2 1/2 Years-A mile marker I could have done without!

[olemisfit]

I'm sure everyone here has said that, or will when their turn comes.  And the awfulness of being at this milestone doesn't become better just by us mumbling what most of us end up chanting at one time or another during this journey..."Oh well, it is what it is".  

My journey down this path started 2 1/2 years ago this past Friday.  My Cookie went into the hospital with pneumonia on 12/13/15. On the 15th she was moved into the hospital's critical care unit and put on a ventilator.The hospital's policy was to keep her heavily sedated while on the ventilator so that she wouldn't fight the tubes and try to pull them out. So, once that started she never consciously knew it when I was there to visit her each day.On the 20th the tubes were removed as a trial to see if she could breath on her own. When I got there to visit her that day she was awake and alert. We visited for a while, and then she drifted off to sleep. That was the one and only time she and I actually talked to each other after she was moved to the critical care unit. After they re-sedated her and  put her back on the ventilator on the 20th, we never spoke to each other again. But I visited each day, and I held out hope that she would get her strength back and get better, and be able to return home. But finally, on New Year's Day of 2016 the jig was up. I wasn't able to ignore the ugly elephant in the room any longer. I had to make the awful decision and then give the instructions that we all hope we never have to make. Was it ever hard to get the words out of my mouth and then sign the paperwork to end my wife's life. But it was time to end her misery and suffering. To anyone who also has had to make this decision, you have my sympathies. I know how hard to was on you. It isn't an easy process to have to go through, but then it shouldn't be easy, should it?

Cookie and I were blessed with being together (physically) for 41+ years.  In some ways being together that long does I think make it harder to be without her. Any couple that stays together that long and truly loves each other develops a real dependency on each other. In every way imaginable. Being without my Cookie hasn't been easy. Especially the year of 2016. I didn't even stumble upon this group until Christmas Eve of that year. But I did somehow survive that year. At the time, I didn't much care whether i did or not. But I did. And 2017 was a bit better for me. And now, 2018 so far has been more tolerable than even 2017 was. So, it is true isn't it? This grief crap really is a journey or a process. Cookie and I are still together spiritually, and I have to be content with that. I don't imagine I will ever forget her. I think about her every day. I talk to her, I tell her i love her and miss her numerous times each day. And by now I get through most days without curling up in the proverbial fetal position. But the trigger days still get to me somewhat. Like last Friday. Or our wedding anniversary (March 7th).  Or her birthday (August 16th).  The big holidays don't affect me. Cookie and I had outlived each of our families and weren't able to have children, so the big holidays stopped being big events to us a number of years ago. So they aren't triggers for me now, which is a blessing.

The one thing that keeps me going, and keeps me sane, is the sure and certain knowledge that Cookie and I will be together again, when I join her in heaven. And that reunion will last into eternity. That is what makes it possible for me to continue getting up each morning, willing to keep on putting one foot in front of the other. 

Darrel

[kayc]

19 hours ago, olemisfit said:

I don't imagine I will ever forget her. I think about her every day. I talk to her, I tell her i love her and miss her numerous times each day.

No, you won't ever forget her, that is not possible.  And 13 years later George is still on my mind continuously, I miss him each and every day.  On my other site I recently used the analogy...I had been checking into what was going on with my computer and I went to the task manager and saw all of these things running in the background...and I thought, that is how it is with George, he is always running in the background of my mind and heart.  There.  All of the time.  As you said, this is quite a process, a lifelong journey.  It's not something we get over and done with like other things, no, it's with us each and every day of our lives.  Even when people remarry, it's still there, they're not forgotten, the grief process is still going.  

[Cookie]

On ‎07‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 12:51 PM, olemisfit said:

I'm sure everyone here has said that, or will when their turn comes.  And the awfulness of being at this milestone doesn't become better just by us mumbling what most of us end up chanting at one time or another during this journey..."Oh well, it is what it is".  

My journey down this path started 2 1/2 years ago this past Friday.  My Cookie went into the hospital with pneumonia on 12/13/15. On the 15th she was moved into the hospital's critical care unit and put on a ventilator.The hospital's policy was to keep her heavily sedated while on the ventilator so that she wouldn't fight the tubes and try to pull them out. So, once that started she never consciously knew it when I was there to visit her each day.On the 20th the tubes were removed as a trial to see if she could breath on her own. When I got there to visit her that day she was awake and alert. We visited for a while, and then she drifted off to sleep. That was the one and only time she and I actually talked to each other after she was moved to the critical care unit. After they re-sedated her and  put her back on the ventilator on the 20th, we never spoke to each other again. But I visited each day, and I held out hope that she would get her strength back and get better, and be able to return home. But finally, on New Year's Day of 2016 the jig was up. I wasn't able to ignore the ugly elephant in the room any longer. I had to make the awful decision and then give the instructions that we all hope we never have to make. Was it ever hard to get the words out of my mouth and then sign the paperwork to end my wife's life. But it was time to end her misery and suffering. To anyone who also has had to make this decision, you have my sympathies. I know how hard to was on you. It isn't an easy process to have to go through, but then it shouldn't be easy, should it?

Cookie and I were blessed with being together (physically) for 41+ years.  In some ways being together that long does I think make it harder to be without her. Any couple that stays together that long and truly loves each other develops a real dependency on each other. In every way imaginable. Being without my Cookie hasn't been easy. Especially the year of 2016. I didn't even stumble upon this group until Christmas Eve of that year. But I did somehow survive that year. At the time, I didn't much care whether i did or not. But I did. And 2017 was a bit better for me. And now, 2018 so far has been more tolerable than even 2017 was. So, it is true isn't it? This grief crap really is a journey or a process. Cookie and I are still together spiritually, and I have to be content with that. I don't imagine I will ever forget her. I think about her every day. I talk to her, I tell her i love her and miss her numerous times each day. And by now I get through most days without curling up in the proverbial fetal position. But the trigger days still get to me somewhat. Like last Friday. Or our wedding anniversary (March 7th).  Or her birthday (August 16th).  The big holidays don't affect me. Cookie and I had outlived each of our families and weren't able to have children, so the big holidays stopped being big events to us a number of years ago. So they aren't triggers for me now, which is a blessing.

The one thing that keeps me going, and keeps me sane, is the sure and certain knowledge that Cookie and I will be together again, when I join her in heaven. And that reunion will last into eternity. That is what makes it possible for me to continue getting up each morning, willing to keep on putting one foot in front of the other. 

Darrel

Darrel:  I cried reading this....you expressed your feelings well; John and I were together 47 years, babies when we met, grew up together, and you are right, that makes it so, so hard.....fondly, Cookie

[Margm]

There are moments when I hear him moving in the next room (and he would hate an apartment) and the truth comes to my head in a rush that it is impossible.  It was just 54 years of having him with me and sometimes sounds of him are still with me, if only for a nanosecond.  I had a belief system that allowed magic, miracles, imagination, mystic feelings that was with me since childhood.  A place would scare me for some reason, a place I had never been in and I knew it was one of my "ghosts."  My son coded on the op table more than once and he thinks it may have opened a "portal" to where he feels things.  Billy was never superstitious and told Scott it was his "weed."  He was shot in the leg with a shotgun slug and was bleeding out.  He actually has conversed with "beings" in an old bar above which he lived in downtown Hot Springs, which people do talk about seeing ghosts there from the turmoil that the 1920's and those clubs brought, the lifestyle that was led by it being a hideout and pleasure place for the gangsters of that era.  I have a friend who is a witch, she studies something I think called Wicca , and really I don't get into it and she was very quiet about it except to confirm some things Scott saw.  I just know I get a feeling sometimes in a place I have to get away from.  Like I said though, Billy did not believe in  things like that and just humored me if I did not want to go somewhere or if I had to leave.  Anyhow, I don't seem to really have it anymore and think when he left, so did the magic.  Or whatever a person wants to call it.  He called it foolishness and the things he went along with me, sometimes things I saw or heard and he would agree he saw or heard them, he would deny it around people and said he really didn't.  So, maybe I didn't either.  Just a vivid imagination, which I want back.  There are people who believe in the Wiccan (religion?) and my friend would not discuss it much unless I would make a statement sometimes about something and she would seriously tell me not to do it, or think it.  So, I didn't.  And, I am not saying I believe in this following at all, it scares me, and I do not even read about it, but after I met my witch coworker, I looked into it some and again, it scared me so with the way I believe, there was no room for this belief (for me).  

[kayc]

I also had a coworker that was Wiccan, it's not my beliefs either but it wasn't like I'd imagined it to be either.  They believe in doing good with it but it goes against my beliefs so there's that.

[Gwenivere]

My understanding is the Wiccans beliefs begin with nature.  Not a diety.  The work with the energies of the earth.  I’m not into any belief system, but it is interesting all the different ones out there.  Some give me the creeps like voo doo.  People that want to cause harm or use it for personal gain with disregard to others.