Running out of words

[brat#2]

I don't seem to be able to express myself as beautifully as most of you.  I think I'm running out words to say to express how much I miss my wonderful husband and everything about him. As with all of you, my life has changed drastically and the pain is unbearable most of the time. I'm hoping for the day when it gets a little easier.

[mittam99]

I understand what you are saying. I'm usually pretty good at expressing myself but I often find myself in so much pain that my mind goes numb and I simply don't have the words. Just remember that words are just that... words. It's the love you feel inside that really matters.

As far as it getting easier, I'm almost at the one year mark and the pain is about the same for me. After all, we were all madly in love with our soul mate and it's this deep love that means we have deep and intense grief. Our once wonderful, filled with love lives are now filled with anguish. All any of us can do is cope and take it one moment at a time.

I know that my Tammy is with me forever. She will always be my bride. She made me a better man. I miss her so much!!!

[hollowheart]

Brat, I hope the days get easier for you--and all of us--as well. I think the very brutal days will get less and less and navigating the day to day will get better. I hate to use the word "easier" because there is nothing easy about this. There is nothing easy about someone you love just being gone and that absence is like a loud shrilling horn all day long. But soon there will be more hours in the day you can get through them better than you did before. *sigh*

 

[brat#2]

Mitch, thank you for understanding.  You are right, words are just words, it is the love that we had and still feel that matters.  I don't know if easier is the right word, just hoping for more days of less intense pain.   I know Dale will be with me forever as will Tammy be with you forever.  Together we can get through this one moment at a time.

[Margm]

@Brat#2:  I think a person dreams in REM sleep, and if I remember right, that is the time that is close to awakening.  I am trying to remember from the time I worked at the teaching hospital, when I was working in the neurology department, at that time in the sleep clinic.  I can think of nothing more boring than watching someone sleep all night.  I just typed results.  Last night/this morning, Billy visited me in my sleep.  Just an anytime dream, nothing significant.  I woke up and it was just "matter-of-fact."  It was a disappointment that it was only a dream.  He had told me that "the one left must stay," so I will stay.  I have to get things in order in my physical house, my mental house, and (in my opinion) my spiritual house.  There is no help right now.  I am not sure that the saying that time heals all wounds applies to us that have to stay.  One of my doctors a few years ago, and his two daughters were taken away in a plane he was flying.  His wife and teen-aged son were left.  I cannot even imagine the pain she felt, and I do hope I am too old to experience that pain, yet some here have experienced this double pain.  They tell us to write, and I think we were given this forum to express our pain.  And now, and scattered all over this forum, are the writings of all my pain, my stumbling steps down this path that none of us want to walk.  I thought it rather odd after my dad's passing that I might have dreamed of him only once that I can remember.  Billy visits me often, and I wake up to reality afterwards.  There is never a message.  Before he left I had a mystical, magical imagination.  He did not believe in anything supernatural.  He said I was him and he was me.  Somehow when he left, he left me with that part of "us" that was void of mystical magic.  We just trudge on.  We are the one left, so we must stay.  And I do what I do, I write.  My family were writers. Nothing significant except memories, and my sisters published poems.  

[enna]

Yes, I believe that those we love will be with us always.  This quote by Richard Fife spoke to me today as often I do not have words either ~ the pain silences me.

 

[brat#2]

Marg - I haven't had any dreams of Dale yet or if I have I don't remember them.  I can't imagine how disappointing and sad that you have to wake up and realize it was a dream and that he wasn't truly there.  I look at pictures of him all the time and all his things (which I haven't gotten rid of or moved anything) and it does give me comfort, but also hurts terribly that I can't touch him.  I talk to him all the time too and I'm hoping he can hear me, which I think he does.  It's such a confusing time, a feeling of being lost, scared and alone.  I also write in a journal daily and on here which does help.  Thank you

[brat#2]

enna - thank you for the beautiful quote, so true!

[Froggie4635]

Dear Brat,

It might take some time to have that dream of your Dale.  I am approaching 15 months, and I can only recall one short flash where I touched Mark's cheek...nothing more and so very brief.  But I KNOW it was real.  So many of us are still under that protective layer of grief...kind of existing in "neutral".  Just keep talking to him.  He hasn't gone too far.

[Margm]

I have been visited in my dreams more than once and sometimes I awaken and reach for him.  He had high cheek bones and that is what I want  to touch, and those beautiful hands that I cannot remember without terrible pain.  They were held out to me letting me know he had to give up.  My last emotion to him was anger because I did not want him to give up.  When this enters my mind I am supposed to say STOP!!!!  I just let it enter again.  I have to take my granddaughter to doctor today so I will take my Xanax that this memory always flips me out.  I hope he understood and forgives me.  

Brat, I have his picture on here.  I cannot look at any of his pictures, especially the ones he took of nature for his photography hobby.  It is strange the things that give some of us comfort and that same thing causes pain in others.  I have slowly introduced some music, not all.  But I am putting all his clothes in the big plastic buckets and all his cards and pictures in buckets too.  Maybe my guilt keeps the pictures from giving me comfort.  I miss him so terribly, but "I am him and he is me" has to forgive myself.  And the tears that I have held back for so long finally returned.  That part of us has to forgive me and now I have to "stay" and get on with everyday responsibilities.  If I was gone, Billy would be taking our granddaughter to doc.  I so wish I had gone.  He was a much better father and grandfather than I am, but I am left. I still sleep with his pillow and a pair of his pants.  But we were both enablers to the whole family and I feel so lacking.

[MartyT]

Marg, my dear, I cannot help but wonder: What if your last emotion to Billy had been something other than anger? Surely your anger stemmed from your not wanting your beloved to leave you. Why in the world would Billy not understand that? Would it have been better if you had acted happy that he was leaving you? It seems to me that Billy knows you well enough to understand how you were feeling at that moment, and I simply cannot imagine why he would not be willing to "forgive" you. You are beating yourself up for being human, my dear, and the one from whom you need compassion, understanding and forgiveness is not Billy. It is you.

[Margm]

I know this Marty, your chapter on guilt explains this.  Billy forgave me so many worse things.  I know it is me that cannot forgive myself.  I have to get the discovery and shock of his death mask out of my mind and rememberhis happy antics in pictures and remember his tricks and bad jokes he played on shopkeepers, making like he had a complaint.  I had to be with him to blow his cover because they were stunned at his anger with them and were relieved it was a joke.  But he could act serious.  He wasn't, and they finally laughed with him, but it was a nervous angry laugh.  Just my Billy.

I wanted another miracle but it was not to be.  It was not magical or mystical.  It was reality.

[brat#2]

Maryann - thank you.  "Neutral" that is a great way of putting how some of us are existing.  I will keep talking to him and sometimes I think he answers me (so maybe those are my dreams).

[Margm]

@Brat, sometimes I wake up to him saying somethig.  The whole family living off me put so much responsibility on me that I awoke with him saying "its enough."  It was, so I left it to them.  I cannot fight yet, but flight is easy.

[brat#2]

Marg - I completely understand the guilty feeling, but I'm sure Billy understood and has forgiven you.  I feel guilty and angry that I didn't tell Dale it was ok to leave, which is really wasn't,  and to not be in pain anymore.  I had to put him in a  Hospice care facility and thought I would have time to talk with him about this, so I went home Monday night thinking I could talk with him the next day and when I got there the next morning he was not responding and never woke up again and finally on Friday, his body gave up and he passed away.  I did talk "to" him all those days, telling him how much I loved him and will miss him and thanked him for our marriage and years together, but I never got to talk "with" him about it.  I agree with Marty, I feel both Billy and Dale haven forgiven us and now we just have to try and forgive ourselves, which is not easy to do.

[Margm]

See Brat, you have words, very helpful words. Sometimes it helps to bring them out like a leech brings out nasty infections.  I am a leech. And Marty, you always make us "think" and oh how that helps.

[brat#2]

Thank you Marg

[hollowheart]

3 hours ago, Marg M said:

 My last emotion to him was anger because I did not want him to give up.  When this enters my mind I am supposed to say STOP!!!!  I just let it enter again.  I have to take my granddaughter to doctor today so I will take my Xanax that this memory always flips me out.  I hope he understood and forgives me.  

Marg, I have done the exact same thing. When I think about how I didn't call an ambulance, which might have saved her, I get anxiety and need a pill. But I don't think my pill is working as well as your Xanax. I'm trying to tell myself to stop with those thoughts too. I remember the last weekend she was alive we were out really late and I was trying to rush her home because I had work in the morning, and I know she was trying to be nice about it. I try not to hate on myself but I do. The last thing I need is more guilt.

[Margm]

One thing I know we all feel. we want to believe we will wake up from this nightmare and they will return.  If only they could. I hope he keeps visiting my dreams, but waking up is bittersweet. I usually forget my dreams.  Some you cannot forget.  

[Gin]

Guilt is a big issue with me, too.  I do not know how to get rid of it.  I tried so hard but keep thinking I should have noticed something that the doctors did not.  Al was so dependent at the end.  Couldn't walk, blind and oh so many problems.  I felt he needed me so much and I let him down.

[Margm]

Gin, guess that is why guilt is one of the emotions of grief.  They are gone and we aren't.  I could not understand my mother's years of anger.  My close friend stayed angry at her husband, still admittedly is angry and she is remarried to a man that has been ill since she married him.  We all reach for a lifeline of some sort.  My mom was married to my dad for 44 years.  Now she is fixing to be 95.  Her little Alzheimer's mind remembers being married to five men.  She says "they were all healthy when I married them, but they all died." (She was only married to my dad.)  But this refrain is repeated over and over throughout the day. 

[hollowheart]

Gin, I don't know how to get rid of my guilt either. I talk to my therapist about it a lot. I think that's where some anger came in when friends would say "just ask for forgiveness and move on."  I think right now I'm just pushing it down inside. Lately I've been thinking about that last weekend when she started going downhill and I was rushing her out of the store because I wanted to get home.

Why wasn't I more insistent she go to a hospital instead of just going home? Like you, in the end I know she needed me and I let her down. For things to end so tragically is more than I can bear. It's one thing if they were hurt badly but recovered, but to die is just beyond what I can handle. Never in my worst nightmares did I see this coming to fruition, even when she was diagnosed with a bad heart. She was pretty much back to herself and I guess I got lax about the seriousness of it. I was the last person with her that long so I can't help but blame myself for not helping her when she was clearly unable to help herself.

[iheartm]

We are all speaking for each other here. I had to walk out of a meeting at work this morning because I just started crying and had to leave the room. I am currently locked in my office in tears. It's just that kind of day.

I am having trouble sleeping again. I zonk out at my regular bed time and then wake up, wide awake, an hour later and then sleep in 10-20 minute increments for the rest of the night. Sometimes I just watch the clock tick on by.

All I want to do is go home and lay on the couch doing nothing. 

[brat#2]

I think our guilt is going to be difficult to get through.  The feeling of not doing enough to save them, the guilt of us still being here and they are not.  I think we all now it's not really our fault, but that is a hard feeling to get through.

[hollowheart]

1 hour ago, iheartm said:

I am having trouble sleeping again. I zonk out at my regular bed time and then wake up, wide awake, an hour later and then sleep in 10-20 minute increments for the rest of the night. Sometimes I just watch the clock tick on by.

All I want to do is go home and lay on the couch doing nothing. 

OMG. Me too!! This is like I wrote it. I'm having the same exact problem. I have found myself very tired/sleepy during the day and at my regular bedtime. I also zonk out at night then wake up at 1 or 2 am and I think I sleep/wake/sleep/wake until I finally get wide awake a couple of hours before my alarm, which sucks. Then I'm tired and cranky during the work day.  I might have to ask to change my sleeping pills,I'm taking Ambian but they don't keep me out long enough.

Your last line is how I feel RIGHT NOW.

1 hour ago, brat#2 said:

I think our guilt is going to be difficult to get through.  The feeling of not doing enough to save them, the guilt of us still being here and they are not.  I think we all now it's not really our fault, but that is a hard feeling to get through.

It sure is, and I don't think I ever will. And is no one that understands that, they all say let it go and move on. I guess I do have survivors guilt on top of the frustration of her just being gone. I'm at my desk now feeling a little crazy. I need my life back.