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Someone’s post made me think about my grief


I have followed Simon Thomas’s story since the news broke that he had lost his wife to cancer. His honesty about it all is SO admiral and I hope him writing about it is helping him as much as it is helping others.
But it is his latest posting that has really struck with me. https://t.co/GHR7vUoYQ7
To be so vulnerable in how he writes of before and after his wife’s death shows real courage. And I hope that people reading it that are struggling find the strength to speak up.

My story although nearly two years down the line some days still feels like yesterday. All of a sudden one night out of the blue my husband started fitting. (He didn’t have seizures) He had been unwell for a month but none of us expected that one night to change our lives as we new them. So 10+ seizures of differing scales and he was admitted into ICU. He was only in there for maybe 24hrs (that bits a bit fuzzy)
We got the news that the brain tumour that had plagued him in his teenage years was back and it looks like there may be another. To say my world fell apart was an understatement but I wasn’t the one that new what was coming next, and you could see that part in his eyes.
So we were transferred to a bigger hospital and surgery happened. Trying to distract yourself when you know the love of your life is having his skull opened up is not and easy task let me tell you.
9 months of fighting to not let the cancer win, until one day you get a call that you know means the next one will be get here now. We had managed to get a couple of days out of the hospital for respite but John really wasn’t good. Having to help him walk to the top of a beach to watch/listen to the sea I knew it would be his last time.
That call came and I made my way to his side. To be taken into a room to be told it’s a matter of time, maybe upto 3 months. It was aspiration pneumonia that was causing the issue. He was just to weak.
So he was transferred to high dependency and I spent that night awake. Trying not think of him not being around by my side. Turns out he wanted the last word and died that night 24hrs after us being told it was a matter of time.
I did not want to see him after he’d died. I wanted to remember him as I’d fallen in love with him. So I said my good byes over night while it was just me and him. (Getting scowled at by him for crying to loud)

The pain of loosing him, of knowing I’m not gonna grow old with him still gets to me. But I have to be thankful for the time we did have together however short. Trying to get through the days just after we’re hard. But I managed to talk and that helped. For all that we knew he wasn’t gonna make it passed the cancer this time it was still a shock. A kick in the heart breaking it in pieces. The dark clouds have come and passed and the anxiety of doing things alone instead of as a couple still gets me now. But I know he would want me to carry on. So I do it for him. However hard, it’s for him.
I lost part of me when he died. That part I know will never be filled again because it is with him.

Signing just your name on a card and not both for the first time really brings the black clouds of grief.  Giving away his stuff for how ever hard it was I knew it was going to better places and that’s what he’d want. But it’s the life steps that I’m struggling with. Moving into my own place is bringing all sorts of anxieties to deal with as well as excuses. My heart can only handle so much.

I will always love you J x

I do not fully understand why at 32 I became a widow but I have to try and accept that God wanted me in this path in life for a reason, what ever it may be.

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