Yes it is hard to see the happy couples having companionship with their best friends. Makes you really miss the other half of yourself. People can't understand what it is like unless they have gone through it. It makes you feel alone in a crowd. ((Hugs))

I feel the same way. I have very good friends, but they’re all couples. They invite me to go places with them sometimes, but it’s very hard to be the 3rd wheel. There are so many things I can’t do or places I can’t go cause I have no one.

To all of you, yes, yes and yes! It has been almost 3 years since my husband went Home without taking me along.

The world seems to have two groups....marrieds, and female widows. There are, I have discovered, a significant number of people who move about as invisible ghosts, just as I have felt since 'widow' became my middle name.

It is not in my nature to become part of groups, as I reveled in just being a part of my husband's world. However, I have forced myself to become a dedicated attender/contributor of the Believer's Assembly small groups that I was led to. While I am there, I look for that other person who seems to slip in and out without anyone noticing. I ask their name, say 'hi' and look for them the next week.
One of these people has actually chosen to text me regularly, just to talk about the daily stuff that our spouses used to be there to hear. It's nice to have my phone engaged, again and have someone else's thoughts to occupy mine.

Another person has lunch with me once a week, and, although this is far from the intimacy and comfort that my husband welcomed me with, it has given me an opportunity to minister and be ministered to. Connections.

Still, I know that it is my nature to be most content in a fabulous marriage, I believe God placed this in me as part of my nature. So, I have asked for the Lord to prepare me to be a mate and have a mate, to live out the rest of my days with. I am confident that my late husband approves of this, wholeheartedly, and watches with eager anticipation for his 'Babygirl' to be loved and cherished in my earthly walk, again.

Until that one is revealed, I am able to, perhaps, take a moment of loneliness away , and receive a blessing as well.

I have pressed in, as well, to a relationship with my Heavenly Father, demanding that He be to me what His Word says He will....Ani Lo "I am His". And also, Dodie Li "He is mine". Indeed, we meet together, now,throughout the day, and converse back and forth. He hears my heart and I hear HIs. This relationship will not ever end. There is no grief in it. I am thankful.

There is Hope in our expected end.

Holidays are the worse emotionally, but we stumble through them.as best we can. It will be 12 years in June I lost Don. We were married 40 years and although I manage to hold the sadness till I return home. In the early days I often tried to leave as soon as I can. I just explained that it's hard not to have him here and I will be back to me again as I can.