Nightwinds

I'm so sorry for both of your loses. I can't imagine ever being in a relationship again. The idea actually makes my stomach drop. I am at about 3-1/2 months and have had everything go wrong that can go wrong. It is getting to me and I am starting to lose my tenuous grip. Blessings to you and know that your in my heart. I can't imagine your devistation.

I agree. Many don't have the empathy to understand the grief and others are deathly afraid of it and will avoid you because you are a reminder of the life they have a 50% chance at my father is one that doesn't have the empathy about an hour after brian passed he called me and asked why I was crying you knew he was going to die you knew for 17 years I know how lucky we were to have those extra years after his first dissection. Doesn't make it any easier

Since brian died my world has become pretty small. I lost his 20 year old cat a few days after he passed. I had to have him put down. He had dementia so bad and he would stand in front of Brian's spot on the couch and scream all night long and walk through the house crying all day looking for him. I had terrible guilt for this but he was making my grief even worse. My 15 year old cat was diagnosed with mammary cancer a week after Brian passed. In 2 months it has spread all over her and one tumor is hot and close to rupturing. When it ruptures I will have no choice but to take her to the vet and lose her also. It almost feels like the last straw. She is closer to me than my family as sad as that is to say. She is my 3rd child. She has had no mother besides me. She was raised with the powdered kitty milk and a syringe. Let me tell you that every kitten I have raised this way is a hellion. Something was different between us. It's almost as though you can have a soul May human in your life and a soul mate animal. I taought her words and she said momma and right now pretty well. She has a couple of weeks. I have decided to pretty much stay home and I'm staying in bed with her. She is just starting to feel pain and I will not let her suffer. If links are ok this is my husband and her playing.

I seem to have waves of grief and I am always alone when the really bad ones hit. I feel like a water faucet all the time now. I just tear up anything talk about Brian or even just typing this. I can't tell you when my love for this man encompassed my life but I felt my heart break and my soul leave with him when he died. I was running around gathering clothes to meet him st another hospital. I hit my knees and grabbed my chest about 39 minutes after I put him on the ambulance. I called his phone. He answered and said hey babe and I heard the phone hit the floor and the emt start working on him. I cried so hard. Hanging up the phone felt like I gave up on him. I went back to the hospital knowing he would be taken back. When they brought him in he was uncovered and his eyes were open. I have nightmares of those eyes many nights a week. I will never be ok with losing him but I will go on.

This was my answer to the idiot. I posted it all over my Facebook. I'm not sure who wrote this or even where I got it* "Grief means loss. Grief means pain and suffering. Grief means mourning.Grief means someone or something you love is gone. Grief means a gaping hole in your heart.Grief means that things will never be the same again.I see posts about the “stages of grief” and the “grief process” — and I hate it.It makes it sound so sterile, so clinical, so neatly organized.I hear people wondering when someone will “get over” or “get past” their mourning and “move on with their life” — and I hate it.It makes it sound so easy.It makes it sound as if having something or someone ripped out of your life isn’t profoundly life-altering, as if you aren’t living and breathing every day with something that has wounded your soul, as if you’re defective when someone feels your “official mourning period” should be over.As if the space in your heart that has someone’s name on it should be boarded up, or worse, cleaned up and ready for occupation, all the cobwebs of pain swept away. As if it didn’t matter. As if that space could be filled up and smoothed over by time like patch…Grief isn’t something that we “get past” or “get over” so much as we learn to live in spite of.It’s learning to breathe and walk all over again. And again. And again.It comes and goes like waves. The holes in our hearts are like the sand on the beach. It erodes and it fills with the tide, but it’s never actually exactly the same again.And like the tide, it doesn’t really stop.And the truth is, you don’t want it to. Because grief is the price we pay for deep love. Mourning means we had something worth missing.And that’s OK.Because the alternative is never having had that beauty in your life.Some days — even years from now — the pain will stun you, but some days you can smile at a memory without it being through tears. Some days the pain of them not being here will be a physical ache, others you’ll feel as if they’re smiling and standing right by you and others you’ll feel numb". *[Source: https://downtherabbithole397.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/grief-and-perseverance/]

Good news with my kitty. She is eating and she has gained a little weight. I'm feeding her every couple of hours. I would be so lost without her company. She really is one of my children.

I totally understand what you mean. I have always known how Brian would die. I accepted it and my only regret is not letting him know even more that he has been my world all these years. The night we went to the hospital I asked him "Is it time?" He said yes it is. I really felt like we would spend months with him recovering but he would get though this one also. I knew when I read the radiology report that he was going to die. I couldn't accept it but I knew. In August he was hit by lightening. We were in the burn unit and when he come home I bandaged his legs and chest every day for about 6 weeks. We got even closer after that. I thought I was watching him die after he got hit by lightening. It was so bad. He was smoking out of his chest and legs. He couldn't talk and required rescue breaths. I think the lightening actually did kill him. It just took 6 months. I feel like it weakened what was already weak. I don't know how he survived it but I'm thankful! It doesn't really matter what the cause. He is gone and I'm so alone. His (and now my) best friend is telling me how much better I am handling things than he expected. He thought I was going to be a suicide watch for months. My entire family thought I would take my life. I did pray for death for weeks. I am trying to take one day at a time. I can't see the future right now but I can make it through today. I work myself until I can't move. It's probably not the best way to handle the grief but I don't feel comfortable in my own skin anymore

I was a laboratory technologist for years and worked with blood bank, hematology, chemistry , and microbiology. I always hated to hear a blood culture go off because I knew someone was gravely ill. blessings to you. I feel so out of control and so unbalanced in my life. It's so strange to go from being content with my life and happy in my life even with the medical problems Brian and I faced to being alone and trying to figure out how the world works as a widow. I don't think there are many words I dislike more than widow. Maybe the term baby daddy is running a close second.

I had to put Brian's 20 year old cat down a week after he passed. The cat had dementia and would walk around the house crying for Brian all night. I felt terrible but I could not handle the added stress of a confused mourning cat. My friends and family said now brian has his cat. It's strange that we have had all these cats through the years and Brian and I had "our" kitty. I have 2 other cats but they were our cats. We love them but they didn't gravitate to us the way our kitties do.

Memorial Day has been a very special day for Brian and I since 2000. On Memorial Day in 2000 we were doing to normal thing. We were still in the early years of our marriage and I was still recovering from back surgery the year before. We had cooked out and had watermelon. Brian had mowed the front yard (an acre). We got our showers and got ready for bed. He started having chest pain and I all but carried him to the truck. After several days in our little hospital we finally had a doctor that understood what was wrong with Brian. He had a massive dissection of the aorta. From the time this doctor came in to the time he was on a helicopter was minutes. When he got to the heart hospital in Dallas they took him to surgery. When I finally got to Dallas the first thing the nurse told me when I asked how he is doing was that I would be going home a widow. Turns out he was already leaking from the aneurysm. He was in surgery for 11 hours and then had to have another surgery because a clot developed in the pericardium He had a hard time recovering from the intubation. They had brown out one of his lungs. With Marfans the scoliosis is so severe one lung can be much smaller. He fought pneumonia for almost 2 years. So we celebrated Memorial Day as not only a day for veterans but also another year that we beat the odds. It was a very hard day for me when I started getting upset I went and got the stuff to cook out I have not used a grill for 21 years I made burgers, chicken poppers, sausages, and vegetables. I over cooked the burgers a bit but I wanted to do this for myself. The hits keep coming. I took my 15 year old cat to the vet yesterday. I had noticed a knot on her belly right before I lost Brian. The vet was hopeful it was a fatty tumor. It turns out my baby has cancer. She has lost 4 pounds since that appointment and a new tumor has come up. She has literally been with me laying on me since brian died. She has always pined for me when I would leave the house or be busy walking around. She follows until I sit down so she can be in my lap or on my chest. I'm the only mother she has ever known. She was abandoned while her umbilical cord was still wet. I barely kept her alive the first 2 weeks. I know it sounds crazy but I don't know if I can survive her death after losing Brian. She is laying on my chest as I type this. If she doesn't pick up some weight her time left is weeks. If she gains weight she has a less grim outlook. She is more than a pet to me. She is one of my children. When people ask me how many kids I have I answer 3. A girl, a boy, and my cat.

I have been using those meals in a bottle. High protein low carb because of the diabetes but I forget to eat some days and some days I want to eat everything but don't have the energy to cook. I keep hearing from everyone how well I am handling things and how good I look.

I am going to look into volunteering somewhere or find a way to get out. Sitting in my house alone makes things worse. I realized last night I will be sad when the work is finished on my house. I will not have company every day anymore. The bad anxiety attack I had happened the day they were not here and I was alone all day. I tried working myself stupid but that only made things worse. I ended up tired and physically miserable as well.

When Brian passed several of his family and friends took his photographs from my Facebook account and changed their profile to Brian's photo. It really upset me at the time. I knew within 2 months they would change their pictures and go on with their liives just like before he passed away. Well that is exactly what has happened. Everyone has moved on. I am stuck. Its been 2 months. I don't feel I will ever move on. One of the people that changed his profile picture called to check on me about a month ago. I said how I miss Brian so much I can't breath. He told me "we all do." I wanted to scream at him and tell him you have seen him once in the last 6 years. He has been my world for 21 years day in and day out. I kept my temper (it takes to much energy to get that angry) and I got off the phone and had a major breakdown. I'm 48 years old with medical problems. Brian was 49 years old. Brian and I always joked that it was a great thing we found each other since no one would ever want to deal with our issues. I have had some days that were not as terrible and I don't cry every night anymore. I feel guilty for letting Brian down. I feel like I should still be as upset as the week he passed. I have no one I can talk to besides this group that understands how devastated I am about losing Brian but to the people around me it looks like I'm fine and moving on with my life like nothing has happened. The main time I tear up is when I talk about him now and I breakdown with anxiety attacks at minimum one night a week.

Today it has been 2 months since brian passed and 1 month since our 21st anniversary. I think I'm numb half the time and in pain the other half. I have not known contentment or peace since the night we walked into the ER and I walked out a widow. I am so thankful for every day brian and I had together and I am thankful for the love and understanding we had together. It is worth the pain to have had such a beautiful relationship I feel I will never know peace again. I had a doctor appointment Friday. I have lost 20 pounds in 2 months and my labs have not looked so great in many years. My kidney function improved and my cholesterol profile is absolutely normal. I have had really bad cholesterol and triglycerides for 15 years. I wonder if the doctor has figured out if you eat very little this is what happens. I ate vegetables and a great diet while I had Brian. Now I do not do any of the vegetables or other prep work to make the food healthy. I'm eating worse than I have eaten in 21 years (I was anorexic when I meat Brian). My doctor said keep up the good work if they only knew. i feel this new life I am trying to build is a house of cards and I'm running around back and forthtrying to keep the cards from falling down. The roof is almost finished and the crazy thing is I'm going to be so sad when the guys go away. The activity around the house and the people to talk to have convinced me I need to get out. Brian and I were so wrapped up in one another we didn't socialize. We had a best friend (his best friend since middle school). He is like a brother to me after all these years.

My mom had a life insurance policy. She left it to my grandmother. My grandmother passed several years before she did so she told me she changed the policy to me. After she passed away I had to go to court. I racked up 5000$ in costs, 2500$ to take care of her passing, gas driving back and forth.... she had a family she cared about. They had abandoned her the last year. I split the bank account and the furniture in the house with them. It turns out on the back of one of her bills to the insurance company she had written the new phone number and the friends name. The insurance company decided that she wanted to change the beneficiary to that person. I was out all the money and he got the policy. Nothing I could do. It was wrong. I felt like she was still abusing me after her death. I thought I was devastated by this until I experienced Brian's death. Now I know what true devastation really means. I finally let it go the best I could.

I have diabetes and broke my back as a child. Brian was as much my caretaker as I was his. We kind of went back and forth. Whoever was the healthiest took care of the other. There have been times we literally leaned on each other to get food ready. Lol The reason I'm writing about the diabetes and back problems.... I have bad neuropathy in my feet. My primary doctor prescribed me Effexor. I am absolutely against antidepressants for myself. I have never had any relief and the side effects were awful. I have had no problems with the Effexor. It's the lowest dose. It has helped my neuropathy and I think it has helped me with my grief. The doctor wouldn't prescribe it for me until a month had passed after Brian's death. She said it was important to do the grieving without a medication helping you the first month. I didn't want an antidepressant but I wanted relief from the neuropathy. One that will not hurt my damaged kidneys.

That is what I use and the same way I use it. I am in a full blown anxiety/panic attack before I will take the Valium. I hate taking medication and I will not drive when I have taken one until after I have slept. I only take about 2.5 to 5 mg. I needed it often right after losing Brian. I'm not saying I am doing ok but I am not praying to die so I can be with Brian very often. I miss him so much! No one but Brian could tell when I had taken valium or muscle relaxers. I don't mix the muscle relaxers and Valium. After brian was hit by lightening I had to take the Valium pretty regularly. Almost daily. I still need it when a heavy storm comes up. It's been 10 months since the lightening strike and it still haunts me as though it was yesterday. Brian was walking our puppy (the puppy was ok and I gave him away the day Brian died since I couldn't take care of him). We had a pop up storm. Just so happened he was walking by a tree when the tree got hit. The lightening jumped from the tree to him hitting him in the chest and exiting his body through his side and in several spots on his legs. When I found him he needed rescue breathing and he was smoking out of his chest and legs. He was unable to move and if he was laid flat he stopped breathing. He was only able to say 2 words in a slurred mumble. He said Tricia and Ambulance. The ambulance was an hour away so I had to load him in my mini van and take him to the hospital. I truly believe the lightening strike is what killed him even though it took 8 months. He was finally getting around so much better and the nerve pain was getting better. I was actually started to be hopeful. His cardiac surgeon said he was stable l. I understand with his genetic condition (Marfans) that he was living on borrowed time. His favorite joke was "I'm a walking dead man." He stopped saying it around me very often when he realized it upset me

I have a neighbors puppy that has been giving me so much comfort. She comes to my house and cries at the door until I come out or let her into the house. She is about 6 weeks old She was hit by a car the other day when someone was backing out of the neighbors driveway so I have been keeping her bathed and doctoring her foot and belly. She has a vet appointment today and I will be taking her and her owner to the vet office. This puppy has truly brought me peace the last few days. She likes to sleep in my arms. I have spoiled this puppy I am hoping her foot will be ok. She definitely needs antibiotics. The day my husband passed I gave our dog 10 month old 75 pound puppy away and the next week his 20 year old cat passed. I cried so hard as I dug the hole for that cat. He was around for most of our marriage and he was a tough old man. Thank you for this post. I'm trying to look for the positives in my life.

No Kayc I have not talked to a grief counselor. Most of the time I'm ok when around people. They all say how well I'm handling things and how they thought I would be much more devastated. I have hid physical pain since I was 7 years old when I broke my back. Hiding the mental anguish from losing Brian is very similar. Brian took such good care of me it was worth the pain that I live with day and night. I'm trying to survive one day at a time. I can't look forward farther than the next day right now or my anxiety kicks in and I try to keep that under control. I hate the medication I need when I am in a full blown anxiety attack. People don't understand how anxiety attacks can affect your life I discovered even making a doctors appointment for 1 month in the future was a trigger. I will talk to my doctor about things and see if there is a grief counselor in the area. I have talked very little to my family and friends about how I am doing. I am afraid to let them know how hard I am struggling.

This is the only thing that has stopped me from taking my life. I can't take the chance I wouldn't have him in the afterlife. I think about things like.... if I don't eat is that suicide? Or if I stop my meds and insulin is that suicide. I have decided it is. It's intention. If the reason you do something to harm yourself and the end results are your death it is suicide in my opinion. I feel like I'm in a nightmare and I can't wake up. I wish I had been able to hold him as he passed but he was in an ambulance heading to a larger hospital. We always had a weird connection. When I left the hospital and I watched them load him into the ambulance I didn't think I would ever see him alive again but I prayed so hard. As I was running around the house packing I got this terrible chest pain. I hit my knees and I had a need to call Brian. Still on my knees I called his phone and he answered "Hey Babe." I heard the phone hit the floor and the EMT start saying he threw up and he was coding. I screamed into the phone. After 10 minutes I hung up the phone and called the hospital. It was so hard to hang up the phone The hospital told me he was being brought back and had lost consciousness. That I needed to come back to the hospital. I beat the ambulance by about 30 minutes. I have worked in the hospital long enough to know what loss of consciousness and bringing him back means. When they brought him into the ER he was looking at me. He didn't have a blander over him. I am having nightmares about his dead eyes. They closed his eyes but the dead eyes were so wrong. Brian had so much personality that showed in his eyes. It was all gone. Im having some days that aren't as bad but then I have days like yesterday where I had a full blown anxiety attack that lasted 5 hours. I am sore from the bawling. The harder I tried to stop the worse it got. My son walked by me seeing I was in a full blown anxiety meltdown and walked out of the house.

I indentify with so much of your post. I lost my Brian on March 27. We were married almost 21 years and he was my everything. I too am glad he is not the one feeling the pain I struggle with day in and day out. He was a better gentler person than me. He had a kinder heart. I think with his aneurysm we would have died within days if I had gone first. I still wish we could have gone together because I am so empty without him. I put a picture of us on our wedding day on the lock screen of my phone. I have taken to kissing my phone. Such a silly thing to do but it brings me a small measure comfort. I miss him so much. I feel so empty.

I'm just so dang tired. The hits just keep coming. I knew peace for 21 years every time I looked at Brian and I haven't felt lonely in so long. I knew it would be hard without him but it's so much worse than I could ever have imagined. Love sing my sister, mom, and grandmothers. I thought it would be a similar pain. It's not. I don't understand how the pain in my chest doesn't kill me. It hurts so bad. I never realized I would have actually physical chest pain like this.

I understand the numb and lost feeling. It boggles the mind how a person can feel numb and be in so much pain at the same time. I have people tell me they understand my loss but they don't. If they have never lost the 1 person in their life that made life wonderful every time you looked in his eyes no matter what was falling apart in the outside world then they don't get it. I prayed for the first 2 weeks that God would take me so I could join him. I just couldn't fathom anyone surviving the pain I was feeling in my chest. I felt like my soul left as he died and he is holding it for me until I join him. The pain in my chest was real and it still aches so bad. The 2 of us together made a whole person and I don't even feel like a real person anymore. I'm going through the motions and I haven't had any good days but I have had a few that weren't as bad. The not as bad days are helping me think I might survive and I hate to say I'm not sure I'm happy about that. I am not suicidal and will not stop my meds or do something passive to get sick. I want to join him in Heaven. Its been 6 weeks since I lost him. I really sometimes feel like I'm in a nightmare I can't wake up from with him.

I made it through the anniversary and came to absolute pieces that night. I thought that was as bad as it was going to get. Its been 6 weeks today is Brian's 50th birthday I so wanted to pick at him and think how amazing it is that he made it to 50. The old saying if it can go wrong it will has been so true for me these last 6 weeks. The roof had problems, the house has slid of the piers, dealing with bats in the house, and several other big problems. Well I sold our truck today to pay for the roof. I am applying for disabled housing in government housing. The thought of not having the house and the yard is so painful. I thought I was doing so much better. No sobbing (which I have never really done before losing Brian). The tears don't fall as often the last two weeks. I tear up but am able to choke it back. I guess today I'm making up for it.

Does a little Benadryl a bedtime count. I can't sleep without something. A 1/2 a muscle relaxer or a 1/2 a Valium. I have not slept well in years but I loved listening to Brian's breathing as I read a book. It soothed me and I could usually get a few hours of sleep. Now without his breathing and without him to touch me when I have nightmares it's so hard.