 months (not yet 4) I have lost my forward energy. The energy I have always relied on to keep me going through dark times, I have known quite a few of those, but this has floored me. Forgive me for saying this, but I don't wish I had died. HE Would not have been able to cope with my death. We have 1 son so this is important(not just because of a child, but because it was love talking) . I once sank into a depression after I lost the rest of my family and he said 'if anything happens to me I need to know you will carry on for Max's sake and mine. Don't go under'. So not getting out of bed, cooking, cleaning, sorting clothes, working at my job is not an option and nor do I think living or dying is. HE would have chosen to live. Right by my side, until death did us BOTH part. Like you both, I don't see the point (my son aside). Who cares how my day has been? Who has my back now? Whose opinion do I listen to and know I can trust? Who knows me like his own DNA ? Well, he chose me so I must be worth something and that in itself is something.. Please remember that in your darkest despair. You were and are loved. Never give up, ever ever ever. Big hugs to you xxxx

Margaret, just between you and I , Brussels was HIS city, where I came to, to be with him. London, England is MINE Actually, he came originally from Iran, proud of it. Ancient culture beautiful scenery. I pray that I live to see democracy there. But you are so right Margaret, we are all the same race wherever we come from, some of those in the world lack the preface 'human' though. You are a good friend too. Just 1 question, why, oh why can't I live next door to you ???

Well Margaret, if you are strange then you are a member of a club I too am in. With you all the way. SO good to be back in contact xx Removing names is achingly hard. I remember going to the bank (they freeze accounts here can you believe regardless of circumstances) and watch the bank manager systematically go through everything taking his name off and making me the primary...horrible. Mind you the bank manager did cry. Brussels - 'capital of Europe' but a legend in its own lunchtime if you ask me - is amazingly small and very like a village. I say this coming from around population 10 million in London. People do tend to know each other here, and the bank manager said my husband had 'made his staff feel better for him having spoken with them'...I knew just what he meant. I LOVE the hat scenario and I wish I could see them. Hats are so very personal aren't they? Having been worn on such precious heads. Max grabbed his dad's fishing hat from the car and has slept with it ever since. I think imagining them, in their hats or sitting in their favourite chair is a huge comfort. Margaret, who are we to say they are NOT there listening to us talking to them? Actually that is no more absurd than life, is it? I hold an open palm out on his side of the bed...just in case he takes my hand, just in hope. I have old woman's bladder too my mum, always the realist, warned me it would come in my arrogant youth and so it has! Addiction is the least of it, but my wonderful woman, take care. I am fighting going to the docs because I know I, personally, mustn't. I read. I weep. I read some more. I take comfort in the fact that love began millennia before me and that many have trodden this path. Can you imagine how many oceans the love of those who have passed would fill? I think that is why/how the world has continued. We will find our way out of the fog my friend. Life will be just a little less sure, a little more misty. We will never take anything for granted again. We will have to live each moment and I think, maybe that was always the goal. Big, big hugs xxx

Oh Margaret I TOTALLY get that!!! How are you? (I have a lot of posts to catch up on!)

Marty, thank you so so much. I cannot tell you how much I have missed you and your compassion and that of every wonderful soul on here. This forum is, quite literally a lifesaver, and I pray I can win the lottery here because I know who my first donation will be to! The work you do is how humanity should be, working as one to ease our way through this, sometimes perplexing and tough, world xx

New Normal, My heart goes out to you. Yes we get it and the 'it' is the hell you are living through. I lost my husband just over 3 months ago at 49 to a brain haemorrhage. He too never believed he would live to see old age and so it was proved (despite his father being alive at 81 and brother at 55) My story can be found somewhere ( a moment by moment account too, like yours) here in my many outpourings of grief on this wonderful forum. NOTHING I say will make you feel any momentary flicker of comfort aside from you are not alone. We got body slammed from the beginning. Yes you did. So many setbacks BUT you were together for the final vow of marriage. You loved him and he loved you and only death parted you. We were together almost 20 years '( son now 16), my husband lost his mum at 6 in a car accident, fought on the frontline of a war (I kid you not, he never got over what he saw), lost a friend to suicide and was estranged from his father after a stupid argument. He lived a continent away from all his family. My husband too had anger. Never with us, but with the cards he had been dealt I could have saved him. How I live with this I don't know. You couldn't have saved him my lovely lady, because as far as you were concerned, there was nothing to save him from. But maybe the information, had it been given, would have enabled him to help himself. It is shocking. Shocking in the extreme that this information was withheld. These people are accountable for their actions. I don't want to inflame you any further but really? In this day and age vital information is not passed on to the one person it concerns. Oh my love, I want to reach through the screen and scream with you. We should have both died in the car during the 11 hour drive. I too have thought about that. Long and hard. You see, 3 hours before he collapsed we were speeding in a car. He was the driver (I don't) and I asked him to slow down. When he collapsed, he collapsed in such a way that had it happened in the car we would have driven into a tunnel at speed. I wouldn't be here. We would be together. As we were in life, joined at the hip. BUT our son....OUR son? For him it would have been catastrophic. No, it wasn't meant to be, for good reason. Whether you believe in fate or not, newnormal, you are here for a reason and our children have us and that is at least half their hearts saved even though we feel ours are entirely broken. Because who would our children have to remember the fresh cranberries with if we also had gone? Who, in years to come would they reminisce with about the silly sayings if they were placing flowers on a double grave? No more 430 am coffee together. There is not one of the wonderful people on here that cannot tune in to this. It is the little stuff, the minutiae of life that matters in the final analysis. the small moments two souls enjoy together that make us unique in every way. For me, it was our 2.30am 'pastmidnight' snacks together, giggling like 2 naughty kids in case we got found out by our son! Oh and......well so so many moments just like you have. Too many to mention, for you and I. Too many. There is no God. One thing I feel sure of is that 'whoever' or 'whatever' was the genius behind our creation can handle our anger. So rage away you are totally entitled. I admire the folks here so strong. I just don't have it. We are strong for each other because we are all plodding down a common human road nearnormal, but please don't think we are always strong for ourselves. Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. This changes moment to moment with breathtaking speed. Our stories, our lives are here. I had never been on a forum in my life until one night, so desperate for help I stumbled upon this. This and the people here have been my lifeline. I wish I had a magic wand for you and all of us suffering, or a time machine or some other device to make you whole again. Nothing will change the horror of what you have been through. But, you are NOT alone. I want to repeat it over and over to you because I thought I was 3 months ago, locked in my prison of despair. Don't get me wrong, I will never get over the loss of the best man I have ever known, but I will live, if only for my son, minute by minute, hour by hour. With a little help from my friends here. I am sending all my love and courage to you xxxx

I missed you too Kay! And you Brad (I hope Wakey Dog is in fine health), Margaret, Marty, Scba....all of you. I hope Kevin is okay too. I have thought about you all so often. I have had literally no internet access and I really felt the loss of not being able to communicate with you all. Still I'm back now! Or as my dad used to say (with a smile) 'Trouble is back in Town!'

Hello My Wonderful Friends, So Max and I returned at the weekend from sorting out mom's house. I think it was the 3rd most harrowing thing I have ever done in my life. I felt so sad because now my husband is gone there is enormous pressure (not least financial) to sort it out quickly. I ended up getting rid of so many sentimental items that I would have chosen to bring back and go through at leisure, but not driving made this impossible. So out went so much. So many bits of history, so many little things, meaningless to others. I managed to keep myself together for Max's sake until I looked under the stairs and saw my husband's work clothes neatly folded in February, and his work tools where he left them. Waiting for him. Then I wept. And wept and wept. I think the whole experience has changed me irrevocably. How can you be the same when you have lived through that? I am not the same person, I know, as the one that 15 months ago had her mom and husband and comfort and love surrounding her. I wept for Max particularly, who has experienced too much loss in his short life. I also discovered that my 2nd cousin Debbie (and that's where my living family ends) had died in May at the age of 54 of a particularly swift bone cancer. She had fallen ill at Christmas apparently. I had been trying to track her down (she moved quite a bit) to invite her to Mom's funeral and thought it was odd she never responded. I had called at her last known address and left her a long note. I will never know if she received it. Anyway, the first picture of Pooh is of course for Brad and the second is how I feel. Big hugs to you all xxx

Max and I leave in 2 hours. Feeling very wobbly, but I keep repeating to myself 'this too will pass' when the anxiety keeps rising. I remember putting the key in the door at moms just after she had passed and feeling the whole house in shock, she had passed in her bedroom the previous week. Now, without my rock, protector and hero by my side this journey takes on a nightmarish dimension. I will see him everywhere, his tools and his work clothes as he was the last to leave in February. I find myself wondering, what is the end game here? What spiritual lesson or benefit are we supposed to be learning from such sorrow and pain? When I put the key in the door and miss my whole family, and a husband far too young to pass with a huge heart and soul, what is it achieving? Does it make me kinder to others? My husband was already the kindest person I ever met and yet he was taken. I know my friends there are no answers, but when faced with this is doesn't stop you asking the questions. I will be in touch when I return. Strength to us all x

The only one that helps me, is also one mom taught me which is 'Be still and know that I am God' it is particularly powerful in the wee small hours of the morning I find.

Gwenivere, I am so so sorry. Who knows why these days hit us the hardest and you are right who has answers? Certainly not me. The first anniversary I think is particularly significant because up until that day you can say 'this time last year life was normal. I was happy, he was here with me' then you suddenly can't utter those words again. My husband passed 3 months ago and I even dread 2015 finishing (although it has been the worst year of my life) because it will be the last year he even lived part way through on this earth. My life will now, forever be measured specific time. 'When HE was here' and 'When HE left' Gwenivere, you have lived through one whole year without him. It will feel hopeless and empty now, but when you consider what you have lost, what we all have lost, this fact alone is nothing short of a little triumph, a miracle. xx