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[MartyT]

I thought of you, Brianna, when I read this today: Cleanup in the Produce Aisle  ♥

[KATPILOT]

George for me it's cats. I never gave them much thought but Kathy always loved them. After she died I kept having cat encounters. I had a cat who would come in my yard while I was sitting on the patio and just sit near me watching as if it was listening to my thoughts. At work, the feral cats would all but come inside my store and just watch me from the open back doorway.  Maybe they have grown up and remember the nice lady that helped feed them in the hot summer so many years ago.

[Gin]

New picture of Kathy?  Nice.

[Brianna]

4 hours ago, MartyT said:

I thought of you, Brianna, when I read this today: Cleanup in the Produce Aisle  ♥

It's funny because I didn't go to the store for a month after he passed, I lived on whatever I had & Taco Bell. Food rotted in my fridge because I had made us special meals & couldn't stand to throw them out because then it was real. I couldn't handle being where we used to shop together, where we used to laugh & go isle by isle & spend hours talking & planning & doing our special things. I would get physically sick when I would pull in. I can totally relate to that. Thank you for sharing this with me, it means so much to know that I am not alone & that I am not some weirdo because I have been unable to do some of the simplist of things, that people expect me to do. 

[Clematis]

I had a lot of strange rabbit encounters after my mother died -she had a life-long obsession with them. I would be out on a trail or even driving through the neighborhood and a rabbit would come running toward me and stop fairly close by and stare at me, fearlessly. It took me a long time to figure out what she was trying to say to me through the rabbits, but I never doubted that it was her. With my dad I just hear his voice and there have been a few dreams. I miss my dad terribly - we were very close and I miss him every day. Hearing his voice is nowhere near having him here but it is reassuring.

[Clematis]

1 hour ago, Brianna said:

It's funny because I didn't go to the store for a month after he passed, I lived on whatever I had & Taco Bell.

I've gotten stuck on Lucky Charms. In the beginning, it was macaroni & cheese and Lucky Charms. Some snack things from Schwan's and whatever I could find in my dad's freezer. Food that was his was better than any other food. I managed to steam vegetables. And that was all I ate for months. A few weeks ago I finally managed to make my own macaroni & cheese and it was so much better than the stuff I could buy. I felt like I had performed a miracle to bake macaroni & cheese, and I am eight months out.

I was talking to a fellow griever about how when I go to Walmart, I feel like there is an elephant on my chest and the bottom has dropped out of my stomach and my world. He said, "I know the feeling". I was trying to explain why that happened in Walmart even though I actually had no idea why Walmart was the biggest trigger I know of. Then as I talked, it came to me. It wasn't just the times I was there with him. More like every time I was in Walmart, with him or alone, I was always thinking about him and if maybe somewhere in this huge store maybe there was something that I could bring him that would save him - or help him have an easier time - or just cheer him up, make him laugh, or remind him that he wasn't alone in the world.

But after my dad died, it was too late to save him or help him or cheer him up with a cute seasonal T-shirt, because it's just too late, and there I am in Walmart and alone in the world. It's still hard, but I think it's a little better understanding why I feel like it's the end of the world just to walk in the door.

[Brianna]

I still can't cook, its too much. If it comes in a box or a bag & it can go in the oven or microwave I can do it but actually cooking like I used to is too much like we used to do it, I miss it so much. My living room hasn't been sat in by me in months. I just can't. I tried but like you said its like an elephant is sitting on me. Walmart, I rush in & out for dog food & go thru the wrong door & to a different one that is out of the way. It's crazy how similar but different our grieving is, no matter what the loss or how but we can all still relate. I'm so grateful to have found this blog. I come here whenever I am home alone & I feel less alone.

[blee]

Brianna, he was letting you know it's okay.  Before my husband passed away a butterfly landed on my finger and it stayef there. I told him I love you and it flapped his wings. It was beautiful. It will take time Brianna, we will never forget our love ones however it will get easier. 

[Jgillen]

 

23 hours ago, Brianna said:

Ya'll's support means so much to me & your kind words are overwhelming. In RL nobody understands. It's not a figurative alone, I am truly alone in this, everyone wants me to move on & forget about it & just be B already, but I can't. I have good days but they usually turn bad real fast with a song or something so simple. Then with the latest news I feel like it's going to be even harder to get understanding. I love him & I can't just stop doing that for anything. 

Thank you Gin, I go to a Grief group once a week & a counselor but I still feel stuck & I don't know if it's me or if I'm just being hurried in my process.

Mitch, I do get signs from him all the time reminding me of his love & then I get feelings but I just wish he was here to tell me when I have that forgetting feeling but I guess that's what the signs are for... ::sigh:: I'm a cookey who believes in butterflies & dragonflies & birds & other signs that our loved ones can send us. Call me crazy but its happened to me too many times when I needed it for me not to, not just after my SO passed but also after I had family pass. It helped me get thru that period of not wanting to be alive without him early in my grief. Thank you so much for your kind words, they mean a lot right now.

Kayc, Thank you so much & thank you for more places on here to look, being new here it's kinda like being new to a big city from a small town.

While I was at my husband's bedside before we turned the machines off, I told him to send me butterflies and birds.  The very next day, my yard was full of butterflies.  His mom and sister and I all just stood in the yard and watched them fly around.  We all smiled.  Since then, I have had a lot of cool experiences with birds and butterflies.  I am so thankful for these moments.   

[Jgillen]

I am so glad to see that I am not alone with a lot of my feelings and experiences.  I used to just ignore the music in the grocery store and elsewhere..and now I just have to rush through as fast as I can so that I don't get caught by some stupid sad song that catches me off guard.  Kind of a funny story now that I think back on it...my family took me to this cute little restaurant that uses locally grown produce...It was two weeks after Mike passed and I needed to get out..and I was so excited to go.  The kids and I sat at this big wooden table in this cute little restaurant with my parents and we were all in good spirits... John Denver's 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' came on and then another sad song...I ran to the restroom and balled..and kept repeating. "I hate this restaurant!!!"  It's so amazing the things that will catch you off guard.. the other day I walked by celery and broke down.  Mike always wanted me to buy celery, and I bought it for him every week. Big hugs to all of you.  I'm so grateful for support and not feeling alone in this journey.     

[KATPILOT]

One of the last things my wife said to me was that she would reach me if she possibly could. Hours after she died when I got back to my house from the funeral home is when the lights started doing their thing. Oh yes they have their ways. You asked for a butterfly Jgillen ?  He heard you.

Butterflies fly randomly effected by even a slight breeze. When they land on your finger blee?  Well, that takes determination.

I love theses stories.

[Brianna]

Reading all these stories are so great  I get chills. There was this bird my SO was really impressed by called a Grackle but he didn't know that at the time & he would be like, "Babe! Babe, come look at this bird! Look at it's wings!!" He loved birds. Well, I went outside today & my yard had to have a dozen of them in my backyard atleast & more in my front it was so magical. I was in total awe. After my bad days it was nice to see the outpouring of love from him, it was like he was like you wanna be mad at me we let me make you unmad real quick, like he always used to

[mittam99]

Brianna, as I've mentioned here before, I had no pre-conceived notion of whether an afterlife exists. It wasn't long after Tammy passed that my mind was changed forever.

Tammy was buried in her home State of Illinois. Driving there from Maryland, I fell asleep on the highway travelling 70mph and was awakened by the awful sound of my front fender crashing into a concrete barrier, and seeing my car bounce off of it. I just knew my car was terribly damaged.

I exited at the nearest rest stop to survey the damage. To my utter and completely shock, there wasn't even a scratch. It was at that moment I knew my angel Tammy was at work and helping me.

Another occurance....

Tammy loved the ceiling fan in our bedroom. One night I was on the phone with my niece and was recalling a story where daughter Katie was being unkind to Tammy. It was an upsetting subject and as I was getting more and more irritated, the ceiling fan (which was off) turned on by itself, to the highest speed! I almost dropped the phone because I knew it was Tammy telling me not to get upset.

There have been a number of other things that have happened which I've posted about over the last 18 months, but here's one I forgot to post that happened just recently...

I haven't moved many of Tammy's things. I'm just not ready. Well, three of her combs are in a corner of the bathroom vanity, neatly stacked one on the other. The other day, I was brushing my teeth and I saw a sight that stopped me in my tracks. The comb on top was now standing on its edge, upright against the side of the vanity. Not flat like it was. Impossible? I know it was Tammy letting me know she's still here.

I just wish her next angel "trick" would be to take us back in time, cure lupus and we can get back to what we had. Unfortunately, I don't think that's allowed in the angel rules and regulations.

Mitch

[Clematis]

On September 10, 2016 at 7:27 AM, kayc said:

My husband confessed to me three weeks before he died that he'd been using meth (his boss gave it to him) to keep up at work.  Little did he realize the reason he was having a hard time with the frantic work pace was because he had five blocked arteries...he died of a heart attack.  While I appreciate that he came to me of his own volition and told me, I figured out lies after his death, it took a while...because with drug use comes lies, they go hand in hand..

Kay, I just noticed this post of yours. It's really heartbreaking. I can't imagine what you went through before and after he died. I think a lot of people discover things after someone has died, but all that seems really overwhelming.

[kayc]

It was tough, I went through the whole gamut of feelings but in conclusion I take the whole of the man, and the whole of our relationship, that in spite of this, was very wonderful and his love for me was unquestionable.  When he was in the hospital (his last day on earth), the surgeon showed me the pictures of his heart, the blockages, the damage was severe from a previous heart attack that we were just figuring out, and George said, "Now do you know why I did what I did?" and I replied, "Oh George, I always knew why you did what you did, I just didn't think it was the right answer."  Had I known about his heart situation, he wouldn't have been working!  And to think his boss got him on it and supplied it.  No wonder I got rid of any trace of Country Coach when he died!  I got rid of his Carhartts and work mug, etc.  I wanted no reminders because in my mind they killed him.  Then they stole all of his work tools (thousands of dollars)!  My son made a 150 mile round trip to pick them up...for nothing.  They gave us a shoebox with a couple of broken pencils in it.  That place was abominable with corruption.  I couldn't be sad when they went down, although I felt bad for my SIL because he and a lot of others lost their much needed jobs.  

[Clematis]

Gosh Kay - that is horrible! What kind of work did he do there? Supplying him with drugs? Stealing his tools after he had died? It's really unspeakable. I am so sorry to hear that - it is really dreadful. I didn't know George, but I know you well enough to know you wouldn't marry someone who wasn't an amazing person. Not that it wouldn't be dreadful to do that to anyone, but still...

[WolfsKat]

Oh my God, Kay.......I am so so very sorry!  It must have very much made the grief at losing him that much more horrible!  I'd be so very angry, as I'm sure you were/am at his workplace, especially the bastard who supplied him!  That POS was definitely responsible for contributing to George's death, in my opinion! (((((hugs to you))))

[kayc]

My George only ever thought of me.  He was 51 and doing the work of three men, he was a welding fabricator, he was the best.  It was never enough for them, they wanted blood.  They used and discarded people.  To top it off his job was 75 miles from home.  They never sent me a card, they never sent flowers to his funeral, they never sent a company rep. to convey their regards, nothing.  I don't know how to forgive a company/people like that, so I think it best that they dissolved.  They had close to 2,000 employees and as far as I know they used them all.
George was scared of losing his job, they put so much pressure on him, and he was worried he'd lose our medical insurance...I'm on medications and he didn't want that to happen.  I knew that was his main concern, in all of life he thought of me before him.  All the more reason I had a hard time with it.  

[Clematis]

I remember when I was a young adult telling my mother a story about the father of a close friend. He worked for Frito-Lay, driving a delivery truck and developed an aggressive cancer, which took his life a month before he was fully vested in his retirement benefits for himself and his beneficiary. My mother caught her breath at this point in the story and held it, bracing herself for the tragic ending. I continued...and they gave him all of it anyway. My mother let out her breath and exclaimed, "My g-d! That's inspiring enough to get you to eat Frito-Lay for the rest of your life!" I was young and had no idea just how unusual that story was.

It's just horrible that companies treat people the way they do. My father's company was good to him in many ways, but when I called them to stop his pension checks they told me to hold the line, went and checked and told me that he had no life insurance. A week or two later I found a piece of paper in his handwriting with some life insurance policy numbers, the amounts and the percentages that went to each beneficiary. I called them back with the policy number and amazingly enough they rather quickly found that indeed he did have a policy paying out $51,000! My older sister's part was enough to keep her house from foreclosing - at least for this year - and I was barely able to get it to her in time. 

[kayc]

Wow.  Couldn't find it, amazing!

[Widowedbysuicide]

i keep trying to write here and can not get it right.  Please all, just know that your sorrows and your stories are very much in my heart and mind.  Blessings to all.

Blee, I'm sorry you are here but hope you will find the comfort I have found here.

Brianna, I lost my husband to suicide eight months ago.  I recognize myself in parts of your story.  It isn't always as raw now as it was in the beginning.  I hope you too will find this is a place where you can be real and be comforted.  Feel free to message me anytime.

Marita

[Clematis]

Yeah, pretty amazing. My mother had a laundry list of their misdeeds, which my dad overcame by being who he was, brilliant and persevering. That's why he was always my hero - and still is! He could do anything. After a brutal childhood, he was working as a chemist in a lab in Baltimore and going to law school while supporting his wife and three little kids. They yanked him out of school and the lab and sent him to work in Atlanta to work as a traveling salesman, selling the same chemicals he had been working with. Bye bye law school? No, he transferred to Emory university and finished there. In law school they had to prepare cases and he was traveling all over the southeast, taking his books with him so he could work up cases in his hotel room in the evenings. When he'd get back to class he always had plenty of work done. The professor would eventually say, "Does anyone have any other cases to present? I mean, other than Charlie?"

When he graduated from Emory, someone came down from Princeton and offered him a job as a patent attorney. After moving there, they told him they would show him how to write a patent application but if he wasn't successful in six months they would fire him. He was in over his head, but worked night and day, and got on top of things. Five years later, they transferred him to the foreign division but due to a mixup he found himself covering two positions in a new area. It took them two years to figure that out and hire another attorney to cover the other position. It's hard to tell if it was malice or just a lack of thought. He was pushed into retirement - it wasn't really early but he wanted to keep working. Right after he retired, they realized that no one else could do his job, and they hired him back as a consultant for two years while he trained a replacement. So he double-dipped on his pension and consultant pay and was able to put off claiming on social security for two years, which upped the payments.

One of the things that breaks my heart about him is that it seems likely that he developed Parkinsons due to his exposure to chemicals, between the lab and the farms, while securing a future for his family. His company wasn't trying to do him a favor when they took him out of the lab - he just knew how to take the ball and run with it.

His early stress was probably related to his drinking heavily at times and all of the stuff that went along with that. In the early 1980's I was very angry with him over things that had happened when I was young. He wrote me a long letter of apology, detailing what he had been through as a child, youth, and young adult. He made it clear that he wasn't telling me any of that as an excuse, but he loved me and hoped that if he explained things I would understand him better. I have read that letter over and over; it's very well worn, and I keep it in a drawer next to my bed. He really is my hero.

[mittam99]

Brianna, I want to talk about all the "lies" you said you found out about after your SO died. First of all, excuse me if I'm wrong but I don't think you've mentioned his name and I definitely don't know what the "lies" were but I know they are painfully devastating. It's you choice to tells us as little or as much as you want to cleanse your mind and spirit.

There's one thing that you need to think about (and again I have no idea what these "lies" were or who or where the source came from)...

Ultimately, and sadly, he's not here to defend himself or explain things definitively.

If I'm prying, I apologize. I'm just trying to help and let you see another point of view. Your life right now is in turmoil, it feels like nothing is "right". I know this is easier said than done but these "lies" can't be a focus of emphasis on your grief journey at this point. It's sort of like all the time I spent agonizing over the "why's" of Tammy's death. Finally, I realized that some things simply don't have an answer.

I'm not saying at some point this shouldn't be confronted but for now it's more about the basics. Get your rest, eat healthy foods. Drink plenty of water. Take each day as it comes and live in the moment.

I'm sorry you're in such pain and all of us are here to help you walk this journey into (hopefully) a better place than today.

I've opened up about my life with Tammy with members here. It's been healing to me to vent about my struggles after Tammy's death. And it's been just as important in my healing to tell others about my wonderful wife and who she was.

Mitch

 

[Clematis]

32 minutes ago, mittam99 said:

There's one thing that you need to think about (and again I have no idea what these "lies" were or who or where the source came from)...

Ultimately, and sadly, he's not here to defend himself or explain things definitively.

 

Another thought about "lies" is that everyone's "truth" is different. Since my dad died and I've gone through his stuff, I have found some big inconsistencies between documents and the family lore. Also, there is this - two posts up is some stuff about my dad. My sisters have a totally different viewpoint, even though we all grew up in the same family and were very close in age. After my mother died they had no use for or interest in him, and both told him they did not want him to move to their town - an hour away from where he lived. With Parkinson's in a split-level house, he had to go somewhere, and I was trying very hard to coax him out west. So out he came.

My sisters thought it was bizarre that I was even upset about this man's death. I went to great efforts for many years to work things out with him, which in the beginning involved my working through a lot of anger. Then I tried to make friends with him - for a long time!  Then my mother died and I was able to see who he really was underneath and not being a satellite around his extremely narcissistic wife. My sisters never gave him a chance, never tried to work out anything or have anything to do with him other than extracting money, which they probably have a continuing need to justify.

No one who listened to my sisters and me now talk about our father would believe we were talking about the same person. I can understand why they are angry with him how they came to see things as they did because I have seen the same thing in other families. But I am the one who reaped the big bonus, which was having a close and loving relationship with him for a decade. My sisters don't see it like that. They may think I am out of my mind, but as time goes by, I care less and less what they think.

[KATPILOT]

Good!