Living in the Twilight Zone...

[John/Wendy]

Even after 5 months, my mind can’t wrap any of this up and file it , so I can feel normal or sleep. I used to love dreaming and waking up next to an Angel. Now it’s just small pass out moments stitched together with “insane dreams”. Or dreams where I see her, and either wake up suddenly or tell myself we’ve found a cure. Or...at least I have one more day to make her happy. But then... The Twilight Zone. None of this feels real. Time doesn’t even feel real. It all happened so fast. How can something you cherished and worked your whole life for be taken so quickly? I feel blessed that I lived a love story for 31 years. But this level of “reality pulled out from under us”?? How can it ever make sense? If I hear one more ... “ how are you doing?” Or “ you look good”. I’m going to scream!! I’m struggling just to make one day to the next for my kids and grandkids. I feel like even they know I don’t want to be here anymore. The brain fog is becoming more of a permanent haze, where I can’t carry on a conversation or follow through with a thought. I guess this is where “crazy old men” are created. I now know where all the lost souls you see in insane asylums or walking down the steet talking to themselves come from. I’m not making light of any of those with conditions or who find themselves in those positions. I just feel like anyone who goes through grief has the potential to go into the “looking glass” and not come out. I’m fighting this to the end, but living in this Twilight Zone is getting old!

[JBSC01]

2 hours ago, John/Wendy said:

Even after 5 months, my mind can’t wrap any of this up and file it , so I can feel normal or sleep. I used to love dreaming and waking up next to an Angel. Now it’s just small pass out moments stitched together with “insane dreams”. Or dreams where I see her, and either wake up suddenly or tell myself we’ve found a cure. Or...at least I have one more day to make her happy. But then... The Twilight Zone. None of this feels real. Time doesn’t even feel real. It all happened so fast. How can something you cherished and worked your whole life for be taken so quickly? I feel blessed that I lived a love story for 31 years. But this level of “reality pulled out from under us”?? How can it ever make sense? If I hear one more ... “ how are you doing?” Or “ you look good”. I’m going to scream!! I’m struggling just to make one day to the next for my kids and grandkids. I feel like even they know I don’t want to be here anymore. The brain fog is becoming more of a permanent haze, where I can’t carry on a conversation or follow through with a thought. I guess this is where “crazy old men” are created. I now know where all the lost souls you see in insane asylums or walking down the steet talking to themselves come from. I’m not making light of any of those with conditions or who find themselves in those positions. I just feel like anyone who goes through grief has the potential to go into the “looking glass” and not come out. I’m fighting this to the end, but living in this Twilight Zone is getting old!

I truly understand and feel all of what youre saying all too well. Its been a year for me and although you do start to get "used to it" and function better with time its still a unreal nightmare.  I often say also, that i feel like a zombie living in the twilight zone trapped in hell but yet its not a dream. Just carry her with you like we all have to do, live for the both of you and make it to the finish line hopefully to be reunited in whatevers next. 

[ccoflove]

6 hours ago, John/Wendy said:

I now know where all the lost souls you see in insane asylums or walking down the steet talking to themselves come from. I’m not making light of any of those with conditions or who find themselves in those positions. I just feel like anyone who goes through grief has the potential to go into the “looking glass” and not come out.

i felt like i was going crazy this weekend. I couldnt stop crying, spending too much time alone with my thoughts. I felt like i needed to be checked into a mental ward, how much can you take before you break? Thankfully i go back to work today, that helps me keep it together. There i get the question of how are you all day from people who dont know. Im FINE, feelings inside not expressed. 

"Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken." - CS Lewis

[Moment2moment]

This thread emerged right out of my brain this morning. It is exactly how I experience reality. I have also called it "bizzaro world". I feel like I am frozen in time zones and leap from one to the other. The time when we were happy and younger, the time when she developed health problems, the rehab years, the rapid decline time, the hospice months, the 3 days she began to die, the summer of shock, the months of holidays and birthdays and our anniversary, and now the months leading up to her death date, May 6.

I leap from one to the other mentally and cannot read a book, follow a movie, plan a life without her. I fumble and stumble and grumble, finding moments of solace and distraction here and there but none lasting.

I am heading toward a cliff a week from now and dreading the immersion in memories that can never heal.

My heart has permanent cracks and my true identity is lost amid the waves of sad change that can never find a shore line.

Yes, I truly understand and am oh so sorry for all of us who wander in the Twilight Zone of grief.

Love and stay strong-one moment at a time.

Lily Bell

[KayC]

John,

Twilight Zone is an apt way to describe it.  The unthinkable is so hard to wrap your head around, so hard to process, it's hard to get it's reality into us, to change what was into what is now, it takes longer than any of us could anticipate.  The more entwined our lives, the deeper our love, the harder to grasp it it seems.  the night times were the worst for me.  Eventually we do process and hone our coping skills and begin to adjust but never ever is it the same.  I wish none of us were going through this, but happily back with the one we love in our arms, finding this was all a bad dream and not our alternate reality.

[Billie Rae]

It is the twilight zone.I don't feel"myself"anymore I feel fake,like I'm not really here maybe I'm in a nightmare or floating under water.I keep thinking I'll wake up and find it was all a dream.
Had to change our insurance today and I cried when I removed his name,cried so hard the agent had to wait for it to stop.
I don't remember a lot of my days.
John,you are right,I see how easy it would be to fall over that edge to total madness and wander around looking for him.
I met a woman in California who in the heat was wearing 3 jackets and unwashed she was homeless,the guy at the truck stop said she was actually a wealthy woman and had lost her mind when her husband was killed in a car accident.The jackets were his.
I get it

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Grieving.com mobile app

[John/Wendy]

Yep. I feel for all of us. No one tells you about this possibility in life. It is the most shunned subject I can think of in our culture. Even religious people shield themselves from it. No one taught a class in school, no one warned us about an unhappy ending. Except songs. All the songs about lost love, I hear them all the time now. Just another thing to haunt me. I still, after 5 months haven’t touched any of my wife’s things. I still can’t bare the thought of “packing up” or “donating”, “ HER THINGS”! I know it’s just my mind thinking she may come back. How sad is that. The only thing keeping me alive is the thoughts of promising my wife I would stay for our kids. I just had no idea the hell I had condemned myself to with that promise. It feels like my heart is being torn in two every day. Wanting so much to be where ever she is and wanting to help my kids. Everything in between is just  Twilight Zone. 

[JES]

@John/Wendy  I so understand what you are going through.  I lately feel I am stuck in a time warp,  between the past and the future..unable to move.  I try to be positive,  I manage to do what needs to get done, or spend time with family, friends,  etc.  but I feel I just go through the motions.  My days are better...  I call them good days because Im able to function but just feel emotionless lately.  I want to feel excited about something or feel joy again but it doesnt happen.  I had it before all I lost him..its what I miss the most...  the joy I felt when we were together. I hope time has a way of giving us back some of these feeling or its going to be to be a very hard life ahead.  Thinking of all of us and sending love.  And hope for our future.

[Brazil Man]

On 4/29/2019 at 11:00 PM, Billie Rae said:

Had to change our insurance today and I cried when I removed his name,cried so hard the agent had to wait for it to stop.

I also cried when I had to remove the name of my wife from the income tax form.    

[Moment2moment]

I still get mail for her. It breaks my heart. Some days I would just as soon join her as to go on. Only thing keeps me here are my dogs. Lost my job today and feeling pretty low and scared about paying the bills. When it was the 2 of us we always gave each other strength, got through anything. Now it is just me and I am losing my coping capacity. Hard to stay positive. Monday is one year.

[John/Wendy]

Sorry for your struggles and pain. Dealing with all this is just too much. It just feels like life is so ruthless at this stage. I don’t know about you but I feel cursed. Like I invoked the wrath of a vengeful spirit. Every time I feel like maybe I can get through this something else falls apart. Even those around me seem to be suffering with horrible times. A month before my wife came home for hospice, I had gone in for cardiac clearance for a hip replacement that I had put off for years. Only to find out I had suffered a undiagnosed heart attack two years earlier and only had 45% heart function left. So, I had quadruple bypass surgery in the same hospital my wife was in 4 days before we brought her home for hospice. She only lasted a few days. I don’t think I’ll ever heal from a shattered and broken heart. Then after 3 months trying to heal and 2 months back to work. I finally got clearance for my hip replacement. So I’m two weeks into recuperating  from that. Now my right hand is having nerve issues. Can’t feel 4 fingers. I’ve had to put down one of our last two dogs, my poor kids have fallen on financial problems and I can’t help them. I feel like a complete failure. The last thing I want to be is a burden to my kids. I to feel like giving up. All this and trying to deal with this GRIEF! God help us all. 

[Skywise]

@John/Wendy  It's been 18  months since I lost my Hubby and I still haven't been able to move any of his things, let alone dispose of them.  Everything is exactly where he left it - shoes and coat in the hall, magazines by the bed, beer in the fridge, everything.  The only things of his that I've touched are two of his shirts which I wear to bed and his wallet, which I picked  up when I lost mine.   I did sell his cars, but I couldn't drive them anyway - they were his and he loved them.  In a strange way it gives me comfort to still  e surrounded by his stuff.  It makes me feel that our life together was real and that I was happy once upon a time because all too often I get so lost in the grief fog that it seems impossible there was a time when  I smiled and laughed over silly little things.

 

My therapist says that the time to "have a clear out" will be when I feel ready and that forcing the issue would be "counterproductive ".  I just wish all the well, mean ing people who keep offering to come over and help me clear out the house would understand that I'm not ready yet.  Maybe I never will be.  Maybe you never will  be.  What does it matter?  You'll do what's right for you when it's right for you to do it.  

[KayC]

On 5/1/2019 at 8:21 AM, Brazil Man said:

I also cried when I had to remove the name of my wife from the income tax form.    

If she died in 2018 you should have been able to claim her for 2018 so if you didn't you can do an amended return.  

[KayC]

15 hours ago, John/Wendy said:

Sorry for your struggles and pain. Dealing with all this is just too much. It just feels like life is so ruthless at this stage. I don’t know about you but I feel cursed. Like I invoked the wrath of a vengeful spirit. Every time I feel like maybe I can get through this something else falls apart. Even those around me seem to be suffering with horrible times. A month before my wife came home for hospice, I had gone in for cardiac clearance for a hip replacement that I had put off for years. Only to find out I had suffered a undiagnosed heart attack two years earlier and only had 45% heart function left. So, I had quadruple bypass surgery in the same hospital my wife was in 4 days before we brought her home for hospice. She only lasted a few days. I don’t think I’ll ever heal from a shattered and broken heart. Then after 3 months trying to heal and 2 months back to work. I finally got clearance for my hip replacement. So I’m two weeks into recuperating  from that. Now my right hand is having nerve issues. Can’t feel 4 fingers. I’ve had to put down one of our last two dogs, my poor kids have fallen on financial problems and I can’t help them. I feel like a complete failure. The last thing I want to be is a burden to my kids. I to feel like giving up. All this and trying to deal with this GRIEF! God help us all. 

John I'm so sorry about your dog.  That is so hard.  And your nerve issues!  Geez, it seems like when it rains it pours.  I get wanting to help our kids and it feels so hard when we can't be there for them like we want to.  I hope things start looking up for you soon.

[JES]

John,  Im so sorry you are have had to go thru the surgerys and pain and healing along with the grief of losing your wife.  Its been a really tough time for you, I cant imagine how hard.  And sad also for losing your dog..another member of the family for us dog lovers.  I am thinking of you and hoping your hip heals quickly and will pray that things will start looking up for you and your family.  Love to all. Jeanne

[Brazil Man]

9 hours ago, KayC said:

If she died in 2018 you should have been able to claim her for 2018 so if you didn't you can do an amended return.  

Dear KayC
Thank you but I live in Brazil where rules are different
Moises
 

[KayC]

I'm sorry, I didn't pick up on that, I should have.