Greiving over loss of my wife

[Jerry]

Five weeks since she passed after almost two-year battle with lung cancer. Married for almost 54 years and I adored her. She was my lover, my best friend, my counselor and my partner. She was intelligent, charismatic, spiritual, charitable and very beautiful. The emptiness and loneliness is sometimes unbearable. Dealing still with details of her death and estate that remind me continuously of her passing  I’m crying even as I type this. 

I thought I would try this forum in addition to the professional help I’m getting and local support groups. My grown children have been great in trying to console me but I realize this will never go away  The only consolation I have is that we did everything that could be done to try to cure her but I carry the guilt in perhaps not catching the disease earlier somehow. This was her third primary cancer, the others being cured years ago. Perhaps there was something in her genetic makeup or some environmental insult to her body that caused this.

A priest told me that I was her protector and by her dieing first I spared her the pain of survivorship. I get slight comfort in that  

 

[Sunflower2]

Jerry you are in a very painful place.  So raw and fresh!!!  Keep reaching out!  we each find ways to move through our grief.  I continue to work with a therapist where my deepest grief is shared with another being.  Its intense but it is good.  Create a grief "toolbox" of things that can support you even if it is for a moment. A tool may be highly effective one moment and useless the next.  Your tools are your creation. A massage.  Mindless reruns on TV. A walk. A carry out. A prayer. A salt float. Journal writing. journals can be simple. writing just phrases or words that you are feeling may be just enough. jot down ideas for your grief helping tools when you have that moment of focus or determination to survive. we survive even with our loss! 

you are in our thoughts.

[Michelene]

1 hour ago, Jerry said:

A priest told me that I was her protector and by her dieing first I spared her the pain of survivorship

I think about this sometimes, too.  I am so unhappy, but would I want my husband to feel this? I am still struggling with all the paperwork my job, etc. It all seems hollow, and yet must be done...but seems like there's no greater good for it. We supported each other...I feel like a hollow shell, would I wish this on my husband? no. But still I'd rather have him here with me...

[Lost6263]

9 hours ago, Jerry said:

The only consolation I have is that we did everything that could be done to try to cure her but I carry the guilt in perhaps not catching the disease earlier somehow. This was her third primary cancer, the others being cured years ago. Perhaps there was something in her genetic makeup or some environmental insult to her body that caused this.

You did all you could and I'm sure she is thankful for that. Guilt is part of the grieving process. It's been 6 months and I still think of the what if this or thats. Sadly none of that changes the fact that our loved one is gone and that we miss them every second of every day. I believe we will see them again.

[Sunflower2]

7 hours ago, Lost6263 said:

You did all you could and I'm sure she is thankful for that. Guilt is part of the grieving process. It's been 6 months and I still think of the what if this or thats. Sadly none of that changes the fact that our loved one is gone and that we miss them every second of every day. I believe we will see them again.

I just went through the regret feelings this morning,,,,again! Not as frequent as I experienced initially but the regrets still surface and create tears and heart break.  I feel in time once  I can find  the beginning of acceptance and realize the regrets are not reality I will have some peace and calm.  Peace and calm coming from the releasing of the regrets.  Once I walk through that pain I acknowledge what you stated "Sadly none of that changes the fact that our love on is gone and we miss them every second of the day."  September 24th will be my 1 year anniversary date.  It seems so long ago yet not so long ago.  When I think of that year...a year of my life in such deep pain and grief while others are living their life as usual. Yes there is a thread of anger with that.  I realize its natural and it isn't consuming but there are those moments of anger.

[KayC]

18 hours ago, Jerry said:

Five weeks since she passed after almost two-year battle with lung cancer. Married for almost 54 years and I adored her. She was my lover, my best friend, my counselor and my partner. She was intelligent, charismatic, spiritual, charitable and very beautiful. The emptiness and loneliness is sometimes unbearable. Dealing still with details of her death and estate that remind me continuously of her passing  I’m crying even as I type this. 

I thought I would try this forum in addition to the professional help I’m getting and local support groups. My grown children have been great in trying to console me but I realize this will never go away  The only consolation I have is that we did everything that could be done to try to cure her but I carry the guilt in perhaps not catching the disease earlier somehow. This was her third primary cancer, the others being cured years ago. Perhaps there was something in her genetic makeup or some environmental insult to her body that caused this.

A priest told me that I was her protector and by her dieing first I spared her the pain of survivorship. I get slight comfort in that  

 

Jerry,

Welcome to this site.  It helps greatly to be here, where others "get it" and hear your pain and understand.  You've had one of the longest marriages...you lived your lifetime together.  I was struck by your description of her, how you called her beautiful, your best friend, everything to you.  Your love is evident in the words you share.

I am so sorry, words are so inadequate when facing loss of this magnitude.  My husband was also my best friend, my lover, my everything.  I loved his smell, his voice, the way I felt when he held me.  Those memories I cherish still...it's been 13 years for me.  

Guilt seems to be part of grief.  Most of us experience it.  It's as if we go through all of the what ifs in an effort to find some other kind of ending...but the truth is there is no ending but the one we have.  We don't earn or deserve that guilt and it serves no purpose to us.  We learn to let it go eventually although to some extent it can still creep up upon us now and then.  
https://www.griefhealingblog.com/2012/12/grief-and-burden-of-guilt.html 

I'm sure you, like all of us here, would have done anything you could for her.  Perhaps you thought because she'd made it through the first two cancers she's make it through this too...that is our thought process, we'd weathered everything together.  My husband died suddenly, it caught me totally off guard, I was blindsided, shocked.  Regardless of how we lose them we are left grappling with that loss and what it means to our lives.

I, too, find comfort in that my husband didn't have to go through this, being the one left and going through all of those struggles.  I would not have wished it on him for anything.  If this is what I must bear to spare him that, so be it.  I'd rather we have gone together, but that wasn't a choice that belonged to me, I guess.

 

[Jerry]

Thank you for your comments and especially to you JayC for attaching the site on dealing with guilt. I think of the several times over the past few years when my wife had a persistent cough that was attributed to a cold or something and usually went away with cough medicine. Even her physician dismissed the cough many months prior to the cancer diagnosis. I’m not sure whether that would have made any difference and I asked experts about that subsequently. But I still feel like I let her down. She so wanted to live to see her granddaughter grow up and to do  other charitable works.  I will try to do the things she would have done in her honor but I am no match for the compassion and love she had for others. 

JayC, you said it has been 12 years for you and it is still so painful? God, I hope I’m gone long before that. 

[KayC]

It's KayC, and it's been 13 years...I wouldn't call it painful, but I do still miss him, that part never stops.  I love him even more if possible.  I think my appreciation has grown even more.  

You can't be expected to know what even her doctor didn't!  That's why we have doctors!  THEY went to medical school, we did not.  But you know this rationally, still it's our heart that feels what it feels.  Guilt with grief is a feeling and knows no rationale.  Still, I've learned to put up the hand when guilt comes and tell it to go packing...there is nothing in the world I wouldn't have done for my George, he knows it and I know it, that's just how we were with each other.  Guilt doesn't belong in our relationship, love doesn't leave it room.

[Nicole-my grief journey]

On 8/14/2018 at 3:32 PM, Jerry said:

Five weeks since she passed after almost two-year battle with lung cancer. Married for almost 54 years and I adored her. She was my lover, my best friend, my counselor and my partner. She was intelligent, charismatic, spiritual, charitable and very beautiful. The emptiness and loneliness is sometimes unbearable. Dealing still with details of her death and estate that remind me continuously of her passing  I’m crying even as I type this. 

I thought I would try this forum in addition to the professional help I’m getting and local support groups. My grown children have been great in trying to console me but I realize this will never go away  The only consolation I have is that we did everything that could be done to try to cure her but I carry the guilt in perhaps not catching the disease earlier somehow. This was her third primary cancer, the others being cured years ago. Perhaps there was something in her genetic makeup or some environmental insult to her body that caused this.

A priest told me that I was her protector and by her dieing first I spared her the pain of survivorship. I get slight comfort in that  

 

Jerry,

She sounds like a beautiful soul. I love that you expressed how you feel and wrote qualities you love about her. My heart is with you and breaks for you. I know my father feels so much of what you wrote about your wife and about my mother. EVERYTHING is a constant reminder. We have yet to do some of the estate stuff that we should be doing because it feels like too much. My dad is hurting from people that keep asking “How are you?”. He’s expressed that it bothers him so much because he feels like “How do you think I’m doing?!”. We both know that it’s a common greeting, yet it is just so painful because if he’s actually able to focus on something like cutting the grass or eating (and not be crying in that moment), the calls and messages pop up and it brings him right back to the trauma and he’s bawling his eyes out again. This happens to me when people talk at me to fast, or ride straight over the fact that I lost her. 

And I too feel that the loneliness and emptiness feels unbearable for me and him about my mom. Many times a day I go over in my head, could it have been different, why didn’t the cancer get found sooner, why wasn’t her oncologist more forth coming, the surgeons, the nurses...I asked for more information and testing every single day and read all the labs and advocated and fought for her to have the right treatments, help and procedures and it still wasn’t enough. I hands on participated every day in her wound care, PT and diet to make sure it was happening the right way. She was diagnosed with metastic colon cancer, spread to the liver, retroperitoneal area and lungs. Once her primary tumor in the colon ruptured and had to be taken out (she had two Ileostomy’s done im a week!), the cancer attacked her liver site with full force (but all the while, they told me her liver was functioning fine). They never mentioned that sometimes once a primary is gone, the secondary site get attacked quickly. A CT scan the day before she died showed what it did to her liver. I was overtaken by what I saw. It was unbelievable and the fact that the were nonchalant blew my mind. I begged for that CT scan for weeks before this to know if we were going at 30mph, 60mph, or 90mph to know if she should be in hospice, or at home, so that she wouldn’t pass away in the hospital. I literally said tobthe entire staff to please be transparent because I didn’t want that place to be her last stop. They didn’t do it until right before she died and we weren’t able to get her home. I do sometimes find it a consolation that we DID everything that we could do as a family to fight for her...and god bless her, she wanted to live and it broke me knowing she wouldn’t. It broke me knowing she didn’t understand it. I’m thanking god that we had the instinct to stay with her round the clock (even though she was in the hospital). Because we were all there to hold her, love her, comfort her and pray over her when she was taking her last breaths. I hope it will eventually bring me comfort, but right now...it doesn’t. Still so fresh and trying to process it all because  it happened so fast. I look aroumd at all the beauty she created, recognize how much she loved and gave to all of us. How selfless, patient and pure of heart she was. My brain keeps me thinking she walk through the door at any moment, that I’ll hear her voice, and I yearn for her hugs and talking to her. (Sigh)...sending you prayers. I like what the priest said to you and believe that’s true. Painful, but true. You were her comfort, champion, protector, best friend, soulmate and so much more. 

Hugs,

Nicole