Widows & Widowers Support Group
This community is dedicated to those who have lost a husband, wife, or partner. Anything is open for discussion here, with the hope that we can focus on grief, bereavement, life after loss, and continuing on after a great loss.
Since Sunday have been battling a bad cold. First time I have been ill since my husband passed. After having family around my house for ten days, something way out of norm for me because I usually do the traveling, I feel vulnerable. I am wearing my husband's casual jacket, his socks around the house and just missing him. In the support group, a great comment was made about not living your life in fear but right now my thoughts are what if something physically major happens, like a stroke or some debilitating disease. My sister who lives out of state has a serious chronic illness and her husband is the caregiver. Girlfriends calling and wanting to run over with soup which is so sweet, but this little blip in the road in my life has me thinking to do some major life planning. Now that most of us are alone, do you also feel that vulnerability?
I try to remind myself that my success rate for making it through
tough times has been pretty good so far..
A few months after my husband died I fell off a ladder & broke my foot pruning a tree branch that broke in a windstorm.
I thought I was doomed but somehow I managed to drive myself to the hospital to get splinted, to the pharmacy to pickup my pain meds, back to the hospital be casted & then home to mend.
I spent the next 3 months in a non-weight bearing cast & crutches. I learned to drive my 6 speed with a cast, utilize the electric carts at the store to my do grocery shopping, scoot up & own the stairs on my butt & carry things in a sack I wore around my neck, etc.
I was completely alone but one thing I hadn't counted upon was the help I received from complete & total strangers. Everywhere I went people would give up their seats for me, hold doors for me, help me carry things to my car etc. If I had relied solely on the fear that was my imagination I would've given up without ever trying.
I had to arrange my husband's memorial & settle his estate alone. I stayed in the big rental house my husband & I had shared until the neighborhood started going downhill & I got too scared to stay there, then I searched & bought a house, packed up & moved 200 miles & refurbished the house -all alone, none of which I knew how to do or had ever done before (I just learned as I went & hired help when I absolutely had to) which wasn't often because I was poor.
I went 5+ years without any medical/dental insurance or a job. If I injured myself I just stuck it out & self-medicated at home til I healed (broken toes, pulled muscles, illnesses) I managed to get through them all alone somehow.
I finally found myself a job too & for the 1st time in a long time am feeling like I can really make it on my own here, like I have a future...
I guess what I'm trying to say is we humans are very resilient. We adapt & persevere. The main thing is to keep trying, do the best you can with what you have, even if you have to improvise. You may
surprise yourself with how innovative & resourceful you can be (necessity is the mother of invention) & how things just seem to work themselves out given time.
Above all else, don't give up on yourself or worry yourself into total apathy.. apathy is the killer (I know because I was stuck in it for the longest time. It serves no useful purpose. Thankfully I eventually realized that & pulled myself free..
Hang in there, you can do this..
(((hugs & best wishes)))