Hi everyone.  My name is James and i haven't visited here before but I felt the need to reach out for more support than I am going to get from family and friends.  That is not meant to have a negative connotation, but I'll explain.

Six years ago, I lost a 15 year old son and it was the toughest situation to experience.  He was the best parts of my wife and I and it took me 5+ years to even get to a point where life could be considered life again.  Friends and family mean well but what are they going to say and do.  It's a personal journey and each person experiences loss in such a profoundly personal way that noone will every understand exactly. 

Six years and 1 month later, I lost the other half of me.  My wife had suffered from some fairly serious medical events in the past few years but I thought we had turned a corner and were on the upswing.  She hadn't been hospitalized in a year (for her that was a monumental accomplishment).  She went into the hospital with an infection and even though it was serious and required many rounds of antibiotics to clear... 15 hours before she passed away, she was sitting in a chair and talking to me about whether or not I did my job to get our belongings moved into our new house.  She was ready to be home and I was ready for her to be home.  We had plans made for beach trips and Christmas trips and all of that just disappeared in a single moment.

I have some amazing work friends and my remaining children are around and are all watching me carefully to see how I am.  I try to be normal but that's just me displaying my public side whereas my private side is just seemingly crumbling inside.  There are brief moments when I really focus on her hand when she was squeezing mine by her bedside in her last moments and the hug she asked for knowing that the time for recovery was passing quickly. I treasure those moments for sure but I would give anything to have so many more. 

Both losses are the same and yet different for their own reasons and now, the uphill battle starts over for both actually because so many memories just come flooding through at any given moment.  One second I can be fine and the next... tears are just falling.

I am sorry to read about so many losses but there are also some encouraging words.  The one thing I want someone to take from my story is that I was able to get some recovery from a devstating loss when I never thought I would and, quite frankly, didn't want to at times.  I just wanted to disappear.  Please always be gentle with yourself and your feelings.  You are going to be overwhelmed and you just have to let it work.  You will get there and you are all still loved by someone in your life.