Grieving and memories?

[WithoutHer]

I am a week past 3 months and am struggling with memories. I'm talking about recalling the good memories as apposed to the last ones of the last day always being there. I can recall day trips of where we went for example but few details of the day and us together. I know my grieving is interfering with this because I know we would talk about those times and discuss other places we would like to take a day drive to. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced trouble with recalling the good memories over the last day memories.

[KayC]

For me it took a while, it was all the last weekend, every detail, then in time the good memories supplanted.  I still remember with detail the last weekend but it doesn't hold it's grip so much.

[widower2]

2 hours ago, WithoutHer said:

I am a week past 3 months and am struggling with memories. I'm talking about recalling the good memories as apposed to the last ones of the last day always being there. I can recall day trips of where we went for example but few details of the day and us together. I know my grieving is interfering with this because I know we would talk about those times and discuss other places we would like to take a day drive to. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced trouble with recalling the good memories over the last day memories.

Oh heck yes. I think that's normal (if there is such a thing as "normal" in grief). It's still hard sometimes.

[Shinka]

Yes, definitely. In the beginning the trauma of seeing him leave his body unexpectately , and also the remorse over all I should have done and said and didn't and the things I said and did that I shouldn't have, they dominated everything. It actually helped me to sit down and write him a letter in which I told him what he'd been to me, the things he achieved, the silly things we did that made me laugh, the way he brought changes and good things into the world and into my life. Of course that also made me more acutely aware of what I'd lost, so it was also very painful. Maybe this forgetfulness is a way of protecting our broken hearts until we find the courage to face all of what our relationship was, the good and the not so good. 

[foreverhis]

15 hours ago, widower2 said:

Oh heck yes. I think that's normal (if there is such a thing as "normal" in grief). It's still hard sometimes.

Same here. For at least a year, all I could see and remember were his last painful months. I would hear his voice calling for me from the times I had to leave the room (like when they had to do x-rays). Everything I did “wrong” over those months and the images of his last day were seared into my brain, overriding everything else.

Ever so slowly, I was able to bring forward 35 years (37, counting from the first time I saw him and was smitten by his laugh and the way his whole face crinkled up into his twinkling blue eyes) of our life together. The wonderful, happy, funny, loving, challenging, and even boring day-to-day started to creep back in. It took a long time for me to be able to mix everything into the whole of our lives together.

 I really don’t see how it could be otherwise. Our minds and bodies sustain such a deep shock, even when we know we’re going to lose them, that it’s bound to be what lives inside us over all else. Most of us feel a sense of, “I should have been able to stop this from happening,” so that’s where we start. We try to figure out how to have a different outcome. And that’s why our minds relive it over and over until we can’t sustain it anymore. Only then, when we understand inside that we can’t change reality, are we able to open up to the good memories. At least, it seems that way and it’s been that way for me.

[Roxeanne]

It's not a linear process for me....sometimes i remember the funny days with him laughin', and the day after i can't see his pictures without missing him so much...awakening the pain! I can't remember the last days together when we didn't know what was about to happen to us, without my heart breaking again...

I think it will be always like this, between acceptance and despair, between laugh and tears...

There is no way to repair what was destroyed!

[widower2]

I doubt it's linear for anyone...it seems to me that human beings' thought processes aren't inherently linear in general, but esp in a time like this when things are so intensely stressful and the adrenaline is flowing, it gets our mind racing. I think maybe some of it is we're in so much pain that the brain keeps trying to rationalize why, so we re-live the worst of moments (I know...."I lost my love, duh, that's why, that's enough rationalization right there"....but emotions aren't always logical and again the mind is racing, so we bounce from one thought or memory to another). 

[Jemiga70]

On 5/19/2023 at 4:46 PM, WithoutHer said:

I would like to know if anyone else has experienced trouble with recalling the good memories over the last day memories.

Absolutely.  Our last day was horrible, traumatizing.  For me it took almost 2 years before any good memories started to override the last day  (just entered year 3 without her).

Take care, and try to be kind to yourself.

[Griefsucks810]

On 5/21/2023 at 11:40 PM, Jemiga70 said:

Absolutely.  Our last day was horrible, traumatizing.  For me it took almost 2 years before any good memories started to override the last day  (just entered year 3 without her).

Take care, and try to be kind to yourself.

The last time I saw my husband alive and talked to him was on 8/18/19.  On 8/21/19 he was dead and overdosed from receiving a fentanyl laced bag of heroin.  His death was unexpected cuz I didn’t foresee him dying at age 57.  I was traumatized and in shock that he was dead and didn’t know how I was gonna be able to support myself cuz I didn’t have a job and now I didn’t have a place to live cuz I refused to go back to the mobile trailer where we were living at cuz he died in their. I was more traumatized and in disbelief when I saw my husband’s body in a black body bag being carried down the steps to a white van waiting to bring his body to the county morgue in Somers Point NJ.  This is a vision that is burned into my mind and its something I’ll never forget.  For months all I did was replay in my mind over and over of seeing his body in a black body bag and what I went thru to have his body transported to the funeral home in our hometown of Philadelphia, PA.  I wasn’t able to think of any good memories we shared together for the first year since he died.  It took me 2 years to go thru various photos I had accumulated and made myself a photo album containing pictures of us from when we first met all the way up till 12 days before he died.  I don’t think of our memories too often cuz I carry them in my heart. 

[AzgirlUK]

On 2/26/2024 at 1:58 PM, Griefsucks810 said:

The last time I saw my husband alive and talked to him was on 8/18/19.  On 8/21/19 he was dead and overdosed from receiving a fentanyl laced bag of heroin.  His death was unexpected cuz I didn’t foresee him dying at age 57.  I was traumatized and in shock that he was dead and didn’t know how I was gonna be able to support myself cuz I didn’t have a job and now I didn’t have a place to live cuz I refused to go back to the mobile trailer where we were living at cuz he died in their. I was more traumatized and in disbelief when I saw my husband’s body in a black body bag being carried down the steps to a white van waiting to bring his body to the county morgue in Somers Point NJ.  This is a vision that is burned into my mind and its something I’ll never forget.  For months all I did was replay in my mind over and over of seeing his body in a black body bag and what I went thru to have his body transported to the funeral home in our hometown of Philadelphia, PA.  I wasn’t able to think of any good memories we shared together for the first year since he died.  It took me 2 years to go thru various photos I had accumulated and made myself a photo album containing pictures of us from when we first met all the way up till 12 days before he died.  I don’t think of our memories too often cuz I carry them in my heart. 

My husband's last days were a traumatic. I could not understand what was happening to him, just the screaming thought "B, you're dying." I remember clinging to him, my head raised to any friendly Angel crying "please don't take my husband from me."  I think this is moving around in my mind because tomorrow it will be three months . I watch the videos I made of him for my kids, feeling just sad. This stuff is a mixed bag. I laugh at moments and cry at others.