How to survive the loss of someone we can’t live without.

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/08/how-to-survive-the-loss-of-someone-we-cant-live-without/?fbclid=IwAR10CKGkSdxCVI3OfW7rA0FqDy7XGKEwHfQd4trlD5Md9vrkIrRaoXt6HBg

“Sometimes you have grief under control. It lies low, under the radar, to where you no longer notice it. Sometimes grief hits you like a fucking freight train. You don’t know when it will happen. It could’ve been years since the last wave of it hit, but you are wracked with pain and sadness, until there’s nothing but numbness left.”

— A girl who was just hit by the freight train of grief

Almost six years later. It’s still this bad. I don’t have the words or energy to explain it right now.

#NCRM18 #ResearchSavesLives

Because you are gone, it’s what you are now. And I hate it. I fight all the time to keep your memory alive. Today our daughter told me she has no memories of you. Not meaning to, I said ‘Oh wow. That is so incredibly sad…’ out loud (I try to stay positive for them, I do…) and she said ‘Yes, it is.’ I can’t help but wonder- is that really true? Has she blocked any she had out bc of the pain of losing her dad? Are the only ‘memories’ of a girl who was 7 when you died the ones I help to keep alive? Am I doing a good job of it? Isn’t this what I worried about so much when you got sick and died? Isn’t this what I cried and cried and cried about all the time and felt guilt over? What about the other children, is it the same for them??

Isn’t this MY NIGHTMARE, come true???

I will never stop trying to show the kids how much you truly loved them, but it’s breaking my heart to know that maybe the only reason they’ll ever know that is the memories I try to keep alive for them and not real ones they were able to make with you.

I am so sad you are gone.

Today marks 4 years that you have been gone. I'm not sure I even have the energy to describe how much I miss you and how much of a negative impact your death has made on my life. I WILL miss you forever. I will never stop wishing you were here with me.

THE anniversary

It's only 5 days away. In 5 days, it will be 4 years since you went away. I am haunted by those last days and what you went through, things that happened. They play over and over again in my head. Sometimes I wonder if you knew you might be dying. I think you may have now that I look back or maybe you were just too sick and out of it to really know. Maybe that's better. Why didn't I know? Why didn't I see it more clearly? Now there is so much left unsaid, and I can never tell you so many things. A million things were left unsaid. So much unfinished business. I tried to tell you some of them that afternoon, right after you stopped breathing and you died but before they came to take you away, but if I have to be honest, I don't believe in an 'afterlife' and I don't believe you heard those things. But what else could I do? I was grasping for straws. Even now when I write 'to you' I know it's not like you'll ever read it. I write anyway. I remember visiting your body every day- the same day you died, the next day and the next. I just had to see you, to touch you, it felt so unnatural to be away from you and that you could be gone. You looked so strange, that odd way a body looks when all life has left it, the paleness and coldness of a body. I remember the lividity that first day on the underside of your body as the blood that once ran through your veins settled in the lowest points of your frame. I remember your funeral, and how after it was over I sat in a room with your body, just staring and talking to you again. I remember my mother coming to take me away because they needed to bring your body to the crematorium. It was the last time I would ever see your face besides in pictures or memories or the very rare dream about you. I remember your stupid fucking family and all the ways they made that day harder, the ways they made the whole 3 month situation harder, the way they made the afterwards harder. I still hate your stupid fucking family. I remember once your dad saying (while you were still alive and fighting as best you could) 'It should've been me.' He was right, it should've been him. And the rest of your family, too. Any or all of them, but not you. They were and are useless- you were so very loved and needed. I miss you so much. Those words seem so petty, as if 'I miss you' could ever sum up the heaviness and sadness inside of me. Time does not heal all wounds. That's a fucking lie.

Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?

Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray (via wordsnquotes)

I've pondered this a time or two but I'm basically positive it's harder to be the one who survives.

12 years ago I married a man I planned to be with forever. That's a serious commitment to make to another person, but I loved him with everything I had.

Then nearly 4 years ago he stopped breathing one morning, in our home, when the cancer was just too much for his body to fight off anymore. I hate that day more than any other.

But for today- Happy wedding anniversary, John. You are missed more than anyone will ever know.

“Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.”

Elizabeth McCracken (via survivingsiblingsuicide)

Isn't that the truth?

I will never forget the moment your heart stopped and mine kept beating.

Angela Miller (via closetohonest)

Literally, everything. Literally, forever.

But what's new? It's a weird situation- sad over the loss of my husband and his constant absence, but simultaneously happy with my fiancée and somehow the two coexist. I don't know how, but they do.