Today Was Our Anniversary

[Suitearia]

Hello. My name is Suzanne and I lost my husband, Ric, to prostate cancer 5/1/15. Today was our anniversary and I did my best to celebrate my 13th year with him.

The morning went well. I decided to go out to breakfast at the first restaurant we went to when we moved to Florida almost 2.5 years ago. I pretended that he was sitting across the table from me reading his newspaper while I read my book. I felt so calm and "good" that I wondered if he was sharing the moment with me. Then I went to the bookstore and bought a book that he had recommended to a dear friend just before he died and mailed it to her. It was the Celestine Prophecy and I sent it to her from Ric "for all of the possibilities" then I went home and went to the beach for awhile and watched the waves.

Somewhere between leaving the beach and walking home I lost it. I don't remember the trigger I just remembered dissolving into tears. I got home and listened to the song "just you and I" and cried even harder. I listen to Josh Groban's "to where you are and cried some more (and wished that I could go to where he is).

We moved to florida alone ... so it has just been the two of us here for the last couple of years and much of that time he was so very ill (last year a bout of meningeal metastasis at Easter with radiation, bone pain and more radiation, then a GI bleed that put him in the ICU in July. The gastric ulcer was positive for prostate cancer. So begain the struggle with anorexia-cachexia and the struggle with the oncologist to move him to a fentanyl patch rather than playing games with oxycontin and oxycodone cocktails.

April 3rd 2015 he decided that he couldn't do it anymore and wanted to get into hospice. As soon as he said that to me the phone rang and it was the nurse from our new oncologist (thank you for fentanyl patches and dilaudid for breakthrough pain). Ric told her he wanted to stop all treatment (he had had 2 Xofigo infusions and gone into bone marrow failure) and go into hospice. By that evening he had been admitted to hospice. It was a relief that now I'd have help but sad because that meant the end was near.

Then the morning of May 1st I left the room where he his hospital bed was to go to the bathroom. I walked back into the room and walked over to the hospital bed and the nurse leans over and says "he just expired". And I'm WHAT DID YOU SAY??? I knew he was going to die; but maybe I thought he wouldn't. But he did ... I watched the funeral home take him away from me. I asked for his clothes back that we dressed him in and washed them and folded them. He always ironed his shorts so I had his shorts pressed at the dry cleaners so that they'd be like he wanted.

So how do I make sense of this? How do I build a life without him and not feel like I've abandoned him? Sometimes I just feel blank and detached from it all. I watch the news, I watch Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy .. the shows we always watched but I feel separate and void ...

I cannot even go to a grave to see him. He didn't want me to leave him here in FL if I moved away so I buried him in Mobile where he was born and next to his mother. It was the best I could do for him and it was the right thing to do for him.

The hospice said that they'd be in my life for the next year so that is good. It's just a very tough day today.

Thank you for listening.

On a positive note, though, I'd read Final Journeys and Final Gifts and was blessed to witness Ric's interaction with someone from Heaven. It was incredible to see but remembering it doesn't take away my pain, or my sorrow, or my feelings of "what do I do now".

[mittam99]

Suzanne, I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your beloved Ric. I know today had to be a very difficult day to say the least. This grief journey we're all on isn't an easy one... it doesn't just go away. All we can really do is to try to put one foot in front of the other and cope the best we can.

This June 10th would be my Tammy's 46th birthday and I think I'm going to celebrate by making a meal of some of her favorites and know she's there by my side with a smile on her face.

Keep posting your thoughts. It will help and you'll find this is a very welcoming, understanding group.

Mitch

[Rozemon]

Suzanne- you are so right you never always know what triggers the meltdown/breakdown into tears. I lost my husband a month ago from a fatal motorcycle accident. The first Saturday after the funeral I had this overwhelming need to go to the beach. I wasn't in the mood but just had to go so I went. Bc of different obstacles I ended up on the beach down where we had gotten married 9 years prior. It wasn't were I normally go and was not somewhere I really visited. Once there I realized where I was and was choked up. Got myself set up Had a good cry and then had this overwhelming peace and calmness come over me. We had been together 14 years and married for 9 and the accident was the day after our anniversary.

I'm now on the next round of people that are finding out. It has been tougher than I thought and now all the work with the attorneys has started. I think my meltdown might be coming sooner than I thought and my mother in law is being difficult again.

I wish you peace and that you can make it through each day as it comes. I'm over in St Augustine, Fl.

[Suitearia]

Hello Rozemon, I am down in Fort Lauderdale. We drove by St Augustine on our way to Mobile in early May (that was a long exhausting drive). My dad and stepmother came down to FL on 4/4 and didn't leave until 5/14. They stayed with us until Ric was buried and we finished some business I needed help with. I don't have a mother in law or a father in law as they passed many years ago (Ric was 62 and I will be 59 in October). I'm sorry that your's is adding to your grief and stress (aren't the lawyers enough stress?). Maybe her pain and perhaps anger is driving her to lash out at you.

Mitch ... Ric and I ... our birthdays are a week apart (we're libra's). I will think of you on the 10th and whisper an affirmatory prayer for you ... I will pray for you too Rozemon. Were you injured in the accident?

[Rozemon]

Suzanne. Thank you.

No I was at work and he was on his way to apply for a new job. I got the call that he had been life flighted up to Jacksonville.

I knew right away it was bad and possibly over. We had been through so much in our 14 years - him with drugs for years and finally rehab which he embraced whole heartedly and I was able to get the person back that I had met all those years ago! Thank goodness for our path into recovery and all the support groups. They have helped me so much in the last few weeks I'm a teacher so I went back to work to finish out the school year it was only 2 1/2 weeks. I'm starting to get scared at what these coming weeks hold for me now that school is over. The mother in law and I don't have a good relationship and even though she is his mother she was not really part of his life. Only when it was convenient for her. She added a lot of stress and anxiety for him. So now she's continuing that with me. But what she doesn't realize is that I have no tie to her and I can just ignore her. We live at opposit ends of town and do not have much in common.

The lawyers are ok. They are dealing with something's that were set in motion before the accident. I have just had to spend time revising documents and answering questions.

All in all I'm still just starting to process all this. He never went over board for my bday but he tried. Tomorrow is my birthday and he is not here. Thank you for listening. I know this was your thread that you started.

[Suitearia]

I did start the thread but since it is a discussion group I'm glad to have started a conversation and happy birthday. We never did a lot for our birthday's either especially as he got sicker and couldn't drive at times or go out and enjoy a meal. But it is the thought that they aren't here to even know and say Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary that's emotionally rough for us. Maybe you can start some grief counseling over the summer ...

[kayc]

Happy Birthday, Rozemon! I'm sorry you are alone, I know how hard it is. I spend most of my special days alone anymore.

Suzanne,

I am so sorry you lost your beloved Ric, I know how that feels...the early stage of disbelief/shock and the longer days ahead of learning to live and do life alone. I'm glad hospice is there for you, I didn't have that. I contacted them after he died, but I'm 1 1/2 hours from the nearest city where hospice is and couldn't drive there all the time. My husband died rather suddenly (heart) and he was barely 51 when he died. Now I'm retired without him and it certainly isn't what we'd planned.

I hope you'll continue to post here, it really does help to have a safe place to talk about your feelings and experiences. It helps to know you are not alone in what you're going through.

[enna]

Hello Suzanne,

I want to stop in and tell you how very sorry I am that your beloved Ric has passed and that you had to celebrate your anniversary yesterday without his physical presence. So very many of us have been where you are. We will be here for you as you need to talk.

Happy belated birthday, dear Rozemon. The first months are indeed taken up with paperwork and details that need to be taken care of. Your grief journey is just beginning also and those of us who are here will walk it with you.

Anne

[Suitearia]

I will continue to post KayC especially as I havent started working with hospice yet (I'm doing my own pre-lim work reading Kubler-Ross's book on the 5 stages of Grief).

Yesterday I got the balance of my life insurance (minus the mortuary costs) ... and while I'm relieved I have the money, its the way I got the money that has me in turmoil. I have to consider the cost paid for those benefits and I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's a strange feeling inside, maybe some level of anxiety combined with guilt for feeling relieved that I know that I can pay our bills for the immediate future ... or maybe its just a hole in my soul where I just cannot feel right now. I don't know how to describe it.

Somebody posted this statement on being a widow and acceptance; it struck a chord within me so I wrote it in my journal: "... he faced his death with faith, love, and courage. My job now is to live as well as he died". I whispered in Ric's ear that I would be OK once he died -- so I feel that if I don't find a way to work through my greif and to "live as well he died", then I lied to him and myself.

[kayc]

That's a good quote.

[mittam99]

I'm doing my own pre-lim work reading Kubler-Ross's book on the 5 stages of Grief).

That book is actually considered to be very outdated. The truth is there is no order that things will happen in. It's all an individual thing. You may not even experience all the so-called "stages" of grief. One of the books I've read that seemed to help me a bit is called "I Wasn't Ready To Say Goodbye" by Brook Noel & Pamela D. Blair PhD.

[MartyT]

You may find the suggestions in this post helpful, too: Grief Bibliography ♥

[kayc]

While it's true that we've learned a lot since that book came out and we now know that the "stages" of grief, if you will, may overlap, there may be more than five or less than five, or in different order, or some simultaneously...still, I'm of the thinking you don't throw the baby out with the bath. In other words, there are some things to be gleaned through that book, but I wouldn't base all of my thinking on it alone. There are MANY great books on grief, and Marty has quite a list!

[Suitearia]

Thanks Marty, I've been out and bookmarked the link for future reference.

Just a word about Kubler-Ross; the book is clear to state that people may move though the 5 stages sequentially but more than likely they will move back and forth through the stages (or even skip some of them) until they can truely accept "the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognize that this new reality is the permanent reality ... it's not OK but we learn to live with it".

I had started grieving last July when Ric was going downhill fast from a GI Bleed (we didn't know what wrong but I decided he needed to go to the ER and we did). I cried and cried then ... and in the fall I withdrew from the school of public health, for the first time admitting (but not really believing) that my husband was dying. Anyway I will definitely look up "I Wasn't Ready To Say Goodbye" by Brook Noel & Pamela D. Blair PhD.