New Year

[Yoli]

Part of me will be glad to see the end of 2020 but there is also another part of me that is petrified of leaving it. 2021 means leaving behind the last year in which I could touch, talk to and be with Indy. I feel as if this is another loss in some way.

Anyone feel similar?

[LoveNeverDies]

Yoli ,

I feel the same way, it’s like he’s getting further away from me . 

[foreverhis]

I absolutely felt that way my first New Year's Eve without him.  It was only the second time I'd been without him in 35 years.  The other time he was stuck in Seattle with our daughter and brand new granddaughter during the December-January of 2008-2009.  They had the worst winter in 50 years and I hadn't been able to get there before everything closed down (long story).  I was happy he was there for our girls and I saw family and friends throughout the day and early evening.  Plus, I knew he'd be coming home a week into the new year and we were on the phone together at midnight.

Going into 2019, I was completely alone, which was fine with me.  I had been a bit of a hermit for 6 months by then and had only spent time with the few people (friends and family) closest to us.  The thought of even being in a room with anyone but him at midnight made me physically ill.

I sat there asking him over and over and over how I was supposed to let another year start without him by my side.  We'd had every sort of New Year's Eve over the years, from a quiet evening at home with our best friends to fancy-shmancy galas and balls to being with our girls (our daughter and my baby sister) in a cabin at Yosemite to parties at friends or our house (the best being the year we planned it last minute, assuming that half of our 45 person guest list would already have plans; they didn't; it was crowded fun).  Every one of those years was special because we were together. 

I wondered if waking up the next morning would feel different.  Would it feel like turning a page or closing the book?  Would I feel him growing more distant from me?  How could I let go of a year when it was the last time he had been able to say, "I love you" or tease me (even during the fight for his life) or laugh with our daughter on the phone or call my name when he needed help?  Then again, how could I not let go of a year that took him from us and brought me unimaginable pain?

To say I was conflicted is putting it mildly.  But I woke up the next morning and realized that, much like the other holidays that year, the days leading up to it and especially the eve-of were worse than the actual next-day feelings.  I don't know if that's common, but most special days have been like that for me.

One thing I know for certain is that you are not alone in feeling this way and you will never be alone when you are here.

[Missy1]

It is definitely a challenging day today. New year’s was ours, we we’re always selfish with it, just him and I, either on a trip, party, special dinner or like last year we spent it in our jacuzzi looking at the stars talking, giggling and listening to music as the New Year rolled in, toasting with champagne. I feel so cheated and alone, this is crappy lonely existence. 

I can’t bear the thought of a new year without him. My chest hurts and I have that old familiar lump in my throat, always holding back the tears.
I am sick inside this will be a rough night to endure for all us here, we all have our special memories.
This New Year does not bring hope or new possibilities to me, only more days on end without the light of my life.

 

[widower2]

13 hours ago, LoveNeverDies said:

Yoli ,

I feel the same way, it’s like he’s getting further away from me . 

I don't know if this will help, but something that helped me when I felt similar...also how I felt when confronted with the term "moving on," which sounded like leaving her behind.

I realized she isn't back there in our past. She is moving on too.  Just in another existence that I can't be a part of yet. I look at it like we are both moving forward but we are on different, but parallel, paths. So trying to reach back into the past isn't trying to get back to her really. She's not there. And although we are on a different path, ultimately we are both moving in the same direction...and eventually I think (I hope) to a place where the paths join again. 

Happy new year all!  Here's hoping and praying it's better...waaay better...than 2020. 

[Sparky1]

49 minutes ago, widower2 said:

I don't know if this will help, but something that helped me when I felt similar...also how I felt when confronted with the term "moving on," which sounded like leaving her behind.

I realized she isn't back there in our past. She is moving on too.  Just in another existence that I can't be a part of yet. I look at it like we are both moving forward but we are on different, but parallel, paths. So trying to reach back into the past isn't trying to get back to her really. She's not there. And although we are on a different path, ultimately we are both moving in the same direction...and eventually I think (I hope) to a place where the paths join again. 

Happy new year all!  Here's hoping and praying it's better...waaay better...than 2020. 

This is amazing. This is exactly how I feel. She can't come back to me but her and I have to wait for me to go to her in the future. This gives me some comfort but in the meantime the waiting is tortuous.

[LoveNeverDies]

9 hours ago, widower2 said:

I look at it like we are both moving forward but we are on different, but parallel, paths. So trying to reach back into the past isn't trying to get back to her really. She's not there. And although we are on a different path, ultimately we are both moving in the same direction...and eventually I think (I hope) to a place where the paths join again. 

Thank you Widower2 for sharing this, I found this extremely helpful . I will now look at the passage of time this way ! 

[KayC]

10 hours ago, widower2 said:

we are both moving in the same direction...and eventually I think (I hope) to a place where the paths join again.

Thank you for that.  It helps, a lot.  We are getting closer to that day...

[SDC]

Yes, I feel the same way. I'm relieved to put the trauma of 2020 behind me (he died after an accident in April), but it's hard to say good-bye to the last year I saw him, talked to him, laughed with him, etc. It's weird how we know our person is gone every minute of every day, and yet new markers--like a New Year--make their absence feel like new information. I can't make sense of that, but it keeps happening. I have no helpful advice, but just sharing so you know you aren't alone in how you feel. 

[foreverhis]

6 hours ago, SDC said:

I have no helpful advice, but just sharing so you know you aren't alone in how you feel. 

Sharing how you feel and what you're experiencing is helpful.  It lets others know that their feelings and experiences are not abnormal or weird or wrong.

Don't ever worry about giving advice.  When there are times you do, wonderful.  When what you have to say reinforces what another member is going through, also wonderful.

I also sometimes feel as if the markers, the special days, make losing John feel fresh and raw again.  But those times no longer last days and weeks.  I'm more able to cope and bring forward good memories and happy times to mix right in there with the pain.  It helps me get through missing him every minute of every day.

[Dawn Wms]

I have thought the very same thing.  I read a line in "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt,  that really resonated with me: "Every new event—every thing I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us.  Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away."  That's the way I feel about the passage of time.  I have no concern that I will ever forget my husband, but I hate getting "further way" from the time when he was here with me.  I have come to hate the phrase, "Time heals all wounds," because I don't find that to be true.  It has been 8 months and I have yet to feel the tiniest bit better.  Some wounds never heal.  I suppose we have no choice but to learn to live with them, but they don't all heal.  I liken it to an amputation.  The love of my life has been taken and that part of me is gone and I can't ever get it back.  There is no replacement, no prosthetic so to speak.  I have to live on without a major limb.  I will never look the same, never feel the same, never act the same ever again.  I am mourning his death, but also the death of our life together, (which had been really good) my joyful personality, my will to live, my desire to travel, to work, to set goals.  I guess I am also not that excited for a new year because I don't want a future without my husband and best friend.

[foreverhis]

1 hour ago, Dawn Wms said:

Some wounds never heal.  I suppose we have no choice but to learn to live with them, but they don't all heal.  I liken it to an amputation.  The love of my life has been taken and that part of me is gone and I can't ever get it back.  There is no replacement, no prosthetic so to speak.  I have to live on without a major limb.  I will never look the same, never feel the same, never act the same ever again. 

Here are a few snippets from Nora McInerny's TED Talk that might help reinforce the truth of this for you--not that you need it, but I think it bears repeating:

“…because these are the experiences that mark us and make us just as much as the joyful ones, and just as permanently.”

“You understand that what you’re experiencing is not a moment in time, it’s not a bone that will reset, but that you’ve been touched by something chronic, something incurable.  It’s not fatal, but sometimes grief feels like it could be.”

“What can we do other than try to remind one another that some things can’t be fixed, and not all wounds are meant to heal?”

Both of her TED Talks are really good, as long as you're okay with the fact that she brings a full range of emotions to them, including sardonic humor.

Here's a little paragraph from one of the first articles I found that resonated for me, "Learning to be a widow is the hardest thing I have ever done" by Joy Tyndall:

"With spousal bereavement, things don't get better, just different. Everything feels wrong. A rift exists between us, as I go on and he doesn't. Time comes between us. When sutures refuse to hold, the wound opens unpredictably. So it is for the widow or widower: The world assumes that time has done its proverbial work and "healed" us. No. We bleed still, our amputation aches. The wound never heals because our partner is gone, forever. Time heals nothing."

(I hope it's okay to quote as long as I give the correct attribution. As an FYI, I am a writer and this falls under the Fair Use statutes, but I'm happy to post links to both if that's preferred.)

I first read that article and a few others about 10-12 weeks after John died.  I was struggling so much.  I was lost, in the dark pit, floundering, even though I had a small, loving, and wonderful circle of friends and family to cosset and comfort me.  I had basically been a hermit and could only tolerate being around a few people and even then, not all the time.  I needed someone, anyone, to let me know that what I was feeling, thinking, and doing was not completely insane and that I wasn't losing my mind.  All of it, including the moments when I'd say to him, "I don't think I can do this without you.  I need you to come get me," and the times I'd beg, "I need you to come home now," made me wonder just how much pain I could bear without grief actually killing me (not that I would have minded at that point).

I sobbed my way through a number of well written, first person articles, rather than look for anything clinical, because I didn't want a doctor or therapist or researcher to give me any sort of grief analysis.  I needed to hear it from men and women like me, which is how I ended up here a few months after that.  The members here all get it in ways that no one else in my life can, which over time has helped lighten the burden I felt was crushing me.  Both time and coming here so often are helping me learn to live with my loss and grief as part of my life, rather than all of it.  I miss John every minute of every day; I always will.  But I am figuring out ways to move forward  (not "move on") with him because I am the keeper of our memories and our love now. 

((HUGS))

 

[Dawn Wms]

Thank you for this post.  I have read McInery and will check out her TED talks.  Nothing lessens my pain, but there is comfort in knowing that what I am going through and  how I behave (like not wanting to be around people) is a shared experience.  I love how you say you are the keeper of your memories and your love.  That is a reason to carry on, something that I am really struggling to do.  I am paralyzed and I most often feel I can't (and don't want to) carry on.  

[KayC]

The Ted talks are good, I have bookmarked.  

Dawn, you are still early in this journey...although it undoubtedly feels an eternity.  You are so right, it changes us, changes our lives, changes everything.  At 15 1/2 years it FEELS an eternity since our life together.  I have not forgotten anything, including his smell, the way I felt when he held me, he had the most beautiful eyes.  It's like we looked into each other's souls and felt each other.  I've never had that feeling I had when he held me, since he died.  Only he made me feel protected/safe/loved.  I know where he is he is not suffering and I know we'll be together again, but sometimes this wait seems oh so long!!!

[foreverhis]

4 hours ago, KayC said:

It's like we looked into each other's souls and felt each other. 

I know this will probably seem a little out there, but I swear there are times I look at pictures where he's looking directly at the camera, particularly or maybe specifically if I was the one taking it, and I can feel him looking at me, here and now.  That's one of the times I'm most inclined to talk to him more often.

[Sparky1]

10 minutes ago, foreverhis said:

I know this will probably seem a little out there, but I swear there are times I look at pictures where he's looking directly at the camera, particularly or maybe specifically if I was the one taking it, and I can feel him looking at me, here and now.  That's one of the times I'm most inclined to talk to him more often.

I have a full size face picture of my wife in canvas and she is looking directly ahead. It's the picture I look at most since it reminds me of when we were close together and I would look in her eyes and tell her how beautiful she was.

[foreverhis]

Here are links to the two TED Talks and to a few articles that I found beneficial (fair warning:  I really did sob pretty much all the way through them).

We move forward, we do not move on TED Talk

Better than "Fine" TED Talk

A New Look at Seven Emotional States of Loss

Learning to be a widow is the hardest thing I've ever done

5 Stages of Grief and Other Lies

This last one is a blog post by John Pavlovitz from his website "Stuff that Needs to be Said."  A disclaimer:  He is a pastor.  To be blunt, if more pastors were like him, John and I might not have walked away from organized religion in favor of keeping a universal faith.  He wrote this in April 2020.  It is specific, but not exclusive, to the experiences of COVID-19.  He includes the difficulty he sees with those of us who were already grieving and have been thrust backward on our journey, but also the challenges of losing the person we love most during the pandemic.

You Can't Social Distance from Grief

 

I hope one or more of these are helpful in some way.

[steveb]

I feel the same Yoli.  I have 2 fridges in my kitchen that  are covered with pics of my wife and family. I see her beautiful face at every turn in my home. God I miss her. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and insights.  It means so much to me and has helped tremendously.

[KayC]

Thank you foreverhis, I have them all bookmarked now.