To Deborah & Ustwo

[Susan]

TO DEBORAH & USTWO,

Thank you for your replies. Just knowing someone has experienced the same feeling has helped me to cope. My biggest problem was the guilt for being so impatient with my husband the last month of his life. I have a confection business and was working 20 hour days to get my orders out. Needless to say I didn't have much resolve left when he called me every hour. At the time I took care of his needs but didn't have the qualtiy time, although I do remember holding him the last week and letting him know he will always be my solemate.

So many post here seem to read like they never lost there tempers with their loved ones and I thought I was the only one.

USTWO I think Gene waited until you were out of the room to pass on, as he loved you so much he didn't want you to remember him taking his last breath.

DEBORAH My heart goes out to you, I don't know how long you and Larry were together, but I assume you were looking forward to a wedding. At least I had 41 years with Charlie. Hopefully we can move on and our loved ones will always have a special place in our hearts.

Contacts, friends and family are so important at this very difficult time, somedays you just don't feel like moving on. I find keeping busy helps and I have a wonderful daughter who calls me everyday.

How wonderful to have the internet to reach out to people we will never meet but have given us a shoulder to lean on.

May Charlie have found peace, he was sick for so many years (23)

Susan

[Guest Guest_Deborah_*]

Susan, Larry and I were together 14 years. The first day we met, we never missed a day without talking. A wedding was being planned for "after transplant" when he would have the strength. I guess I will always be sad for that missed opportunity. I share the feelings with you about your business. I am an artist and was very busy the last couple of weeks. I would run up the stairs feed him, give him his medicine, talk and let him go back to sleep, run back down the stairs and paint thru shear exhaustion. I wish I could have just let that go and spent every moment with him. People were waiting for their orders and I felt I had to complete it. Of course, I did not think he was going to leave me so quick. If only...

[Susan]

Deborah,

Our circumstances seem so similar and you summed it up perfectly with the words if only....

As I sit and think I feel all the decisions we made were meant to be made for it was time for our men to leave us.

Of course as you know, it still doesn't make the pain any less.

If you ever need to talk just email me: katie@epix.net

[kayc]

I too had those "if only"s...George and I spent all of our time together when we weren't working. Once a year I went to my sisters' reunions...June 16 he came home from work early, not feeling well. I got up and packed for my trip, thinking he just had a bug or ate something that didn't agree with him. Usually he hauled everything out to the car, this time he didn't. He said he thought he'd sleep sitting up, so I did too, next to him. But a half hour after I left, he had a heart attack and then drove himself to the doctor and was then transported by ambulance to the hospital in the nearest city. The doctor wanted to call me but George wouldn't let him, he didn't want to spoil my trip. By the time I found out and got to the hospital it was two days later and he died without us ever being able to talk alone. I have a lot of "if only"s...my heart is broke for all of the last minute things we never got to say, for not being able to be there when he needed me most. I don't understand why things went the way they did, and I probably never will. I could have at least held his hand when he died except the nurse threw me out of the room when he started having his last heart attack. I can never forgive that. I was everything to him and he to me, she had no right. But life goes how it does and it's up to us to accept it and do the best we can with it. I miss my friend, my husband, so very much, I always will. Right now I try not to think about it any more than I have to, it's too hard and too painful. I've shed a million tears, I've dealt with a ton of "stuff" you have to deal with, and I don't know what else to do but try to build my life. It will never be the same again, it never can be. But I must give myself the gift of trying to make my life something worth living. What else can one do?