Being a new widow

Good for you, blackbird Keep posting to tell us how it is going.

It does! You will have bad days, I've got one today , but then so does everyone!

just felt able to read your lovely messages.I am going to volunteer to help in a charity shop and am looking inti U3A courses.I still find coming home to an empty house difficult.I also find the evenings long and lonely cannot concentrate on anything for long but hopofully that will improve in time

Gally Your message was very moving. Enjoy your visit. Much to look forward to. [flower]

Just sending good wishes and glad that there are good moments for you.

elegran

Gally I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying your time down under. There is nothing like the company of your family to fill the gap. I agree with you about the empty house - it is so quiet.

There are pluses and minuses. When you sit up until 1 am finishing a book, no-one interrupts with a bellow of "Are you coming to bed some time tonight?" but when you come home after an evening out, no-one asks "How did it go?" and makes you a cuppa.

Lovely to hear from you Gally and to know you are with your lovely family. Your time at home will become easier as the months go by, but meanwhile you have your grandchildren to enjoy and what a fantastic place you're visiting. Have a great time

Love the Merry Widow bit Gally!Keep enjoying yourself down under

Keep on at it! You're doing fine. Your feelings at this stage are completely normal! Particularly the empty house one!
Eventually you will wellcome the house as a haven of peace.
Trust me, it gets better every day!

gally john willbe having a laugh over the forms of transport I am sure. {{{{hugs}}}

Gally, how good it is that you have your family and that you are there to greet your new grandchildren.
Thank you for keeping us updated - I have just read right through this thread and I hope the other recently widowed members are also coming to terms with their loss.

I've just picked up on this thread again, almost 6 months to the day when John died - how strange . Those first awful, desperate months have now passed and I seem to be picking up a few threads of 'normality' again. I find I am ok when busy busy busy and don't think about it too deeply, but I dread going back home again into an empty house when the memories come flooding back and he isn't there to share them and I do still become very panicky about 'paper work'. Once probate has been granted, hopefully when I get home from Oz, I can then sort out my own system and feel comfortable about it all. Georgie and I are hopefully going down to Fairlight Cove on Sydney's North Harbour to scatter the rest of J's ashes (which travelled in my hand luggage on the flight - he would have laughed at that!) on friday, the 6 month anniversary - unless her baby has decided to make its appearance by then. It will be somewhere she and the children can go, a place which he loved, and be near to him and his memory. I can't believe that there are 2 more grandchildren who he will never meet. Oh dear, tears again.....

Blackbird and nonnasusie

I full intend to become a very Merry Widow

nonnasusie

He was!!

nonnasusie He must have been a good man. He deserves to be rememberd.

It was 17 years ago today since I lost my 1st husband in a motorcycle accident and although I'm happily remarried I'll never forget that day!! R.I.P

Mahler moves me to tears...and brings me joy at the same time.

Good music has an emotional path built into it that leads you into a "safe" sadness and then leads you out again the other side. and some of the thundering ones, like "Fingal's Cave" or "Land of the Mountain and the Flood" or a good bit of Wagner can leave you feeling wrung-out but good - cathartic is the word I suppose.

"Music hath charm to soothe the savage breast" and it can soothe a sad one too.

Chopin's music has tremendous healing power.

That's true, Elegran. When my father died, I found Chopin's Nocturnes filled the gap.

blackbird A practical thing that I do is to have music playing for most of the day. For me it is CDs of classical music but play whatever you like to hear. It covers that empty echoing silence that seems to wrap you round when there is no-one to hear moving around the house, making all those little lived-in noises, the clink of a cup, the sound of a door closing or the loo being flushed, and it acts as a partial substitute for a conversation.

I believe it has been shown that listening to structured music patterns helps a child's brain develop, and also patients in distress with Alzheimers were made calmer by it. It certainly has a direct link into the emotional state of the mind, so I suspect it can work to wash out negative feelings and unhappiness.

blackbird, try not to feel that you're on your own. It's such early days yet for you. Elegran talks a lot of sense in her post, I'm sure, and I hope that this will give you a bit of comfort. In the meantime, please keep posting and talking to us.

Blackbird It is not that your friends do not want to help you, it is that you have to step halfway towards them so that they know what they can do that will make a difference. Don't wait for them to contact you. Ring someone and invite them for a meal or a coffee.

There are many organisations providing opportunities to leave the house and spend an afternoon or an evening doing something that you enjoy in pleasant company, that will fill your mind for a while and give you something else to focaus on. But they will not come to you, you have to search through evening class brochures and "What's on" lists, think back to the interests, hobbies and crafts that you used to enjoy and find out how you can pick them up again.

I used to do a lot of photography (back in the smelly darkroom days) At a neighbourhood fair soon after I lost my husband, I got talking to someone beside a display of entries to the photograph competition, and as a result I have joined the local camera club. At the first meeting I went to I knew nobody but at the next they seemed like old friends - and I found I had not lost my eye for a picture. Editing the shots digitally is a steep learning curve, quite different from wet darkroom techniques, but the brain exercise is good for me, and needs a lot of concentration, which prevents me dwelling too much on what I have lost.

Where do you live, blackbird? A number of gransnetters around the country have taken to meeting up and perhaps some of us live near you. Are you a member of any groups such as U3A?