How Have You Handled the Emptiness You Feel in Your Home Since Your Loved One Passed?

[kayc]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:08 PM, Minerva said:

I just lost him four days ago and I am having to avoid certain areas of the house where he spent most of his time, like the living room and even the kitchen. He should be there, and he's not, and I dread being there without him. We shared two dogs and two cats and they have become my reason for getting up in the morning. 

I am so sorry for your loss!  It's the hardest journey I've ever had to embark on, it's been 17 years now and it's hard growing old alone but with time I've learned to carry my grief.
 

Grief Process

This is not a one-size-fits-all, what strikes us one day will be different a few months/years from now, so please save/print this for reference!

I want to share an article I wrote of the things I've found helpful over the years, in the hopes something will be of help to you either now or on down the road.

TIPS TO MAKE YOUR WAY THROUGH GRIEF

There's no way to sum up how to go on in a simple easy answer, but I encourage you to read the other threads here, little by little you will learn how to make your way through this.  I do want to give you some pointers though, of some things I've learned on my journey.

• Take one day at a time.  The Bible says each day has enough trouble of its own, I've found that to be true, so don't bite off more than you can chew.  It can be challenging enough just to tackle today.  I tell myself, I only have to get through today.  Then I get up tomorrow and do it all over again.  To think about the "rest of my life" invites anxiety.
• Don't be afraid, grief may not end but it evolves.  The intensity lessens eventually.
• Visit your doctor.  Tell them about your loss, any troubles sleeping, suicidal thoughts, anxiety attacks.  They need to know these things in order to help you through it...this is all part of grief.
• Suicidal thoughts are common in early grief.  If they're reoccurring, call a suicide hotline.  I felt that way early on, but then realized it wasn't that I wanted to die so much as I didn't want to go through what I'd have to face if I lived.  Back to taking a day at a time.  Suicide Hotline - Call 1-800-273-8255 or www.crisis textline.org or US and Canada: text 741741 UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 50808
• Give yourself permission to smile.  It is not our grief that binds us to them, but our love, and that continues still.
• Try not to isolate too much.  
• There's a balance to reach between taking time to process our grief, and avoiding it...it's good to find that balance for yourself.  We can't keep so busy as to avoid our grief, it has a way of haunting us, finding us, and demanding we pay attention to it!  Some people set aside time every day to grieve.  I didn't have to, it searched and found me!
• Self-care is extremely important, more so than ever.  That person that would have cared for you is gone, now you're it...learn to be your own best friend, your own advocate, practice self-care.  You'll need it more than ever.
• Recognize that your doctor isn't trained in grief, find a professional grief counselor that is.  We need help finding ourselves through this maze of grief, knowing where to start, etc.  They have not only the knowledge, but the resources.
• In time, consider a grief support group.  If your friends have not been through it themselves, they may not understand what you're going through, it helps to find someone somewhere who DOES "get it". 
• Be patient, give yourself time.  There's no hurry or timetable about cleaning out belongings, etc.  They can wait, you can take a year, ten years, or never deal with it.  It's okay, it's what YOU are comfortable with that matters.  
• Know that what we are comfortable with may change from time to time.  That first couple of years I put his pictures up, took them down, up, down, depending on whether it made me feel better or worse.  Finally, they were up to stay.
• Consider a pet.  Not everyone is a pet fan, but I've found that my dog helps immensely.  It's someone to love, someone to come home to, someone happy to see me, someone that gives me a purpose...I have to come home and feed him.  Besides, they're known to relieve stress.  Well maybe not in the puppy stage when they're chewing up everything, but there's older ones to adopt if you don't relish that stage.
• Make yourself get out now and then.  You may not feel interest in anything, things that interested you before seem to feel flat now.  That's normal.  Push yourself out of your comfort zone just a wee bit now and then.  Eating out alone, going to a movie alone or church alone, all of these things are hard to do at first.  You may feel you flunked at it, cried throughout, that's okay, you did it, you tried, and eventually you get a little better at it.  If I waited until I had someone to do things with I'd be stuck at home a lot.
• Keep coming here.  We've been through it and we're all going through this together.
• Look for joy in every day.  It will be hard to find at first, but in practicing this, it will change your focus so you can embrace what IS rather than merely focusing on what ISN'T.  It teaches you to live in the present and appreciate fully.  You have lost your big joy in life, and all other small joys may seem insignificant in comparison, but rather than compare what used to be to what is, learn the ability to appreciate each and every small thing that comes your way...a rainbow, a phone call from a friend, unexpected money, a stranger smiling at you, whatever the small joy, embrace it.  It's an art that takes practice and is life changing if you continue it.
• Eventually consider volunteering.  It helps us when we're outward focused, it's a win/win.

(((hugs)))  Praying for you today.

 

[Chocolate]

Thanks.  I know all this stuff.  I studied to be a counselor once upon a time.  It's one thing to know it in theory.  It's another to deal with it.  I just like to hear what other people do.  I think that's important.  And I bring up topics hoping it will help others too.

[Roxi]

On 9/28/2022 at 10:18 PM, Chocolate said:

.  I got myself a huge teddy bear to sit in my husband's easy chair in front of the tv so I didn't have to see his empty chair. 

 

Chocolate i love how you can find  solutions and help yourself

[kayc]

I like that too.  That was a great idea!

[Chocolate]

6 hours ago, Roxi said:

Chocolate i love how you can find  solutions and help yourself

Thank you.  Grief, like with all things, seems to be a case of learn as you go.  What works for someone else, might not work for me.  And I've learned that what works one time may not work the next.  Grief seems to make me feel like I've become at schizophrenic at times.

Thanks, kayc.

[Gwenivere]

You are so right, Chocolate.  It does make you feel like you have so many personalities and crazy.  The only one I can’t feel is the one I was with him.  The only one I want to be.  And what revolves from it.  Living all these other versions has me so looking for a permanent escape.  It’s very frightening.  A lot is becoming disabled to not do normal things like I did when  this started.  That was hard enough without all these battles.  Having to have someone living with me and never leaving the house.  I read others struggles and they are so hard.  Everything I watch or hear is different .  So much anger,, depression and jealousy.  A cold and broken heart. II know I’m not alone in the mindset.  I don’t feel less a person.  I just feel a void that will never be filled with extra challenges I don’t know if I can ever adapt to.  

[Chocolate]

9 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

You are so right, Chocolate.  It does make you feel like you have so many personalities and crazy.  The only one I can’t feel is the one I was with him.  The only one I want to be.  And what revolves from it.  Living all these other versions has me so looking for a permanent escape.  It’s very frightening.  A lot is becoming disabled to not do normal things like I did when  this started.  That was hard enough without all these battles.  Having to have someone living with me and never leaving the house.  I read others struggles and they are so hard.  Everything I watch or hear is different .  So much anger,, depression and jealousy.  A cold and broken heart. II know I’m not alone in the mindset.  I don’t feel less a person.  I just feel a void that will never be filled with extra challenges I don’t know if I can ever adapt to.  

Gwenivere, I understand about wanting a permanent escape.  I understand about the void that will never be filled.  I understand about extra challenges and feeling like I can't adapt.  It's amazing to me how things that were no problem before now feel like jagged mountain peaks that I can't climb over.  While I don't know how you feel specifically, I know what it's like for me.  I find those feelings unacceptable.  I accept that he died.  But I don't accept where that leaves me.  That's part of what I have to figure out how to work through.

[kayc]

Gwen, you have extraordinary things you are going through that complicate your journey tremendously...I've no doubt you'd have adjusted more if not for the physical things you endure, my heart goes out to you in your daily struggles. 

[Gwenivere]

Thank you, Kay.  ❤️  You brought a ray of sun into a terribly frustrating day.  

[Margm]

I did everything I was told not to do.  I moved.  I spent a few nights alone and knew that was not going to help me in an over 2,000 sq ft home.  Nothing but forest all around with homes hidden in little places that were hidden from view.  Two and a half acres between all of us.  Heaven for me and Billy.  I wanted to hear "life" and not "quiet" though.  I loved our retirement home, but without Billy there it was a millstone around my neck.  I moved back to our old home area where we  began, our kids began and finished school, where we got married, where we worked until retirement.  Most all my relatives live here too, but they sleep in the cemeteries around our area.  Moved to an apartment where everything would be fixed that broke..  The couple who live above me have a new baby and a young daughter.  I hear life.  One night about 2:00 a.m. I was woke up with a familiar sounding "thump" above me and knew the baby had thrown her bottle out of her bed.  Life.  COVID made me almost a hermit.  My family draws me out eventually.  I want to just not worry, read, and wait.  I'm okay.  (If the worry does not hang on too long).

[Chocolate]

41 minutes ago, Marg M said:

I did everything I was told not to do.  I moved.  I spent a few nights alone and knew that was not going to help me in an over 2,000 sq ft home.  Nothing but forest all around with homes hidden in little places that were hidden from view.  Two and a half acres between all of us.  Heaven for me and Billy.  I wanted to hear "life" and not "quiet" though.  I loved our retirement home, but without Billy there it was a millstone around my neck.  I moved back to our old home area where we  began, our kids began and finished school, where we got married, where we worked until retirement.  Most all my relatives live here too, but they sleep in the cemeteries around our area.  Moved to an apartment where everything would be fixed that broke..  The couple who live above me have a new baby and a young daughter.  I hear life.  One night about 2:00 a.m. I was woke up with a familiar sounding "thump" above me and knew the baby had thrown her bottle out of her bed.  Life.  COVID made me almost a hermit.  My family draws me out eventually.  I want to just not worry, read, and wait.  I'm okay.  (If the worry does not hang on too long).

So, all in all Marg M do you regret your moves?  I live in a rural setting that was perfect for my husband and me, and it comforts me even with him gone.  He presence seeps out of the walls and comforts me.  If others are around I find them disruptive.  I would be concerned about the couple with the two little ones, knowing that with the climate change they do not have a future.  That's how I feel about the little ones who live not far from me.  Most of my large extended family are gone now.  I focus on my own personal growth.  How long have you been widowed?

[Margm]

18 minutes ago, Chocolate said:

So, all in all Marg M do you regret your moves? 

No, I do not regret anything but living without Billy.  We all have such different personalities, and whatever works for one would never work for another.  The people who leased our house, the man passed away.  She is trying to buy the house and I hope she does because she has made so many improvements in the house at her own expense.  I do not want it back or to make any money on the sale of it.  To me, his death covers the whole area of Arkansas.  Not Arkansas's fault, but I cannot visit where we were so happy without him with me.  Even after seven years, it is just as hard to go up that way.  I had to go Monday to my doc I used so many years in the little town just  below where we lived.  I had to make everyone let me go by myself too.  It is about 275 miles from here one way..  It did tire me out.  I still have to go manage some things about twice a year.  I would be happy never going back.  I cannot really feel him here in our old home area.  The memories do not haunt me though and I cannot explain that.  Billy would never have lived in an apartment.  I still have about 15 of the huge plastic boxes with tops that I keep in my bedroom.  Our happiest times were the RVing years and somehow putting all the boxes in my bedroom, (got rid of the California queen size bed) and just having a twin size bed with plastic pull out drawers for my clothes (underwear, etc) is something my kids can just take to the dumps when I'm gone.  Nothing valuable.  Got rid of all that.  We were married 54-years.  No regrets.  Would not be for other people though, I'm a lot weird.  

[Chocolate]

Marg M, true one size does not fit all.  But sometimes what works for one, can work for another. For me there would be no one who would not want to be travel by myself.  All those people have already passed away.  My husband has been gone 8 months.  The doctor I would like to go see passed away some time ago.  He'd be 110 if he was still alive.  And he definitely does not make house calls.  At least I've never seen him around here, grin.

[Margm]

My first 6 years, 11 months and 7 days I have talked to him just like he was there.  People in the apartment will see the crazy old lady out talking to the moon.  I talk to him when I am riding by myself, before I go to bed at night too.  Sometimes I talk to him and Jesus and Jesus says he does not mind..  I think they both listen but neither of them speak back to me.  My granddaughter always told me that he knows me, he does not answer me because it would scare me.  She is right, it would.  Does not shut me up though.  My only nagging worry is he had 3 old girlfriends pass on a long time ago.  

[kayc]

4 hours ago, Marg M said:

COVID made me almost a hermit. 

Oh boy, do I know that!  I felt myself getting more reclusive with the passage of time...

[Minerva]

Intellectually, I know he's gone for good, yet emotionally it feels as if he's just on a business trip and will be home soon. But it's been only two weeks. I think I'm still in denial.

I thought I might want to move out because there would be so many memories triggered by staying in the house we shared for decades. That does happen, but so far I've managed to shut them down and I have had no urge to flee. Yes, the emptiness that is left after he died is very depressing and the loneliness is sometimes unbearable. He was larger than life and without his presence, the house feels like an empty theatre after the leading man has left the stage forever. 

 

[kayc]

I pray it gets less triggering with time for you.  It was for me at first too but now I find comfort in the little things that remind me of him...

[Chocolate]

There are so many ways to look at all this.  My husband is not gone for good.  He just lives in a different dimension now aka the afterlife aka heaven.  I talk to him.  He talks to me.  His voice comes as thoughts in my head.  We are getting closer.  We are part of each other, so there is no separation.  Love does not leave it's own. I am learning to accept the changes.  It's difficult for me, but it's coming along.

[V. R.]

I agree that there is no separation. I talk to him all the time too, he will always be a part of me. We became the way we were because of our twenty five years spent together, we are a fusion, how can I suddenly change that? I would have to have a brain transplant! I couldn't bear to leave this house where we've lived since we married, where our children have grown up, where he spent hours, weeks, months and years doing home improvements, turning it into the most comfortable home a family would ever desire. He is this house and this land. I'll hold on to at least that part of him. My two grownup children feel the same but obviously when they're older they may  move out for work necessities (no job opportunities down here!). I feel my husband here, he is in the air I breathe, he is everywhere, however  I do understand other points of view, we all react in different ways. It has taken me almost two years to finally decide to sell his car, it felt like losing him even more. 

[kayc]

8 hours ago, Chocolate said:

My husband is not gone for good.  He just lives in a different dimension now aka the afterlife aka heaven. 

This is how I view it too, it helps.

[kayc]

7 hours ago, V. R. said:

I feel my husband here, he is in the air I breathe, he is everywhere

I feel this too although not always, but have felt him on occasion.

 

[Chocolate]

11 hours ago, V. R. said:

 He is this house and this land. I'll hold on to at least that part of him.  I feel my husband here, he is in the air I breathe, he is everywhere, however  I do understand other points of view, we all react in different ways.

The laws of physics say that nothing is ever lost.  It only changes form and substance.  There's a bunch of science stuff I won't go into here, but it basically says what a lot of religions say, that we are all one, even though science uses different words.  All that is comes from the same source.  This is our house, his and mine. Like with you, V.R. he is the air I breathe.  He tells me to breathe him in.  I'm learning how to access him more fully.  When the house feels vacant, empty, I tune more closely into him.  I say things to him to strengthen the connection. I carry a good- sized picture of him in the car with me when I go out grocery shopping.  I put it on the passenger seat.  This is a learning process.  I'm learning things I did not know were possible.  Sometimes I get scared of all the changes in the world, climate change, running out of water, the fires that could start here and what I would do if my house burns down,  etc.  He tells me not to be afraid, that it will be handled.  I'm tired of being without him physically, but.... there's nothing I can do about that.  I'm doing all I know to do to learn and grow.

[kayc]

7 hours ago, Chocolate said:

It only changes form and substance. 

I like that!

[Chocolate]

On 10/7/2022 at 9:53 PM, V. R. said:

I feel my husband here, he is in the air I breathe, he is everywhere

I feel this too, all the time.  For me it can be no other way.

[Margm]

On 10/1/2022 at 9:10 PM, Chocolate said:

Thanks.  I know all this stuff.  I studied to be a counselor once upon a time.  It's one thing to know it in theory.  It's another to deal with it.  I just like to hear what other people do. 

You wrote after four days.  I wrote after three days.  I will tell you I had, only how I describe my own, "grief brain."  Billy's hobby was making animal and bird "calls."  He could actually talk to the crows and I saw him call them up one time and it was like they were so angry and were cursing us out for fooling them.  He had CD's teaching different calls.  Our county had a wildlife officer and I took all the CD's to (her), and it was a female.  Do not know if they ever used them or listened to them.  Doesn't matter.

I did what they all advised not to do, something Billy would never have done.  When the "quiet" became so "loud" that I could not handle it, I moved back to our home state, into an apartment where I could hear life.  We lived in a concave with mountains (hills) and valleys all around, houses hidden from each other, wildlife all around us.  For me, for Billy, it was a wonderful place together.  For me, it was one of the most miserable places I had ever been in.

Do I have regrets?  The other night, the people who live above us, they have a baby under six months old.  I woke up with a thud sound that was so familiar that I could not have regrets.  It was a bottle from a baby hitting the floor when she was finished with it.  I like quiet, I just do not like loud quiet.  I miss Billy so very much, but I do not regret moving where I hear noise.  And, I sleep.  I have "help" sleeping, and will argue with anyone that I want my quality of life to come before my quantity.  I have quantity.  But what I did, even though it was best for me, it definitely is not for every person in this situation.