Depressed

The first year of grief was unbearable raw pain.

The second year the shock is gone, but the reality of loss sets in.

The third year was a fight to have hope.

The fourth year was unbearably lonely.

I'm starting my fifth year, and the depression is debilitating. The tears come daily. I work, I sleep, I do little else. I feel like the gift of life is wasted on me. I have nobody to talk to. I spend too much time alone. I feel like I don't matter.

It never goes away

Four years ago tonight was the worst night of my life. When you realize that the idea of the person you love most in the world dying is less horrific than the thought that they will continue to live in their current state.....  When you start to press the morphine button to help him die instead of to help him live.....

That is a pain that never goes away. That is a blow from which you never recover. That was me four years ago tonight, and right now it hurts almost as much as it did then.

I miss you, Brian. This pain is so awful because our love was so strong. Your died too young. Fate was so unfair. I live, not because I expect to regain the happiness we had, but because I know how incredibly lucky I am to have had the love we shared. I will always love you.

Time Does Not Heal

It will be four years on Thursday. I remember those last days. I remember how brave he was. I remember how searing the pain of losing him was. Time doesn't heal. Time allows you to get used to living with loss and pain. Time eases the shock, but when the shock is gone the starkness of reality is so clear. I miss my husband. I miss our life. I miss feeling that there were things to look forward to. I truly don't believe that I will ever again be happy. I was so lucky. I had the best life could give. It is sad to know that the best is in the past.

Done

I've wanted to write many times since my last post, but I couldn't log on my devices. I guess my password is saved on my desktop, but things have been hard, and fighting to log on was too much work. I guess getting up and walking to the desktop was too much work too.

It will be four years later this month, and while the raw all-consuming grief has passed, in some ways things are worse. The shock of the loss is gone; now I'm dealing with the reality of life post-Brian. It's not good. I suppose if I'm honest I would have to say it's not bad either. Bad was hearing that your husband had terminal cancer. Bad was watching your most loved one die. Bad was getting his ashes left on the front porch by UPS. Bad was burying a bag of ash that used to be your husband. Bad was choosing a headstone for a wonderful man who died too young. What I have now is just not good.

I think the worst part is the isolation. In early grief people blanket you with care and concern. It's not that they stop caring, its just that with time, the loss is no longer on their radar. It's always on mine. At this point, the grief isn't something I can't talk about with others. They don't understand. They think I should have moved on, but what does that mean? Move on? I have. I buried our cat. I buried our dog. I adopted a new dog that he never knew. I sold our home. I bought my new home. I started a new job. I have accepted that the love of my life is dead. That's moving on, I think. I live in the here and now; I'm not caught up in the past. And that's the problem. I'm lonely. The here and now is lonely. I come home to a nice house and a great dog, but there is nobody to come home to. Nobody gives me a hug, asks how my day is, sits down to dinner with me. Nobody helps with responsibilities at home. Nobody supports me on the bad days. Nobody makes me tea when I don't feel well, or comforts me when I cry, or shares in any sort of accomplishment. Nobody relies on me to do all those things for them. The sadness isn't dissipated; the joy can't be shared - and that makes the sadness so  much worse, and the joy so meaningless.

I'm not young, but I'm not old, and I feel like I am destined to this lonely mediocrity for the next few decades.

My dad is 87 years old and having health issues. He is on dialysis three times a week, and while he is doing great, there is a lot more life behind him than in front of him. My mom is dealing with all sorts of stress and anxiety related to his illness. She is depressed and doesn't know what to do about it. She hates being old, but how do I help? I totally  understand how she feels, but she has no idea that I too feel old and depressed. I work Monday through Friday. I sleep on the weekends. The bills get paid, the laundry gets done, but the house could be a lot cleaner, I could eat better, I could get involved with hobbies or friends - but I don't. It's all too much work, because no matter what I do, I am doing it alone and without my life partner.

I don't believe in heaven. I don't believe in a God that takes people because he needs them more than we do. Brian is dead because he had horrible luck - he had a cancer cell that ate his body, and that modern medicine couldn't fight. The idea that he is in a better place is absurd to me. Death, I believe, is the absence of life. I don't believe in life after death, I don't believe in consciousness after death. I believe that we have the here and now and that we live and then we are gone - and I hate myself for not being able to live now while I have the opportunity. When I die will I regret this inertia, or will I be grateful that I had 9 years together with a wonderful man who knew me, loved me, let me love him, and made my life complete?

I was so very lucky. Now I just feel done.

Holidays suck

I don't write here as often as I used to. I think maybe I need to write a lot more. Maybe this is the only place that I can express myself. I know that very few people see these posts, and I don't know if anyone that I know reads them. Maybe I should write more because there is no other outlet for the grief. The world moves on, and people expect that I have moved on, so grief is no longer tolerated. I'm supposed to accept my life and see the beauty in it. I accept that Brian is dead. I don't look for him around the corner anymore. I don't expect that he will come back. I live in today; I accept my reality.

I didn't know true happiness until Brian came into my life, and I haven't experienced it since he has been gone. That isn't to say that life is awful. Watching him die was awful. Being unable to help him was awful. This isn't awful - it's just not good. I miss him. I miss who I was when he was here. I miss the life we shared. I miss being "us". When Brian was in life we were two perfect halves of a wonderful whole. We fit. We made life meaningful. Now I'm a whole of nothing. I don't really matter to anyone. Nobody asks me what I want, and I couldn't answer. I don't even know. I no longer dream or plan or hope. I just get through one day at a time.

This week we wrapped up the holidays. Hanukah, Christmas, New years. It was a hard week. It is always a hard week now. I miss celebrating with him. From Thanksgiving until his death date in April is hard - so many occasions without him - so many memories.  Thanksgiving, his birthday, Chanukah and our Jew Bear celebration, his families Christmas, the anniversary of when he got sick, the anniversary of his diagnosis and all the bad luck in the hospital, the day we moved to hospice, Valentines Day, our anniversary, and ultimately his death. All of these things. I feel his absence through all of these. So if I invite people to celebrate with Jew Bear, for me it is a very hard bitter sweet event. For others it is a party. On New Years I remember just four years ago when we spent New Years Eve day in the ER and New Years day in bed. How sick he was - but that we still had hope - before that horrible diagnosis.

I seem to have forgotten how to live. I don't know how to be happy. I don't know how to allow anyone in. I know that I could love again, but I'm afraid. I want someone to know me again, but I can't imagine anyone knowing me like he did, loving me like he did. And the idea of losing again is too too hard. I am angry at life, and at the people in my life. Maybe it isn't fair - maybe I have nobody to be angry at but myself, but I feel like I just don't matter.

These holidays sucked. On Christmas day I went out with friends - the same friends that Brian and I went out with 4 years ago - but it wasn't fun. Then that night I got food poisoning. I felt awful, and I cancelled the Jew Bear celebration. I had another small get together planned for New Years, and woke up that morning with a horrific migraine. Every time I stood up I was overcome by waves of nausea. I couldn't cancel though - nobody cared enough to tell me to take care of myself. And then a friend mentioned that I'm having a party in front of others and I ended up with double the people that I had invited. So I doubled up on pain meds and I suffered through, and it was fine. Everyone had an ok time - even me, despite the headache. But I was angry. It was like my life isn't even about me. I had to have this party for others despite that I was sick. I don't have my partner to help set up and clean up. I don't have anyone to lean on. And I became furious. I'm not going to put others first anymore. I'm not inviting people or hosting out of a sense of obligation. I'm not doing things because other people think that I should. I'm not pretending to love my life because anything less makes others uncomfortable. I want to matter to someone the way that I mattered to Brian.  

I am so sad, and so lonely. I am so angry. I am so tired of living like this. I feel like I don't know how to relate to people anymore. I don't even know myself anymore. I don't know what I enjoy and don't enjoy. I don't know what I want. I don't know how to lighten up and enjoy the gift of life. I hate that this is who I have become. I hate what my life has become. I am so tired of hurting.

Grief doesn't go away. We learn to live with it, but we don't heal. I haven't healed. I have moved forward in time from those horrible days when I heard that he was dying and that there was nothing we could do. I have moved forward from the multiple surgeries, the sepsis, the chemo. I have moved forward from urinals, and drainage tubes, and vomit. I have left the sights and smells of death behind, but I have also left the joy of life behind. Grief is no longer raw, but it is as whole as it ever was. Others may have forgotten, but I never will. If there is beauty somewhere in my future, it will never erase the pain of my loss. I can't pretend to be who others want me to be because pain is too hard for them to deal with. I need to give myself permission to be fragile.

Comfortable

I went to the cemetery today to clean Brian's stone. I don't feel closer to him there. He isn't there. The ashes of his remains were put in the ground there. The stone means a lot to me. Long after I'm gone that stone should still be there as proof of his life. It will tell people who never knew him that he once lived, and that he mattered.

As I walked amongst the graves in our small cemetery, I saw memorials to people I knew and to people that I didn't. Many of them lived well into old age. Others didn't. Brian isn't the youngest to have been buried their. Not far from his is the grave of a baby. But in our small cemetery, Brian is one of the youngest to have died. He was diagnosed a month past his 48th birthday, and died three and a half months later.

And now, a few hours after leaving the cemetery, I am suddenly filled with rage. Why is he gone? Why didn't he have the opportunity to get old?

It is 9/11, and I feel guilty for my anger. All those who died 15 years were murdered. Their lives were taken through violence, not through a chance of bad luck. This guilt doesn't change my anger though. Knowing that it might have been worse doesn't make it easier. People comment on how much better I'm doing, and I want to scream! Of course I manage my grief better than I did during those early months. All that means is that I have gotten better at making you less uncomfortable with my grief. My life with grief will never be comfortable for me.

Tragedy

Shortly after Brian died, my dad said to me, "I've lived a long life, and when I die it won't be a tragedy. I know you'll be sad, but I've lived a good long life." It was one of the most sentimental living things he ever said to me. I know my dad loves me, but he's not one to say it, and that said it about as loud and clear as anything.

Now it's over three years later, and my parents are here visiting. They've aged a lot in three years, and have slowed down a lot, but I am so lucky that they are still in command of their bodies and minds and that they can still travel.

Sixteen years ago my dad lost a kidney to cancer. They caught it early, so after surgery no chemo or radiation was needed. Now, though, his kidney function is getting pretty low. When they are back home next week a surgeon will be creating a fistula so that they can start dialysis as soon as my dad begins to feel sick. To complicate things, it is most likely that he has cancer in the remaining kidney. It is relatively small and slow growing, but it is growing.

My dad is a real trooper and taking all of this in stride. He is not one to complain.

My dad is going to be 86, and aside from this little cancer/kidney situation, is in good health.

So tonight when I got home from work, we were relaxing and talking when he said, "this may be the last time I ever see you. When I die, I know you'll be sad, but it won't be tragic, I've lived a long good life." I felt the burn of tears well up, so I immediately said that I was going to visit them soon. We talked about when might be the best time.

I was fine until I closed my bedroom door and the tears started to flow. My dad's death won't be tragic. He is old and accomplished a lot in his life, but he's my dad. I'm a mushy gushy pansy. I cry; I hug; I tell people I love them. My dad and I are so different this way. And so, as much as I understand that my dad's death won't be tragic like Brian's was, I can't face this loss right now. I thought I could. I've always been sad that my dad and I don't have a sentimental father - daughter bond that I would have loved. I've always regretted my dad,I believe, doesn't really understand me and what makes me tick. It's been a strained relationship that has caused me a lot of angst, anger and guilt, but that we love each other was never a question.

So now I'm faced with a very real possibility that this could be our last visit together, and even though these visits are often stressful, my heart is completely broken. I am going to lose my dad some day sooner than later, and when that day comes, my Brian won't be here to hold me when I cry.