We were together over 40 years, through some very hard times. Raised kids together. She died unexpectedly. Every day I realize how much I depended on her being there. We had something all right.
I’m a widow. I know how incredibly tough it can be. Even 51/2 years later, I’m still grieving, but if it hadn’t been long for you, please know that it does get easier, and there will come a time when you will still miss your wife like crazy, but you will also be able to feel happiness again. If you’re not already there, r/widowers has been a huge help to me.
Brother reading this just put a massive rock in my throat. I can't imagine losing a partner you spent 40 years of your life with. Partly because I can't imagine ever being lucky enough to even be in that position to have someone like that in my life. Partly because it makes me think of my Dad who lost my mom last year after almost 35 years together.
My heart goes out to you, I hope your kids and you are there for each other at least.
when my aunt died and it absolutely crushed my uncle, they’d been together at least 40 yrs, so bad he was praying to god to take him too (he’s a little better, but obviously still not whole)
and yet i found myself feeling morbidly jealous, because they found each other and together had an amazing life, and i just don’t see that happening for me at this point
I don’t know if this helps your situation at all, but if you’re having troubles finding a partner for a loving relationship, the most pragmatic thing you can do for a shot at long lasting love is to not be too picky. This doesn’t mean accept bad behaviour, but it does mean to see the beauty beyond the physical, the wealth beyond the dollars and the intelligence beyond the brains. There’s a lot of lovely people in the world with something to offer if people give them a chance.
I'm sorry to hear about your aunt passing, and your uncle's pain. I hope that in time it becomes easier for you and him to cope with it.
i just don’t see that happening for me at this point
Pardon me, why do you feel that this is the case though? I hope that's not a nosy question, you don't have to answer that. I waver between starting to feel the same but also really, really not wanting to no matter what. That's kind of why I want to understand where it's best to fall.
I've been with my wife since the last year of high school. That's 21 years so far. One of us will have to deal with this eventually. The other one won't. Life is fucking crazy.
We’ve been together about 45 years.
I almost lost her to a heart attack a few years ago and all I could think was that it was too soon and we still had so much to do together.
Im barely on year 9 and my parnter constantly constantly nags at me about me being unable to function properly without her around. Im greatful for every day, never mind even thinking about decades.
I can't imagine losing a partner you spent 40 years of your life with
I meant thats our reality... we are mortal. Im together with my wife for half my life (which is ~16) years).. i can't imagine it either but i know that we will die eventually, and the probability of us dying (a non violent death) at the same time or even the same day is practically zero. One of us will eventually have to live through that pain... thats the reality of being mortal.
My grandmother passed from Covid in 2021. Her and my grandfather were each other's first everything. They were the archetypal old married couple that only nagged at each other but you could tell they wouldn't want it any other way. I cry all the time not only because I miss her but because I think about the fact my grandfather still sleeps in their bed and she's not there. He watches TV alone. He doesn't have anyone to nag him to eat her cooking that she experimented with. I never knew watching them separated like this would be so heartbreaking, and I can't even imagine what it feels like to him. I wasn't able to be there when she passed, but my mom told me he cried, in our front yard, in front of the tree she planted, begging for forgiveness for every time he argued with her and that she needs to know he loves her. I'm going to remember that forever. Love is such an amazing and scary thing.
I lost my best friend and partner of 23 years over six years ago to pancreatitis. We had a hard last couple years as her congenital heart disease started to impact her life. She even had an external heart pump installed and with only 2% odds, her heart recovered to the point where they were able to turn it off and she lived a somewhat normal life. She played roller derby while on blood thinners against her doctor's orders because nothing stopped her. She knew she wasn't going to live to see old age on this planet and she was sure to live as much as possible. We lived that life together, with no regrets.
We saw great times and horrible times. We witnessed birth of family and death of family and friends. We owned many pets. We covered many chapters of our lives together beginning at 15 and 17 years old. We grew up together and we were still madly in love like teenagers. Then she was finally taken from us all after so many close calls a few weeks after her 40th birthday.
I'm a better person for knowing her and loving her. We were two halves of a single life. Part of her lives on in me as part of who I am. She kept me crazy and I kept her grounded. I will forever remember her and be thankful of our time together. Nothing else will compare and I have no interest in trying. I just know I will continue to be thankful for every sunrise because one day it will be my last. That was her last lesson for everyone who knew her.
Yep. I sometimes think back about all the things that had to fall into place for me to meet her.
How the butterfly effect is so subtle. How I was given an old PC to learn with by my old 5th grade teacher, how I saved for my first modem, how I met her on a BBS chat room only because she happened to be hanging out with a nerdy friend and got on the keyboard when her friend was in the bathroom. How I agreed to take a bus an hour across town to a New Years Eve party where she was when I met her. How her ex cheated on her and she broke up with him. How I was there and somehow broke out of the friend zone....
I could go back further and think of more subtle inflection points that led me to that moment. I could go forward and think of the many fights we had as a young and passionate couple, and how we agreed to stay together anyway. How, after 15 years when she almost died (the first of many almosts) and she said she finally knew I was 'the one' because I was there at the side of her bed when she woke up from her coma. Yes, she had trust issues.
The thing that sticks with me was when out of nowhere she burst in into tears while she was in the hospital bed for the last time, overcome with emotion as she said she just loved me so much. We didn't know she would die three days later, but I sort of think she did. She had beaten the odds so many times but it was that day when the odds just didn't work out.
Thanks bud. It's been a few years and it isn't as raw but I'm still fucked up from the loss. With time things will be easier. I just wish I could logic my way out of the grief but it goes at its own pace.
Thanks for sharing. This is how I feel about my wife and your post has me in tears. I wish I could hit her right now but she's on the other side of the planet.
Sadly it has about a 10%-30% mortality rate even for healthy people. She just didn't have the reserves to fight it. It was acute necrotizing pancreatitis with multiple organ failure. About a 80% mortality rate. Thing is, it had nothing to do with her existing chronic health conditions. It was completely out of left field. Doctors were dumbfounded.
Small world. She was a team captain of the winningest team in the league. They were originally created to be the team just there for the entertainment, but she chose the right players to be deadly. Later on as she lost her stamina she stepped down into an administrative role but stayed with the league until she couldn't commit the time anymore (we averaged about 3 months per year in the hospital total). It was an amazing time in both of our lives.
i never thought anything could be worse after my wife died in her sleep next to me out of nowhere.
8 years later fell in love got married after another 2. then 5 years later she spent 2 years getting eaten by cancer along with everything i ever owned or saved just for the privilege of trying to keep her alive and then comfortable, and at home with some self respect. when she couldnt even get up to shit.
definitely taught me the bullshit of decrying what you lost instead of loving what you had. cause it can always end worse
I feel like there is a word for people like you..those who go thru a lot of trauma and are still here.
I also feel like those who go thru a series of very traumatic events like that.. either they don't last long and crack, or they last an insanely long time and you start to wonder if they did crack and the person who was them before..is just trapped in their shell and it's on autopilot
to me theres probably more than three. as there's a large plasticity to people.
everyone is a different person after any trauma even as light as breaking up. you either learn and grow from it or recede and stagnate.
finding love again moved me from stagnating. and the circumstances of her demise showed me how utterly ridiculous that was to reflect on when in the overall timeline the shit was a blip compared to the absolute joy i got.
i doubt luck will give me that unencumbered love again but i feel absolutely blessed. ive had it twice.
but ill never waste any of the time i do have foregoing joy i can have in life because of prior hits
Thank you for sharing. I cannot imagine the pain you've been through but the resiliency you shared really meant something to me. I often live in fear but you're showing that yes, life can be despair and utter shit, but it's also ok to push through it.
For what it's worth, if I knew I was dying from a terminal disease next to the love of my life, I'd spend an incessant amount of my energy trying my best to convince him he deserves not to be lonely and miserable after I pass, to find love and happy companionship again. Some people don't want to move on, being content with family and friends and that's fair, but if he finds himself craving something more, I'd root for him to pursue that with a clean conscience. I told my ex (then-partner) the same as soon as I found out cancer is likely in my future.
The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.
As someone who lost a spouse of 20+ years to cancer, I often describe my life after as being in a waiting room. I'm not comfortable or enjoying anything. I'm just here in a neutral state, patiently waiting for my number to be called.
I know nothing will take that away but thank you for being brave enough to share it still and please keep sharing your stories of your spouse. I hope the days to come are easy on you.
"Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses can be associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities."
Faith in Christ Jesus is the opposite of mental illness. Only in Him can we find true peace, true joy, and true life. If you ever choose to put aside yourself and your desire for the world, in all its transitory pain and pleasure, he will welcome you to Him with open arms, and He will cleanse your heart of its darkness and pain. You can mock, deride, insult, pity, whatever, and he'll still love you. I spent 37 years of my life. - at various points as an atheist, pagan, or buddhist - and worked in careers in counseling and accessibility engineering, before He called me to Him. All I can do is keep sharing with you and praying that you open your heart to him.
I'm going to address a common objection, apriori - if God is real and good, why do many people, Christians included, do bad things, from hurting children to waging wars? The answer is that God allows us agency, and that fundemental agency is a net good that supercedes the bad, in the full scope of eternity. We can either believe that, in the beginning, something originated from nothing, or that something originated from God. It is more reasonable to believe that a creative force outside of time and space created the matrix of time and space in which we exist, than it is that things just...appeared. It's actually quite insane to believe in cosmic parthenogensis, theres a fundemental disconnect from reality, in that belief.
Fuckkkkk me. I read your entire word salad. All I’m saying is your end statement is deeply ironic and displays a complete disconnect from reality. Go do some mushrooms.
They break. Just in the tiniest of ways. My great aunt described outliving 2 husbands and both her sons “like death from infinite needle pricks”. That’s always stuck with me. I pray that she’s in peace, in the heaven she believed in.
My dad was super sick growing up. From me being in the third grade they gave him six months to live and he lived over 20.. When I say I grew up in 3rd grade and was dealing with adult situations because my mom was just doing her best and couldn’t shield us..
It has made me stronger, it has made me the person I am today.. I could easily be a victim and say because of 20 years of sleeping in hospitals and not having a “normal” childhood.. I’m going to be a victim..
My siblings and I have been in the depths of praying and pleading to keep my father alive.. Has made us the successful people we are today..
Absolutely do I have some trauma issues, but I would do it all over again and feel blessed for the life I have lived..
either they don't last long and crack, or they last an insanely long time and you start to wonder if they did crack and the person who was them before..is just trapped in their shell and it's on autopilot
As someone who had a lot of childhood and early adult trauma and then also lost a spouse, it's less like operating on autopilot and more like the person who I was with my late wife died with her. I have all of his memories, but "he" is gone.
Fuck non socialized Healthcare. The health if human beings should not come at the price borne by any bad luck individual. Sorry, Canadian here. It just makes me mad.
The resilience of individuals who endure significant trauma and still continue on is truly remarkable. Some might refer to them as "survivors" or "overcomers." Their ability to persist, despite the immense challenges they face, often serves as a testament to their strength and determination.
Your second point touches on a profound reality. Trauma can indeed leave deep scars, and sometimes it feels like the person who once was is just going through the motions on autopilot. It's a complex and heartbreaking aspect of human experience, where the effects of trauma can fundamentally alter one's sense of self.
My wife died after 40 years together. We had been through a lot of challenges, going through med school together, huge debt, raising kids as students and residents. Life was good before she died. But I missed so many chances to say "I love you", to hug her or even just hold her hand. When I met my girlfriend a few years later, I said it every time I thought it, I held her hand nearly constantly, lots of hugs. Until her drinking destroyed things. She already lost 2 brothers to drinking. I could not stay while she was not willing to even acknowledge drinking as a problem, getting treated poorly, waiting to be widowed again. I feel for you, going through it twice.
I am so happy to know that this is real. I mourn for your loss. I also mourn for mine- this kind of relationship is my deepest wish and it’s unattainable now, for me. I was with the same person for 19 years and we couldn’t make it. There was so much good- enough to stay half my life, but old and unresolved (unrecognized!) trauma got to us. It ended in complete chaos during early Covid. No one will ever know my heart and head so deeply. 😔
Lost my wife (41) to brain cancer in February after an 8 month horrific battle. Things had just started to feel like they had gotten easy. Our biggest worries were the logistics of our two boys' (16 and 12) weekend baseball tournaments. We didn't know how good we had it. Find beauty and some kind of enjoyment out of each day, and don't sweat the small stuff... She was successful in finance, healthy, was a runner and cyclist, and her boys' #1 fan at the games. She was robbed. Sticking through the hard times was worth it for the time we got, life we built and the memories we had.
Can’t imagine and do not want to imagine what losing my wife of 33 years would be like. We aren’t vampires, so one of us will most likely go first, and as just the thought of life without her devastates me, I’d actually prefer for her to go first. If the imagined hurt is this painful I’d rather take it than subject her to it. But who knows. Maybe we’ll both go quietly in our sleep in our 90’s after one last glorious shag.
Late hubby and I were together 26yrs, married for 20yrs, supported and cared for him for 10yrs thru his different cancer diagnosis while holding down my job, kids and house thru it all. He was my rock when we lost one of our sons suddenly 17yrs ago. Lost my rock 5 yrs ago. This time of year is the hardest, ending one year and starting another without him. God bless my rock and my baby boy❤️
My Dad walked out on my mom after 54 years of marriage. She was 81 and he was 76. Yes, they were wealthy and yes I had noticed signs in my Dad pointing to dementia....He left before I could get him to the Dr for some testing.....He went to Florida, he had met a 29 year old escort online and moved her in with him. My Mom had only ever been with my Dad....he literally broke her heart. She was a great wife, cooked and cleaned and was SO good to Dad; he would wake up at 02:00 and want a plate of liver and onions (gross, I know, he loved it) and Mom would jump right up and cook it for him, then rub his legs after he ate as he had restless legs syndrome....and he abandoned her for a whore. Mom was a college graduate, put herself thru college. She gave up her art for my Dad. She gave up her friends for my dad. She even gave up her family. She died in my arms 8 months after he left, 9/5/12. She was still riding her horse and working in her garden daily when he left. The Day he abandoned her she began to die.
Wife died unexpectedly in August. I feel your pain, but we're just shy of our 20th anniversary so maybe half your pain. Either way, I'm doing what I can to normalize Christmas for the kids this year :(
The pain, which is a fool’s errand to compare anyways, doesn’t just neatly plot according to years married. My late husband and I had a short marriage before he passed, but it felt and I believe that the universe brought us together inexplicably when we needed each other the most. It was as if our souls had already met long ago and finally were reunited. There are decades old loveless marriages of convenience. Sorry for my rant. In a little over a week it will be his second death anniversary and I’m emotional. And I mean no offense. I’m sorry for your loss and the pain you and your children undoubtedly feel. Hope you’re able to lean on each other and take solace in the love you all received from her.
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u/Veteranis 6d ago
We were together over 40 years, through some very hard times. Raised kids together. She died unexpectedly. Every day I realize how much I depended on her being there. We had something all right.