What advice would you give a new 32 year old widow? My husband passed of an apparent aneurysm 8 days ago and I have no idea how to navigate this. We have been together over 15 years, married 4. I don’t know a life without him.
Over half my life was spent with her, and now it’s no more. I just sit here everyday starring off into space most of the day. Watching baseball, but not really watching because it just doesn’t mean shit to me anymore. If we didn’t have kids, I would have been right behind her. I’ll continue to live whatever the hell this is now, because she would want me to, but not happily.. fuck this life and why it had to happen.
Did you know the Declaration of Independence is not a legally binding document? It doesn't establish laws or government structures. It's the document that set the "moral standard" for the U. S. in that all men are created equal.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Do we feel this after the loss of our spouse?
Many have passed away on this date as well as other holidays, special occasions, anniversaries, birthdays and the like.
While I've experienced my share of July 4th's, it now holds no meaning to me. My husband and I got tired of all the hustle and bustle fanfare with entertaining or going to activities and fireworks before he passed. Instead he would BBQ any and all meat from the freezer as though we were going to feed an army. All this precooked food naturally ended up back in the freezer for ready meals at any time. I often told him he loved his elaborate grill more than me. He even built himself a screened in grill porch. I miss his BBQ grilling and reluctantly sold it shortly after he died. I couldn't bear seeing it on that back porch, knowing what it represented.
What have you done on this day or how do you now celebrate it?
My partner of 15 years passed away suddenly 10 days ago. I’ve never felt sorrow and pain like this before. Everything feels hard…when I work up the energy to do everyday things I almost forget that this has happened. Then it hits me, like the wind gets knocked out of me. The overwhelming amount of grief knowing I’m never going to see him again is unbearable. The fact that this is my reality is unreal. I have no idea how it will ever get better.
How do u talk about ur late partner. In the sense that do u bring them a lot or seldom.
I started talking to someone for the first time since my husband passed and I don’t want to scare him away with all my baggage. Sometimes I feel my entire personality was built with my husband.
The guy is super sweet and is taking things slow and I appreciate it so much. Just want some advice.
Little off my chest moment. Posted something similar a couple months ago, full disclosure.
I need a friggin break. My mind and body are still in absolute panic mode, since my soulmate passed away in early March. I only work 4 days per week with a LOT of PTO options.... But I want out of this. I want to lay around for a few months. I want to go to Europe and just sit and eat. I want people to stop bothering me. I want to move back home. I want to watch hours of TV. Basically, I want to win the lottery. And I know, I know, we all want that. But I NEED something to change. It was a sudden loss and I think I'm just in shock and exhausting myself with finding ways to escape life for a while. I'm working on this project, that project. I feel like I'm at a breaking point.
So my husband and I slept in the living room because he couldn't sleep lying down due to severe back issues. He had his own reclining couch and I slept in a recliner. I am very close to moving into my room, but for some reason that I really can't explain, I am having trouble making the adjustment. I have a little bit more to do in my room before I can sleep in there. I have a mattress and I have the bed frame that needs to be put together. He kept so much crap and I have more that I have to donate. I have already donated and thrown away SO MUCH stuff. Some days I can work on my room for hours, but then I have days like today that I am filled with anxiety just thinking about it. I feel like I would feel better once I am in there, but I am stuck right now. I need help, please.....
Edit: I posted this on the wrong account. It should be under bad_ass_bitch79
So I (34f) lost my bf(32m) in November to type 1 diabetes.
It was a new relationship. We'd only known each other for 3 months. BUT because of circumstances and choices we were together pretty much the whole time. Deeply in love. Ready to commit. Due to his shower being broken I offered him to use mine and it evolved into him being at my place a lot. Which I loved. Losing him, I lost a future. One we already talked about a lot. I feel like I lost my soulmate, a husband a life partner.
Its been extremely difficult. But I find people are trying to invalidate me because of our relationship length. To those people I say go fuck yourself. I have no regrets loving someone that deeply and wholly.
My "BEST friend" told me direct quote of the message
"you need to be able to let go like this is lasting longer then the length of the time you knew him"
This cut so deep. This hurt so much. I honestly was so mad about it but left it because she doesn't even know wtf she's talking about. She gets to snuggle up to her fiancé every night still. She didn't have to deal with his affairs, go through his belongings. Witness the life lost. Or tell his mother. Or tell his grandmother. She didn't make her knuckles bleed banging on his shop door begging him to answer in November not knowing he was less then 8 feet away, gone already.
Everyone around me keeps treating this like a break up.
I literally kissed the love of my life goodbye one morning as he left for work and I never saw him alive again. I literally had to get a wellness check done to get the cops to break into his shop to find his body because he wasn't responding. My friends told me I was being dramatic and he was probably fine. I knew he wasn't.
I'm so irritated and hurt by her overt lack of compassion. But my other friend has been just as dismissive. They claim to be supportive and there for me but haven't been at all. I can see all the small ways they tell me they are over it.
I've literally dropped everything multiple times to be there for them. Truely. Without complaint.
It really hurts to realize my best friends aren't actually that great.
Secondary grief is realizing they are only ok when its all ok. Ok to party and have a good time. But when it gets hard they are dismissive and cold...
Thank god I have more anchoring me to this life then them. I have depression already and the grief has been making me think of suicide a lot. I swear to god they almost pushed me over the edge with their behavior.
Because if your "best friends" aren't actually there for you who is? For me no one.
I don't have parents, grandparents, siblings or other family. Its just me. My kids from a previous marriage and my 2 best gfs plus a handful of not so close friends and acquaintances.
But this is why I am hyper independent. Anytime I actually need to lean on people they suddenly dissappear. 😭
This 8 months have been hard. But this was insult to injury. Safe to say I'm on the market for new connections that hopefully have more substance and depth then these ones
At first it was because I felt privileged to have been present the moment my husband took his last breath on May 21, 2026 at 8:46am, while I held his hand. Now it's a reminder that I survived another day because there are times when I don't think I can continue living.
I (43) lost my wife (48) this last Tuesday. l don't know what to say. It hurts to even talk about the circumstances that took her from me. She had a long stay at the hospital then came home... I had one day with her... then she was gone. There was no indication that it would happen. She seemed totally fine and it looked like all the darkest parts of her stay were behind us. Then it happened.
So here I sit on the 4th of July holiday. Before, I thought we would be home to celebrate and instead I am suffering the worst pain I have ever had in my life. I have a huge weight on my heart.
D and I were married for nearly 10 years, but we had been together since around 2013 or so. She saved me from a life where I was living on autopilot for familial expectations. She showed me magic... she showed me freedom... she encouraged me to be the best person I could be. She embraced me for who I was. And with her strength, I broke free from my social cage and showed me that I could be a princess just like her.
I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person. There was no question. When I moved across two states to be with her, I cut ties with my family just to be with her. I never regretted it a single moment. Eventually, I was able to reconnect with them, but with established boundaries put in place that I was never strong enough to impose on my own. I have the best relationship with my family now than I ever did thanks to her.
We had some rough times. We lost three cars in one year. We had to declare bankruptcy. We were poor. We relied on the help of friends to get by. She protected me from a lot of bad things in the world and always showed me her best smile. She uplifted me.
I tried my best to do right by her. I didn't have much money, but I tried to buy her all the things she deserved to have. I told her I loved her every day. When things got hard, she was my strength to muscle through because I knew it was for her. My life for her life. That was supposed to be the deal.
And now I am here.
the light has gone out. Everything tastes like ash. I can only sleep when I am too exhausted to stay awake. When it gets to be night time, I start to feel a creeping terror in my heart.... like I can't push away the emptiness anymore.
Let me say some things about D:
D loved cats. She LOVED them. She had discord groups dedicated just to pictures of cats. She would fawn over pictures of cats on the box of catfood products. She had many cats over the years and we had three at current writing. One was a small kitten that we found on the street and adopted that reminded her of a particularly special cat that passed away early on in our relationship. It brings me great sorrow she will not be able to see this kitten grow up. I believed that this kitten was supposed to be the return of her soul-mate cat. She put cat stickers on everything. She drew cats, she had cat photos on her wall, and in particular, she loved watching cats on youtube and especially a cat by the name of Gumbus.
D loved without reservation. She was very protective of her people. She didn't mince words and if you did something to someone she cared about, even accidentally, she would aggressively go out of her way to correct this wrong-doing. There were many times where I didn't feel particularly pretty and she made me feel so beautiful. She went out of her way to give extremely thoughtful gifts... small books, thoughtful gift cards (which I have saved most of them, though a few may have gotten lost in moves, which I deeply regret), and once she wrote on a napkin with my lunch a little note that simply said "You're awesome".... just unprompted. She wanted me to text her every day to know if I made it safe to work and wanted me to call her when I was done to let her know when I was coming home.
D was magical. I've always been a rationalist. I tried to study philosophy to understand people and I fell out with religion. I'm atheist ex-catholic. She was raised baptist, but believed in lots of different kinds of spiritual things. She had statues of Ganesh and Shiva, she had a membership to the Temple of Satan (The activist group, not the magic group), she was good friends with some Wicca folks (or Wicca adjacent) and she believed in a spirit energy of positivity. She never had any specific religious leaning... only that she believed in a kind of great mystery that wasn't fully explained by any particular religion... or maybe something closer to every religion getting a piece of the story. When we would discuss these things, I would always try to push back against these ideas... and she would accept that this was how I saw things, but always told me I was surrounded by good energy (or something to that effect). I have never in my life wanted to be so wrong about anything in my life. I desperately find myself envious of those who believe in an afterlife now... I can see the pull of religion.
D was a big fan of tabletop roleplaying. We have kept games going for years. Before her most recent stay at the hospital, we had just completed a long-running D&D game (but we had done more games in Pathfinder 2e)... and we had been playing tabletop roleplaying games since about the second year of our marriage. She always played some kind of frontline fighter. She liked doing the big damage and doing accents and saving people. She was always overly cautious of traps, to the point where sometimes we would have to push to get her to move the story along... after all, thats what the adventure is about... falling into danger and coming out of it safe on the other side by your own strength and skill. And maybe some luck.
D was a big fan of wrestling. She and a close friend of ours discussed wrestling together for hours. I was never too in to wrestling myself, but I tried to watch sometimes and she had such interesting thoughts on plotlines, different wrestling gimicks, and the state of the business. I only remember watching wrestling when I was young during the "attitude era" with the NWO and such. She knew all the wrestlers in AEW, WWE and even other wrestling circuits I'd never heard of.
D was a gamer and decorator. D loved to decorate things. She had various games, like Second Life, House Flipper, the Sims, etc where she would spend hours decorating elaborate homes. She had an unusual knack for knowing how to decorate spaces with small touches that made it feel lived in. Her eye for detail could make anything from a cozy country cabin to a haunting Addams Family villa. She brought this eye to our home and even now, I'm receiving things she purchased for our home... I hope I can find the right place to put these things... I was never much good at that. I just hope I do right by her vision... or that she can/would forgive me for getting it wrong. She would often make elaborate builds and decorations... the break it down and start all over. She made amusement parks, houses, cyberpunk cities, and more. She also spent a lot of time playing other types of games like the fighting game For Honor, the recent Dune game, Helldivers 2, and other types of games.
D loved to cook. She loved to make food for me and everyone else around her. The care and love she put into everything she made, even for our cats, was extraordinary. She tried to make sure everyone's tastes were accounted for and went out of her way to ensure everyone loved what they ate. She knew how to take even the cheapest meal and make it feel like it came out of a kitchen run by Gordon Ramsay. I was an ok cook myself, but when I tried to help her, she would shove me out of the kitchen. She was a stay-at-home wife by choice and she felt that since I left the home to work, she felt offended that I would have to do anything for myself when I got home. It never bothered me to help, however. I tried to clean the dishes and keep things clean for her so she didn't have to work in a dirty environment, but she could cook up anything. She knew I loved Japanese cooking and learned many Japanese dishes just for me, including Spam Musubi. She bought a rice cooker just because she knew how much I love rice and wanted it to be perfect every time. But she also loved takeout food! Her favorite food from takeout places were usually some kind of fish or chicken. She also loved burgers (who doesnt?) but the burgers we got didn't hold a candle to the ones she cooked.
D Loved anime and Japanese culture. She wasn't quite as big on it as me, but she adored anime style and tried to introduce a Japanese-style flair for our home. She loved Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid and said that she felt especially close to Tohru, whom I think she saw as aspirational and perhaps similar to her own personality. Eager homemaker and doggedly defensive of her people, especially the love of her life Ms. Kobayashi. We watched many shows together, like Death Note, My Hero Acadamia (which she claimed replaced Naruto as her favorite anime of all time), Dragon Ball super, and many other things. She also indulged my tastes in anime, which usually ran for slice of life stuff. Sometimes she would be as into the stories as me and sometimes she would question my taste quite a bit. But she never judged harshly, she just knew I loved those kinds of stories and shared them with me. She also loved anime-adjacent things like the Dreamworks She-ra cartoon or the Harley Quinn show from HBO.
D LOVED music and art. She was all about music. She knew the lyrics to every song ever. She loved House music and other electeronica. She loved Jazz, Green Day, Wheezer, the Temptations and an Ai album where someone took Guns And Roses and made them into a Reggae band. She just really loved it for some reason. She was also a big fan of Van Gogh and she was always brought to tears by the song "Vincent (Starry Starry Night). It will be a very long time before I can listen to any of those without crying myself. She was also a fan of several movies she loved to watch over and over: Love Actually, Grosse Point Blank, John Wick and many others that I can't really continue to name or this will get too long.
There are so many things she was and if I keep writing, this post will be too long. I could keep adding more and more to the list of things that she was... her presence was enormous and she tied the lives of people together in such a way that I had no idea how many people would miss her passing until this week. It has been eyeopening that I had the privilege of being married to this woman.
...and now that light has gone out. I sit in darkness. We were supposed to be old together. I am trying to keep going because she would have wanted me to... but trying to summon her strength but it feels like I'm trying to draw water from an empty well. My limbs are heavy... my eyes are burning. I don't want to go on. But I have to. And no, I'm not suicidal... I'm just... tired.
How dare the world keep turning when it lost someone so wonderful. How does the sun come up without her? I'm angry and bitter that this happened. The clenching pain in my chest is so much that it sometimes feels difficult to draw breath. I just want to scream to everyone that they need to stop and remember this woman. A beautiful thing has come to an end and the whole world should stop for even a little while in honor of that spark that it lost.
I have run out of strength to keep going with this post. I guess I just needed to tell the passer-by about her. Its not fair that only I ever got to know her. Maybe I've done some justice to who she was by saying this. I told her every day, in person and in writing, how much I love her. I guess I'm trying to do the same here.
I love you D... I wish you were here. I'd give any goddamned thing to have you with me. I dont know how I'm supposed to go on without you.
-Fiona
I am not quite two months out from losing my love. Every day does get a tiny bit easier, but I am longing so badly for human touch and connection. I am the type of person that only likes physical touch from people I actually am connected to emotionally so getting a massage is not a way to fulfill that need.
One of my friends at work (different department) gives great hugs and we chit chat but it’s just not the same as going home and cuddling with my person. Another person at work was actually friends with my husband before I even knew him…and I’m so attracted to him it’s not even funny…but like…I can’t even get him to hang out as friends.
Idk just fucking lonely and sad and I want held.
My mom is in very very poor health. I do not think she is going to pass tomorrow, but she's not going to get better. My father has been caring for her for the past several years. I'm trying to figure out how to support my dad through this and help him not be blindsided or alone when the time comes.
Some context that makes it harder:
I want to help him build some kind of support system before things get worse, and figure out how to stay connected in a meaningful way from a distance. I figure this is an okay subreddit to ask for advice on this. How do I bring this up with him without it feeling like I'm rushing toward the worst-case scenario? What helped you (or would have helped) in the weeks/months after losing a spouse?
Le 13 juin, six jours avant mon anniversaire et seulement trois mois après le décès de ma maman, mon mari Francis est décédé brutalement devant moi. Il n'avait que 61 ans.
Il a fait un malaise et j'ai tout fait pour le sauver. Je lui ai parlé, je l'ai supplié de rester avec moi et j'ai pratiqué un massage cardiaque jusqu'à l'arrivée des secours. Malgré tous les efforts, il n'a pas pu être réanimé.
Rien ne laissait présager un tel drame. Francis avait une bonne hygiène de vie. Il ne fumait pas, ne buvait que très occasionnellement, jamais pendant ses compétitions de tennis, et prenait soin de sa santé. C'est aussi ce qui rend son départ si incompréhensible pour moi.
Depuis ce jour, ma vie a basculé. J'ai l'impression qu'une partie de moi est partie avec lui. Je vis encore dans le choc et je n'arrive toujours pas à croire qu'il n'est plus là.
Nous avions encore tant de projets. Nous avions prévu de faire de petits voyages et, dans quatre ans, à l'approche de ma retraite, de refaire notre vie dans un autre département pour profiter enfin de la vie et voyager ensemble.
Aujourd'hui, je ne sais pas comment continuer sans lui. Je me sens complètement perdue et, pour l'instant, j'essaie simplement de mettre un pied devant l'autre.
I Get up. I go to work during the week . I come home, I parent my kids and do all the housework ,and I am taxi dad all evening. It’s not easy; it’s really hard, but I do it. I manage to live, get by day to day without my wife . I miss her every single minute of the day, but I keep going.
Then the weeks bend come and I fall apart each and every time . Worse and worse it is because I’m not as busy and my mind likes to remind me my life is shit. I have lost it all, all the promised future we had, and this is now till the day I just stop and go join her.
I hate the weekend. I hate having time to think about all this pain.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated .
So at about 6-7 months after my beautiful lady of 22 years passed away I was looking for inimate connections on apps. What started as a friends with benefits has been continuing for 8 months now. More emotional attachments on both ends have flourished. But we have continued as per her stating that we are a friends with benefits. But I’ve realized this is causing her pain.
She has cried and informed me so that her true wants is a relationship but wants to continue what we’re doing regardless as she loves me.
She also has unique situation of a 10 year old boy that’s Autistic and is still going through a divorce .so a normal relationship on her end is complicated as well.
I guess the biggest thing that gives her pain is that when we started this my home , ( I live in 400 square foot apt in a high rise ) is a bit of shrine to my passed lady. There are many pictures of us together in this small space. My social media account still has our picture up as the profile as I havnt had it in me to change it. She says it’s not so much all the pictures that hurts but I’ve not made any room for her in all of this, she doesn’t get to be up on wall or on my pro pic ect… I believe what she says is Valid. I can get uncomfortable when she wants a selfie with me occasionally when she hold my hand or tries to I feel I get uncomfortable and she’s noticed.
It all brings up guilt.
Now although I’ve thought about taking down some of photos and have thought about doing before this conversation . I feel like doing now would and could lead to resentment. There will always be a photo or two of my late spouse up . I will never not have her part of my life. But maybe less .
I guess I’m torn should I be doing this out of respect out of this new relationship or should I be ending things, working on myself, working on my grief and organically moving forward when I’m ready ? I mean it’s only been 14 months. This will hurt this new woman and myself but would also stop causing her pain as well.
Hard Truth: If you wait until you feel better to start living, you might wait forever. Go live your life. Do it sad. Do it anxious. Do it uncertain. Because healing doesn't always come before the experience. Sometimes the experience is what heals you.
The reason this hit so close to home is that I'm planning a 15 day, 8 national park road trip this fall, and will be spreading her ashes at each major stop along the way. Don't feel like doing it ... but I am.
I dissociated so much in the last 4 days, my husband feels like a distant memory. It almost feels like my life with him was all just my imagination. How strange...i guess because it is going to be a year soon.
It’s been just over a year. I couldn’t bear to even open the closet. I knew I wanted to do it to help me move forward so it was hanging over me to some extent. This weekend I ripped the bandaid off and slowly pulled everything out, sorted through it. Took several moments to remember and put a few special things aside to keep or give to friends. Then I packed it all up and donated it. Then I cried in the car. Overall it wasn’t as hard as I worried it would be. At the end of the day it’s just ‘stuff’. It feels better to have tackled such a big job that I was dreading.
I sprinkled some of his ashes on the seeds and thought of this poem: “From my body’s ashes flowers shall grow. And I am in them, and that is eternity.” Edvard Munch
I visited home for the holiday and its the first time ive seen my mother since my partner died. She started asking me a lot of questions, some i dont have the answer to and others i did not feel comfortable sharing with her. In her own way, she tried to cheer me up... but i felt it ended up hurtful. Things like "at least you two different marry", "youre still young", "treat him like your ex's and forget about him". I dont know if she has lost anyone close to her. Both her parents are alive, and her husband (my dad) is still around.
Ive always had a hard time telling her things feeling like she wouldnt understand. She only knew of my partner's passing bc I asked my sibling to tell her. And todays experience makes me feel more inclined to hid truths from her.
Im wondering if this maybe is a cultural thing. Im of chinese descent. My dad hasnt asked or spoken. Maybe bc he understands... he lost people in his life.
Has anyone else have similar experience from their parent or parents?