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15 hours ago, Metal said:

my Grandad was unwell - I was meant to be seeing him today for the first time since all of this, but received word this morning that he passed away

I am sorry, so hard, another loss.  Wishing you some comfort and peace, I'm glad you had a visit with your wife's friend.

I hear you on the backlog, companies are going to have to work with their employees, only so much humanly possible.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Rough day with Grandads funeral today. Not only for the loss of Grandad, which was tough enough. But seeing family that I hadn't seen since Jenna died, and seeing / hearing about Grandads life with my Nanna, seeing photos of their 60th wedding anniversary, hearing how the last 12 years of his life since she passed were the hardest... Made me feel so much more just how much I have lost, and how much I have been cheated to miss out on so much of our life together. Also, and I'm sorry to those who will be upset by this, but being a Christian funeral I found the talk of how everything is God's plan just offensive really. I fail to see how my wife being torn from this world so soon, so unfairly, and despite prayer from a very large number of people, could be part of any divine plan. Right now I feel that if God exists, he must be either impotent (couldn't help) or an asshole (chose not to help). I find it much more palatable to just to accept that there is no God. 

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Andrew, you are not alone in your feelings regarding god.  I totally respect everyone’s beliefs here, but for me it is a concept I have the same reaction to.  I was raised Catholic and exposed to many faiths and none made sense to me.  I only wish it did so I could cuss him out for taking Steve so soon.  If it would provide solace, I’d still beleive as I did as a child.  But as a child, I had no experience with testing that faith as I did growing up.  Divine plans, a greater good and he has his reasons just don’t cut it for me.  Never will.  I just see nature gone awry and still feel ripped off by that.  The only ,good' thing his death served was to stop his physical pain and wasting away from being a vital life force.  I do terrible things like see people doing great harm in the world and thinking why are they still here?  Think of the suffering that could be saved if they were taken.  None of this will ever make sense beyond biology.  Not having that feeling we will see each other again in some heavenly place also makes this so lonely.  I have no idea what happens after death, not a clue.

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5 hours ago, Metal said:

I found the talk of how everything is God's plan just offensive really.

I did not like hearing that either and did NOT find it comforting!  I AM a Christian and have deep faith but there are some things people just shouldn't say to new grievers especially.  It makes us feel God sided up against us and decided to ruin our lives without any regard for our feelings.  I don't believe that's exactly how it is...we live in a fallen world in which God has taken His hands off and that we lose our spouse so young seems very unfair because it IS unfair!  That others who aren't even soulmates still get to keep each other and we who meant everything to each other didn't...is very unfair.  Nothing fair about this.

http://www.griefspeaks.com/id9.html
http://www.griefhealing.com/column-what-is-not-helpful.htm

I especially like this one:
http://www.griefspeaks.com/id9.html

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These memorials and funerals after the death of your wife are certain to stir up residual grief.  It did when my grandmother passed away.  I was asked to be a pallbearer and initially agreed but on the day of it, I had to back out.   Of course, for her generation, the expectation was the Catholic funeral and so on, including the platitudes, divine plan etc. we mention here.  She had had a long life so the feeling was different, but still the reverberations rattled me.  It became clear to me that I should expect this rattling to be a lifelong reality.

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Thanks Kieron. Yes, my Grandad had a great long life, but honestly hearing and seeing pictures of his great long life (with his wife for the vast majority of it), just made me feel worse about my own situation having my wife taken from me so soon. It reinforced how unfair it is, and made me even more upset about my situation. I couldn't take it. I disappeared, took a walk for a while after the funeral. I came back before I probably should have (had a message asking where I was from one of my brothers despite having let them know beforehand that I expected to find it difficult and might disappear for a while) and proceeded to fall apart and cry in the arms of a couple of different cousins when they expressed how sorry they were about Jenna - covid meant that I hadn't seen them since then. And I feel / felt so selfish for feeling worse about Jenna on a day that was meant to be about Grandad. 

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55 minutes ago, Metal said:

And I feel / felt so selfish for feeling worse about Jenna on a day that was meant to be about Grandad. 

I can understand that, but at the same time, you're entitled to feel that way.

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1 hour ago, Metal said:

And I feel / felt so selfish for feeling worse about Jenna on a day that was meant to be about Grandad. 

It was about him but for you it stirred up intense feelings about the recent loss of your wife...grief does that.

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I’ve found any death now triggers my loss of Steve.  Of course I feel for the person who passed, but death has taken on a whole new meaning for me than it ever had even tho I had met it several times before.  It hadn’t taken half of me too.   Don’t see how you could not be affected since you are just weeks past your biggest loss.  Also that he had his spouse much longer.  We don’t shift gears in grief.  I know you cared for your grandfather.  You also love your wife.  Resentment isn’t the right word, but every day that I hear from someone what they are doing in a 'we' format, I cry a little more inside.  

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We had no funeral.  I entered his death  into our local newspaper with my words, like I put on here.  My English teacher sister wanted to rewrite it for our state newspaper.  I would not put it in any other place.  Billy would have wanted my words, anything else would have been someone else's words for him.  I'm not proper with my writing, but no one complains about it.  Actually, my feelings did get smudged by her wanting to make it "proper."  We did not have a funeral for my mom or Billy.  My daughter seemed to need "something else."  They say that funerals are for the people that are left behind.  So, one year later, Kelli announced a meeting at Billy's favorite fishing  place since childhood and jumped off the RR bridge, into the bayou, releasing balloons.  Some of my friends came.  I did not  invite anyone.  This was not for Billy, this was for Kelli and whoever wanted to come (and she wanted a big turnout), but it was only about 15 people.  It was not celebrating Billy's life, it was Kelli's attention that needed filled.  Billy did not want attention.  Me either.  My mom didn't either.  My dad had a huge funeral, family was hidden behind a wall that was hard to see through, he had a Masonic funeral.  Fighting cancer myself, I was "doped" up and Billy and Scott helped me around.  I was not crying, but  sure did not want to be there.  I lost a shoe in the mud.  It really was not for us, but his family were all still alive and his mom, two sisters and a brother and their families, they needed this.  

My grandmother wrote about how they did the body when she was a young person.  Family  bathed the body, it lay on the table (yes, THE table), then was buried fast.  This is the south.

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Our (Eugene) Register Guard was a family business all my life and now is bought out by a big company and they've cut it to two skimpy sections, barely any journalism or city/region included, even cut the comics!  Hardly worth reading.  My subscription is on line and not even worth what I'm paying.  May have to switch to the Oregonian.  Is that like your state paper?  So many changes I'm glad George doesn't have to see.

Wow, Marg, that must have been a lot of mud!

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1 hour ago, kayc said:

Wow, Marg, that must have been a lot of mud!

Where do you  think we get our crawfish, crawdad's, mudbugs, whatever you want to call it.  In Arkansas we tried to have a garden.  Billy had a tractor and moved huge rock bolders.  We grew more rocks.  In Louisiana we have red clay mud (when it rains a lot).  And it does rain a lot.  You go along the road/highway and you will see people seining (netting) for crawfish (with boots on).  My dad passed in April.  Rain.  Mud.  (And, I was not looking where I stepped).  

And, I'm on the wrong forum to talk about this.  Sorry.  

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You’re not in the wrong forum to share the news of your dad passing, Marg.  We would want to know that.  If that were you’re only loss there is the other forum.  But it’s definitely OK to share losing someone else close here.  We all know how they pile up especially having to face them without our partners.  Kay lost her dog, Metal his grandfather.  I wish you would have shared this as we all care about your whole being.  But I also respect your privacy too.  ❤️

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Gwen, I should have put April 1984.  I put April because that is our raining months.  He has been gone a long time.  Mama passed in August after Billy left in October of 2015.  We had the full funeral for my dad, Masonic rites, and all of this was done because he was a hometown boy (at 65, I thought an old man), and done out of respect for my dad's family (not for us), although I'm sure it was for us too.  We have grown a bunch of outlaws since then though and we just want to go when its time and if anyone asks, we say,  "Oh, they have been gone two years, etc."

Billy did not want a long drawn out funeral and none of the rest of us do.  I don't want any flowering plants strewed around  (I'll just kill them all).  I'm sorry to give you the notion my dad passed "this" April.  It was a long, long time ago.  My mom would be 99 today and she left a long time before her body did.  

We all have our things we like to keep on as tradition.  That's everybody's own business.  

Sure need to fill out a sentence before you put it down.  I'm sorry.  Sorry I lost my  dad.  Sorry I lost my mom (I cannot be real sorry  of that.  She was so unhappy here on earth without her sisters and kept wanting to be with them. It wasn't Daddy, it was her sisters. )  Y'all know all my business, in fact, if anyone knows me, they know the good, the bad and the ugly.  

 

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19 hours ago, Marg M said:

You go along the road/highway and you will see people seining (netting) for crawfish (with boots on). 

Reminds me of when I was a teenager and my dad and I went fishing for crawdads...he paid me $1 for each one I picked up, LOL!  I thought that was funny that he was squeamish about it and I wasn''t!

I lost my dad in April too, Marg only it was 1982.  Losing my dad felt like I got gypped out of a whole life with him, I was in my 20s, he didn't get to meet my kids.  I'm sorry they didn't get to know him, telling them about him is not the same.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Was Jenna's birthday on Friday. It was rough, but I was going alright until some flowers arrived from Jenna's workmates. I went for dinner and drinks with some friends and drank myself stupid. As much as I have some wonderful friends, who want to be there and listen (and yes I know how lucky I am in that) it's really hard, because they can't really understand. And they're all grieving Jenna too, so it's hard for them to hear me talk about trying to find something else to live for. In some ways, I am starting to get used to living alone. But at the same time I am called on for so many meetings with friends and family that I feel I am having trouble finding time to just be, and I may find that I'm still not ok with it at all. Again, shouldn't complain, I'm lucky to have that. I dunno. I'm considering maybe going back to work in the next week or so. There's still so much to sort out, but I can't avoid it forever. I just don't know what's right or what to want out of life any more. And I can't live this way forever. 

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You won’t live this way forever, but it’s still so soon to even imagine that.  You are very fortunate to have your friends even if they don’t get it.  It so helps to be thought of the best way they can.  I am assuming they are letting you be who you are right now and can listen without trying to 'fix' you.  

I dint say this to be discouraging, but it’s going to take a lot of time before you can find a rhythm or routine that fits you as time passes.  Jenna will always be in there in your heart and maybe some actions too.  I found keeping our bed, eating and sleeping times the same the best for me.  There were enough other things to adjust to.  Mostly him not being there obviously.  I had to change shopping, cooking and some cleaning habits from the void created.  I’ve still never adjusted to not having someone to talk to about daily little things much less problems that were his turf to conquer.   Never planned on aging alone and all that brings.  

Kieron made an observation in another topic about depression and grief going hand in hand.  So very true.  Depression and grief can manifest in so many ways.  You have so much to process in yourself that I can understand not wanting to socialize much.  It’s kind you have caring people, but you have to have time to yourself.  I hope you make that time and don’t pressure yourself to attend all invites.  I found it a step to adjust to the loneliness as best I could because being with people at first intensified coming home to a forever changed life.  I can’t count how many things I turned down for months.  My work was volunteering so I pretty much called the shots for my time.  Only you know if you have the concentration for structured work.  Some find it helpful, some find it overwhelming.  All you can do is try if you feel ready.  

I know all these decisions probably feel overwhelming.  That is so normal.  You’re going to hate hearing that soon.  There is nothing in this loss that that feels remotely normal.  As with all of us, your choices, triggers, feelings and expression will be uniquely yours.  Fortunately there is always someone or more here that can relate to each.  You are not alone here with the newly found empathy we’ve all learned.

 

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This is a very hard time for you, everything in constant upheaval, unusual, but there will be a time when things settle down into more of a routine and balance.  As Gwen says, we are here and we get it.  Hang in there, I know it sounds trite but keep taking one day at a time, it's all I can handle!  I can't look too far down the road or it's overwhelming, even this many years later.

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You are right, Kay, about looking too far ahead.  But that is something we can’t do right away, not look at feeling life is over for us too.  The shock is too much in the beginning.  At that time, the world ended.  It takes time we don’t feel like we have to come to a level of 'acceptance' this is real, we can’t go back and the void will never be filled.  An occasion they don’t have those 'idiot' or 'dummy' guide books for.  If we had dry enough eyes to read them.

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16 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

But that is something we can’t do right away, not look at feeling life is over for us too.

Yes and no...I started practicing "one day at a time" in the early days following George's death as looking at "the whole rest of my life" or "possibly forty years" as too much to handle or bear, it spun me into terrific anxiety!  So I would remind myself, "stay in today" and my anxiety would settle down a bit.  Yes we are in shock in the beginning, I do remember much anxiety, I wish I'd gotten on medication way back then but it was three years before I did that.  Anything that helps us through this!  I am still using those survival techniques, not only with grief but with anything I can't handle.

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