martha jane

Gwen, If you can only chat and listen that is one of the best things you can do for an older person. All they want is someone to be interested in them and listen. Let them tell you their life story. I once worked as a companion to a 98 year old lady and I asked her what was the very first memory she had. From there her life story flowed and we laughed and cried together. You don't have to say or do anything, just listen. That will help more than a bottle of medicine. And you will feel so much better knowing that you are doing something wonderful for an older person just by using your ears. You don't have to push them around or help them walk, just sit beside them, listen and be ready with a hug or smile when they need it. Although my friend was 98 and all her family was gone she still was sad over a time that she hurt her mother's feelings and said something hateful. She talked it out with me and felt much better. Until I became older I did not realize how important what I had done for her was. Now I just wish I had someone to do the same for me.

Gwen, If you call the church they are bound to know who you are talking about since she lost her husband just a year ago. She is probably disappointed that she can't find you either. Have you returned to the park? I hope you find her. It is so hard to find someone who you can really talk to especially in person. I can't talk to my children or relatives or really anyone. It is hard to put into words how you feel . Sometimes you don't even know yourself. I hardly ever feel happy or even excited about anything. I was thinking last night, every day for over 57 years I knew where my husband was. Even when he was working out of town I talked to him everyday. Now I look at a picture of us the day we got married and I don't know those two people. Where did we go? Where did I go? I read you posts, I don't often respond but it breaks my heart that there are no words I can say to help you feel better, to calm your mind, to bring a little sunshine in your days. Please know that I think about you and care so much that your life will get better and you will somehow find a purpose to understand why you are still here and your husband is gone. I can't seem to find a purpose, something that I can do to help me feel useful. I used to do a lot of volunteer work, especially at nursing homes and with hospice. I can no longer do that, it brings back too many memories of what my husband went through before he died. I have read that there is a time to live and a time to die. Our time won't come until we have completed our purpose for being born. I seem to have stepped out of my path and can't find my way back. I wish I could just sit with you and let you pour out your heart. I would love to do that but I can't seem to find anyone who I feel comfortable with to do that . I never dreamed that when we started our life together it would end the way it did. I have hope that I will see him again some day. And I wish I knew where he is now.

I have read through all your posting tonight. I want to say that you are one of the most intelligent persons that I have ever read. You make everything so plain and easy to understand. I have never had a " career" as you do, I have worked for doctor's offices and also for the state of Ala and Louisanna but the same things you experienced goes on in every kind of job there is. Everywhere I have worked I have always had what I call " a thorn in my side." I know how it feels to be treated unfairly and be disliked in a job just because you are doing it well. The last sentence in your latest post said exactly what I feel. How is it possible that it is all over? I was married for 57 years the day my husband was put on hospice and he died 15 days later, no food or water for those 15 days. No movement and no words spoken, eyes closed and his mouth wide open. My husband had Parkinson's. He had been diagnosed 4 years before. He was doing okay, he didn't have the shaking , just the weakness and freezing while he was walking. He would see people who weren't real sometimes mostly two little girls. I would hear him talking to them. He was hospitalized several times with extremely high blood pressure and UTI's but always managed to get better and come home. But the last time he got sick very suddenly and left home in an ambulance on Nov 1st, my son's birthday. He had sepsis and never recovered from it. It was so horrible, the way he died, so slow and silent. He was on morphine and Ativan and never knew what was happening to him. I know your dad had Parkinson's also and I wondered if he may have had sepsis from some kind of bacteria? I think my husband's was from his kidneys. My husband was my support and my world just as your dad was yours. I am so sorry for your grief and pain. I hope that you will find work that you will enjoy and there will be no more thorns, just nice people who will appreciate you and your sweet personality, your honesty and good work. My comfort is my cat also. She is a flame siamese, I got her from a no kill shelter and I have never had a cat who loved me like she does. I would love to have you for a friend, but Alabama is a long way from Arizona. God bless you.

Kieron, I too have my husbands bath robe still on the hook in the bathroom. I bought it just a month or so before he went into the hospital for the last time. It was beginning to turn cold and I thought it would be nice to have so he could be dry all over rather than having to be toweled off. He only used it a few times. I have all his clothes packed away, I haven't been able to part with them. His shoes are still in the bedroom and one pair I can see everytime I go in the bedroom. They are the very last pair he ever wore. Sometimes I just sit and look at them and see the shape of his feet. The strings are broken but he alway tied the ends together and kept using them. I noticed he did that right after we got married and I knew that the probably had done that since he was a boy because they were poor and I guess new shoe strings were hard to come by. He died on Dec 13, 2016. He had been on hospice and filled with morphine and ativan since Nov 28th which was out 57th wedding anniversary. He never spoke or moved again after that. He lay with his eyes closed and his mouth wide open. I keep seeing him like that when my daughters and I saw him draw his last breath. We never said goodbye, he did not even know we were there with him. I thought that things would be better by now but it isn't. Lately I don't want to talk to anyone go anywhere. I can hardly believe that he is gone forever. One day I was in the kitchen and I could see him through the living room window sitting in the porch swing like he was in deep thought. I thought to myself that I needed to go and sit with him but I didn't. Now I can hardly bear to look at that window, I see him there by himself when I should have taken time to sit with him. My husband had Parkinson's and he was admitted to the hospital several times with high blood pressure and a UTI but he always came home feeling better. I did not know that this time he would get sepsis and die. He went in the hospital on Nov 1st , My son's birthday and was in the hospital ICU for 11 days and then he was supposed to be so much improved that they sent him for rehab when he couldn't even stand up or walk. He improved for a day or two and then they found him in the floor one night and rushed him to the hospital and he became so much worse that the doctor talked us in having him be turned over to hospice. I felt like we starved him to death. He lived for 15 days with no water or food. I don't know how aware he was all that time and it breaks my heart that he went with no goodbyes from us. How much was he aware of what was happening to him? Was he afraid? Did he lay in the floor at rehab calling for me and wondering why I didn't come and help him? Thinking about this really haunts me. I look at a picture of the day we got married and it is like I no longer know who those two happy smiling people are. I don't know who I am.

I read a lot of books but after I finish them, in a few days I can't remember what they were about. I have to go on good reads and review them to remember. I have Acorn through Amazon because I love English movies. Watching them rests my mind for awhile. If I don't have my mind occupied with something I am miserable missing my life before my husband died. I still can't believe he is gone, One year and three months now. A whole year since I have heard his voice except for on videos we made. Never hear him say my name anymore. He had such a thick southern accent that a lot of people thought he was calling me Johnny instead of Jane. My younger brother tells me that the first time he heard him talk , he and our cousin went into another room and laughed and laughed. I don't know why he talked like he did, we were from the same state but his family all talked that way. When he was working in Coral Gables, Fla building a Kentucky Fried Chicken place people would ask him where he was from and he would say New York City and they would look at him so funny. If you are familiar with the east side of Fla you know that many of the people who live there are from New York and other surrounding states. On the west side the people are from the mid-west. Only in the panhandle do you hear many southern accents. They call it Lower Alabama. I so wish I could turn back time and have him get a phone call from a company asking him if he would go some place out of state to work and we would get so excited. Those years were like one long vacation. Even the kids didn't mind moving until they got to be teenagers and it was hard to make friends in new schools especially out of the south. Now they say they are very glad that we moved around, that it was always a wonderful experience. My whole married life was a wonderful experience and I didn't appreciate it like I should have.

Tom, I will be thinking of you tomorrow on the anniversary of Susan's death.

Gwen, I see what you mean. Didn't think about that. Funny!

I feel the same way, Gwen. I thought it might get easier the second year but it hasn't.

It is a Ford Tarus. So far so good. It is special because when my daughter and I drove to Colorado last year we were passing through the hometown of a Nascar driver that we loved to watch race. My son in law is a state trooper and knows him through the Talladega races. He called him and the driver met us and as he was leaving I asked would her autograph my car. He wrote on the sun visor Jane, drive fast and signed his name. I wish I could tell my husband about it.

IS there a delete button somewhere? Got carried away, thinking it wasn't saved. Sorry

Tom, it breaks my heart for you, seeing that picture. I can just feel how pleasant it was to sit on the boat in the sunshine, feeling the wind and the clanging of the rigging. When I walk past a flag pole and hear the thing that pulls it up hitting the pole it makes me think of sailing. We sold our boat, we didn't get to use it much because he was always working out of state. I remember that I stood at the wheel, it seemed I could sail better if my feet were in the floor. Maybe there will be sailboats in heaven. And lots of wind.

After my husband died my daughter thought I needed a better car. I was signing the papers for a Ford which my son said would make his daddy turn over in his grave. He was a Chevrolet and Buick man. The dealership had that canned music and it played back to back two old songs that I had played at his funeral. I looked at my daughter and said were they there? The salesman said that is your husband letting you know that he approves of you buying this car. I hope so much that is why those two songs played.

Tom, please let know if the flower is blooming on the 31st. Below is a picture of our sailboat, a 30 ft Hunter.

I have posted about this before but will again as this subject has come up. My husband died on Dec 13, 2016. Two days before Valentine's day my daughter and I was at his grave cleaning and I began raking his grave trying to remove some of the small rocks that covered it , being that the dirt from the grave was very rocky. As I raked a small rock got stuck in the tines of the rake. When I removed it there it was, shaped like an almost perfect heart that just fit in the palm of my hand. It made me and my daughter very happy. Perhaps that was my valentine card that he would have given me had he been alive.

Today is my husband's 86th birthday his second in heaven. Never spent any of his birthday's apart before. For 57 years we talked to each other everyday, sometimes on the phone when he would be away starting a new job. I have been in the house we bought when he retired for ten years now, ten years of memories that come to me everyday. It is hard to believe that he is gone. I am sorry for anyone who is living with the memory of a birthday, anniversary or any special time they spent with their wife or husband. It is so hard. I am just sitting at my computer listening to songs that have meaning and I can't keep from crying. I need to do something with myself today instead of just sitting. But what? Where ever I go it's always the same when I come back home.

To Tom PB, I don't know how to put a song on here but if you go to you tube and look for " The Anchor Holds" by Roy Boltz it is a song you might like and relate to since you are a sailor.

Yesterday my husband has been dead for one year and two months. Right before Valentine's day last year, my daughter and I were putting flowers on his grave and I was raking it. The ground where he is buried had a lot of rocks in it and his grave is covered with small rocks. As I raked, a rock turned up and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was in nearly a perfect shape of a heart. I showed it to my daughter and she made a picture of it in my hand. Could that have been a message to me from him? I don't know, I try to believe that he passed from death into eternal life. I want to believe that he is happier now than he has ever been in his whole life. I want to believe that he is back young and strong with his brown curly hair and laughing blue eyes. I want to believe that he no longer remembers the times I hurt his feelings, the times I was so impatient with him in his sickness, the times that I wasn't as sympathetic as I could have been, the times I resented him because our lives had changed so much. I want him to be sailing on a boat like we used to do, smiling and enjoying the ocean breezes and the sound of the water passing beneath the bow, like silk swishing. I hope that he is somewhere swinging his hammer, putting a nail in with two strokes of his hammer like he used to do and the kids thought it was so great that he could do that. I hope he is surrounded by the smell of fresh cut boards and sawdust, the roar of a table saw. I hope he is measuring lengths and marking the place to cut with a line and an arrow on the end, something I had never seen anyone use before, especially my daddy who never measured and never actually got anything level or plumb. I couldn 't believe that someone would be so very careful when they measured and cut and sawed and nailed. I hope that he is in charge of building big buildings like he did for American Airlines and the federal government in Denver Colorado. He never even blinked when he was put in charge of 30 million plus buildings and over all the sub- contractors, the workers and meetings. My husband was such a smart man, smarter than I ever gave him credit for , smart about all things not just building. Now I have to make all the decisions, what repairs should I do to the house , what about his truck? I want to move, I don't want to move, I want to go some place , I don't want to go anywhere. People I thought I could count on have gone away. Other people, some surprising ones have moved closer. But he is dead, the man I married and had such fun with, who loved our children, mine and his parents, our families is gone. I wish I could tell my mama that he is gone away, the young man that she loved so well and was willing to do things for her like spending one Thanksgiving day building her a sink cabinet and one day building a platform outside her kitchen window so her cat could climb up and see in. Now it is just me, here in the house with my cat. The house he didn't want to buy but later would stand outside and look around and say " All this and heaven too." But the last few years he didn't do that, he hardly went outside. He couldn't build anything, forgot how to turn his saw on once. I stand at the back door and look across the yard like he used to do when I would be outside watching over my two chickens and he would wonder where I was. Sometimes it would irritate me. Why was I such a bad person to him? I could be kind and over look everyone else and the things they did but not him. And he was sick, sicker than I ever realized. I feel guilt, I feel lonely, I feel deserted, I feel scared, I feel unloved, and I feel I deserve the life I have now. I don't deserve a nice Valentine day today. If I could only turn back time to the days when sickness didn't make us both scared and angry, When we camped by the river and hiked through the woods, we walked in the snow and climbed the mountains of Colorado, sailed and swam in the waters of Pensacola Bay, moved where ever his jobs were, dragged the kids from place to place and we all enjoyed every moment of the moves. It was like one long vacation. And I didn't really realize or appreciate the good life we had together for 57 years. And on the anniversary of our 57th year they put him on hospice and he never spoke again, hardly moved and lived for 15 days with no water or food. Just because he got a kidney infection and developed sepsis and was not taken care of by the doctors like he should have been. I stood by his bed and saw him take his very last breath and we never said goodby. Will I ever get over it? Where ever you are I send you my love. Do you remember the Valentine I made you the first year we were married? A red heart cut from construction paper and real lace pasted around the edges? If only I could see you and give it to you again.

Thank you so much for your understanding. Sometimes I am angry as soon as I wake up and find fault in everything and everyone. I am not the same person I used to be. I never get a sense of anticipation , or feel happy looking forward to going somewhere and doing things. And if I did right in the middle of it I would remember that he is gone. Then I just stop and stare into space for a while. He will never know that I was able to add antifreeze to his truck on my own. A truck I can barely stand to look at but then stop and stand and look inside at the things he had in the back, his golf clubs, his tool chest and his jacket and cap. All the things that were important to him don't matter anymore. And I am left with them to look at and wonder what to do with them. He has all kind of saws, screwdrivers, drills, hammers with his initals scratched on some of them. I can't bear to get rid of them but I feel overwhelmed with everything. What will become of them when I am not able to care for the house and have to move away? What would he want? It seems like I am just looking for things to worry about but I don't know what to do.

Today will be 1 year and 18 days since My husband died. I have taken a trip to Colorado to see a friend who had cancer. She died a few days ago. I am in the process of gathering up all the letters she wrote me in the past 24 years. I enjoyed going to Denver where my husband and I lived while the renovation of the federal building and court house was going on but it was also very very sad. My daughter and I flew to Vermont to visit my oldest daughter and her family and I enjoyed that except for remembering the last time I was there my husband was with me and I saw the small repairs he did to her house at the time. And it was very, very sad. My daughter and I went to the Smokies because she wanted to stand on a mountain on her birthday. It was fun but I remembered the last time we were there her daddy was with us. We also went to the lost sea in Georgia which we had been seeing advertised along the interstate for years on the way to and from jobs my husband did when they were small. They always begged to go but we were always in a rush. It was fun, but my husband never got to see the amazing sights inside the cave and the largest underground lake I think in America. And it was very, very sad. My daughter and I have done many things together. The night her daddy died she stood with her hand over his heart as it slowly stopped beating and she promised him that she would take care of me. And she is but for both of us things are very very sad. Everything I do is steeped in sadness. In the middle of the enjoyment, I just stop and realize that he is gone and it seems that everything stops. I have this awful feeling of being abandoned and no longer loved by him. He is never in my dreams. I am left to live alone and when my time comes he won't be there to hold my hands and shed tears. He was so changed before he died that the part I am grieving over is the years when we first met, got married and had our children and how we traveled and lived in different places and met such nice people. It was so exciting when he would be asked to travel to another town or state to supervise a project, we never hesitated to go anywhere . It was all like one exciting vacation wherever we went. We climbed mountains in Denver, went to Mardi Gras in Louisiana, enjoyed snow in Indiana, drove here and there all around Knoxville, Tenn. Bought and learned to sail a boat in Pensacola. I could go on and on about all the things we did and enjoyed. I look at pictures of both of us when we were children and who would have thought all the things that little girl and boy would do. But we grew old and his health failed and we stopped in one place and the memories are of ambulances and hospitals and falls and slowing steps. And we both changed, and began to be angry with each other. And now I am living with the guilt of how I got angry with things that he couldn't help. And angry that I had to take on a lot of things that he once did and angry that he changed and became hard to get along with. And now there is nothing to get angry about. Except I am, sometimes so angry I want to throw things. Angry that he is not here for me to tell things to , discuss things with, angry that when I slipped and fell the other day he wasn't there to help me up and make me feel better. Angry that I don't have him to hang pictures for me or help bring in the groceries. Angry that I have to eat alone and and go places alone and angry that I have to keep the doors locked even if I am just going out into the yard. I am angry and sad and feel that not many people care, not his relatives at all. I am just angry.

I don't know any comforting words to say to Butch, I can not find any to say to myself. But I am crying for us both.

yesterday was ten months since my husband died, 11 months since he left our house for the last time. I thought by now it would get a little easier but it is getting harder. I want so much to leave this house. There are so many reminders, I know every place in the house where he fell. The marks where he held on to the door facings to get around still show. The last shoes he wore are sitting by the dresser. I have taken his clothes down out of the closet, but where do I put them. They are in boxes still in the living room. I don't want to give them to a thrift store, I can't stand the thoughts of them being there for sale. My daughter in law wants a few of his shirts to make pillows, I have promised to send them but I can't get motivated to pack them to mail. I get up every morning with plans to do something like house or yard work but I wind up just sitting, wasting time. I don't feel any closeness with him or with the Lord. I feel deserted. I went to church for the first time since way before he died. People were friendly but I really just wanted to leave. The night that Kenneth died, my daughters and I, not knowing how close he was to leaving, went out to eat. A man from my church saw me and he didn't know that Kenneth was even sick. He said as everyone says in a deep and sincere voice IF there is anything I can do please let me know. I said there was nothing and he said Don't rob me of a blessing, let me do something. We left and went back to the hospital and realized that something had changed and we knew he was going to die. We stood at his bedside and watched it happen. He just drew a breath and that was the last one. It was very peaceful but I wish I hadn't seen it. The hospice people came and we left the room, his color was already fading to gray. He had been lying with his mouth wide open and his head drawn back, he looked so pitiful. I asked the hospice nurse to please close it. She came to me and told me that she couldn't . It wouldn't close. I hid so I wouldn't see them take his body from the bed. It seemed impossible that he was gone and I was feeling nothing. Now after 10 months it is getting worse and worse. I talked about the man from my church because he did not attend the funeral and I have not seen or heard one word from him. It was all an act. a fake caring. There has been a lot of that . My sister in law, my husbands baby sister has not called since he died. She is afraid she will cry. I have not heard from his brother in two or three months. But if I need anything I am to let him know. I wish people would just not say things like that because most of the time they don't mean it . I have a young man who keeps two cows in my pasture. He has been better to me than any of my relatives. He has brought me lunch three times, checks on me , has fed my cats when I go away, If he sees something that is amiss he will call me. He is what I consider a true Christian. I do not like asking for help, I would rather pay someone but it is disappointing that few people seem to care. I don't know what to do with myself. My son and his family came from San Francisco to visit and I enjoyed it but I knew how it would be when they left. My daughter comes every other weekend but when she leaves I am so sad that I cry but she doesn't know it. My daughter in Vermont calls me every day. But I am afraid she will catch me crying. I guess I sound crazy and maybe I am. At my age there is not too much to look forward to. I can't build a new life. Even when I am doing things trying to enjoy myself there is a backdrop of sadness and hurt. I never wake up in the morning with a feeling of a new day to enjoy life. This town is so sad for me. I see places we lived, places where we ate, rivers that we swam in and camped beside. I can't bear to see the sun sparkling on the water or a sailboat in the wind. His cane is still sitting in the corner where he kept it unless he had misplaced it. These memories make my heart hurt so bad. I am afraid what my future is going to be like and he is not here to stand beside me like I did for him. My one comfort is knowing that it is better that he went first because he needed me so bad to take care of him. If he had been left he would have had to go to a nursing home. He would be worse off than I am. But that still does not make me feel any better. I just wish I had more faith that he is somewhere well and happier than he has ever been and he is young again, strong and healthy, able to run and walk and do all the things he enjoyed before he got Parkinson's. I believe if there is a heaven he is there or perhaps he is asleep and in the blink of an eye for him the Lord will come and raise him up. I did not intend to write a book when I got started but I have to tell someone my thoughts.

Dave, you had known Dana in the past? Did you care for her then? I am so sorry that things didn't work out for you. The two of you must have been so happy when you finally met up again. March 13th will be three months since my husband died. I knew he was sick but he had been sick in the past and recovered. This time he didn't. It is Sunday here. The skies are dark and the house is so quiet. One thing I miss is not having his clothes to wash. And no one to share a cone of icecream with. I hope it gets better for both of us. Again I am so sorry.

I started reading at the very start of these posts and just finished and I am so happy that KayC has come through that so unhappy time and is doing better. Now my heart can stop hurting for her. Good Luck in the future, You deserve it.

I too agree that Marty said everything that was right that you needed to know. Your pain is tripled and that must be very hard to accept. I hope you find someone who might can lead you to a better understanding and some relief from the deep deep pain you must be carrying with all the losses you have suffered.

I can actually feel the pain you are in. I wish I could do something to comfort you but I haven't found much to comfort myself except for the fact that my husband lived a long life and possibly escaped being bedridden from Parkinson's. 34 is so very young. It seems much more of a tragedy than when an older person dies. My husband got sick and never had a chance although I didn't realize it at the time. I have a friend who keeps asking me what I am going to do, that I can't live alone, etc. She knows nothing about how it feels for your husband to die. She said she had talked to a lot of widows and know how they think. No she does not. NO one knows until it happens to them. Don't worry about crying, I do the same thing and am staying away from church because I don't want people to see me cry. Its hard to see the places he walked, the truck he drove, the tools that he used to make a good living for me and my children. I could go on and on but you know what I mean. Please just take things a day at a time or an hour at a time and right now don't think about the future and what you should do. I don't know your circumstances but it doesn't matter. The man you love is gone and it seems impossible, so impossible.