It's been two months since my wife died from Pulmonary Hypertension. She had just turned 22 and we celebrated our 2nd anniversary only two weeks prior to her death. We had our whole future planned together and we were both so excited and ready to experience life together. I know two years is a weekend for a lot of you who lost someone later in life, but two years was not enough time to give her all of the love I had for her. I'm still in college. She made me promise to continue to go to school and get my degree. I'm glad she did because that promise is the only thing keeping me going. She was getting really sick around April and May. She had a really aggressive cough, and after a month of tests, the cardiologist diagnosed her with PH. She died a month later. I was able to take care of her during that time, and was with her when she passed, but it still feels like a sudden death. I can't make sense of it. I feel like the best movie I've ever watched completely flipped and now it's the worst movie ever made, and I'm still trying to figure out if it's worth sitting through to see if it gets better. It feels cliche to say that we were soul mates, but that concept seems like it's not strong enough to represent what we had. I used to be able to see what life would be like at 80 years old. I can't picture what life is going to be like at even 40 now. I devoted myself to my wife and our life, and now I'm supposed to devote myself to me, but I the hell am I supposed to do that...
Hi Bruce, thank you for being here, and for sharing your story. I'm so sorry to hear of your loss and all that you're going through. I have found that even if a person feels they had some "warning" of a loved one's passing, when it happens as quickly as it did with your wife it is still going to feel very sudden. There was no time for you to prepare. I'm guessing the entire time she was sick you focused only on her treatments, getting her better, or what's next. While some people in similar circumstances may have that fleeting thought, "what if he/she doesn't make it?" there's no time to process it while the person is here and we're doing everything we can to get them better. Nothing prepares us for the finality of the loss, and now you are left to try and figure out what comes next. These losses rob us not only our loved ones, but our plans, and what our future was supposed to look like. This is a very very new loss, and I would guess in many ways some of the shock and numbness hasn't yet begun to fade. It takes time, more time than we think, to be able to begin to move forward. And what you need to remind yourself right now is that you don't need to know what your life is going to be like at 40, or 80, or even next month. While we're all supposed to be living "one day at a time" there is no time that it's more important to do that than in the early days of grief. You need to focus on your day to day tasks, and only what's right in front of you. Otherwise it is just too much and becomes too overwhelming. I know that's easier said than done, but for today give it a try. What do you have control over? What can you work on? What things need to be done at work, or around the house? Focus only on those things. When your thoughts start to wonder to what are you going to do for the holidays or next year or twenty years from now.....pull back to what you're doing in the moment and what's right in front of you. In time, the answers we are looking for begin to reveal themselves. But in the meanwhile, please take good care of yourself. We're glad you're here, and I'm hoping you find the support and comfort you need.
Thank you for responding. You're right, taking it day by day definitely eases the stress but it is hard to do. I definitely haven't fully come to terms with what has happened and I think that may be the most frustrating thing of all. I will definitely follow your advice and look forward to better days. Thank you.
