Hard time staying home alone....

[AnnRA]

Hi All - At 4 months in, I continue to have a really hard time staying home alone.   Now I realize that many of you have had no choice, due to covid restrictions.  Where I live, we can be in public places now.  So that helps a bit.  I resigned my job at end of 2019, so that we could travel in 2020, but covid AND my husband’s death dashed all of that.  I have worked all of my adult life, til now. So I am grieving my husband AND no more work, and the house is so, so EMPTY. 

I try to do housework, but am totally tired and depressed.  I am trying to do things in very short blocks, i.e 10 mins at a time, but even that is overwhleming, even with gardening.  I cry, call my few friends, turn on tv/music but EVERYTHING reminds me of him.  Our lovely home has turned into a prison for me.  How have you all handled this?? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sparky1]

Ann, I'm in the exact same situation. I'm almost at  5 months in and the emptiness of the house is really painful for me. I've been back to work for the last 2 months and it helps being away from home, but while I'm at work I long to go home and can't wait for the work day to end. The weekends are tough for me, I try to clean the house, go to the store for groceries and maybe go by my mother in law's. At home, everything reminds me of my wife and I break down constantly, yet it is also a safe place for me to grieve. I do have a small dog, but she is older and is always sleeping, nonetheless she is a companion. I don't know what else to do and I feel very anxious a lot of the time.

[Dawn Wms]

I am so sorry for the loneliness you feel.  It has been 10 months for me and I hate the emptiness.  I actually don't mind being alone, but I mind being without my husband.  A few close friends and family members have been here, but it isn't the same.  I miss him and I need him.  I am so heartbroken and lonely that I feel either anxious or sick to my stomach or both.  I have so much to do that I have no energy for (housework, taxes, errands, work) so that I become paralyzed and accomplish very little.  Then the tasks mount and the stress increases.  I'm so sorry I don't have any advice but I can empathize with you.

[Yoli]

I have work during the day but as soon as I walk through that door the cloak of loneliness wraps itself around me. Not to say I don't feel lonely during the day because I do but the complete aloneness of the house is something else.

It is good that you at least attempt to do housework and I hope that you find work soon.

I don't have any real advice either but like Dawn WMS I can certainly empathize. In 2 days it will be ten months since Indy passed.

[AnnRA]

Yoli,  I feel your pain at coming up to 10 months, as these days get shorter and winter is not far away down here.  I desperately want work soon, but I can understand the anguish of coming home from something that is “normal” like work, and then finding that life at home is anything but......

 

[AnnRA]

/Dawn, Sparky and Yoli — Thanks so much for replying.  This is so, so hard. For all of us, the only way now is one hour at a time, sometimes 10 mins at a time if I am trying to do something that brings me to tears.   We always enjoyed doing things together at home, and the house is so empty now, I fear I will never enjoy living here again.....

One day at a time, as they say, but when my love was here, we always enjoyed planning things to do, to experience, to see — that is the enjoyment of life that we do not get to do now......

[jmmosley53]

AnnRA

I could have written your post.  April 3rd will be 1 year since my husband's death.  During the months since he has been gone I have had so many up and downs.

Living alone  is almost surreal some times.  I tend to walk around the house looking at each room.  I'm not looking for my husband, I am looking at the room and realizing that it is now my room. It takes time to believe that.   I am taking ownership of my house.  It is slowly turning from OUR house to MY house.  

Some times my grief rebels and thought of "am I trying to erase my husband" get in my head, and I have to once again come to terms with his being gone.  Afterward I start again trying to take owner ship of not just the house, but of my whole life.

I was going to be a retired lady with her husband and we'd grow old and do old people things together.  NOW - I can't have that.  I don't know what I want my life to be. 

So I sit all day long in my house alone except for my dog, trying to think, what now?

[Roxeanne]

Yes it's the thing that haunts all of us! 

An empty house instead of 'our home" full of life and tenderness with our loved ones!

I was scared by my house full of shadows and silence...and i always think that my house is still "a mourning house" miss as me his warm presence.

But little by little i have adapted to an empty house and now i am at easy in it, with all his memories that now don't hurt so much...they are source of comfort against a world outside that still is dangerous and boring!

I don't know how it happened and i have no advices for that, i still miss him all the time!

Maybe for exhaustion..hard raw pain it's not a good place to stay...

Maybe it 's true that time heal

Trust over time

[KayC]

It was hard for me in early grief because it was such a trigger, our home was OUR place together and when the other is missing, it's not the same!  It was different when I knew he was coming home...

[Gail 8588]

The transition from 'our house' and 'our stuff' to 'my house' and 'my stuff'  has been a long one for me.  My house today (I have moved twice since my husband's death) is still full of his stuff - our stuff.  For example, I have his band equipment, amplifiers, microphones all sorts of things that I don't even know what they are.  Our boys don't want them, and I can't seem to take action to get rid of them. So 4 years later, they are still here in my house. I have artwork that he bought that was never a favorite of mine, but it seems somehow disloyal to take it down.   He loved it, and I love him, so I should love it too.  

I don't know when I will be able to let go of these things and be content that I loved, and still love, him. But I don't have to keep 'things' that don't work in my new life just because they were a part of our life together. 

I'll never erase my sweetie from my life.  There are plenty of things in my house that remind me of him that do 'work' for me in my new life.  I love sitting at the piano that he learned to play on as a child, and played his whole life. My fingers touch the keys his fingers touched millions of times. That gives me comfort. 

Looking at a piece of art that, I never liked much from the beginning, is more of an obligation that I should be able to get out from someday. 

Gail

 

  

[foreverhis]

5 hours ago, Gail 8588 said:

But I don't have to keep 'things' that don't work in my new life just because they were a part of our life together. 

Yeah, I get that.  It's kind of like his intense dislike of green paint of any shade or depth.  He loved rich and/or soft greens in other things, but not "all over the walls."  We had settled on a soft, light blue-grey for repainting the second bedroom, but in an act almost of defiance, I went and got a number of soft, light green paint chips.  I found one I really liked, taped it on the wall to make sure, and then looked up and said, "What?  You're not here.  You don't get a say in this now!"

I've once again started going through his shop a tiny bit and some of the things still at the house.  His big, expensive and worth it, therapy chair is still in the middle of the living room, where I shoved it so he could have a variety of places to be during his chemo and after surgery.  It's too big for me and I need to sell it.  I thought I was ready to and I probably am, but then COVID came calling and I don't want strangers in the house just yet.  It's not that I dislike it, but it displaced my smaller recliner, which still sits butted up against the entryway. 

Yet there are things that I will never get rid of because they give me tremendous comfort.  I'm sure someone would think it weird that I left his toothbrush and toothpaste in his medicine cabinet (lucky us, we had two!).  I don't care.  And yes, I also have kept things that I can touch and feel and remember that he touched them hundreds of times.

23 hours ago, AnnRA said:

Our lovely home has turned into a prison for me.  How have you all handled this?? 

I'm so sorry you have had so much to deal with all at once.  Others will have mentioned that you're still really early in your grief so it's all encompassing.  No matter what you do or where you go, it will be there right now.

I was a virtual hermit the first 6 or so months after my husband died.  In a way, I put myself into that prison in a house that no longer felt like a home.  In part it was because I just couldn't deal with most people.  Only a few life-long friends and family visited because that's all I could handle.  It was absolutely overwhelming most of the time.  As you say, everywhere I looked, there he was.  That's still true, but after more than 2-1/2 years, all the good, funny, loving, and even boring memories have really started filtering forward and mixing in with the painful ones so that now he is more than just the soulmate who was taken from me.  He is also the soulmate who was here with me. 

After coming here and talking to other members, I decided to take the "one day, one hour at a time" recommendations.  If I could do one thing, one tiny productive thing, I'd tell myself, "That's good enough," which helped me stop pushing myself to somehow do "better."  If I couldn't bear to be in one room or see a specific thing, I'd go to another room or move the thing out of sight, at least temporarily.  I figured I had enough triggers and pain, why make it worse?

Then I decided I needed to start back on my long-term physical therapy and taking short walks.  The activity helped break my mind free for short periods (at first, very short, like 10 minutes or so), but more than that, those short walks to the nature preserve were another time for me to talk to my husband somewhere other than in the house or yard.  Then a neighbor friend gently nagged me into trying restorative yoga with her once a week.  I'm glad she did because it helped physically, but it also allowed me a slow, quiet way back into the world for an hour once or twice a week.

Maybe you could start by just going out for a little walk and see how you do.  If you manage that okay, then see if you can incorporate that into your day to give you a brief respite from the crushing weight you are bearing right now.

[Missy1]

I understand and can relate, It’s definitely very surreal and lonely without him here in the house. There is everything to remind me of him our lives together so many memories I’m sure that you have all kinds of trinkets and pictures and everything that you did together is everywhere in the house.

That being said I still wouldn’t want to leave our last home together unless I have to. I’ll do what I have to do because this was his last home on earth with m and I just need to be surrounded by our stuff.

 I am all alone every day, I see people at the store but don’t go anywhere else. It was crippling at first and I felt like I was losing my mind and now I’ve come to except being alone very slowly. Now I feel like I’m comfortable without anyone else around now and prefer to my solitude. 

[KayC]

This last year has been the hardest one for grievers as we're so isolated and alone.  Those with families can't begin to understand.  
https://keyt.com/news/national-world/2021/02/03/loneliness-pandemic-how-widows-are-dealing-with-grief-amid-covid-19/