Grief feels like a form of madness

It is exactly like a kind of madness. The grief invades your thoughts, constantly- it is all that you can think about. Two months is not a long time. Big hugs xx

Only just joined gransnet and just been browsing the posts. I immediately came to this about bereavement as my husband died 2 ½ years ago and I feel as though it was only yesterday. Can empathise with most of you.
He was my second husband ( my first having died when I was 36 with 3 children) and we were married 20 years. I got on well with some of his children although some of them I felt held me at arms length. Since he died I’ve hardly seen them at all, and the grandchildren even less. We are just coming out of lockdown now but I feel as though I’ve been shut out of their lives for good.

Issibon
Sometimes four years can feel like a very long time and others no time at all

My wonderful husband died four years ago and I am still at a loss miss him so much .

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My mother died at Christmas (2018) so it's reasonably fresh.

Some days grief and loss and sorrow hits me bad, and I cry it out of my system. Other days, it's as though she passed away years and years ago, or that she never existed.

I think this is some kind of inbuilt protection mechanism, as her last few months were particularly painful and harrowing to watch. Only my sister knew this as she wa going through the same kind of thing.

Just be kind to yourself and 'go with the flow' x

Sorry to hear of your loss Annie it stays raw for a long time I’ve found. Coming home to an ever empty house is so hard.
As you say one day at a time.

I’m hurting , everyone is kind , I think yes it’s form devastation and to much sadness to bear . It very resent , the funeral is just over . We are all so angry at life , maybe because it was so fast he was poorly for few weeks , and in hospital some of the time . But awaiting a stent , however developed a infection in hospital , one day later sepsis took him . He was very fit till then we had just returned from Montenegro . Only 74 and 54 years of marriage .

I v been with my daughter mostly , now I have to stay home , not just for a night . But forever with out him , I don’t know how’s I will manage . My daughter is only 10 miles away ,
And I have many friends near .
But the future without my soulmate terrifies me ..
One day at a time .

I was widowed in 2006. Madness just about sums it up, but I promise it's just your brain trying to adjust to a new life. Have you hear of "Way Up" a forum for widows and widowers. You'll see that your feelings are completely normal. They also arrange meals out, and holidays etc. I'd recommend a holiday planned for next year. I stay at the Mistral Hotel, in Maleme, Crete, single people only. It's a great place, I smiled and laughed for the first time there, fabulous food, spotlessly clean, and you can do as much or as little as you want. Lost count of how many times I've stayed since. You will make new friends.

Thanks again everyone - so kind. My thoughts are with you all. We are not alone are we while we can share?

lmm6 Again, thanks for your suggestions. The poem was written only a month after DH's death. I am now 4+ months down the road. I talk to him and his photo, all the time. The memorial is sorted - a tree and a seat in a special place. As for his hobbies, the equipment he used I have donated to a club in his memory, which I know he would have wanted: and I am in the process of choosing a new volunteer role that reflects his interests (conservation) as well as mine. I just need first to recover some physical stamina that has been drained by many years of caring.

Personally I don't think that being able to express strong emotions means that you are necessarily in complicated grief. For me it means only that I find it preferable to bottling things up or over-using displacement techniques (though I do that sometimes, as I imagine most of us do).

It is very early days, grief has several different stages and there is no time factor. I became a widow 4 years ago and have spent the whole time being busy, it is how I cope. I think I have reached the acceptance stage, I hope I have but memories are fading, even the 45 years as a married couple. It is a strange, it feels strange

I talk to my husband a lot and I never mis-place or lose things any more. I ask and then I just go straight to the object, did it again this morning. The white feathers kept me going, they appeared when I needed them, even indoors. I talk aloud in my house, not to myself but because I believe he is somewhere, listening and yes he approves of the stuff I have downsized, the fact that I am moving

It is early days. But I would really suggest that when you are ready you consider making a gesture in memory of your husband. It can help. The Woodland Trust, for example, will plant trees in memory of someone or you could perhaps make a garden in your husband's memory. I lost a grandmother - she took her own life due to depression - 40 years ago. I have grieved for her ever since. I have ornaments and jewellery that belonged to her. I am going to sell them and give the money to MIND. What were your husband's interests? I am sure there is something you could support in his memory. And I think you should talk to him - love can never die. I visit my grandmother's grave regularly and take flowers and talk to her. Sometimes I talk to her photo. "You do not really die until the last person speaks your name" - it's something I read and I talk about her a lot to my GS and he's really interested. His brown eyes are just like hers. I feel she could walk into the room at any moment. She was born in 1902 and every year I think how old would she be now? This year I thought that someone has loved her for the last 117 years - first her parents and family, then her husband and daughter and me still.

Lovely poem, purplepatch. Describes it perfectly.
I keep thinking back to the moment he took his last breath - my life changed in that milisecond. But I am trying to make the life I have now as good as it can be, for him. I owe it to him.
Would have been our 47th anniversary last Wednesday, went out for the day, had lunch out, did some shopping, and in the evening had lovely flowers from DD and DS.
On Thursday had lunch with my oldest friend, would have been her Golden Wedding on Friday. So, we drank wine, talked, and reminisced and it did us good.
Going on my first holiday without him soon, a step into the unknown...
I read recently that the grief is always there and stays the same, but that gradually your life expands around it.
for you.

Whoops that was meant to be - wrong brackets!

Thanks for your kind thought lmm6. I did look up grief, including complicated grief, a while ago. I don't have it. I am a writer and just expressing my thoughts in the way that helps me. Others will express, or not express, differently I guess. (smile) (flowers)

Dear Purplepatch, I think tha the feeling that the past never existed is your good healthy brain-mind getting used to your new identity as a widow. I wish you well in your future life.

Please look up Complicated Grief. It is a recognised condition.

Grief

Grief - the thief that steals your heart and holds it in a vice
That takes your breath and hurls it into a void
That makes you hug yourself and rock in pain
Silently in a corner.

Grief - the actor that invades your dreams
That lets you tears flow even as you sleep
Then makes you pace the empty house
And despair.

Grief - the pain that overwhelms the mind
Imbues the slightest thought with meaning
So profound it crushes your spirit
And saps your strength.

Grief - that tears your memories from your soul
And lays them bare for all the world to see
A life left numb and empty
Never ending.

Grief - the price we pay for love
Too big a price to pay for caring
Too harsh a punishment
Just for being there.

Hallo everyone who posted from 1 April on. I have been off the boards for a while and only just caught up with them. Thank you all for your wise words, info about books, advice and general loveliness Particular thoughts to the posters who have suffered recent losses.

I penned a few thoughts about a month after DH died that summed up my feelings at that time. I'll post it separately, so don't open it if you feel it might be triggering and not helpful.

Ito lost my dw wife over night last xmas i ask myself could i have told her more how much i loved her things go around in your head all the time . You had over 50loving years together that tells me allot take care

Hi purplepatch - gosh 52 years, such a long time.

I've experienced grief with the loss of close family members - my mother when I was in my forties, my 43 year old nephew in recent years when I felt my sister's grief as if it was my own.

Reading about grief helped me.

There's a book called "Grief is the thing with feathers"- I've not read it (it seemed too highbrow for me), but I've read about it, intrigued by the title. The feathers of the title refers to a "crow" that "comes to stay" when the author is widowed. I won't leave until you don't need me anymore the crow says.

Joan Didion's book on grief (when her husband and daughter died within a year of each other) is called The Year of Magical Thinking. It's a wonderful book.

I offer these books as examples that you're not mad, you're grieving as expressed too by these authors.

for you.

It's only a few weeks for me and I just feel I can't go on without him...but I am, looking after our animals and knowing my family would suffer too much if I took myself off. I get furious with him and upset the dogs screaming and crying. Today I have just felt so tired that apart from a dog walk I've been watching television all day. Heartache is just what it says, an ache in your heart. I'm so sorry there are so many of us going through this.

Bless your heart, no it's not madness, it's just grief. I went through that same thing.

I don't know what causes it but I found that talking to my husband helped.

I asked his advice, told him off, even told him jokes just as I did in life.

I still do talk to him occasionally, even now, 20 years later and can just imagine his wry smile and humorous responses.

Hi Purplepatch,

no, it's definitely not a form of madness.
It's a ruddy great hole in your life where someone you loved beyond life itself used to live, and it doesn't matter what you do in an attempt to fill that hole, it refuses to budge.
My husband died in 2003, aged 45 - he had a massive heart attack whilst driving home. By time the paramedics arrived it was too late - they couldn't restart him, despite their best efforts. For months after Tony died, I slept with the shirt the ambulance crew cut away in their attempts to save him. In my bed, in the dark, I could pretend he was there with me, as I cried and smelled the gradually fading aftershave he wore....
For six months, life was a thick fog in which I simply functioned on a day to day basis. And that was it. Matters weren't helped by his family, who shut me out (I'm a second wife and as such, didn't count, apparently). His mother actually told me that the family knew he didn't love me and it was a matter of time before he returned to his first wife. I will be honest and say that suicide was a viable option at that point.
Workmates thought Tony's death was on a par to losing a pet gerbil, and after six months, I really should have been getting over it - really?!
Nearly sixteen years on, the absolute numbness and sheer physical pain (yes, bereavement hurts) of my loss has receded somewhat, and now I can smile when I see photographs of him, as opposed to dissolving into a complete mess.
Life has since taken a direction that was never planned as a couple, but is one in which I have found some peace. Suffice to say, the toxic family members are no longer a part of that.
Personally, I would not join any widow's groups - I found it was not helpful to sit with women who talked about their deceased husbands every time we met, thereby exacerbating loss. Talking to a bereavement counsellor wasn't helpful either, as it didn't help with moving on.
If you're not working, you may find voluntary roles helpful. Keep busy. Fill your days. Remember your husband for the man he clearly was (and he was, for you to love him so deeply and so much). One day, you WILL start to feel something you recognise as peace - a coming to terms with your loss. But don't put a timescale on it. One day at a time...………

Coming up to 5 yrs for me and I still thank all the Gnetters that helped me .

I left the duvet/pillow and bit n bobs around for months and months, I couldn't bare to move them. When a few years later I decided to tidy the room out, I couldn't take the curtains down, each time I moved I felt like I was discarding him (even the curtains) my dd said "mum hes not in the curtains" (yes silly things I know)

I too sometimes think "did this person ever exist"? if so how could I have spent so many yrs (over 40 at the time) and yet feel like hes never been here and it has been some film or play I have been watching, why am I here in this house, where has all that time gone! its just like some kind of vision/dream what ever you want to call it.