Multiple Deaths- How Much Can One Take.

[Glolilly]

Most here know that I lost my 57 year old husband suddenly and expectedly around January 2018. But did you know, to be honest I have lost multiple deaths in a short time. Within 8 years! I have lost my 93 year old father, 2 months later my 53 year old brother in the same house unexpectedly from an asthma attack during the night.  A few months later, an older brother-in-law, a year later, my father- in-law, a year later, another father-in-law, 2 years later my mother -in-law, 2 years  later, my husband and 7 months later my youngest closest brother-in-law. I have my 81 year old mother still living in another state with my youngest brother. As I awoke this morning, I found myself wondering, how much pain can one take? How can a person survive so much heartache? Does each coexist or or is it accumulating  with each passing person? Some people I see in passing, seem more resilient than others, while a few seem to collapse under the weight. The mind, the emotions are so hard to control. Some deaths can be easily accepted while others are a  real-real struggle to come to grips with. Your thoughts please.

[KayC]

Oh Glolilly, my heart hurts for you...I too have have multiple losses, I guess I haven't really thought of it that way as I try to deal with each as it comes, but it's true.  After my husband passed, I lost all of our animals, even my granddoggy, several close friends, including one that shared the same name as me, our daughters were Melissa Kay and Mandy Kay and were best friends before they moved clear across the state.  I'd always hoped once we reached retirement we could spend time together, I miss Kay so much...but alas cancer took her within a couple of weeks of diagnosis.   I went through my mom's dementia journey, ending in her death four years ago.  Ten months ago I lost my oldest sister, she was quadriplegic, she'd lived like that for fifty years, my mom and I used to take care of her.  Then my second-oldest sister fell and crushed her vertebrae and I was so terrified I'd lose her too...she was also diagnosed with dementia.  It's been a horrible year, praying for Peggy and hoping against hope...at one point she was suicidal because of the pain.  I had to fight with the hospital to do her surgery as they tried to cancel the night before.  We made it through that and rehab, it's been day by day in these ensuing months.  Then as of late, my close friend, Jim...I nearly lost him to CHF and A-Fib this week...his third time in the hospital lately and he was literally at death's door.  The battle is not over yet.

Sometimes you wonder how much more you can take.  I posted on my other forum in anticipatory grief, I feel like I'm losing everyone close to me.  It truly is a battle to keep my outlook healthy, to have a semi-decent mindset and continue.  I've had to employ everything I've ever learned, draw on that strength and knowledge.  If you have a prayer group, draw from them, I have everyone I know praying, it has helped...it also helps having others you are close to, friends with, we need their support.  We can't do this alone.

You have had deaths so close together...I hope you and your sister can draw strength from each other, I know it doesn't always work like that but I'm hoping in your case it does.  Who can be closer than two sisters who are also friends?

Keep pouring your heart out, it helps to express yourself, we never know when someone might respond just the thing we need to hear, but I do think there's solace in sharing too.

I may have given you this before, note there's links to other articles at the bottom too:
http://www.griefhealingblog.com/2016/04/in-grief-coping-with-multiple-losses.html
 

In this article it talks about someone who lost his family in an accident in which he was driving.  I had a pastor friend who also suffered such a loss, his wife and baby daughters.  I do know he's made it through that horrible extensive loss, God has given him another family, a wife and sons this time, almost as if God already knew there was no replacing his baby girls so gave him something quite different!  His name is Jerry also.  I remember him sharing his story, he'd cried out, "Why me!!!"  and all of a sudden the thought came to him, "Why NOT me?!"  You see, none of us is immune to loss.  None of us above suffering it.  It comes to us unbidden, it changes our lives forever, changes who we are, even how we deal with things.  We learn eventually to adjust, to accept what seems unthinkable, we do it one day at a time and the adjusting is so imperceptible as to seemingly not even notice it when it's taking place.  As an old friend, Darrel (olemisfit), used to say here "One foot in front of the other."  I don't know any other way...one day at a time.

(((hugs dear friend)))

 

[floyd11554]

I'm so sorry to hear about this horrendous stretch of time for you.  Life can be so cruel when it takes so much of what makes us whole and brings us joy.  I know how you feel.  I lost my mother at 31, my father at 36, and the love of my life at 37.   My mother was a shock and tore me apart, my father was more expected and while it didn't make it any easier it gave us all more time to process the grief beforehand and almost come to a peace with it.  My girlfriend, well shock isn't a big enough word for that one as it came so out of nowhere it will forever haunt me every day I wake up.  The only thing that keeps me going is to try and live with strength that all three gave me when they were alive.  To try and live for them and imagine them still here with me.   I know they all would want nothing but happiness for me so that gives me some strength on those days that are harder than others.  

[Glolilly]

Hello Floyd11554, I see you lost your girlfriend a day before I lost my husband. Even though it's been a year, it feels shorter than a year. It feels that time went on by without me. I am so sorry for all your losses as well. Wow you really explain the difference of shock with unexpected loss and expected loss. I think the unexpected is so ground shaking imo. My father (age 93) was expected he was on hospice care. My closest persons besides him were shocking, my brother (age 53) and my husband (57). P.S. So my two sons lost their father at ages 22 and 24. I knew my youngest brother-in-law (53) was chronically ill but we still expected him live a few years longer, so it was another shock. I've been a nurse for over 30 years and saw death a lot and had to remain calmed. But life can take a toll as we try to remain strong and continue to work without hardly a break. Yes, I try to draw strength from my losses as well in what they stood for. Yes this grief can have good and sad days but we must keep putting a foot in front of each other.

[floyd11554]

1 hour ago, Glolilly said:

Hello Floyd11554, I see you lost your girlfriend a day before I lost my husband. Even though it's been a year, it feels shorter than a year. It feels that time went on by without me. I am so sorry for all your losses as well. Wow you really explain the difference of shock with unexpected loss and expected loss. I think the unexpected is so ground shaking imo. My father (age 93) was expected he was on hospice care. My closest persons besides him were shocking, my brother (age 53) and my husband (57). P.S. So my two sons lost their father at ages 22 and 24. I knew my youngest brother-in-law (53) was chronically ill but we still expected him live a few years longer, so it was another shock. I've been a nurse for over 30 years and saw death a lot and had to remain calmed. But life can take a toll as we try to remain strong and continue to work without hardly a break. Yes, I try to draw strength from my losses as well in what they stood for. Yes this grief can have good and sad days but we must keep putting a foot in front of each other.

I didn't even realize when I made my post that they were a day apart.   What a way to start the year it was for us.  I was never more happy to rid myself of a year than this past one.  You are completely on the money about feeling time going on without you.  Everyone else around you, there life keeps on moving but it feels like ours just get put on hold, like your an old VHS tape stuck in a VCR on the pause position.   

I can only imagine how hard it must have been to remain calm in your line of work.  It is hard enough to grieve in any sense let alone when you are surrounded by people who may be going thru the same pain and you have to be strong for them as well as yourself.  Did you find yourself desensitized at all to it having had to bear witness to so much loss not only in your personal life but most likely cause of your profession as well?  

[Glolilly]

Hello, I was glad to say goodbye to this past year too, but it was hard. Yes, it's strange how the mind is numbed and in a thick thick fog. Yes my role as a nurse caused me to put my emotions on the back seat. Even when my father died I had to tell myself mentally that I had take business steps to follow on procedures and feel emotions later. Yes my profession still is at work causing me to act strong and as a good soldier. But then I know I need to grieve and release it so I do this on my off days.

[Pmarie]

2018 was a horrible year. It began with the loss of my “cat of a lifetime” in 2017 and then my daughter losing her best friend (who was only 28-years-old) to death. I am actually still in the process of healing from my mother’s death in 2013, which was the worse loss of my life. Just when I was starting to feel stabilized again I lost a very close “sister-friend” of many years to cancer. Two weeks later I received news that my life partner was in the hospital and he passed away in December. I am devastated beyond words and it feels just like half my reality is gone.

[KayC]

Pmarie,

I'm so sorry, that is an awful lot on your plate at one time.  I understand your feeling so much loss from your "cat of a lifetime", I've been lucky to have some good ones, but my last one I lost June 3, 2016 and I miss her still, I slept with her every night.  I still have one but she is the complete opposite of her sister, absolutely nothing like her.  I lost my mom in 2014, although expected and it needed to be, she was in her 90s and had dementia, but knowing death is welcome doesn't make it any easier to accept sometimes.  I still want to call her, take her out to eat.  And I lost my oldest sister in March.  One of my best friends of nearly 40 years a couple of years ago to cancer, a shock, no time to go see her or prepare for her death, she went so fast.  I've had much more time to get used to my husband's death, time is the one thing that seems to continue.   But at the time, it was a huge unexpected shock and it took me years to learn how to make my way through this, it has been a learning experience, kind of like trial and error, what helps, what doesn't.  

I wish no one would ever have to go through this.  Someone wrote in another thread they wish everyone would experience this, I understand what they're saying though, because without that, you can't possibly know.  I don't think any of us wish it on them, just would like some better and more appropriate response, some sensitivity, you know?

[Pmarie]

Yes, I do know. I’m so sensitive to what I perceive as inappropriate remarks right now, even though I know that the people saying them actually mean well. I’ve sort of just shut myself up inside the house with my pets. I felt surprised that you’ve also lost as many people as I have, and I’m so sorry  ... My deepest condolences to you, I know what so many layers of grief can do. And the type of relationships We both lost are very similar. The sister-friend I lost to cancer last year was my close and very faithful friend of 35 years. Irreplaceable. My mother, although elderly, was my rock and best friend. I still haven’t gotten over her loss. That death shook me to my very core. I also  lost another beloved romantic partner of 12 years before losing my second one. These two men were the only ones in my whole life who ever really meant something to me and who made me feel loved or wanted. My “real” ex-husband is still alive, but was only a fantasy. Now I feel old and alone, without a future. Not that I even care about a future anymore. This is what multiple loss does, it’s scary, and has made me afraid to ever love another partner (the very last thing on my mind). This is an excellent website, I wish they had a category for multiple losses. I feel like most of my reality has just disappeared into thin air. I’m walking in a parallel universe without them.

[Moment2moment]

2 hours ago, Pmarie said:

Yes, I do know. I’m so sensitive to what I perceive as inappropriate remarks right now, even though I know that the people saying them actually mean well. I’ve sort of just shut myself up inside the house with my pets. I felt surprised that you’ve also lost as many people as I have, and I’m so sorry  ... My deepest condolences to you, I know what so many layers of grief can do. And the type of relationships We both lost are very similar. The sister-friend I lost to cancer last year was my close and very faithful friend of 35 years. Irreplaceable. My mother, although elderly, was my rock and best friend. I still haven’t gotten over her loss. That death shook me to my very core. I also  lost another beloved romantic partner of 12 years before losing my second one. These two men were the only ones in my whole life who ever really meant something to me and who made me feel loved or wanted. My “real” ex-husband is still alive, but was only a fantasy. Now I feel old and alone, without a future. Not that I even care about a future anymore. This is what multiple loss does, it’s scary, and has made me afraid to ever love another partner (the very last thing on my mind). This is an excellent website, I wish they had a category for multiple losses. I feel like most of my reality has just disappeared into thin air. I’m walking in a parallel universe without them.

I certainly can relate. Since 2005 both I and my partner experienced a "domino effect" of losses: jobs, financial, her health, her mother, all my aunts and uncles, multiple dogs (8 since 2011), our home (twice).

We were plunged into poverty during the recession and never made it out. She had multiple strokes late in 2015 and the cruel, horrifying down hill slide of her health ensued and ended in hospice last May. 

During all this I worked, was laid off, couldn't get hired anywhere, and then was forced to take SS at age 62 to bring in income and keep a roof and food. This was 2017. 

After her death I watched one of our beloved dogs die of cancer over the summer. 5 months to the day from diagnosis. Lost 2 other dogs also this summer and was left with only me and one of our dogs, our "children".

My beloved (28 years together), 8 dogs, multiple jobs for both, our home, everything that had come to define our life.

Sold all belongings that I could on Ebay, pawned family heirlooms, lost everything trying to survive.

Without my faith in God I too would be dead. I have gone through her death alone as well as the loss of our dogs right after.

I found this verse and it has meant a lot to me:

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." (Psalm 34:18)

"Crushed in spirit" pretty much describes how I felt. That was in October when I found this verse carved on a rock at a harvest festival artisans booth.

I am doing so much better now but it comes and goes, this feeling of being crushed. Crushed in every way.

Before it was constant and I thought that I too was going to die. I do feel more hope for a future, but what it is seems vague.

I just cling to my verse and ask God for strength and courage when the darkness of grief threatens to consume me.

It has gotten me out of some rough patches.

I am so sorry for your losses. Just know that your sharing your story is touching someone's heart and helping them to heal, giving them consolation.

I too feel like "half my reality is gone" and for the life of me I have no idea how to get it back.

[KayC]

It was Father's Day 2005 I lost my husband and months later lost my favorite job...I spent six months looking for work, it was the beginning of the recession.  I was afraid I'd lose my place but barely hung onto it.  It may need painting and new flooring, but at least I've hung onto it.  I hear you, I did my fair share of selling on eBay too, when in between jobs...I lost my job three times during the recession.  The last time I hung it up, retired, I used up my savings until it was gone and then filed Soc Sec, trying to minimize the penalty, I made it four years and filed when I turned 65 so only got one year penalty.  It was hard, the first week after losing my job that last time, I found out I needed a new roof.  And then the contractor went to prison, taking my warranty with him.

That verse has also meant a lot to me. I like reading in Psalms and Isaiah, they seem to speak to me.  

[Pmarie]

Moment2Moment, So sorry for all those great losses and hardship. Losing a pet can be devastating, too, and hurts even more when most of society doesn’t really acknowledge it or sees it as silly. The first loss in my string ok losses last year was my favorite cat and I’ll never forget him. All of the wonderful pets I’ve lost since childhood have left their footprints on my heart and I still think of each one now and then. Love is love. Period.

[KayC]

I just got the news this morning that another friend passed away...her husband died just a few months ago, they'd been married 72 years, married as young teenagers.  I never thought of her as that old, and I didn't expect her to pass, she just went into the hospital yesterday with a staph infection following a procedure she'd had done earlier, so likely acquired at the original hospital.  but personally, I think she died of a broken heart, she never thrived after her husband passed.  In a way, I envy her, but I feel sorry for her kids, losing them so close.  They were wonderful people.

[Sunflower2]

@Moment2moment a beautiful share how you found comfort. Thank you! 

@Glolilly

Multiple losses within a 10 month timeframe.  That is why processing grief is important. Had my  previous losses over the years not been worked through I would have had a major ripple effect.  Never dismiss the intensity of back to back losses. 

On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 11:47 PM, Moment2moment said:

I do feel more hope for a future, but what it is seems vague.

Heathy and beautiful!

Just sharing that you have hope is supportive to all of us.  We inch forward. I have hope yet any future is so vague and unknown. Still  I inch forward. Processing our grief is inching forward.   Looking at the future is not helpful for me even now.  I'm open to observe and feel things out but I'm in no place yet to make any major decisions or plans.  I believe and have hope that I will know when that moment arrives. 

A thought.   A dear friend shared during a time shortly after my loss when I was questioning. 

3 ways God answers prayers.

1. Yes!

2. Not yet.....

3. Dear one, I have something even better planned for you

 

again thoughts and prayers are with you!

[Laney]

Glolilly:  I'm so sorry for your losses.  The title of your post really hit home for me.  I lost my mom about 15 years ago, then a few years ago I lost my dad and only sibling (sister) within 60 days of each other.  Then in June 2018 I lost my husband, the love of my life, my everything.  We did not have children, so I find myself alone except for some extended family and friends.  I feel like I've had to endure so much grief it's just hard to believe.  I was part of such a wonderful family and now they are all gone.  Grief counseling has helped some, but self pity does creep in.  Talking to others that understand helps too. 

Wishing everyone healing...

[Pmarie]

On 1/24/2019 at 8:09 PM, Laney said:

Glolilly:  I'm so sorry for your losses.  The title of your post really hit home for me.  I lost my mom about 15 years ago, then a few years ago I lost my dad and only sibling (sister) within 60 days of each other.  Then in June 2018 I lost my husband, the love of my life, my everything.  We did not have children, so I find myself alone except for some extended family and friends.  I feel like I've had to endure so much grief it's just hard to believe.  I was part of such a wonderful family and now they are all gone.  Grief counseling has helped some, but self pity does creep in.  Talking to others that understand helps too. 

Wishing everyone healing...

Multiple losses are so hard. I was lucky enough to not have any close deaths for almost two decades, then they all hit at once, about 5, one after one. All those people were absolutely vital to my life and I presently feel like I’m only enduring half a reality. It’s very surreal, losing that sense of reality. Losing even one person can make us feel so alone in this world. I’m living without their healing love, except in memory. I think that’s why I wouldn’t call our experience as self-pity, although sometimes when I hear myself talk, it sounds self-pitying. But we are sad over what our loved ones lost, their dreams and their entire future ended, even the sad ways they died. You have every right to grieve. My deepest condolences to you.

[foreverhis]

@Glolilly  Sometimes I do wonder how much more my heart can handle.  2018 was by far the worst year of my life.  Losing my love to cancer was the worst possible thing.  Then 6 weeks later his favorite uncle (only 10 years older) died of cancer he had been fighting.  Just 8 weeks after that our daughter had pneumonia so bad I thought I might have to go take care of our granddaughter, who was then diagnosed with Noro virus (along with half her school) on her 10th birthday.  Then a week after we got under control, my husband's sister, who we're very close to and who is also in her 70s, was almost killed in an accident.  She's just now home from rehab and has months of recovery ahead of her.

(This may seem blasphemous to some, but it's how I feel, so I really don't care.)  Someday, when I get there--assuming I get there and am reunited with my love--God's "got some 'splaining to do"!   Only give us as much as we can handle?  Yeah, how about seeing if someone else can "handle" stuff for a while?  And I don't even care about that so much for myself.  I care about my husband, the most honest, kindest, intelligent, funny, generous imperfect man I've ever known.  He had multiple challenges in his life and he did not deserve them.  Somebody up there better have a good explanation for me.

But my heart is and will remain shattered by the one and only loss that I can't see beyond.  All the others I could have managed if he was here with me so we could handle them together as we have done for more than 3 decades.