Things You Should Never, Ever Say Over Text or Email

MawBroon I remember that so well, having to tell people as I met them and then needing to comfort them because it was a shock to them. Actually, I'm glad you didn't notice Remembrance Sunday, because it would make each anniversary harder, maybe. Believe it or not, on the day before my husband died I was playing in the band at the War Memorial for the Sunday Remembrance Service. I noticed the Sergeant Major commanding the Uniformed Brigades. The next day he was in my house. He was the Funeral Director the Police used when they found my husband's body, so I decided to stay with his Service. He was a God send. Like you, people thought I was coping so well, but I knew how I really felt. I remember such odd things, like exactly what I said to one person, and the words of another friend and colleague on the phone, word for word. His son had died and he said, "Take the laughs when they come, because they will." He gave me permission to laugh. Things play in front of my mind like a 3D film, what people were wearing, the strange things they gave us. Yet it's over 26 years ago and there have been many terrible deaths since.
I think sudden death is a shock you never really get over. Death from any illness is terrible but at least with some, say with cancer, in my experience, there is time to learn that it is happening and to speak to each other. A year after my husband died a very dear friend died but at least I did have a chance to sit with her and talk and tell her what she meant to me. She got me through the year after my husband's death actually. My dad died also but that was rather quick and I was unable to talk to him as much as I wished. I was his only child. My mother's first child, he adopted. My mother and my half sister gave my father and me a terrible time. Oh how I ramble! Sorry! Do you have children? It sounds as if they have left home if so.
Do take care of your health, eat well, even take supplements, keep warm, because this shock can knock you physically. Don't expect to be coping all the time, be gentle with yourself. Much love.

Yes, to the last question, 3 DDS all married, 2 with children (43, 40 and 36)
We had been married for 47 years, meeting in our first term at St Andrews. He managed to get out of hospital and have his 70th at hone, then died 6 weeks later. At least (for our sakes) we were all with him at the end and he slipped away without any pain.
It is so hard to believe that a person especially one with whom you have shared all your adult life, is no more.
Sorry -going off at a tangent, but I really think few people understand the layers of emotion involved. Yes, you miss your parents, but it is in the nature of things that they will predecease you.
We also lost our first baby (a boy) at 3 weeks 45 years ago but this is different. That was desperately hard hard., but we were young and he was very poorly.
Ah well.

Oh MawBroon, you were together so long, you must be like one being. It must seem impossible to take in that his presence, his mind, cannot be touched just by turning round and speaking to him. I do not usually talk about it because I am apprehensive lest it upsets someone, but at the birth of my first baby I haemorrhaged and nearly died. I had an "out of body experience" as people call them. There is not room here to describe it very well. My baby was apparently dead and the midwife had discarded her, putting her on the trolly next to me. There was no doctor on the premises at that moment, but he rushed in a bit later. I went out of my body, through my forehead. I was looking down at myself, laughing, for a while then I went towards a bright white light and there were many people so happy to greet me there. I was suddenly turned round and came back the same way very fast. My baby was alive, my doctor restarted her heart. It was the most wonderful experience and I have never doubted that it was real. Yet I am a hard nosed scientist in other ways. Please believe me, Paw is alive. His spirit or soul is more alive than we are while we are contained in our body. Also I believe he may be near you. If this upsets you Please ignore it. I did not talk about it for several years until a boy we looked after"s brother was killed in a car crash and I asked his mother if she would like me to tell her. She gave me Dr Raymond Moody's book 'Life after Life' about cases he studied which were all incredibly similar, right down to not talking about it. People who have not had it tend to explain it in neurological terms. People who have experienced it, including Neurologists and Neuropsychologists of which I was one, just believe it. It changes a person. With my love.

dh passed and was a computer geek so using email was almost a requirement
but i sent earlier emails to let them know he was poorly and than mass emall together for updates
called immediates when he was gone but mass emailed the rest.no one was bothered by the form of delivery

I would never send an important message by e mail without checking if I didn't get a reply. So many e mails seem to randomly go into junk mail that it could easily be missed.

I have an aunt in a care home, messages about her go into in mail and junk mail on a roughly 50/50 split, no idea why some get through and some don't and I do try to remember to check junk mail but as they autodelete after a month I can miss them.

123flump (what a great name!) Thanks for your comment, it reminded me, when I was a Research Fellow we were not supposed to send 'important' info by email without a send/receipt message and if the person didn't receive/open it we had to go to them if they were in our building. There was a general rule that emails were not regarded as the vehicle for important info unless backed up by a check about being received. Obviously too, unless encrypted, they are "postcards" in that the message is open to anyone not just the receiver, so private info should be encrypted.
This was over 10 yrs ago, poss today things have been updated.

mimiro So sorry to hear your DH passed. Yes I would do what you did. Hope you are ok.

Mawbroon I wanted to say too, how very sorry I was to hear about your first baby. That must have been so hard. It can break up a couple but your marriage was so strong. I do hope my message above has not upset you - it is so difficult to decide whether to tell people about it, but I feel selfish not telling a bereaved person. Essentially, it does say that dying is not a horrible experience, even if the bit of life just before it is difficult. I am so glad your Paw (I see the name relevance now -sorry I was so dim!) was peacefully at home with you. Take care of yourself. Lots of love, L

Thank you
He was a quiet and modest man, the son of a war hero and successful diplomat/intelligence agent, and I am sure was not the eldest son his father wanted him to be. He was packed off to Gordonstoun in his early teens to “toughen him up” and was miserable for the whole time.
As it turned out, he was the only one of his siblings to maintain a happy marriage, withstand some very hard times financially and face over 20 years of poor health,knowing that the outcome, if he lived that long would be a painful decline and death. At least he was spared the worst of that.
But in the courage stakes, he ranked up there with his dad’s DSO, Légion d'Honneur and Croix De Guerre.