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.

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patty6953 12/13/2015

Today when I was coming home from a Christmas dinner with our best friend's daughter's new place. It was hard but did have a good time. Something clicked to me. I'm not sure how many of you that are on Facebook but those of you that are or if your spouse was. They post a memory thing on it every night. I sometimes dread looking at the past six years on it. I wrote for the first time in the journal here. I love writing but haven't been able to since David passed last month.

The idea came to me on the way home. My sister-in-law's suggested I start writing down our life together. It didn't have to make sense or anything So I opened a word file and started coping things my husband had tagged me, coping things down we'd done that day that I'd posted, and started coping things people posted on my wall - like thinking of you, David's watching over you extra kind of things. I cried doing it tonight but it felt good. Kind of like a time capsule - putting our history together and what friends and family have said about him. Since he passed 98% of everything I post or write I tag his FB with.

I'm not sure if this is for everyone but it kind of helped me today. So thought I'd share the idea and hope it helps someone else as well. Or if anyone else has thought of doing this!

pattygriffith 12/14/2015

I started going to therapy. she suggested journaling. Such as writing down 3 positives a day / and if there are any triggers. She also recommened writing a dear {spouse name} letter

here is a sample of what I have wrote so far in my dear spouse letter.

Dear Steven,
Im writing this journal & keeping up with things as a new way of communicating about you. The place where I am right now is where no one wants to be in a sad/sorrow time called grief. You know just as well as I did that one day would come that we would have to say goodbye to each other. But we never knew what GOD has in mind for us or when that time will be. Your death was unexpected to say the least. Unfortunatly your health issues was the causes of why you died. The event that happened wasn't what I expected to happen.Being that you had already had 2 massive heart attacks we both knew you could/would have another one but just didn't know when. You passed away on July 29,2015 shortly after we got back to the house that morning. Something terribly went wrong.

emerald15 12/29/2015

Yes, just recently, 4 months after John died, I started journaling on my computer, beginning with the day he went into the hospital on May 14, 2015. It's up to 11 pages now from May to December 2015. I am now going back in time to dates from when we first met, remembering everything I can think of about our life together, which was a wild roller coaster ride. So it's a very good idea and good emotional therapy to write down thoughts and feelings you could never speak to another human being, including negative events, thoughts, etc. I write the journal off Microsoft onto a CD disc. It's not easy though writing down the very sorrowful, sad things about his pain and suffering during his illness in the hospital, and I document events chronologically, including the doctors and everything. That way when I am 90 years old and can't remember who I was or where I am, maybe this journal will bring me back to my life with John.

maryelnew 12/29/2015

I'm not so much journaling our life together but keep a notebook at my work desk and use it to release when the day gets too much. It's a good way for me to vent or cry for a controlled moment or talk to Ron for a minute or two when I can't shake a memory. I haven't gone back to read anything I write though. If I'm ready to at some time that is ok and if I don't that is ok as well. My writing is my release. Some of what I write is similar to Patty Grifith - an open letter to him, other times it is to get thoughts out of my head that just keep circling. For me it makes a huge difference in my healing process.

barbaz 01/04/2016

I have a close friend with whom I email almost daily; we talk about everything under the sun. When my husband died, I gave her blow-by-blow descriptions of everything I was going through: funeral arrangements, having long distance relatives arrive, banking, legal stuff, etc. I also shared my daily emotions with her. When the memorial service was over (one month after my husband died), she created a printed notebook for me out of all our emails during that time -- 130 pages -- and it is a thoughtful journal of that difficult time. I still have difficulty reading it, but it was a kind gift.

patty6953 01/04/2016

Thank you all for sharing what you are doing! I do love the idea of the email book - your friend is awesome! Most of our friends have no clue what I'm going through, or our family for that matter. My husband's mother does since my father-in-law passed away almost twenty years ago. It has helped me but at the same time - I don't write in it every day or when I should. I forget things easily now days that I shouldn't. Shrink says it's PTSD, since I was their when my husband had his heart attack and I couldn't save him. My memory has always been pretty good. But, the ideas are great and I'm hoping others see these and maybe it will help them as well. I know when this time next year get's here it'll be seriously hard, but I'll be able to see all the posts I wrote, our family and friends have wrote about my husband and the support I got. This way I can copy it all down then - hopefully my head and heart will be up to it all!

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