TWICE

[adventure]

Has anyone lost a partner twice? I am so shattered!! My husband of 20 years died in 2005 when he was 42 years old. He had a fall in the front yard causing a cerebral hemorrhage. He was an alcoholic and came out of his 4th rehab on Friday morning. Saturday night he had the fall while I was picking my son up from an evening movie. We came home and he was laying on the ground snoring. We put a blanket on him and thought he going to have to sleep it of. It turned out he was having agonal breathing. He was helivac to university of Pennsylvania hospital and pronounced dead. Such trauma for all of us. This was a devoted, loving, attentive father. He would give the shirt off his back if he heard of a need. The addiction to alcohol was bigger then he could control. And not from lack of trying. Many times I found him on his knees praying and crying for release. My guilt almost paralyzed me. I couldn't look at my children, 16, 18 and 20 at the time. I couldn't breath. I felt like Humpty Dumpty. I fell off the wall and there was no hope that this could be put back together. The year before he died was horrendously terrible as the drinking got more and more out of control. The mean angry words I said. I cried everyday for 8 months after he died.  I went to a church grief group. That helped a little but created more pain when they explained he would not be my husband in heaven. There is no marriage in heaven as we are all a bride to Christ. I was devasted. NO marriage? I loved being married to him. I hated what the alcohol did to "us" and took him away from me. But I wanted ONLY to be his wife. I felt even more and deeper despair. It was like losing all over again. I picked myself up and started to build something of a life. I received my acceptance letter in the school of nursing. Eventually I went on Match.com for some companionship. I met Tom on the site one year after my husband Tor died. I felt guilt that I was probably too soon, but we had such a connection that I continued to pursue a relationship. Tom was honest from the first time together and stated he was in recovery for 4 months. I should have run the other direction but again this connection was so strong. Two months later he was no longer sober, but he totally had my heart. I have since come across a saying that put into words what my heart felt, "The ones who love you will never leave you. Even if there are a hundred reasons to give up, they will find one reason to hold on." Tom told me many times he felt an unconditional love with me he had not had before. I had a dream I wanted to do with my husband but when he died, I assumed that dream died too. Tom wanted to pursue that dream when I shared it with him, so in 2010 I sold my house and we both got rid of almost all of our posessesions and bought a sailboat to live aboard cruise. Tom had an electrical engineering background and a deep deep passion for boating. His career was software development and he had his own small business. He only needed internet and phone connection and he could work anywhere. This afforded us the finances to cruise. I had gotten my nursing license giving me a career that could be transient if we needed or wanted to stay in a place for a longer time. He named out beloved sailboat Grace, saying it was the grace of God that we met and can do this adventure. We were out only a few months when we had a serious accident. The boat AND our relationship sustained and we decided to do repairs and continue to cruise. We went to Florida for the repairs and naively assumed we would be back to cruising in 4-6 months. That turned into 6 years. Tom's addictions continued and put both of us through much hurt and sorrow. His parents and my mother became ill. His parents passed in 2013, 6 months apart. My mother passed in December 2015 after a devastating stroke, suffering intensely from trigeminal neuralgia and 2 years in a horrific nursing home. January of this year we said this is the year we need to return to cruising. We made the list of upgrades Grace would need. I worked 60 hours a week to help bring in extra money for the upgrades and sailing kitty. We were both really happy to see our dream get life breathed back into it. I felt a real direction for the first time in awhile.... outside of working and occasional friend get togethers. I felt joy and real purpose of the two of us working on that distinct goal and seeing it become realized. We have another couple that we are friends with that had left in December. They were going through the Panama Canal in May. That was definitely on my bucket list to do with Grace. We had already started an upgrade by putting on new electric winches. Tom still needed to mount the motors. On May 24, I sold a property I had with my husband. At 3:30pm the funds were wired to my bank account. I was so happy to be free of that burden. Tom helped with the paperwork because I was working. When I came home at 8pm from work he was rinsing the motor off the classic boat he had taken out earlier. We settled for the night and talked about the logistics of the Key West sailing trip we were planning with his children and my youngest son. He texted his son. He had talked to his daughter earlier in the day. He received a surprise text from a close friend he hadn't heard from in awhile. I sat staring at the calendar with a sailboat in the blue blue water and kept thinking that's all I want to do is sail Grace with him. I said, do you really think we are going to get back out there? He said absolutely! What's going to stop us? I told him I have mostly bad luck. He said you sold the townhouse, you don't have bad luck. He said, "When can I marry you? I want to go on a big big honeymoon". We were waiting until I turn 60 so I don't lose the social security benefits from my husband as they are a bit substantial. We are together for 12 years at this point. He has relationships with my children and I have with his children. We have gone through so much of life together at this point. I never needed a person or paper to validate that I was forever to be with this man. I already signed on for better or worse and lived it with him.  It felt wonderful to hear that he wanted to be married....officially. He gave me a beautiful sapphire and diamond band in 2015. That was always my wedding ring. We went to bed at 11pm and put the news on. He fell asleep at 11:30. At 12:30am he woke up to go to the bathroom and collapsed in the doorway. I called 911 and started compressions. He was already grey. They could only get his rhythm in ventricular fibullation. He was taken to the hospital and I eventually made my way into the ER. I told them to stop. I knew when he left our home he was already gone. We talked often that we did want to live in a state that we couldn't be independent and enjoy life. The whole time I did compressions I kept crying "not again!!!! Not again!!!!" I lost my Love. I didn't think I could love again after my husband. It was brutal pulling myself up after he died the way he did. I worked diligently hard with and for Tom. I dared to dream about cruising and the work that goes into getting ready. The new toilet was delivered the day he died!! I lost my partner, my future (but already in my heart), husband and my dream of cruising. I have to sell our beloved Grace. That is going to rip me apart. I have to sell his vintage Glastron....he JUST repowered and enjoyed for 2 days. The other powerboat he did so much transom repairs to was finished two months after he died. He didn't have the opportunity to enjoy it. I just returned back to work. It's brutal. It takes a lot out of you nursing. I don't want to be a caregiver. But harder still is not hearing from him throughout my 12 hour work day. No after work phone call to see if I should pick up anything after work. He's not greeting me with, "Yeah, you're here!" when I walk through the door at home. Tears are my constant companion. He was my entire future outside of work. I was going to quit in July and we were leaving for the islands in November. Christmas in Bimini was the intended plan. His death brings up all the emotions from the many past ones. I have lost a brother when he was 8. When I was 22, my best friend died in a car accident along with 5 others, the entire homecoming court of her college. My sister was murdered and another sister died in a car accident with her 22month old son. My husband, my mother and now Tom. If the purpose of being on this earth is to learn, I'm done with school. I've picked myself up many many times after a loved one has died. This is a void. HE is my lifestyle. It's really almost wordless. The depth of despair, pain, loneliness. It's so painful it just can't be real. We couldn't have worked so so hard and much at our relationship and dream of cruising that it's gone in 1 minute. But it is. I cry for my life back but it's not coming back. Not the one I want. 

 

 

[KayC]

adventure,

I am sorry for all of your pain, your loss, the anguish inside of you.  Yes the Bible does say we are not given in marriage in heaven, maybe because there is no more need for possessiveness and jealousy, but we will remember each other and know each other and you will know you had something special here, you will still be of priceless value to each other, the relationship and love you built with each other continues.  All that has happened is his body has given out, it did not destroy your love.  Here on earth our government declares us no longer married, I remember when the social security office proclaimed that to me, I cried the long commute home, stopping at a friend's house to cry.  Why people feel the need to shove our face in it I don't know, it seems pretty insensitive to me!  We don't need to be told that.  We didn't choose for our marriage to end, we didn't want it to end, and if hanging on to each other would make any difference to the matter, George and I would surely be married throughout eternity!  We never wanted anything to end.  He is everything to me, is still.  My husband also died in 2005, on Father's Day, June 19.

I have seen others who have been through this twice.  I would not shy from it out of fear, I would not want fear to stop me from having anything good in life, but honestly, I meet no one even close to being like my George, not in how we communicated, not in how we clicked, not in his zest for life, or his wonderful personality, not in how he cherished me,not in how we lived and loved.  And I don't want to settle.  To me the deciding factor would be if I couldn't see my life without them, for that I definitely felt with my George...I haven't met anyone else I felt I couldn't live without...anyone else I've been with in my life was definitely settling, compromising, and didn't end in anything worthwhile, so I've learned from this wonderful man, what a great relationship was like.  it's not about ruling out the possibility, more that I haven't seen anything worth having...of course if I wanted to meet someone, I suppose I'd have to date. 

19 hours ago, adventure said:

The ones who love you will never leave you.

I think that is true, even in death.  I am sorry you weren't able to have Tom longer.  Life can be so damned unfair.  I hope you don't have to lose the benefits you would have had at 60.  You are younger than I was when I lost my husband in 2005...we didn't meet until our 40s, he'd just turned 51 when he died.  Way too soon.  I thought we'd grow old together, we bought the porch swing...now it sits empty.

My heart goes out to you in your grief.  They say life is what happens when we're busy making plans, I think that's true.  It's all the little days in between.  Too bad we spend so much of it working.