As one year approaching

[chincube]

I'm starting to panicking everyday as one year is just a bit more than a month away. If I have to describe the panic, it would be like I know he's going to die soon, and I'm frantically panicking over it but know that I will not able to stop it. If that makes any sense. And then the last conversation we had few hours before he died, the phone call his best friend made the next morning, they kept on replaying and replaying. My graphical imagination of his face, all run wild.

And then I do not want days to pass by, I don't want time to go. I don't know how time just heartlessly goes on, and then one year is already approaching, even though I feel like it just happened not long ago. Even our last conversation is still fresh in my head.

All these are scaring me, because I have been working so hard to be "resilient" or whatever that I have no choice to be. I work, I pick up new hobby and past time, I keep myself busy, I do nice things for myself, I laugh, I joke, I spend time with people that makes me feel good. Every so often the sunshine might disappear just for one day, and I don't get out of bed, but the next day I always work hard to get up again. But all the flooding panic and tears make me just wonder, when will I ever get better? Am I just cheating myself to not think about him, not deal with my grief?

Then I think, when the anniversary comes and goes, maybe I still do not know how to deal with this. A whole year, I still have no idea how to deal with it.

[KayC]

This is a bit much to deal with even with our positive attitudes, efforts, resilience.  This breaks us to the core.  It's totally understandable that you are feeling as you do.  One of my low points was facing the new year without him in it, he died mid June so it was over six months later when I went through that.  I could not understand either, how the sun could go on shining without him here.  I don't understand but time does march on.  At least for everyone but us.  For us it's like it's frozen back on "that day."  Because that was the most life altering moment we'll ever experience.  I had one other moment in time that was that way also, and that was the moment of my sister's car accident, 52 1/2 years ago.  It killed her three year old and left her quadriplegic.  Our life centered around taking care of her, I was 14 almost 15 when it happened.  There was no more "after school" events, no dating, no class trips, everything was about taking care of her and the little kids, I became a grown up over night.  And I didn't mind that but my mom took the stress out on me, and her physical and emotional abuse of me became unbearable.  My sister wanted us to kill her.  She screamed for about two years.  Amazingly enough she eventually made the best of what was left of her life.  She learned to appreciate the good that was in it rather than focusing on merely the bad that had occurred.  Maybe I learned those skills from her without realizing it, if so, I owe her a lot.  She passed away almost two years ago, she'd lived trapped in her body for 50 years.  They butchered her vocal chords in the emergency tracheotomy, so communication was difficult.  She had spasticity in her arms, it made it very difficult for her to feed herself.  It meant so much to me when she'd sign a birthday card for me, it was shaky and laborious, but she made the effort and it brought me to tears every time.

Sometimes we don't know how to deal with things.  It's all I can muster to just exist and get through this one day...some days better than others.  But that doesn't mean there isn't any "good" ahead for us, there is.  Not in the mega-doses we had with our spouses, but I'll take whatever minute amount I can get.  We need that.

I will be keeping you in my prayers as you approach this benchmark.  When I survived that one year mark I really felt I deserved a medal, it was no easy feat having survived a year of "firsts without."

[foreverhis]

3 hours ago, chincube said:

But all the flooding panic and tears make me just wonder, when will I ever get better? Am I just cheating myself to not think about him, not deal with my grief?

Then I think, when the anniversary comes and goes, maybe I still do not know how to deal with this. A whole year, I still have no idea how to deal with it.

I'm not sure how this will come out, so apologies in advance if it's not right.

Do I think you're cheating yourself?  No, not exactly.  But if you don't let yourself grieve, if you don't think about your love and everything else, it will catch up with you.  I think maybe that's one reason you feel more panic now.  We must grieve, which feels like it take forever--and maybe it does.  But for me, the raw agonizing pain is a little softer now.  It comes and goes, more here than not, but no longer all encompassing every minute of every day.  Missing my love is always there and it always will be, but there are those bits of light and hope that weren't there before. 

I put on the darn "brave face" for months and then realized that I felt worse and worse because I wasn't allowing myself to fall apart in front of anyone, not even those who love me and my husband the most.  The heck with that.  I still have a lot of trouble crying in front of others, I always have.  But if I'm having a bad day or if someone calls while I'm crying, I no longer try to hide it.

I believe that if we try to not think about our beloveds, then we are kind of cheating them.  While they did not deserve to die and we do not deserve to suffer this endless pain, they do deserve for us to honor them by admitting our grief, both privately and with others.  They are worth the pain we are feeling because we were lucky enough to have found them.  But you must, absolutely must, allow yourself to feel it.  It won't go away no matter how hard you try to keep it locked up.

I don't know that I'd call it getting "better."  It's more like learning to live with our grief as a part of us and our lives now.  There is not a thing wrong with trying to find small bits of happiness and light in our lives.  Our hearts and minds don't seem to be built to suffer every second of every day.  Finding activities that allow us a little respite is a good thing.  It's even okay to sometimes do things specifically so we can be distracted from our grief.  But that's temporary and you can only push your grief back like that for so long before it pushes itself forward and says, "Not so fast!  You can't do that forever."  It helps me that I have friends and family who neither push nor ignore.  They encourage me to talk about my husband.  Newer friends ask for stories and are happy when I casually include my love in our conversations.  Our long-term close friends and family incorporate him into their lives along with mine.  It hurts like hell sometimes, make that most of the time, but keeping his memory alive reminds us all that he lived and that his memory lives on in all of us.  It shows the value of his life in ways that are difficult to explain.

To be honest, I'm not sure any of us ever fully know how to deal with this worst possible loss.  One year is really not that long a time.  I did find myself dreading the one year anniversary of his death and our wedding anniversary and our "first date" anniversary and his birthday and my birthday and on and on.  In most cases, the dreading was worse than the day itself.  I learned early on that making it to and through one of those days was not any sort of threshold to a newer or better step on the path.  They were just difficult and important days that hurt more than others.  I have found that having a good friend or family member checking in on those days helps.  One of my friends who lives on our block has marked each of those days on her calendar.  She will clear time and text me to ask if I'm up to going for a walk because she knows that helps me.  There's a nature preserve close by, so we walk there and she lets me just be however I need to be. 

Grieving takes time.  There is no way around that.  Please, don't try to hide it away or ignore it, both for your sake and your love's memory.

[KayC]

You know, on my other grief site, there was a man a couple years ago that came on and told about the loss of his fiance, 20 years before, when he was young.  He pushed it aside.  Years later when married with children, all of a sudden his grief hit him seemingly out of nowhere, leaving his wife flabbergasted and himself as well.  foreverhis is right, we can't push it aside and hope it disappears.  It doesn't work like that.  It's still there and I can guarantee you it will surface, sometime or the other, demanding you deal with it.  Best to let it out little by little than not at all.  
https://www.griefhealingblog.com/2013/12/finding-crying-time-in-grief.html

[chincube]

Thanks for your words, and foreverhis I'm not upset at all don't worry.

I understand that what you said are absolutely right, in fact you two are not the only persons who said that to me. In my guts, I know that they are true and I should let myself feel and grief. But maybe the dark place I was in few months back then scared myself, I have never been in such dark place in my life and never felt such horrifying emotions and really that suicidal. Also the unexplained sickness and surgery that followed it, and the lonely recovery after, the lost of weight that I can count my own ribs in the mirror... All those scare me so that maybe my subconscious wants me to have nothing to do with the emotions anymore.

So I hang on to rocks that can keep my head above the water... and I break down from time to time, when it's inconvenient I keep it together and not think about it.

It's when the 1 year mark coming, probably the panic catch on. I remember I was so afraid of forgetting things we shared in the first month, now I just find it is quite impossible. I still hear his voice beside my ears, his smile, it's just like it's just yesterday that I heard him and saw him.

I guess I'm going to survive, until now I still feel like he's still here. Sometimes I feel like he hasn't died yet, it's like my mind still hasn't digested the fact yet. Or maybe I don't know, he's really just here besides me, just that like his usual self doesn't know how to give me these cool signs to let me know.

Thanks for listening me rant.

[Kal1120]

It still feels like a glitch in the matrix. I swear that on some cosmic level something got mixed up. A mistake. A typo in the script. Some intern accidentally mixed in a page from a different screenplay. 

Grief is supposed to be a process of ebb and flow, a tangible feeling that can be analyzed and assessed. This is different. Like trying to comprehend the vastness of time and space. It's a void. A black hole. A tear in the continuum where up is down and inside is out.

 How does one process that which cannot be processed? I wish I knew. 

[KayC]

I only know that it's very slow, it takes a long time for the unthinkable to sink in, let alone absorb it.  It takes time to build a life again, even more time to find purpose.  For me it took years but it's different for everyone so don't let that throw you.  That we somehow do this is a testament to our resilience.

[foreverhis]

7 hours ago, Kal1120 said:

Grief is supposed to be a process of ebb and flow, a tangible feeling that can be analysed and assessed.

That's one of the problems in our society.  We think grief is supposed to be something specific, a uniform tangible process we can understand and even control.  I guess I'd have to say whoever told us or decided grief is "supposed" to be anything doesn't have a clue what it really is.  Who are "they" to tell us what it is?

It's not rational, it's not reasonable, and it doesn't lend itself to being analyzed, assessed, or controlled.  This kind of loss defies any sort of reasoning or logic and must be experienced to be understood.  It is very much as if a rift has opened in the universe and taken all our joy, our plans, our futures, and our love.  It's a rift that can never fully mend.  We don't "get over" it or "move on" or "get back to normal" or any other platitude.  Over time, months and years, we learn to live with our grief.  We learn how to incorporate it into our changed lives.  But grieving is neither fast nor easy.

Please don't try to apply logic to your grief.  I truly do not think it will help.

[Jttalways]

People keep saying “you have to deal with your grief, you can’t keep it bottled up inside.” Truth is, I don’t know how to deal with my grief. What am I supposed to do? How does 1 deal with their grief? Am I dealing with my grief, but I don’t know I am?

 Like @Kal1120 said, how can we comprehend the incomprehensible? 

[chincube]

12 hours ago, Kal1120 said:

It still feels like a glitch in the matrix. I swear that on some cosmic level something got mixed up. A mistake. A typo in the script. Some intern accidentally mixed in a page from a different screenplay. 

I feel very much like that too, a glitch in a strange matrix that looks a bit familiar but then you know it's not the same. Worse the glitch just keeps looping and you keep jumping back to the beginning of the glitch part over and over again. Like a scratched disc. 

 

4 hours ago, Jttalways said:

People keep saying “you have to deal with your grief, you can’t keep it bottled up inside.” Truth is, I don’t know how to deal with my grief. What am I supposed to do? How does 1 deal with their grief? Am I dealing with my grief, but I don’t know I am? 

Sometimes that's what I think too. Some friends would tell me to get over it and change topic whenever I talk about him, or treat me like I'm mentally unstable asking me if I have done this and that take this or that to help at first sign of my eyes moistening up. Then I think maybe I should just have my emotions privately, and then some friends urge me that I should let myself grief, that I should continue on therapy and talk about it so that I don't bottle it up. 

I don't know. Sometimes I am a mess but sometimes all I want is to remember a joke he told and smile over it all day, and feel that it's OK at least i have this happy memory. Am I coping it right? Am I dealing it out grieving? I really don't know

[KayC]

When we enter the world of grief, it feels like an alternate universe, one in which we don't know our way around and everything familiar doesn't seem so anymore.  As foreverhis said, there is nothing controllable about this and yes, it defies logic.

https://www.griefhealingblog.com/2014/08/grief-understanding-process.html

[Rhonda R]

On ‎2‎/‎19‎/‎2020 at 8:54 AM, chincube said:

it would be like I know he's going to die soon, and I'm frantically panicking over it but know that I will not able to stop it. If that makes any sense. And then the last conversation we had few hours before he died, the phone call his best friend made the next morning, they kept on replaying and replaying. My graphical imagination of his face, all run wild.

I too went through something like this.  It was like I was reliving the time all over again.  There was a lot of, at this time last year this was going on.  As time got closer, I too could feel the panic build.  I knew what was coming and I wanted so bad to rewrite history.  I wanted so bad for it to not be true.  20+ months into this, I too wonder where the time has gone and how the heck did I make it this far.