The Unique Loneliness of Grief

Understanding Grief / Understanding Grief : Eleanor Haley



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The intersection of grief and loneliness is complicated. Though loneliness, as a concept, is one I think many assume we understand.

We equate loneliness to the very definable concept of being alone, which means "without other people," and thanks to "lonely people" archetypes -- like the spinsters with ten cats and misunderstood teenagers -- we think we have a good idea of how loneliness looks. 

The trouble is that loneliness is subjective (i.e., different from person to person), so there's no way anyone can truly know what it looks like.

In the Encyclopedia of Mental Helath (1998) researchers, Daniel Perlman and Letita Anne Peplau define loneliness as,

"The subjective psychological discomfort people experience when their network of social relationships is significantly deficient in either quality or quantity."

In other words, loneliness occurs when a person's social relationships don't meet their interpersonal needs or desires. I want to note; the above definition says nothing about the state of being alone. Instead, that loneliness is a feeling of discomfort that arises when a person subjectively feels unfulfilled by their social relationships.

Loneliness is dependent on what a person "needs and desires," and this measure is personal and varies drastically from one individual to the next. Based on this definition, prototypical characterizations of "loneliness" seem misguided.

Individual loneliness is defined by what a person wants in relation to what they have. So whether a person has 100 great family and friends, if they long for something or someone they don't have --like an intimate partner, a friend they can open up to, a group of people who "get them," a family, etc. – they are liable to feel lonely.


Grief and Loneliness

"Something or someone they don't have…."

If you're grieving, you may feel this has become the story of your life. There are aspects of grief that make loneliness seem inevitable and unsolvable. Primarily, the fact that what you desire is your loved one, and what you have is an emptiness molded so precisely to your loved one's likeness that no one else could ever fill it.

People who are grieving are at a disadvantage when it comes to loneliness because the person they long for is gone. I've come to understand that loneliness after the death of a loved one is many things. Above all else, it's the ache of having loved someone so much that pieces of you became them, and pieces of them became you. 

When they left this Earth, they took pieces of your shared life with them, and now you have to live a life that feels incomplete. Some people may also say they lost one of the few people in this world who really truly "got" them.

Once your brain starts thinking in an "I'm on my own, so I have to look out for myself" kind of way, it may start to guard against others by pushing them away. And as you might expect, this perpetuates feelings of loneliness.  

You can't easily solve loneliness caused by grief. It takes time and effort. You will never fill your loved one's void, that simply won't happen. Instead, you have to find other ways to connect and fill in alternative spaces.

How do you do this? I sadly can't answer that for you. I guess I would say that, when you are ready, open yourself up to the love of people in your life. 

You can hold on to your loved one, while at the same time, accepting the company and support of others. And maybe, if necessary, seeking out new people in the process. It won't be easy, and it won't be perfect, but perhaps in time, you can partially fill the hole left by your loved one with the love of many.

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After writing online articles for What’s Your Grief for over a decade, we finally wrote a tangible, real-life book!

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You can find What’s Your Grief? Lists to Help you Through Any Loss wherever you buy books:

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326 Comments on "The Unique Loneliness of Grief"

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  1. kerri l.  June 30, 2023 at 11:22 pm Reply

    Whilst I find most of this article is good , it doesn’t allow for those whose experience is one where people that are friends or even family have disappeared. Grief sadly enough isn’t well received in our Culture and I was shocked to discover my friends were not there for me , a few initially were but they too faded away . This wasn’t due to my taking up all the space with my grief or somehow pushing them away . It was a genuinely baffling experience and I discovered I wasn’t alone . If you do research it doesn’t take long to find out your experience is not rare . It was heartbreaking to loose my best friend and I very much wanted people to call or come over but it didn’t happen! I tried to connect and there was this odd response of them not returning my calls etc . After researching I discovered that this is very common , so I think you do a disservice to those of us who have been left alone not by “ pushing them away “ but because our culture seems to be very afteaid of being around the grieving . People feel inadequate or list as to what they should say and so they avoid and in this avoiding they cause more pain to those they care , or love . I’d like to see an article that addresses this phenomenon and one that takes the onus of responsibility for this off the already burdened grieving and back onto those who could learn ways to be available, it’s vital they do because we are all going to have to grieve one day .

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    • Marilyn M  January 1, 2024 at 9:11 am Reply

      Hi
      I read your response and resonate with it so much.
      Today is the one year anniversary of my husband’s death. I feel so alone and am alone –
      Where are friends? Where is family ?
      This is what I am feeling the most pain about today
      I have not pushed family away – where are they ???
      Too busy. I feel forgotten and guilty to feel self pitying.
      Feeling so much pain.
      Feel angry too
      Relieved to have heard you though – thank you for your articulate response
      🙏

  2. Jim  April 15, 2023 at 8:10 am Reply

    I lost my dad to lung cancer, he was 68, 4 yrs later Iv disconnected from my friends, don’t know why that is but I feel like I don’t care anymore, only people I care about is my daughter, wife sister and mum, everything else is a blur, has anyone else experienced these feeling towards friends after losing someone very close.

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  3. Keith  January 28, 2023 at 2:37 pm Reply

    My beautiful mum died 08 January 2023 age 91. I’m her son Keith 67. I was my mum’s full-time carer for 10 years. I have never felt so much pain and heart break as I do since mum has died. Mum was literally my life. 95%of my time was looking after her. I loved every minute although mum tested me sometimes. Like many others on this and various websites. I have no reason to live anymore. I have never been so sad as I am now.

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    • Denise Lara Mangalino  March 30, 2023 at 12:28 pm Reply

      Keith, you are a good son for being a caregiver for your mom. Many people have a hard time imagining a life without the person you love. Slowly, day by day, it will take time and practice in finding ways to connect your values and memories with your mum. I imagine your mum was a huge support for you in difficult times and how you can lean on her for support. However, you can imagine what she might say to you if she were here. When you spend so much time supporting your mum, your life becomes entrenched into theirs and it must be difficult to navigate through the heart break. It may be helpful to reach out for support or counseling for caregivers. You can reach out to you local hospice (even if you didn’t receive hospice services from them) for additional resources and to connect with others that may have similar experiences as you

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    • Donna  August 31, 2023 at 8:57 am Reply

      Im so sorry for your loss. I cried when I read your post. I felt (feel) the same way. I’m 62 and I think my kids just expect me to be ok. I’m not like you my life revolved around my dad and taking care of him. He was super smart and extremely opinionated. We disagreed about lots of things but under it all I k bc ow he loved me very much and I hope he knew how much I loved him. I don’t know how to just “ be” some days. I keep a brave face for my kids and grandkids 6 of them! But I’m so sad I can’t even stand myself !! How do you cope? Sending prayers to you. I completely understand how you feel

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  4. Charmaine  November 23, 2022 at 5:47 am Reply

    My mom passed 2yrs ago 5min before her death she still spoke to me on the phone and my eldest brother 4months ago cancer so Im a mess

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  5. Bob  July 29, 2022 at 10:22 pm Reply

    I just lost my mother and my best friend

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    • M  October 22, 2022 at 11:08 pm Reply

      I am so sorry for your loss. Really understand. No one can fill that void.
      I too lost my Mom this summer,…. my two sisters and Dad…. Some friends passed as well. All in past few years… Another friend has early onset Alzheimer’s . I feel lost.

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      • Kait  June 29, 2023 at 7:14 am

        I’m so sorry. It sounds like you have had an awful few years. I can relate to how painful this is, loosing so many people at once. I feel lost as well. I am 35, a new mom. My mom was diagnosed with rapid onset dementia a year after my first son was born in 2020. She was put into a care home and was doing well, so I never expected her to die randomly. Last year, 2022, we first had a family friend pass away, then my great aunt, a month later my cherished grandpa, and then my mom a month after that. Then a month after her I lost a best friend. Hardest time of my life. I feel like the grieving and sadness will never go away.
        It’s been a year since you wrote this, how are things with you now? Please give me hope. 🙁

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    • Michelle  January 25, 2023 at 9:11 pm Reply

      Hey Bob. I am so sorry for your loss. I truly am. I am greiving
      I don’t know how to live anymore. My greif hurts so deeply from my loss it’s like I can’t even move at times

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  6. River Nomad  July 26, 2022 at 4:13 pm Reply

    Losing sight of and regaining my “Attitude of Gratitude”

    A familiar low, low feeling began to come over me gradually yesterday, the intense loneliness of missing Mom increasing as the day progressed.

    The presence of her absence still a hard row to hoe…

    Certain of not being able to sleep, I deferred getting into bed until after 5 AM this morning, as the new day was dawning!

    Unable to reach full unconsciousness, I experienced some groggy imaginations, not quite the dreams of real sleep. These were neither horrifying, or uplifting, and the details are completely unremembered now, just a few hours after the alarm went off.

    The disruptive tinnitus I’ve been living with for close to 40 years, a horrid cacophony, has been at a very high volume all morning long, a strangely appropriate physical accompaniment to my wounded soul.

    My thoughts have been tangled up with introspection and rumination, working in tandem to draw me into examinations of a now-purposeless life, and frightfully, self-destruction.

    Never mind where the sunshine of truth actually lies, hidden for some time by the dark, heavy clouds of sorrow, regret, and loneliness.

    Fortunately, I’ve retained a grip on the wheel sufficient for this guiding thought to occur: How does any of this honor Mom?

    I re-read a poem Mom would read to my brother and I when we were young:

    Keep A-Goin’, by Frank L. Stanton.

    It’s a wonderful and encouraging bit of writing reflecting Mom’s lifelong inspiring strength and resilience.

    For me, a moving, heartfelt remembrance of her steadfastness and importance throughout my life: Mom always the very core and foundation of my being.

    In August, 2019, three months after she died, at home as I held her hand while talking to her about our shared life, I penned the following lines adding to the work of this brilliant writer:

    When the one you love has died,
    And you’re a-cryin’
    ….Keep….a….goin’….

    And so I shall.

    It’s already hot today, going to hit a hundred or better.

    I’m off to take a swim in one of my favorite local rivers. A beautiful, vigorous change of scenery and activity, both physically and mentally.

    A clearing away of unhelpful, destructive thoughts.

    While swimming, I will be Honoring Mom, which I intend to follow by working in our yard, further Honoring Mom.

    I have the expectation of repeating these two activities until the fading sun, first silhouetting the Ancient Douglas Firs on the ridge across the river, drops out of sight, leaving enough of the day for cleaning my tools and a last swim.

    Working to increase my strength to better carry my grief, and adapt to this new, lonely part of the trail Mom and I shared as a team for sixty years, I know I am very lucky.

    Mom taught herself to swim when she was a little girl. It was important to her that my brother and I take many swimming lessons when we were young.

    I’ve been swimming, innertubing, rafting, and kayaking, ever since.

    I am truly grateful to Mom, for the countless things she constantly did for me and everyone she loved, all her 88 years.

    Today, I am especially grateful for her gifts of my love of Nature, including working in the yard, and my confidence swimming with or against the current, in deep, fast-moving rivers.

    There seems to be a metaphor or two emerging nearby, along with the sunshine…surely from my heart.

    Affirming Mom’s comforting words to me, spoken not long before she died:

    “I will always live in your heart”

    Time for a swim and working in the yard…

    I’m feeling better already.

    Thank-you Mom!

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    • Kait  June 29, 2023 at 7:18 am Reply

      What you wrote is absolutely beautiful.
      Thank you so much, you have also helped me to feel better.

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  7. Shelly  July 25, 2022 at 1:44 am Reply

    After losing my father and only brother a number of years ago, my mother passed away two months ago. While I was sad to lose the first two, there is no way to convey the profound feeling of loss and loneliness you experience when your last parent is gone. You may have a spouse, children and other relatives, but there is nobody left who knew you intimately from day one. It is different.
    My feelings of grief and loneliness over losing my last parent were delayed and I thought I had it all together – I was ok. That thought came crashing down a few days ago, triggered by a song playing over the speaker system at Walmart, of all places. That’s when the significance of this loss really hit me. It’s been a rough couple of days. It will get better over time, but I think that special loneliness will be there deep down inside of me for the rest of my life.

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  8. Sandra  July 5, 2022 at 10:09 pm Reply

    My husband died in July 2020 (start of COVID) after many years of poor health and then 2 years cancer. Had to place him in a care home at 53. We have two teenage children, I’m trying to keep my spirits positive for them but most days I feel nothing but sadness and dread. No one checks in on us, I feel completely alone in the world it seems. Days just run together without any joy or anything to look forward to, no one to share anything with anymore, just so lonely.
    Thanks for your website and posts. It’s helpful to not feel quite so alone with it all.

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    • Tertia Smit  August 19, 2022 at 1:08 pm Reply

      💕💕

    • M  October 22, 2022 at 11:16 pm Reply

      Sandra… I hope you are doing better. I am so sorry for your loss and deeply understand how it feels. The sadness , the loss , the wishing you could see and be with them again; healthy and happy. Life will never be the same. It is less without them.
      Please know that you are not alone. I’m trying to figure out how to go on also.
      Thank you for sharing.

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  9. Michele  June 13, 2022 at 11:13 am Reply

    My mum died 4 days ago. I was with her. She didn’t go gently, her breathing was loud and fast for the last 11 hours, but all traces of her -her spirit, her personality- were gone. She was simply just like a machine or engine pumping breath in and out.
    I had never seen anyone die and I am grateful to have been with her, but to see her reduced to that, I wonder what happened to her soul because it seemed it had left her many hours before she passed.
    Since then I have been in bed, I don’t have the will to get up or do anything. I’m in my 50s but I feel like my mum has abandoned me and left me on my own here and I don’t want to be here without her.
    I have a husband but he hasn’t given me one hug or said anything. He just stays in the background and now I feel I don’t want him anywhere near me if I have to ask for a hug. I feel extremely distant from him.
    I have 2 friends from my school days – I thought they were good friends until now. We were meant to meet up in a couple of days for the first time in years (we all live many miles apart), so I messaged them to tell them I might not be able to meet up because my mum has died. They both sent a message back to say they were sorry, but that’s it – no messages since then to see how I’m doing, no phone call from them to see if I am ok. I have known these girls for over 40 years. I hoped they might have been more supportive.
    I have a friend – not close – her mum recently died and I know she doesn’t want to talk right now because she is still going through her own grief.
    I have no family, no children, so I’m going through this grief process on my own. From what I’m reading, you’re not meant to go through grief alone? You’re meant to be with family and friends?
    But what about those of us who don’t have anyone?
    I just want to be with my mum. I feel my life is over now.

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    • Liz  August 21, 2022 at 2:36 pm Reply

      Michele – I read your post, and I’m so sorry for the loss of your mom, and that you’ve had to carry your grief alone.

      I lost my mom in March just 93 days after her cancer diagnosis. Like your mom, my mother’s exit from the world wasn’t gentle, and being by her side for it was quite traumatic.

      In the days after my mom’s dx, I quit my job, and became a full-time caregiver to her alongside my dad. Even when she was alive, “friends” would call, or want to stop by, but they were often impatient that we didn’t pick up calls, or canceled visits because of unforeseen circumstances. They said they wanted to help, but it never really felt like it. They couldn’t understand the hell we were living, but they also didn’t try to get it.

      After we buried my mom, the friends stopped calling, the cards stopped coming. My brother stopped coming home every weekend, and has seemingly moved on back to regular life with his wife and daughter. It’s like that’s his family now, with no ties to his old one, except that my dad and I are still here, still hurting.

      My dad is in his own grief, and his closed himself off from me. He no longer calls to check on me. He decided to travel for the whole summer, and seems to be enjoying friends and travels. Which, I want for him btw. But I feel forgotten about.

      Everyone in my life has their “someone else.” My dad has a large social circle, his siblings, and their families. My brother has his wife and daughter, his in-laws, countless friends. My mom’s friends all still have their spouses and children. My niece has other grandparents. My mom’s brothers have their own families. And then there is me- alone.

      I have no partner, no roommate. No colleagues since I gave up my job to take care of mom. I don’t know my neighbors. I have some friends, but they’re all out of state, and busy with their own lives and families. I’ve reached out to them explaining my grief and that I need a friend, so they’ll text once or twice, and then fade back to distance.

      No one should have to grieve alone, and I’m so sorry that you and I know how that feels. It’s enough to have a mom-sized hole left in our hearts. And to try to carry on that way without a village is just downright devastating.

      It’s been 5 months since my mom passed, and it still haunts me to put it bluntly. I can only see her in my mind’s eye the way she looked laying on the bed in her final days of life. I can only see her jaundiced skin and eyes wide open and labored breathing. I cannot conjure up any memories of my mom beyond the last week of her life, and that makes me sad, sick, and worried I’ll never recall memories of the “real her.”

      Knowing that I’m hurting and lonely, I know, doesn’t solve your hurt and grief and loneliness. I don’t have a solution or any words of wisdom. I just wanted you to know that I understand how you feel, and I can relate. From one stranger on the internet to another, I feel for you, and I’m so sorry. I will pray for peace for the both of us. I sincerely hope you’re doing okay ♥️

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    • M  October 22, 2022 at 11:23 pm Reply

      Hi Michelle,
      My Mom also died this past summer on June 9th. She was my rock. A kinder, steadfast soul I have never met. She was The Best. My heart aches for her. I listen to her voice messages left on my phone. It helps a little. Just to hear her voice, happy and strong.
      Michelle…. I’m going thru this as well so am not best to give advice, but ask your husband for a hug . Tell him you need him now more than ever. Call your long time girlfriends. Arrange to meet up again. Don’t judge them all to harshly. They may not realize and understand. Let them know how much their support and love would help you at this time in your life. Maybe they will see. If not…. Forgive them. Bless you and good luck sweety. I’m so sorry for your loss.

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    • Charmaine  November 23, 2022 at 5:54 am Reply

      I know how you feel Michelle Im 52 my mom died 2yrs ago some days ate better than others ..we use to speak 3x a day or more and yes with my husband’s mother we stayed until she died that really takes it out of you…we are not medical personell so it can shake you bad ….I know how you feel…death is not neat&clean as in the movies …you cry want to throw up get depressed angry its awful

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  10. Cheryl S  June 6, 2022 at 6:28 pm Reply

    I read your article about… And that’s it. I just read an article. It really meant a lot to me. I actually cried and now I can’t even remember what it was called. I feel like I’m crazy. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m laughing hysterically at something and then I’m driving down the highway crying wanted to run over a kitten. I never would run over a kitten but you know . So here I am. My mother died almost 2 months ago. Today I went back home and closed your bank account and I’ve been a wreck all day and I’m like why would closing her bank account and paying where she was living paying them her last bill. And still crying today. I just can’t get it together. I can’t concentrate. Sometimes I’m driving and sometimes I just think. Wow! I must have blanked out.. can’t see rainbows. And I’ve been sober for almost 17 years. And I had been able to see colors, vibrant and beautiful, and enjoyed the sounds of music and birds. And children playing and now it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me sometimes. Crazy. Yes that’s how I feel. I feel crazy. And I can’t describe it sometimes and I don’t even understand it most times. And what I know is I just didn’t know grief could be this. It’s like you go to take a breath, but you can’t breathe. I was really asthmatic as a child so I know what it feels like to be in a room full of air and not being able to breathe. And it feels like all the air is sucked out of the room and the candle really is blown out and you can see the small little trail of smoke up to the ceiling and then it’s gone.

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  11. Nikki  May 8, 2022 at 5:20 pm Reply

    My dad suddenly passed away Dec 2021. I wasn’t prepared, so I was broken and is still breaking everytime there are events knowing he isn’t there to celebrate with us. I don’t feel excited for a family member’s birthday or anniversaries. I don’t even want to greet them or enjoy for them. I feel i am selfish but this how I feel. I dont talk about this to anyone because I feel I am burden and maybe overly dramatic.

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  12. Drew  April 23, 2022 at 10:10 am Reply

    My young wife passed unexpectedly two years ago. A few years before, I was in a terrible snowboarding accident. They thought I was dead. When I awoke from my coma…hers was the first face I saw. She saw me through the very low times (I was suicidal). Now she’s gone. I’m a bit disabled but before she passed I promised her that I would be here for our college age daughter. I’m a man of my word but most times I’m miserable. Friends and family can’t fill the void.

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    • Litsa  April 29, 2022 at 4:26 am Reply

      Drew – I am so incredibly sorry for your wife’s death and for the injury that has impacted your life. Learning to live after loss is a slow and difficult process; it will never be the life you imagined you’d have with your wife and before your injury. The void your wife left will never be filled exactly (you probably wouldn’t want it to be – she was uniquely her and none of us can be replaced!). But not having that life does not mean there isn’t another life that is worth living that can still feel meaningful and connected to your values. If you are not currently connected with a therapist I would suggest you get connected with one. You can call the number on your insurance card, you can check the psychologytoday directory, and in many areas you can call 211 and they have an assistance line that can help you locate support. Rebuilding after losing someone and your life changing after injury is hard, but it is worth it – for both you, your daughter, and in memory of your wife and the promise you made her. I don’t usual recommend our online courses in the comments here (because I feel weird about self-promotion!) but if you haven’t taken our journaling course, I think it could be a helpful course for you. If you can’t afford it, please just email us and we’ll waive the fee. Or if you pay for it and it doesn’t end up being helpful, let us know and we’ll refund you. https://school.whatsyourgrief.com/p/30-day-grief-journaling-intensive. Sending many good thoughts.

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  13. Pam ADAMS  March 4, 2022 at 12:07 pm Reply

    I am experiencing grief before loss. I have 2 sisters one older one younger. Both are suffering. My oldest has IPF. Shes in her 4th year.. the 5th year is crucial. No cure unless lung transplant. She will need a bilateral transplant. My younger sister ovarian cancer 3 yrs now this is her 3rd remission and a few weeks ago her numbers rose. Not a good sign. They are Sharing life and doing things I feel left out and grief has been teari.g me apart and they are still here. We all live In Different states and the one with less money so I can’t go on These trips. I’m lonely. I tried to explain but it comes out as jealousy. Which I guess I am but it’s more than that. I need them too.. I’m lonely now as I will be lonely when and if the time comes… I mean. It could be me today that goes first… Forgive me but how can. I PUT THIS OUT Of my head and enrich the beauty and strength of my sisters.?

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    • Severiano  April 3, 2022 at 9:26 pm Reply

      Please forgive yourself, God and your Sisters.

      2
    • Kelly  April 20, 2022 at 2:02 pm Reply

      Health professionals say I haven’t grieved for all my losses,I’ve never been to a funeral either I shut my curtains till the funeral passes then open them n carry on with life if I break I will really break and I can’t do that my kids need a mam they only have me n there dad n that in itself saddens me they never got to go nanas for a roast or have anyone visit at Xmas or bdays, I had my first miscarriage age 15 then went on to have my little boy age 16 in March 2002 I’d never lost anyone close to me before till October 2002 my big grandad died in hospital,then in 2005 my nana who I was really close with had lung cancer age 59 I cared for her she passed away 3 weeks after her 60th bday at home on sofa I walked in saw my grandad joe crying then looked twords nana she had passed away her eyes were still wide open, I never saw anyone like that before and it broke me, then in 2006 my grandad how got cancer and he left to he passed away in October 2006,inbetween 2002 2005 my nana shirly passed away on my dad’s side,2008 my aunty Joan passed away cervical cancer then 2010 my mam never told anyone she was suffering she was 44 she had cervical cancer left to late n passed away in hospital I cudnt visit her in hospital or go to any funerals I just cant face it,in the 20 year I’ve been with my partner I’ve suffered 16 miscarriages which I had to deal with alone so I just kept it all his away in myself..I also lost a baby at 13 weeks partial molar pregnancy the baby wudnt of stood a chance the baby was riddled in cancer cells …wen mam died my little brother n sister moved 200 mile away my partner became mentally and physically abusive really bad he was also taunt me ..then 2014 I had a smear and needed some cervix cutting away, my dad’s not a nice man he’s never wanted us kids in his life,then November 2019 1 of my 3 best n only mates passed away in his sleep …then January 2020 another of my best mates passed away he was just 33 …I still kept all this in as the way I saw it the man that shud love n care for me was abusing me n mocking them passing away never will I let him see me cry wen he does that then in July 2020 my 14 year old cousin was killed ….it’s only recently August 2021 I thought my heads going to pop I can feel myself going bk over I told my doctor he then spoke to the mental health team n got me a appointment with him and it was then I got told kelly those baby’s u lost were still a loss u need to grieve for those too …So I’m currently on waiting list for berevement councilling for 21 deaths I’ve not grieved for I also have to do impact councilling for the trauma as a teen my dad put me threw,I dernt tell them about the abuse my partner put me threw for best part 10 years …I’m a mam to 5 and a nana too ,but I’ve lived my late teens 20s 30s near enuf in the house as my anxiety is thru the roof …I feel I’ve got no one that cares well I know I don’t have anyone any more…I have my kids n they keep me going but I dunno x

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  14. Justin  February 23, 2022 at 11:06 am Reply

    I have read so many heartrending accounts of people experiencing grief and loss. I can empathise with some of the feelings you are experiencing.
    I lost my partner of 20 years to cancer in October 2021. She became more and more unwell over the course of 10 months with numerous hospital visits, time spent at home where I cared for her and finally time in a hospice.
    My feelings are many and varied and despite the support of a few people this cannot alleviate the current sense of loss, sadness, fear, lonliness and isolation I am experiencing.

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  15. Sandra  November 17, 2021 at 10:49 pm Reply

    Hi everyone first I want to say I’m sorry for all your losses, I to have lost people and the grief just keeps on going. My mom died in 2015 of lung cancer, it still upsets me to this day it was horrible seeing her in hospice, it came on so fast, we didn’t know she had cancer, I didn’t till she was rushed to er with breathing problems, my brother called me and said mom is in the hospital. My mom was super healthy and had quit smoking, this was a nightmare, she was dying, gone within a month. Then in 2018 my brother in-law died by suicide, I was in shock, and terrified, still haunts me to this day. 2021 my stepdad died suddenly, from health issues that came on suddenly, and he had dementia. Back in 2012 I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, managed by diet, that’s another story in its self, I was scared to the point I have anxiety and now more anxiety from all the death in my family. On antidepressants since my health diagnosis, then with Covid to my husband and daughter had it and are vaccinated, my husband got it when he was with his friends hunting, then my daughter got it, they are good, because they were vaccinated they said it was like a flu/ cold, I did not get it thank God. We are all vaccinated. That was very stressful. Now since my mom died I feel on edge all the time it feels like anxiety, I know it’s because my safety net isn’t there anymore, but I had my stepdad, it gave me some peace. And safety. Now that they are both gone I’m lost, and feeling lonely, my siblings and I went to there house to go over there things, and it felt scary, nothing felt the same without there presence it was an awful feeling. When we lose people the lonelier it gets and it becomes cumlitive losses, and loss after loss brings up other losses, my dad died when I was a child I’m 59, and it brings up losing him and wishing he was here. I miss my mom terribly, wish she was here for all the love she gave me, and to ease that anxious feeling that seems to be more present since her husband died in Sept. and having to go and get shots in my eye. That’s when I need my mom when I go through scary things in my life. I really long for her hugs, love ,comfort. She was y rock, I know grief never goes away but hell what are you suppose to do, I hate feeling it one death after another and health issues is so damn hard one effects the other.

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  16. JERI  November 17, 2021 at 3:52 pm Reply

    My son died in January. People say losing a child is the worst loss you can experience. I’m not sure I agree when I read of all the suffering here. My son and I were very close, had become especially so over the last five years. I experience daily the rollercoaster of disbelief, anguish, guilt, loneliness, the horror that he is gone from this earth in an instant, while life keeps going on. I just want to say that all loss is an agony. And that reading of the suffering of adult children who have lost their parents, well it has brought me, for a brief moment, the tiniest bit of solace. Because I know my son would have been suffering the same way. Now I suffer for him instead. I don’t mean to make light of your losses, I just want to let you know how much it means that you all have shared your feelings. You never know what help you may be.

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    • John  April 12, 2022 at 12:51 pm Reply

      I lost my son too…my only one…20 years old…just graduated from college 4.0 average…nicest…never hated a soul…all love…handsome…sooo good
      Still I’m near paralyzed…nothing interests me…not working…lost his mom a few years before…now alone…empty house…misery…feel like counting the days …I’m healthy and just can’t wait to join them…I have siblings and friends…so kind…yet…I feel empty…my son was my friend too…travelled together…ate together everyday…
      Grieving …I don’t think it will end during this life…writing to you cause I felt talking to you as we share the ugliest loss…one day at a time…it’s been a year and a half…and not a single day without tears…that doesn’t bother me…I’m sad anyway…who cares with or without tears…right ? Take care and please just remember …one day at a time

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      • U N Employed  January 18, 2024 at 10:02 am

        If people haven’t walked through similar loss, they do not understand. I am caught in a rabbit hole I do not know how to get out of. I did not choose this but because a man walked away at a late age, I have battled to find work, lost my house, family, financial security, dreams… and now live alone in an old flat….. with nothing to do.. and a ticking financial clock hanging over my head… then people tell me to volunteer – and challenge me saying I am emotionally unstable if I get upset. Who in their right mind volunteers when they have financial pressure? I don’t understand. Life demands so much of me. Yet I am told, it demands a lot of everyone from the woman owning 5 houses, with a husband, all her belongings in tact, who never needed to work from day one of her marriage or life anyway. Confused and saddened by life.

    • Cindy  June 18, 2022 at 11:26 pm Reply

      Oh Jeri… Your words hit home with me.
      I lost my son in Sept 2021. I have thought on numerous occasions, how I would never want him to feel the pain I feel after losing him. My heart cannot be calmed. I miss him so deeply. The thought of him feeling this lost and empty makes thankful to suffer for him. Its the ONLY consolation I have. There are so many days that I dont want to do this anymore. No one seems to understand or care anymore. I’m just supposed to be over it. I will NEVER be over it. He was my child!!! I pray for peace for you.❤️‍🩹

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  17. Luís  October 15, 2021 at 7:15 am Reply

    I just lost the relationship with my soulmate. We’d anything together. She was the mirror of everything I worship, value, aprecciate, love, think, find funny, amazing, wonderful, admire and the person that I wanna become. All of a sudden, everything got to an end without any signs of it getting there. I wrote this, 2 days after it happened. I don’t know what to do.

    “I feel lonely. I feel lost. I feel like I’ve lost part of me or even myself. I lost the happiness of my days. I lost why fight and get up in the morning. I lost sleep. I lost my sense of humor. I lost myself… and I lost you. I can’t explain what I feel, but I’ve never been so down, so deeply buried in sadness and melancholy. I feel like I have nothing to do. I cling to a sad and risky hope that, maybe one day, you’ll miss me in such a way that you’ll send me a message or come to me and tell me you’re sorry, that you want me back. It’s dangerous to have this belief: because you cling to a hope of something that might not even happen and, when it doesn’t, you run out of ground again and the bridge that was being built for your hypothetical and eventual happiness collapses. It’s risky, I repeat, but I insist. I insist because when you feel something as strong as what I feel for you, it’s impossible not to believe it. I feel and I insist because I know you better than anyone else. And you know me… I’m sure you think about me every now and then, in our daily video calls, at night before bed. That you think about how silly our games were… how we imagined your cat was the mayor and that somehow he was the one who made all the good things in our lives happen. Someone who reads this from the outside might consider it silly, but we don’t. It was a game we played every day. And we played. We loved it. And I still love you. Is it loving? Because I feel that the word “love” is so banal, vulgar and impotent compared to how I feel about you. And I will love you forever. Never before did I expect to find someone who was a reflection of my passions, interests and sense of humor and who, at the same time, loved me unconditionally, “with no deadline or budget”. Why should someone as fantastic as you fall in love with me? But it happened and now I can’t accept the reality. I don’t want to believe that all this time of happiness, play and love has come to an end. I don’t know if I’ll get over it, but frankly, I don’t want to… because there’s no one like you. And I want you. You were my safe haven and you were hopelessly my shelter when something happened. And there I was, under your comfort and embrace, your voice and jokes, far from my eventual problems, whether they were more or less serious. And now? Now that I’ve lost you, where do I take shelter? I can’t get over your absence. Please come back”

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    • Lauren  February 20, 2022 at 2:08 pm Reply

      I understand fully. The anguish and pain of loss.I had had a very blessed life.Then at 48 it all fell apart .My marriage ended abruptly after 29 years. Two years previous I had lost my dad suddenly .Two years on I lost my mum.Two years later I lost a brother.Two years on my best friend .I then fell in love. Now that’s over and I am bereft. Loneliness is debilitating. I have no one to lean on ,no one left.

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  18. Holly  August 7, 2021 at 12:26 pm Reply

    I just lost my mom on August 1st. She was my rock, my best friend, we lived together and went basically almost everywhere together. My mom helped raise my son since he was an infant and he’s turning eight years old in just a couple weeks. My whole world has been flipped upside down I’m left with all the bills amongst being a single mother and trying to work a schedule that’ll bring money in. I have family that live over an hour away that are willing to be here for me and support me through this hardship but I don’t want to move from my home, I don’t want to interrupt my sons school, his normal routine. We buried my mom yesterday and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my twenty six years of living. I’ve had suicidal thoughts because I fear that I won’t be able to make it emotionally or physically.

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    • Isabelle Siegel  August 10, 2021 at 9:44 am Reply

      Holly, I am so very sorry for your loss and for all the pain you’re going through. I wish I could say something to take your pain away. That said, please know that what you’re experiencing is normal and valid. You are not alone in this; We are here to show you that.

      I know you said money is a bit tight, but have you tried looking for a counselor trained in grief and bereavement? We recommend you start here: https://complicatedgrief.columbia.edu/for-the-public/find-a-therapist/ You can also look for a support group instead, which is a great low-cost alternative. If you are thinking of hurting yourself—or even if you just need someone to talk with—please call the National Suicide Helpline at 1-800-273-8255 or visit their website where you can do a live online chat https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

      Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us and the rest of the WYG Community!

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    • Jayme  September 8, 2021 at 9:34 am Reply

      Hi Holly,

      I am truly so sorry very for your loss. I wish we all had something to fill the enormous voids we feel after our loved one has passed. For me, I am finding some comfort in hearing others tell their stories. I am seeing a therapist and looking into a grief group. I will share a bit in hopes that you know you are not alone.

      My situation is similar to yours. I’m 38 and just lost my mom on 8/20/21. She just turned 73 in July. My daughter turned 9 a week before my mom had sudden respiratory failure that lead to cardiac arrest. She was entirely healthy prior to this. It all happened so fast.

      My mom lived with me and helped raise my daughter. She made my baby breakfast in the mornings, picked her up from school in the afternoons, and ate dinner with us. We were so close. I would leave the house in the mornings, having just spoke to my mom, and still call her on my drive to work. She was my rock, my anchor, best friend and advisor. Most days, I can’t figure out how I will continue on without her. Being so young and thinking of how long I will have to live without my mom is so so painful. My heart aches for my daughter who is experiencing pain too deep for a 9 year old.

      But I look into my little ones eyes and know that I want to give her everything my mom gave to me. I have to push on for her. I will make it through this, and I’m grateful to have some hope because of my sweet girl and my hope for her future.

      You suffered one of the biggest loss you will ever face. This pain is sharp and crushing. The physical heartache feels unbearable sometimes. I keep reminding myself that it only hurts this much because my mom loved me so much. And this is the price I pay for her love, and all that she gave to me. I know she would not want to see me in pain, so I trudge through.

      In my religion, we say “may her memory be a blessing”. Hoping that you feel surrounded by your mother’s love and that you find the support you need to get through the grief you feel. Wishing you healing and peace.

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    • Nqobile Fiona Simelane  October 3, 2021 at 3:59 am Reply

      Hi Holly. So sorry for your loss. I lost my Dad very suddenly my and unexpected from a heart attack. He was my whole world and my 3 kids’ lives revolved around him. He was my whole world, our home. I don’t get along with my mother. I feel like I have no home, no safety net. It’s such a lonely place.

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  19. Shawn Sushynski  August 6, 2021 at 6:11 am Reply

    I came across this page looking for help and a better understanding of how to deal with this. I have nobody left really. My pops passed away on May 31 2021 from sudden pancreatic cancer. He was completely full of life at the beginning of the year then 5 months later hes gone. Im battling the worst pain ive ever felt along with having the loneliness that weights me down. Im not sure how to flip it around and it scares me. I was already diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression and now that i lost my last remaining pieces to my family with all my grandparents gone and now my dad gone i feel like im stuck in a dark hole. Im 30 years old and have a lot of life ahead of me the only thing is now its harder to see it. Im sorry to all the people who commented about their loved ones that are in the same hole. Hopefully we can all get better. All get healthy again. Together we Pray 🙏🏻😔😵

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  20. Marcia  July 9, 2021 at 7:01 pm Reply

    I lost my mother, the strongest, and most direct person I’ve ever known on 5-22-21. Understanding her wasn’t always easy in my 40 years if life, but I am so grateful I finally did prior to her unexpected passing. Covid took my vibrant, full of life mother like a thief in the night. My family waited a week in agonizing fear without losing hope or the ability to lean on one another. I talked to her the day she was admitted to the hospital, and just hours later she started to decline. They put her on a ventilator less than 24 hours later. I hang on to every word we spoke that last conversation, but every day I want MORE, more advice, more encouragement, more of her voice. I have 2 baby sisters that won’t have her here to do all the things I was able to with her. Like becoming a mom! Those were mom’s shining moments, she loved being there for me. I’ve got to get myself together so I can be strong enough to support my baby sisters through the rest of their life’s milestones cause we don’t have mom. We’ve all only found comfort in being together, but we are all 3 in 3 different states… I hope and pray we can all find lots of FF miles to use so we can take comfort more frequently with one another. Thank you for this article, it has brought a lot of insight to my grieving heart.

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    • Delsha  July 24, 2021 at 7:27 pm Reply

      Same here I lost my mother on 03/15/2021 and she was battling Lung Cancer and the stupid ass doctor advise her to take that Covid shot. And she was good before she did that. That’s when everything started to happen after she took that shot. Her Lungs started to build up with fluid and they drain it but then they put a draining tube in her and that’s when things really took the worst. Organs start to shut down. I am 41 years old with a younger brother that is 23 years old. We are devastated, she didn’t suppose to take that shot. And the know that the Covid 19 is a respiratory infection that effect your breathing. And that is what it start to do with my mom. After she took the second part of the test. She was complaining about how she couldn’t breathe. Henry Ford killed my mother and her doctor. She was not to get vaccinated in her condition. It was not my mother time, and she was only 64 and was doing good with her Chemo. But she took that shot and that shot cause her death and speeding up her sickness. I knew with her sickness she was not going to live forever but that shot made her condition worser. She was doing fine. So I blame these money hungry ass doctors. These doctors are not good doctors like they were in the old days, when I was coming up. So hey I feel your pain I lost a best friend, counselor, and a Damn good mother. I cry everyday I think about everyday. Ever second, every hour. I feel what you are going thru cause I go thru It everyday. And ask God why you took her you could have took me. She was a Angel in disguise with full of light. I’m pissed!

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  21. E  July 7, 2021 at 10:25 pm Reply

    I lost my mom at 17 in 2003. My dad in 2018. My stepfather in 2020. I’m an only child. I have amazing friends (that live away from me but keep “in touch” and we visit when life allows) a husband, two wonderful children, and this whole family of in-laws. I crave family and find my self seeking family friends and others who knew my family or have known me over the years to build connection with. My husband doesn’t understand how these people are so important to me and it’s really hard to explain.

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  22. Arpita  June 27, 2021 at 8:00 pm Reply

    I lost my soulmate and husband, man who was my life for 20 years to cancer 2 years ago. We battled the illness for 4 years, at one point thinking we conquered it too…I was the sole caretaker for all this time and then he was gone. Suddenly I didn’t know what to do with myself. this was the “my person”, the one person who knew me inside out. Initially I felt relief for him that he didn’t have to suffer all that pain any longer. But then it became anger and this guilt of being left behind, we were a team, did everything together and I didn’t go with him. Every night i relive the last moments with him, I cannot sleep any longer, this pain is too much. People tell me to “move on”, “time will heal” …I lost my dad when I was close to 13,…I still grieve for him so telling me to move on doesn’t help. There are days I can focus on work…nights and weekends are hard…

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  23. Lacy Sorenson  June 26, 2021 at 7:54 pm Reply

    I lost my mom due to cancer. She and I have always been close, she is my best friend,mother, confidant and so much more. I can’t see any future for myself without her. My father and stepfather died years ago. I only have a brother left and we’re not that close. I feel my heart,soul and body just breaking. I also have the same cancer as her, not as aggressive. A blood cancer. I take chemo but I’m thinking of quitting it. I feel my life is gone.

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    • Maria  July 24, 2021 at 12:41 pm Reply

      Hi lacy
      Please feel free to contact me. I too have a similiar situation and trained professionals offer their condolences but do not have experience in my extreme case . Grief is similar to law constantly changing and situations you dont have experience in arising all the time. I am happy to speak with you. Good luck

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      • Dree  August 23, 2021 at 11:27 am

        Maria. Could I reach out to you?

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    • Dree  August 23, 2021 at 11:23 am Reply

      Lacy. I’m going through something similar. Please me if you need a caring friend.

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  24. Curtis Fluge  June 16, 2021 at 2:07 am Reply

    Hi people, colon cancer killed my mom last March and lung cancer killed my dad last May and a stroke killed my mom in law this past May. Cut yourself slack and live your life! We all have to go someday.

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    • Matthew Ressler  June 29, 2021 at 9:51 am Reply

      I’m very I’m sorry, I’ll try harder to be more responsible, I love you for your losses. I wish I shared your optimism, I honestly do.

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    • Lisa  November 15, 2021 at 7:09 pm Reply

      My father died on March 13, 2020 of congestive heart disease. I still have not figured out how to move on from it. He was diagnosed about a year prior, yet I didn’t know he was actually gonna die. I didn’t understand what death meant. I had lost relatives prior but it never hit me how final death was. My father was always strong and healthy. He worked out, he took vitamins, he didn’t eat meat or dairy. I thought my father was invincible.
      I was 48 when my father passed. I am his only child. I never had a personal relationship with him my whole life. Looking back, we were too much alike but didn’t know it. After he was diagnosed, he had contacted me around the same time of the year as right now. He wanted to help me in some way. I told him I was fine and didn’t need any help. Then he said something I will never forget and something that makes me cry every time I think of it. He said, “let me keep u warm.” I said ok. After that conversation, I spoke to my father regularly up until 2 weeks before he died. I bought his groceries for him and would have them delivered to my place, then he would drive over and pick them up. We would talk on the phone, in person. My father always loved life. Always had a smile on his face. One day, I assume due to his failing health, he lashed out at me and hurt my feelings. Any other time of my life, I would’ve not talked to him until I got over it. This time, I wasn’t willing to let any more time pass by due to hurt feelings. He was supposed to call me that day but didn’t. I became worried. I called him and expressed my concern. He said that I didn’t talk to him for years before. I told him that our past didn’t matter to me any longer. I told him I just wanted to know him. That was the jest of it. He was my father. I loved him and just wanted to know him as a person. From that day on, we spoke about things we had never talked about. I told him how much I loved him every time I spoke to him. The last time I spoke to him was 2 weeks before he died. It was a conversation about money. That was it. He called me once after that but I had missed his call. For the life of me, I don’t remember whether or not I called him back. I pray that I did. I hope I did. The day that he died, I woke up and was feeling very strange. I decided to go for a walk. I ended up walking a few miles. At one point, I was walking beside the highway and kept seeing myself running into traffic or throwing myself in front of cars driving 70 mph. It still weirds me out when I remember the way I felt that day. I found out 3 days later that my father had passed the day I took that walk. Now, almost 2 years later, I wish I could have just one moment back with him. Just one conversation, one hug, anything. I would give up my life just to hear him say “love ya” one more time. I wasted my entire life being angry or hurt, in regards to him. In the end, at the end of life, all those details do not matter anymore. The only thing that means anything is having just a little more time with someone U love. That’s all. I just wanted to know him yet I knew him my whole life because I was so much like him. I miss him everyday. I love him everyday. I don’t know if the pain I feel will ever heal. How could it? My father is gone. He will never be back. I will never get another phone call. I will never hear his voice again on earth. During one of the last conversations we had, I asked him if he was afraid to die and if he believed in God. He said he was not afraid to die and asked me why I wanted to know if he believed in God. I told him I needed to believe I would see him again, somewhere…in another place and time. I hold onto that belief everyday. I talk to him often. I don’t have a lot of happy memories with him but I do have the last year he was alive. I haven’t figured out how to say goodbye or let him go but how would I ever be able to? Would he be able to tell me goodbye or let me go? This will be the last thing I share…a few weeks ago, I was staring at his picture, which sits next to an angel tree topper I have in my room, I told him I would be ok and that he could go now. I immediately started crying and said, please don’t go yet. I always needed and loved my father. Now that he’s gone I miss him more than I thought possible and I love him more than I could’ve ever imagined I’d be able to. I wish he was still here. Thank u for reading my story.

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      • Dave  December 7, 2022 at 6:32 pm

        Lisa,

        I know how it feels when you say that you would give anything just to hear your father tell you he loves you just one more time. I recently lost my beloved wife to cancer, and now I’m grasping at any little bit of her writing I can find around the house, or for photos of her I’ve never seen, or a family video that she may have been in, or anything else that had her voice, handwriting, or image on it. I spend my days hunting scraps and crying every hour on the hour. I believe ‘brutal’ is the word for it.

        When the person you love is gone, the details of your relationship will play over and over again in your head until you feel like you’re going to go crazy. I have few regrets with regard to my wife, so I guess I’m relatively okay in that. But everyone’s relationship is different. I would caution you to be easy on yourself. No on in this world is perfect, and I like to think your dad would forgive you anyway. In the meantime, your work will involve learning to forgive yourself. Take care of yourself and think about the good times and the love you had with your dad. It will be very hard to do until time has placed the necessary buffer between the event of his death and now. Let your dad speak to you as my wife speaks to me and says, “The one thing that’s certain is that things will get better.”

  25. Joni Hood  June 15, 2021 at 11:59 pm Reply

    I lost my mom less than 18 months before losing my 33-year-old son! My first child, my only son, he had two children of his own!
    My whole being has been around my family! I’ve been out with friends for class reunions, etc but my life has been my kids and my grandkids!

    My mom, was a very narcissistic, painstaking and depressed person most of my life. I found out in my 30s, from my dad, then my mom had been jealous of me all my life! I just thought she hated me. 12 years before she passed away, her and I reunited, became not only mom and daughter but also best friends! I was there the last year of her life, which included going to hospitals, going to assisted living sites, spending the night with her, going to doctor’s appointments with her and even up to… Spending the last two nights of her life by her side!
    With my only son gone, and the mom I never had for so many years and I miss them both so much, I don’t know what to do. I have a 29-year-old daughter who I would say ” hates me ” due to what she portrays as a horrible life. My son, her older brother, told me ” she’s just self-righteous and a spoiled brat “… I have never told her what her brother said. I also have a 13-year-old in which her father, I never would and never will marry him, is very narcissistic and thinks he owns me by manipulating my daughter, at 13 years old. Family that adopted my biological grandchildren, have kept these children from our family although stating that they would “oh, never Keep these children from their grandma ” Well that’s been bull crap and they are my blood not theirs!
    I can’t call my mom and talk to her about it as I did for years and years. My dad, my Daddy’s girl, Is having physical trouble of his own and his wife is borderline Alzheimer’s!
    I AM LONELY! MY CHILDREN HAVE BEEN MY LIFE, NO MAN CAME BEFORE THEM! I FEEL ABANDONED, SO SAD, SO MAD AND AS STRONG AS I USED TO BE ALL THE TIME AS A SINGLE MOM… I DON’T EVEN FEEL LIKE A MOM ANYMORE! I DON’T FEEL LIKE A DAUGHTER, A SISTER, A FAMILY MEMBER…

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  26. Michael  June 13, 2021 at 9:05 pm Reply

    I lost my wife on March 1, 2021 after having been sick for only 2 months. 3 weeks later I had a very serious health scare due to the stress of having taken care of her. We realized she would not survive only 6 days before she died. I am seeing a therapist but I am incredibly lonely and sad. I never had the opportunity to really talk to her before she went to sleep and died 3 days later.

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    • Jill  June 26, 2021 at 12:10 pm Reply

      My husband just died after less than a year of fighting lung cancer. We were both really hopeful he would beat it for a few years – right up to weeks ago when it was clear he might not. We never really talked about his dying – I think because we thought it would make it real and we wanted the comfort of hoping. He went very quickly and did not regain consciousness after getting a shot to help him sleep so we never got to say goodbye directly although of course I was beside him holding his hand with my other hand on his heart. I am hoping this will at some point be something that I can remember without breaking up. For now it is getting through each day.

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    • Matt  June 28, 2021 at 3:15 am Reply

      I am so sorry.

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  27. Kelli  June 11, 2021 at 3:50 am Reply

    Hi Everyone,

    I lost my dad in Dec. of 2020 and lost my mom in Jan. of 2021. Wow, I am 46, married, with 2 children and I feel like a lost person. They lived four houses up the street from me and it was rare that we didn’t see each other daily. My kids got to grow up with grandparents and great grandparents and it was wonderful. Everyone says to give it time but I still miss them daily and will cry if something reminds me of them. I am hoping that in time I will remember all the great times and years we all had together but I don’t feel that much different today than I did when they passed away. If anyone else has gone through tough times like this, please tell me it does get better! Thanks!

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  28. Steven  June 7, 2021 at 7:20 pm Reply

    Mom passed early April. She was in hospital and rehab from Feb. 5th til that day. Thought she was getting better, but only got worse. I am an only child. I can go on with the causes but that would take forever. It could have been avoided, let’s put it that way. Dad passed over 20 years ago. No family left. Couple of friends here and there. Even though I’m in my lower 50’s, it is so hard and can’t deal with it. I feel like a child . We were so close which makes it harder to deal with. I feel strong at times and at times feel helpless. I talk to her and feel her voice. It gets me through the day. Felt better getting this out. If someone reads it, fine. If not, it helped me to write. I will continue as mom would want that. She was strong and I feel I am too mostly. They always say life must go in, but it is so hard. I ask myself why and what could have been done. Mom, I miss you so and we’re best friends always. I live you more than you will ever know.

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    • Kristine  June 14, 2021 at 6:27 pm Reply

      Hello Steven,
      I completely relate to your situation. My mom passed away Feb. 18 of this year. I knew she was dying but I thought she had longer than she did. Within the last 5 years I’ve lost every member in my family except my one and only son. I did have one sibling but he passed away May 2019. My son lives several hours from me so I don’t see him much. I do work everyday but the days and weekends are long. Next month I’ll be 56, why I’m the last one in my family alive baffles me. There’s many days I wish death would come but here I am. Like you both my moms death and my brothers could have been prevented, right now I’m not a fan of doctors. Doubt I will ever be tho. I wish I could say it gets easier, so far I’m still struggling. I’m lonely without my mom, we did everything together. I wish you all the best, sorry I know this might not be the right thing to say.

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      • Steven  June 15, 2021 at 9:35 pm

        Hello Kristine:
        So sorry for your loss. Thanks for taking the time as I know it is hard for you. I know many are in the same situation. I will keep it short. But writing that made me feel relieved. Discovered this randomly and seemed to be a good place to let my feelings go. You take care and all the best to you.

        3
    • AnnMarie  June 24, 2021 at 8:41 am Reply

      Hi Steven.. I, too, am early 50s, mom’s been gone 2 yrs now. 4/23/19. Still literally feels like ystrday. She was my world. My Dad is still alive, lives in Florida but has never been a source of strength, compassion, affection, support or anything, really. My mother was both parents for me. I’m a social creature but have not felt like doing anything bc it feels so empty and unfulfilling without being able to call and share it with her. I just feel so lonely without my other half and I pray that she comes to get me. Life feels so empty without my other half.. I’m so lonely without her unconditional and unwavering love. She was my rock.. and at the end, I was hers. I am thankful to have been with her at het last moment, but I re-live it every night. I’ve had no family to grieve with. They all disappeared right after her service.
      She knew no one would be here for me and I also know, in my heart, she would’ve taken me with her if she could have. We were that close.
      I know she’d want me to go on & keep having adventures.. but there’s just no joy in life anymore without her. Sure, I have friends, but no one will ever ‘get me’ the way she did. She accepted, and celebrated, everything about me.. “her baby”. God, I miss her.

      7
      • Steven Mucha  June 24, 2021 at 10:31 am

        Hello AnnMarie:
        Thanks for taking the time to write with your story. So sorry for your loss and situation. It is so tough and really hard to believe with my story. I always told mom, she would out live me. She isn’t with me physically, but I speak to her all the time with her wedding picture by my bedside always. I could go on but will keep it short. Thanks again for your time and reading your comment was sad to me.
        Take care and be well.
        Steven

        2
      • Wayne Rowley  June 24, 2021 at 8:54 pm

        I get this “SO” much. But there’s just no joy in life anymore without her.

        I still have my mother and father, but my first and only girlfrind at 53, the girl I had known from 16, left me after two years and us getting along like two teenagers in love. Its been 6 years. Is there others out there still as bad as be 6 years on ???

        I dont get up till 12, as cant face the full day without her, I then go to work, I got my own busy wrought iron firm, just me, thus I do as I like. Come home late, do my training, that keeps me going, and twice a week I go out for a beer, but I still feel like its the end of the World.

        I am so ill, as I call it, I cant go on holidays, cos shes not there with me, will drink to much, and I feel so bad the day after, no work, no training, thus I cant even go on holidays.

        I feel stuck in a hole, and the light at the end of it, is getting less each day, I just think whats the point. BUT this is not me, after being shy till 30, and then being opened up, and a totally diffrent person with her, its hell going back to that lonely little boy again, but I a a man, but I dont fee like.

        On meds, but thinking of asking the Doctor for these ??? TRINTELLIX.

        Wayne

        1
    • Lacy Sorenson  June 26, 2021 at 8:06 pm Reply

      Your situation is similar to mine. I’m not a only child but my brother and I are not close. I have friends but it’s not the same. I am single with no children. In my 50s. I also have cancer too. I’ve never been so heartbroken as I am. I just think God go ahead and take me. I thought I was strong before this.

  29. Heidi Kobulnicky-Brudy  May 26, 2021 at 10:53 am Reply

    I have lived at my current rental space for 3 years. I lost my older service dog on my birthday of July 24, 2020. After that I was okay. Then, I got told 2 weeks ago I have to be out of my rental space by June 1, 2021 at 12 noon due to the place being sold and the new owner don’t like me. I just lost my husband on May 18, 2021. He has been sick for a very long time. I am in the grieving process and it seems like nobody cares. I am on the depression stage and on top of that, I feel like my head is not clear enough to make decisions or do anything right now. I am barely making it and I only have 5 days left as of today May 26, 2021 till I have to move out of my current place.
    I did put an application in for a place in Pittsburgh, PA. Hoping to get to see it tomorrow. I just think that if I change places to live maybe it will help me transition from taking care of 3 to taking care of me.
    I am in for the long haul and am gonna take it one day at a time. I don’t need the added on stress.
    I’m getting tired of putting up with the 24/7 nonstop noise up there.

    2
    • Mike Thomas  May 26, 2021 at 12:54 pm Reply

      Hi Heidi
      My name is Mike I’m a retired widower business plan development. I lost my beloved Pam on 1/16/20 I was with her everyday in the Ed hospital for over a year until she passed, I’m missing without her she was a university professor and former reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. The past several years have been devastating I feel like I’ve in The Twlight Zone in an XFile I’m a writer/researcher Freemason history and trivia buff I like to golf too. I have a property & office you could come here.

    • Shitiki  June 23, 2021 at 5:59 pm Reply

      Hey I lost my husband on May 18,2021 he pass right in front of me we was together for 23 years I miss him so much I don’t feel like I should be here I cry every single day and he visits me in my dreams this is so painful cause every day I sit cry and be lonely

      • Matt  June 28, 2021 at 3:28 am

        I’m so sorry for your loss, it is even harder when you witness a loved ones passing. It will take a long time to heal, my heart goes out to you, I hope you have someone you can count on for some support, If not, please go to your doctor and ask for a referral. I’m sure there are support groups you can find online too. I know it feels so horrible right now, especially at night, but just hang in there, and understand that this is grief you are experiencing, and you will survive it.

        Warm regards,

        Matt

      • TJ  January 20, 2022 at 11:04 pm

        I lost the love of my life nearly 2 years ago. I cry everyday for him, he go sick and died 10 days later. Now there is just me. I have no children. I am so lonely, I go to work each day come home and cry for my loss. I want him back but thats never going to happen. I feel so guilty, did I do enough when he got sick, he could not talk as he had a breathing tube, I worry I did not tell him enough how much he was loved. Due to Covid I only got to spend maybe up to an hour a day with him, it just was not enough. I miss my Raymond xxx

  30. Sunny Verma  May 25, 2021 at 12:59 pm Reply

    I have lost my dad last year on 30th November 2020.. He suffered from cardiac attack and lost his life on my lap.. I often feels that awful moments and from that day I feel totally broken whenever I am alone and thinks about my lovely moments with my dad. He was an great person, very quite and very sweet… He always gives me a special respect by calling me “son”. I often burst I tears. I know it is impossible to bear loss of loving one specially our parents when we r single.. I wish God may give strength to everyone whenever one is greiving..

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  31. Max Weaver  May 19, 2021 at 9:37 am Reply

    My name is Max. I posted here a while back. As of this posting the one year anniversary of my Mom’s passing is in 7 days. She was in a nursing home when she passed and although I was with her when she passed the 3 months I did not get to see her, as I visited everyday, were unbearable. Not only is the anniversary coming up I’m also dealing with the likelihood that the house that I live in that was hers is going to have to be sold. All of this together has got me feeling really down. My best to all those going through the challenging times.

    4
  32. Helen short  May 13, 2021 at 12:51 pm Reply

    I lost my mam to covid a year ago. I won’t go in to all upsetting details but I now truly feel alone. I have nobody to advise me on decisions, I feel I am making wrong job choices etc without her. I am a grown woman but feel scared. After a year everyone assumes you have moved on

    9
    • Brittany  May 15, 2021 at 5:03 am Reply

      I just lost my mother on April 28, 2021. I feel these exact same feelings. I am 31 years old but feel like a lost little girl. I have family members and friends, but feel like I am truly alone in this world since she passed. It is an awful feeling and I am praying for you.

      5
      • Sunny Verma  May 25, 2021 at 12:58 pm

        Hi Brittany.. I have lost my dad last year on 30th November 2020.. He suffered from cardiac attack and lost his life on my lap.. I often feels that awful moments and from that day I feel totally broken whenever I am alone and thinks about my lovely moments with my dad. He was an great person, very quite and very sweet… He always gives me a special respect by calling me “son”. I often burst I tears. I know it is impossible to bear loss of loving one specially our parents when we r single.. I wish God may give strength to everyone whenever one is greiving..

        2
    • Mike Thomas  May 16, 2021 at 10:18 pm Reply

      Hi Helen
      I know all about loneliness I lost my beloved Pam 1/16/21 my life has been a mess since she passed. I was with her everyday in the hospital for over a year until she passed. She was a university professor & former newspaper reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. We retired to the highest mountains of western Pa I can’t drive due to blindness no family, friends or children am in need of personal assistant give me a call [CONTACT INFORMATION REMOVED] 10-15 rings if no answer leave voice message my name is Mike let’s talk I’m 100 percent verifiable not a criminal

      1
      • Maria  June 8, 2021 at 1:55 pm

        Hi was sad to read what you are going thru I’m 62 and have no family anymore it’s frightening and very lonely I need to sell my house but don’t seem to have the energy anymore it’s grief.

        1
  33. Jason  May 3, 2021 at 3:57 pm Reply

    My best friend more like sister promised me she beat cancer she died 6 months ago and I am sad and depressed most of the time it just hurts that promise never happened and just before she passed away she said she phone me but never happened because time was not on our side now I am full of guilt hurt very depressed from the promise and the phone call that didn’t happen I just wish she come back it is the promises that never happened I feel trapped alone despair guilt I feel like I should of called her if I would of known time was not on our side I just can’t let go of the promise and phone call and trust me complicated grief is very horrible feeling I sometimes feel like I should go be with her in heaven last 6 months been hell for me I cry myself to sleep every night I miss her very very much

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    • Lacy Sorenson  June 26, 2021 at 8:14 pm Reply

      I feel emotionally like you do. My mom is gone too. It has not been long but I feel like you do. I miss her soo much. She also had cancer and was on dyalsis too. She just couldn’t do it anymore. She was everything to me.

  34. Renee  March 27, 2021 at 1:00 am Reply

    I lost my mom two months ago. I had not seen her in a year due to COVID. She was in her mid 60s. She suffered cardiac arrest, CPR by EMS was performed right away for 11 minutes, and suffered an anoxic injury. You read all these stories about others down for longer with no or little defects. The doctor stated my mom would had severe brain injury and would not recover.
    I did not think to ask for a second opinion in my grief, we removed her from life support a few days later. I feel especially alone in my grief because my sibling does not regret what we did and I do I often wonder if her prognosis was wrong and we rushed to a decision. She also lived with my sibling so she knew my mom really well. I didn’t I thought I had more time.

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  35. Sue mac  March 23, 2021 at 4:59 am Reply

    I lost my best friend my soul mate my world 6 years ago. My father. Nobody other than those here now understand the chunk gone from one’s self. People sympathise but they’ve not lost a parent yet. I wish I could go back in time and be where I was happy. I have never felt so lost as I do now.

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    • Kathryn  March 24, 2021 at 8:40 am Reply

      I know how you feel really I lost Mum on Sunday ❤

      8
    • Sam  May 21, 2021 at 2:04 am Reply

      I lost my dad. My rock. The only person who understood me and was unconditionally there for me. My mom has been unstable and weak my whole life. My dad was everything. Some nights I don’t feel like I want to go on. I totally understand how you feel.

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  36. Brian Gabriel  February 17, 2021 at 11:02 pm Reply

    I lost my dad in 2008, my little brother in 2010 and my mom out of no where in 2019, growing up I had the closest family out of everyone, after my dad passed my mom wouldn’t date so i made sure she was my world, now I’m gonna b 43 and I never been married and have no kids, I have great friends but inside I’m empty I can’t imagine life getting better because what is missing can’t come back. And nobody can relate because nobody can understand, I don’t see this loneliness and depression going away

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    • Isabelle Siegel  February 18, 2021 at 10:28 am Reply

      Brian, I am so sorry that you’ve been forced to endure so many losses. I highly recommend you check out this article: https://whatsyourgrief.com/cumulative-grief-aka-grief-overload/ I am also sorry to hear that you feel so alone and misunderstood. I want you to know that it’s not too late for you. You have the power to change your life, to reach out to others. Perhaps it would be helpful to see a therapist for some guidance… You can locate one here: https://complicatedgrief.columbia.edu/for-the-public/find-a-therapist/. You also might benefit from joining a support group, where you can speak with people who have experienced similar losses. You can read more about support groups here: https://whatsyourgrief.com/grief-support-groups-positives-and-pitfalls/ Please know that, no matter what, you are not alone. If you are thinking of hurting yourself, or even if you just need someone to talk with, please call the National Suicide Helpline at 1-800-273-8255 or visit their website where you can do a live online chat https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ All the best to you.

      4
    • Madisyn Erdley  February 23, 2021 at 6:32 am Reply

      i fell you Brian my great grandfather died from Stomach cancer in 2014 we were really close for only being together for only a couple of months and the one and last memory i really have of him is that we would always go to this one diner called the Twilight diner and the food is amazing because it feels just like your at home and you make it your self ,but anyhow back to what i was talking about to begin with. and so did my uncle jean died in 2015 from the same thing but my grand fathers was killing him faster than my uncles cancer and then my aunt Virginia Hackenberg died from a hart attack in her sleep in 2016.

      4
      • Ibrahim Mansaray  May 9, 2021 at 6:40 am

        A mother’s love is everything. It is what brings a child into this world. It is what molds their entire being. When a mother sees her child in danger, she is literally capable of anything. Mothers have lifted cars off of their children and destroyed entire dynasties. A mother’s love is the strongest energy known to man. Happy Mother’s Day to your lost mum! May her soul Rest In Peace.

        1
    • Lindsay  February 24, 2021 at 9:38 pm Reply

      This is exactly how I’m feeling … I don’t have much family and my mom was my world my dad I had to put in assisted living and my brother doesn’t talk to me. I don’t know how to relate to anyone anymore nobody understands me and I’m so scared of everything.

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      • Sue mac  March 23, 2021 at 5:03 am

        Me too. I understand its scary. I need help and guidance I hope we can all help each other through our heart ache. X

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    • Julie  March 12, 2021 at 3:02 pm Reply

      Hi Brian.
      My goodness I just finished another conversation with God telling him how I don’t deserve this feeling over and over… I’ve lost people- my father died Christmas morning 2009.
      I lost 160 people due to my husbands drinking I stayed with him as long as I could possibly stay with him without being killed. He was my best friend when he wasn’t drunk and his family were all my best friends we
      Everything under the sun and had so much fun with everyone, that divorce was slightly before my father‘s passing,
      At that time I also work for my children who both graduated and went off to college then my brother was killed in a snowmobile accident a couple years later while I was in a relationship just six months- the man was not honest about where he was at with his wife’s passing with his life and angry at women. 🙁 It’s horrific at times and no one gets it.Because I’m alone

      I own my own home everything is paid for , I do hospice for a living but I literally just said to the Lord;
      How can this possibly be fair Lord, I am a very knowledgeable woman and have studied many religions and see people through so much but I just don’t understand how someone like me so giving and always wanting to help everyone else get what they need has ended up alone at a cabin in the woods in a city where people really don’t except other people very well. So,

      I feel your emptiness and I’m so sorry for it I don’t understand how it will ever change unless I move away or fall in love again. I just want you to know that you’re not exactly in the same story but, I feel the emptiness of looking out the window all summer every weekend and all winter every weekend or during the week and never having anyone there.
      I am so sorry for all of our losses and I hope the that the universe sees and hears -what we need and sends Miracles both of our ways so that we do not have to feel this way any longer..It’s absolutely heart wrenching not to mention mind-boggling.
      [EMAILED REMOVED]
      May the gods in the universe send joy and laughter our way once again forever and ever;for all the good that we’ve done, all the good that we’ve been and all of the good that we have yet to give, to re-create our hearts, renew our mind and our soul. No one deserves this. God bless us.
      Warm hug Brian
      Julie

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      • Darla  April 17, 2021 at 10:12 pm

        Hello Julie,
        I am exactly where you are. I lost my husband of 35 years almost a year and a half ago and together we have one son who has been struggling and consequently at this time I don’t have a relationship with him I do have an older brother he’s never married and has no children and both of my parents have died. I feel so alone in this world and it is a scary feeling I try not to think about it I’ve gone to work and my job keeps my mind busy the evenings and weekends are a terrible time for me. Although that is the state of my life, I am blessed in some ways because I have some financial security and I know some people don’t even have that. I ask myself what does this future hold for me and I try to remain positive about it when the pain of loneliness is not eating away at me.

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    • Kristine  March 15, 2021 at 10:31 pm Reply

      Hello Brian, I’m in same position. After my stepfather died in 2003 I made sure my mom was taken care of. My grandparents died after him. My moms sisters died soon after. My only sibling passed May 2019 my mother passed away February 18, 2021. Four days later my beloved cat died. I’m alone. I do have one adult son but I barely hear from him he’s in college and busy. I’ve never felt so alone and lonely in my life. I work and come home trying to sort through my moms house so I can sell it. I’m dying inside. If it wasn’t for my job I don’t know what I would do.

      Just so you know I’m sorry for your situation. I can’t offer advice because I don’t even know what to do for myself. I do want you to know you’re not alone. I know this doesn’t do any good but I am thinking about you.

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    • Suki  March 16, 2021 at 1:52 pm Reply

      Hello Brian,

      Thank you for sharing your experience! I am feeling the same as well. I lost someone I loved in January this year. The loneliness after he passed away is killing me. I feel empty, scared and insecure. Grieving is a long journey. I don’t think I would be able to move on.

      Take care and all the very best!

      Suki

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    • STUART ALAN LAZAR  March 30, 2021 at 2:59 pm Reply

      I have same situation,,,,,,,,lost mom,, and now alone ,,,,,,,no children,,,,,,,no marriage ,,,,,I feel lost,

      1
    • Lacy Sorenson  June 26, 2021 at 8:21 pm Reply

      I can. Because that’s how I feel. I have a brother but we’re not close. I’m also not married or kids. My mother was my world. I can’t imagine it getting better. Until you lose a parent or child you don’t realize how much your world is intertwined with them.

  37. Samantha  February 12, 2021 at 5:14 am Reply

    hi there, my name is Samantha and I lost my boyfriend of 4 years in 2018. I still feel im floating through life getting nowhere as I still miss him and think about him daily, I have never had anyone since and not sure if I ever could, everytime I think if getting into dating I feel like I could never love anyone else. they’re not him

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    • Isabelle Siegel  February 17, 2021 at 1:00 pm Reply

      Samantha, I’m so very sorry for your loss. Please know that it’s completely okay to not want to date again… Perhaps this will change, perhaps it won’t. You have to do what is best for you. All the best to you.

      1
      • Nithya  February 23, 2021 at 1:39 am

        I have lost my husband after 15 months of our marriage. He was my best friend my partner in crime my whole world literally. We had waited 7 years to marry and again after 15 months I am again lost. I feel like holding him once more. I know he can’t come back but I still wish I have the same world. I know no one will take his place but I am really hating this lonely feeling. I really don’t know what to do. No people around me are helping

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  38. Cliff Frizzell  February 10, 2021 at 9:35 am Reply

    My wife and I lost our 42 year old daughter unexpectedly on 12/08/20. We both feel an emptiness inside. I feel guilty anytime I start to do any hobby or start to feel any joy about anything. I dont know what to do to make things better for my wife. Im lost

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  39. Gary  February 5, 2021 at 2:35 pm Reply

    My Father died in June 2020 and I don’t really feel anything about it. He was my best friend but greatest tormenter too. Since I was a kid I was wracked by anxiety everyday that my Father would die today. It was just this mental telepathy, this different wavelength we operated on and we got each other. A number of times I just got this crawling feeling something was up and true to form I would get there and something was up. 3 times nearly dead. Then He really went and died and now I’m angry with him about it because I tried for so long to stop him. I don’t know what stage that is but I just walked around with this extreme indifference and apathy to the world around Me and became this terribly self-absorbed person, but thats the thing about life. Your either living it or busy dying to paraphrase Bob Dylan. It’s just about perspective. Life is about what You do in between that counts because we are all brought into this world the same way and we all go out the same too. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It is the great eqeulizer.

    1
    • Isabelle Siegel  February 9, 2021 at 10:07 am Reply

      Gary, I’m very sorry for your loss. I want you to know that it’s completely okay to feel angry with your father… and it’s also okay to feel nothing at all. I recommend you check out this article: https://whatsyourgrief.com/feeling-nothing-during-grief/ You’re not selfish; You’re just grieving. Give yourself space to feel whatever it is you need to feel. All the best to you.

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  40. Robert  February 1, 2021 at 10:37 pm Reply

    My grandma died in June her an my grandpa raised me from a baby on a heart mentor I feel so lost an alone since she passed away. My grandpa already trying to be in a realationship with some one already. I try to talk to him how I feel he just don’t understand me that’s the hardest part. It like every one abandoned me or my feelings 💔 i try to talk to my friends an family about it but don’t understand how it feels having some one around for 24 years and now there no longer here.

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    • Isabelle Siegel  February 2, 2021 at 8:42 am Reply

      Robert, I’m so sorry for your loss and that you’re feeling so alone. It’s unfortunately completely normal to feel as though no one understands your feelings after a loss. Perhaps you should seek out the support of a therapist trained in grief and bereavement, which you can find here: https://grief.com/grief-counselor-directory/. Please know that you are not alone, and that your feelings are so normal and valid. I highly recommend you check out this article: https://whatsyourgrief.com/what-does-grief-feel-like/ All the best to you.

    • Anita  February 7, 2021 at 10:16 am Reply

      Hi dear Robert,
      I’m so sorry for your loss… I can’t begin to say how much I feel you… I lost my grandmother almost two month ago, and she and my grandpa raised me too… all my childhood memories are filled with her… I think that’s why it makes it so hard and sad to think about my childhood now…
      I feel super lonely too… I feel like none of my friends and family members actually get what I’m going through… it’s so unbearable …I’m 23 years old too :)) when I read your comment it was like reading my own story… so I guess it’s ok to say I really get what you’re going through… it’s really painful I know… but know that you’re not alone, and by living an amazing and fulfilling life, you will make your grandmother happy and honar her memory … you can ask her help sometimes too:))
      Sorry for my bad English…
      I hope the best for you
      Take care

  41. Jessica R  January 22, 2021 at 2:48 am Reply

    I lost my husband traumatically six years ago and just lost my father almost on the same day six years later. I am having a really hard time with my dad’s death. It hurt when I realized he was the last man on this world that loved me unconditionally and now he is gone. We were really close end so now I have to be strong for my mom because I promised him I would. But I don’t have anybody to be strong for me. I’m thankful that he didn’t suffer or have a painful death. he passed peacefully in his sleep suddenly with no warning but I don’t know if I’m gonna be OK without him. I know it doesn’t get easy but different as the time goes on but there’s a part of me that feels very hollow now.

  42. SB  January 21, 2021 at 3:24 pm Reply

    During our 40 year marriage, my husband & I slowly began to come away from socializing as we grew more deeply dependent on just one another. I foolishy believed we’d always be together, not needing anyone else to complete our fulfilling joy as confidants & best friends. When he passed in his sleep,it was devastating. Being left without friends was difficult, and even almost every family member had abandoned me for one reason or another. I often feel like its open deer season & I’m being gutted open alive. Empty. Hopeless. Lonely. Terrified. I usually turn on the tv just to feel like I’m around people. He was my Everything and I leaned on him more than I ever realized. All Gone. Alone night & day. After one year, I’m still “stuck”. Thnx 4 letting me vent.

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    • Isabelle Siegel  January 22, 2021 at 10:30 am Reply

      SB, I’m truly so sorry for your loss. It’s absolutely okay to feel “stuck,” even after a year has passed. Your feelings of loneliness and of being gutted are completely valid. I recommend you check out this article: https://whatsyourgrief.com/what-does-grief-feel-like/ Perhaps you could try joining a grief support group? This would give you the opportunity to socialize with people who have, like you, experienced loss. You can read more about the pros and cons of grief support groups here: https://whatsyourgrief.com/grief-support-groups-positives-and-pitfalls/ Please know that, no matter what, you’re not alone. The What’s Your Grief community is here for you. All the best to you.

    • Kathryn  March 24, 2021 at 8:47 am Reply

      So sorry and I do really mean that I lost my Mum on Sunday she was my life I am alone no friends gave everything up to care for Mum full time Very lonely x

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    • Bonnie Keating  June 12, 2021 at 11:50 am Reply

      SB
      I’m stuck like you. I lost my soul mate Peggy after 35 yrs together. NO friends really just the strong bond between us. The loneliness is one endless drug re-hab. How are you doing now ? Maybe we could try to help each other.
      Bonnie

  43. Kim Sheppard  January 18, 2021 at 10:09 am Reply

    Hi my name is Kim I am beyond lost she my son died on 12/24/2020 and I don’t no how to move on bc I want to go back in time and stop this from happening I no it’s crazy right but that’ where I am stuck at,and the parent should die before the kid. But that did not happen.so no I am lost…

    • Max Weaver  January 19, 2021 at 6:16 pm Reply

      Kim my name is Max. I’m on here talking about losing my Mother last year. Although I lost my Mother and you lost your son we both lost someone very dear to us and trust me we are listening to you whenever you feel the need to post. Take good care.

    • John  April 12, 2022 at 1:03 pm Reply

      Dear Kim…lost my only son December 17,2020…22 years old
      Still under shock
      I lost my focal point in life
      Lost his mom years before
      One day at a time …
      I have only succeeded to do is eat and sleep…
      Created a fund to achieve his wish…celebrating his life…our life
      Please take a look…and don’t don’t don’t pay attention to funding…just to get to know what can be done.
      I’m now an employee to my son…trying my best
      (link redacted per site guidelines)
      Take it easy…it’s like an ocean…some days are rougher…but so far…never a calm day yet…
      Que sera sera …one sure thing…can’t get worse

  44. Emily  January 15, 2021 at 12:02 am Reply

    Hello my name is Emily and I lost my mom a little over 4 years ago. It’s strange but recently this year the grief and pain has hit me so much harder then from when she initially passed. I’ve felt isolated with this grief because everyone that mourned 4 years ago have moved on or don’t express that they still miss her. It’s just been really hard but this post and the comments from others that feel the same are I guess comforting. My dad has recently got a new girlfriend and I guess it just adds to the overwhelming feeling and the thought of my mom being forgotten.

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  45. Jonathan  January 1, 2021 at 6:21 pm Reply

    Hello, my name is Jonathan and i’m 20 years old. I lost my mother a little over 2 months ago and I’m now living alone. She was really sick for a long time so I helped her and bonded very strongly with her, but now that she’s gone I feel like I lost my way and purpose. Although I am lucky to have lots of caring people surrounding me, I just feel like not wanting to interact with anyone and close my self up in my house. And I continually have dreams where I vividly interact with her making it more painful to live through this every day and increase this sense of loneliness. I don’t know what to do and I fear for the future, are there any tips or helpful advice that I can receive? Plus I want to apologize if this comment has any weird structuring, I never type comments and I’m not so used to it.

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  46. Max  December 27, 2020 at 11:08 am Reply

    My name is Max. I posted on here earlier this month about losing my Mom. I am having great difficulty here at holiday time and I was wondering if any of you would want to talk to hopefully cheer us all up a little. Take care all.

    • IsabelleS  December 28, 2020 at 11:50 am Reply

      Hi Max. My name is Isabelle and I’m an intern for What’s Your Grief. First off, I’m so very sorry for your loss and for the pain you’re experiencing. I completely understand how difficult the holidays can be… In fact, we have a whole section of our website dedicated to this: https://whatsyourgrief.com/blog/?category=holidays-and-special-days I highly recommend you check out some of these articles, including: https://whatsyourgrief.com/treating-yourself-with-kindness-while-grieving-at-the-holidays/ and https://whatsyourgrief.com/https-whatsyourgrief-com-hang-in-there-grief-at-the-holidays/ All the best to you.

    • nick  January 3, 2021 at 10:21 am Reply

      hi max me to bud iam struggling because i was close to mom as we connected everday i have no one now i sold the house we lived in and im staying with my sister now ive been praying alot and have been weak coming down with anxietys i have to take one day ata time im 47 but i feel i need to start over all again its not easy

    • Kolleen  January 3, 2021 at 8:07 pm Reply

      Hi I’m so sorry for your loss! I completely understand the way you feel. I just lost mom one week before Christmas on her birthday. I am lost, lonely and afraid of being alone.

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    • STUART LAZAR  March 30, 2021 at 3:04 pm Reply

      i as well lost my mother 2020 April,,,,,,,I was very close and took care of her,,,,,, she died in this house,,,,,,and cant feel cheerful again

  47. Max  December 3, 2020 at 3:04 pm Reply

    My mother passed back in May. She was in a nursing home and I of course was locked out of her life for 3 months. I was blessed to be able to be with her when she passed but that has not lessened the grief much. I cared for her for 5-6 years before she went in and would go to the home twice a day. And now we just had Thanksgiving, my bday yesterday, Christmas coming up and her bday would be Jan 6th. Sometimes I just don’t know what will become of me. Thanks for listening.

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    • IsabelleS  December 4, 2020 at 1:54 pm Reply

      Max, I’m so sorry for your loss. I cannot begin to imagine how hard it must have been to go 3 months without seeing your mother… I’m glad you were able to be with her when she passed, but I completely understand that that doesn’t make things any easier. It’s so normal to struggle with holidays and special days after a loss. In fact, we have a whole section of our website dedicated to this: https://whatsyourgrief.com/blog/?category=holidays-and-special-days I hope some of these posts bring you some comfort and show you that you’re not alone. All the best to you.

    • Ravi  December 16, 2020 at 8:23 pm Reply

      I lost my Dad in July this year. He really suffered at the end. He was at home in a hospital bed for over a month. He couldn’t get up. It was so hard to watch him suffer like that. I don’t think the pain of losing him will ever go away. It’s like apart of me is missing. I wish I could turn back time and tell him how much I love him. No one seems to understand the pain. Some of my friends really haven’t been there for me so I have cut them off. Sometimes I feel lonely like no one understands how I feel, the pain, the emptiness and the heartache.

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      • IsabelleS  December 17, 2020 at 9:36 am

        Ravi, I’m so sorry for your loss and for the pain you are experiencing. I know how frustrating it can be when no one else seems to understand. I hope this website/community shows you that, no matter what, you’re not alone. The pain, the emptiness, and the heartache you’re enduring are normal and valid. My heart goes out to you. All the best.

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      • Ankita  January 1, 2021 at 3:05 pm

        Please stay strong for your father. Please pray for him happiness wherever he is. He is free from sufferings and pain. Wish him and pray for him everyday, every minute. He is always with you, showering blessings on you. Papa is with you Ravi. Close your eyes and put your hand on your heart and talk to him, feel him close to you.

      • Joyce Lam  January 10, 2021 at 12:50 pm

        Hi. My name is Joyce. I’m 38 years old. I lost my 48 year old fiance on October 24,2020. Drowning accident at the beach. We were together for 5 years and we have a 2 year son together. I also have 2 children from a previous marriage. He was a really good man. He loved me unconditionally and he was kind and generous and we had a beautiful life together. We have friends and family there for us. But it just doesn’t feel the same. I miss him more and more everyday.

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      • IsabelleS  January 11, 2021 at 11:18 am

        Joyce, I’m so sorry for your loss. My heart goes out to you.

    • Jackie  December 22, 2020 at 1:41 am Reply

      I’m so sorry. My mom passed away 2 years ago on Dec. 11; she was nearly 97 years old.
      I’m so sorry you have sustained this loss; and from the bottom of my heart I do know how you feel. Prayers, Jackie

  48. Grieving Dad  December 2, 2020 at 8:34 pm Reply

    Hello,

    I am a 45 yr old dad. Was a father to 2 boys, now 1. My eldest boy passed about a year ago. He was 18. Over the last year, I have been wanting to spend hours alone and away from people. I have a very loving wife and my second son is too. We are all grieving and struggling to move forward. I know that we have to be together and stay strong, however, I have this strong uncontrollable need to be away from people. Not necessarily my family, but just a few hours alone. This need has slowly crept into affecting my wife, whom I love tremendously. I spoke to her about this and why I want to be alone at times. Especially at important days like festivals, birthdays etc. Is this normal for grieving parents or am I being unreasonable. I don’t want to do something that would jeopardise my marriage or family, I just have this strong urge to stay alone at times. Anything you say will help, I’m so lost… Am I being selfish? I just don’t know what’s what anymore.. Thanks!

    • IsabelleS  December 3, 2020 at 12:08 pm Reply

      I’m so very sorry for your loss. Please know that it’s completely normal and valid to need alone time to process your grief… You are definitely not being selfish. It seems as though you and your wife have different grieving styles, which is completely okay: https://whatsyourgrief.com/whats-grief-style-aka-coping-kind-crazy/ I’m glad you’ve taken the first step of discussing this with your wife. Going forward, the hardest part is going to be meeting both of your grief needs: You need alone time, while she wants to feel you there and connected. Can you two create some sort of system or signal for when you need alone time? That way, she knows you are processing rather than pulling away. All the best to you.

    • Sandy Banks  December 28, 2020 at 9:46 pm Reply

      I don’t want to pry, your reasons for wanting to be alone. Are your reasons the reason your wife is upset? Perhaps you need to word it a little differently. I only say this because, if you’re all grieving sometimes it’s hard to understand things, you feel more vulnerable, misunderstood and most of the time you’re unable to articulate what you need because you don’t know. the grief takes so much away from your thought process. I lost my family in 2018. When the grief became too great I would run as fast as I could to the forest next to the river. That was my alone time. The rumbling of the river would muffle my screams and take them away for me as it went by. The forest would breathe for me until I could breathe on my own. The whole experience was soothing and grounding. I would stay there until I could face the world again. Sometimes I would be down there 2, 4, 4 times a day some days I never went home I just stayed there. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not selfish it’s what you need to do for your survival. You just need to find The right words to explain to your wife…why you need that time. tell her She has been wonderful and supportive that this is just let me know what you can do for yourself. she’s probably trying to keep everybody together and maybe she feels like she’s failing you because she can’t give you what you need just saying

  49. frank  November 25, 2020 at 7:19 pm Reply

    i am 74 years old 14 years ago my wife died from a brain aneurysm.she passed out at home while i was at work my son called.when i got home they already went to the hospital they operated that night and for the next three days she was in coma.she never woke up i was in shock we were married 25 years we were like one person i have never been able to get over her i still work to keep busy my son is married now i spend holidays alone he comes to visit me going to his wedding killed me.my sister was with me since then i have lost two brothers it’s like everybody is dying i can’t take losing anyone again i wish i wasn’t here for all this dying it’s like a punishment .

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    • IsabelleS  November 27, 2020 at 11:48 am Reply

      Frank, I’m so very sorry for the multiple losses you have experienced. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain you are enduring… You are so strong. I suggest you check out this article: https://whatsyourgrief.com/cumulative-grief-aka-grief-overload/ I understand that you feel like you are being punished. I’m sorry to hear you feel like this, but I want you to know that you have done absolutely nothing to deserve this. Sometimes life is truly random.

  50. R.K.  November 9, 2020 at 12:09 pm Reply

    While I have fortunately not lost anyone prematurely, I have lost out on girlfriend/partner love as I have never had a romantic relationship. And I am a 65 year old gal who has always tried, asked women out, but if the other person is not interested, it stops right there. It is called disambiguous grief, as in grieving for something I have never had, even though I have always wanted a romantic life. I managed to pretend it did not matter, and upon retirement, suddenly the old subconsciousness woke me up to the fact that of course it completely matters and I cannot stuff that back down again. So here I am, legitimately lonely even with a great life and loving my aloneness which now I find no longer serves me well. It is tough to even have a lovely friendly sexual liaison because in spite of my chronic singleness, I love sex and have no interest in being celibate. What is even worse is people dismiss this type of loneliness, make it trivial, imply if I was “really open” I would find someone right away, obviously I am not happy enough being single so why would anyone want to be with me, blah blah blah. I guess the “real” answer (not as if there is one) for any of us is to find some way to manage our grief, loneliness, despair and sadness of our legitimate, sacred and honourable desires. And to do that requires us to somehow be courageous. Loneliness is the toughest gig of all. Best wishes to all!

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    • Wayne Rowley  November 11, 2020 at 1:41 pm Reply

      Hi R.K.

      Know the feeling to well. My looks, body’s ok, and I have a good job, but my shyness made it that I got to 53 years with just 4 one night stands. 53 I went out with the girl I had known and had a crush on all my life. We got on like 2 teenagers in love, I spoiled her rotten, we had two years togther, then she just left me.

      Now she will not even talk to be, that was 5 years ago, I feel like its the end, I just feel like its all over and everything in life in pointless. Yes your right, loneliness when you have family and friends, is like a living hell.

      Wayne

  51. Carol  October 18, 2020 at 5:11 pm Reply

    lost my youngest daughter this June . She was disabled a long time so I’ve been her caregiver and we’ve never lived apart. I’ve had to give her emotional al support dog away,move out of our apt becasue i couldn’t afford it alone and move into a new place. Im always by myself now. Im on unemployment now becasue i was paid to be her HHA. I miss her so deeply. The pain if often unbearable.her birthday is coming on Oct 25 sh would turn 29. On top of all this her older sister is 31 and decided a couple weeks ago she doesn’t want to talk to me for reasons I just can’t get into here and now i just don’t have it in me….but this makes it hurt that much more because she is l i have now….she lives about an hour away.

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    • IsabelleS  October 19, 2020 at 11:11 am Reply

      Carol, I am so sorry for your loss and for this pain you are being made to endure. It sounds like things feel really difficult and overwhelming right now. I want you to know that, with time, things will get easier. My heart goes out to you. In regards to your daughter’s upcoming birthday, I recommend you check out this post: https://whatsyourgrief.com/deceased-loved-ones-birthday/ I hope this community brings you some comfort. You are not alone. All the best to you.

  52. Malika  October 10, 2020 at 10:15 pm Reply

    I feel so lonely after the passing of my mom and only brother 2 years apart it’s like I am never fully happy. My mom passed in 2012 and my brother in 2014 and I feel so empty inside like I have been abandoned this is a terrible feeling that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

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    • IsabelleS  October 11, 2020 at 2:20 pm Reply

      Malika, I am so very sorry for the losses you experienced and for the pain you are being made to endure. Just know that there are people out there–including this community–who are there for you. I hear that you feel empty inside at times… This is completely normal and acceptable. I recommend that you check out this blog post: https://whatsyourgrief.com/feeling-nothing-during-grief/ All the best to you!

    • Wayne  October 11, 2020 at 2:49 pm Reply

      Yes your right, it is a terrible thing we feel. Its like its all over, its the end. So sorry, and for everyone here.

      Wayne

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  53. Maria Saba  September 28, 2020 at 10:01 pm Reply

    I lost my mom almost 2 weeks ago. Whenever i hear the words may she rest in peace or im there for you, or any similar terms i feel anger boiling inside and a grief that leaves a hole within my soul. No words can ever heal or mend such pain. For 2 weeks I’ve been searching all sorts of comfort that could help me digest such loss and in vain. the ache is so deep and painful that it tears part of you, and i keep asking myself would any human being ever heal of such loss.

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    • IsabelleS  September 29, 2020 at 11:21 am Reply

      Hi Maria, thank you for taking the time to comment. I am so sorry for your loss. I know it may not feel like it, but the anger you are experiencing is completely normal and okay. You may want to communicate to the people around you what they can say and do–if anything–that would be helpful. If you feel like you need someone to talk to, you may want to seek out the support of a therapist trained in grief, which you can find here: https://grief.com/grief-counselor-directory/. All the best to you.

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    • Wayne  October 11, 2020 at 2:47 pm Reply

      Your right, when people, leave or die, its like a huge part you you have been ripped out from you, or from your heart, and your missing that person so much, you want to scream and cry out, “I MISS YOU SO MUCH”. {got myself crying now, as I will not be able to handle it when my mother or father goes} As that person “IS” part you you, she {my girlfriend who was as close as blood left me 5 years ago, and today I feel the pain/hurt just as much} in our case are part of who we are. There’s a great part to a Thunder song, that says it all; Cold water eyes, blues as carton skys.

      “SO” sorry, i feel your pain from here.

      Wayne

  54. marinkiemadiope@gmail.com  September 12, 2020 at 12:56 am Reply

    I lost my husband seven years back. I had a very supportive family and my one and only son. It is not easy to be alone , i decided to focus on my career and work. however after work i feel i really need someone to talk to. during holidays and Christmas days i really missed that intimacy and family holidays. My son was always there to travel with with me and we supported one another just feel the gap during holidays. Right now he is old and he has decided to buy his own house so we are leaving separately. I feel so lonely and so is he. loosing a partner is painful as all friend decided not to be visit. the married friends felt unsafe around me i guess as i have really progressed in my career life. I have just learnt to be alone and together with my son we talk about the good old days that we had with his dad and that really helped . now that he is no longer leaving with me i really feel the loneliness and grieve . I have noted that grieve simply does dot go away it does not matter how many years you have lost your partner. during the lock down it became worse as i was just alone and started thinking about my late husband . I am not even sure if it is the right thing to get a partner or what as i feel i have survived for 7 years without any partner . i really don’t trust any man as i want the same man who will treat and care for me like my late husband. ye he had his own faults he was not a perfect husband however i miss him a lot . i just thank God for a very loving son and sisters , nephews and nieces who have been there for me and my son to see us through this road lonely road which is never ending.

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  55. Wayne  August 27, 2020 at 9:01 am Reply

    I feel the only was to get over this is to kill myself, but I am not going to do that, even frightened of dying.

    Lots of friends and family, but painfully shy up until 30, with just a few one night stands. That at 53 I went out with a girl I have always had a crush on and known from the age of 13. We got on like teenagers in love, it was like I had always gone out with girls, we were going to get married I was “SO” happy at last I could not sleep. After 2 years she just ended it, no row, we talked a bit on text, but now its been 5 years,and I feel everything a waste of time, i am so unhappy all the time, and one hi from her would change that.

    The doctors said after over 10 times there I have taken it as a bad bereavement, I just dont know what to do. Thank God there are others that feel they have entered a living nightmare, is was one before Frances, but now it seems even worst. I feel so fed up and frightened all the time, likes its the end of the World, actually it is for me, i miss her so much every seconds, there is no escape from hell only death, but thats not me.

    Wayne

  56. Zoe  August 6, 2020 at 8:01 pm Reply

    Hello everyone, I’m crying as I’m reading your stories.
    Lost my best friend and love of my life three years ago. I’m still going through all the stages of grieving. I was 25 years old. As I am 28, I’m wondering how fast I met him, how fast everything happened and how fast I lost him. It all goes like a knife in my heart as I feel like I was left with my full life ahead of me at 25 and till this day I have no idea what to do with it. It feels like such a big slow life. I’m so lost and I’m wondering where he went. I’m searching for him, in places and deep inside of me. I’m scared as time passes by, as life passes by. I am overall scared. Then I am terrified that one day I will accidentally forget him. Then I feel like by remembering him, this is the only thing I can do to love him. It’s the only thing I can offer. I don’t know if I am making any sense. I’m only wondering, why do we have to be happy for such a small period of life, find happiness and then lose it.

    If only I could turn back time and if only I knew I had a small period of time available with him. As I have the problem of being such a shy person too, I would tell him he was best friend, the best person I had ever met.

    Positive energy and compassion to everyone feeling alone, sad and in pain <3

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  57. Greg Weber  April 2, 2020 at 4:46 pm Reply

    I’ve been in grief for seven years now due to the loss of a loved one. It has changed me forever. Although the pain is not as acute as it once was, it’s always there. I’ve accepted I will probably never get over it completely.

    But, life goes on. All my energy now is focused on how to find new things to live for, new victories, new meanings, new relationships.

    But that hole where they used to be is still empty. And I’ll probably always miss, not only them, but the person I used to be. That’s not me anymore.

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  58. Linda Davis  April 1, 2020 at 1:29 pm Reply

    Loneliness is a way of life, but, not a good way! I have had a lot of time to sit and reflect how long , feeling lonely, has been with me. Now, I no longer know when it wasn’t there! I get tired trying to pinpoint the, when, because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter any longer. I’ve been asked by several doctors, at different times, do I have suicidal thoughts? The answer would definitely be , yes, but, did I ever try to commit suicide? Only half-heartedly! Which just told me, I didn’t really have the guts, to do something, like end my life, as miserable as it might be at the time. I was lonely and depressed, from within, about life and my expectations, of what it should be like. Nothing was like I thought it would be, so feeling alone, crept in one day and stayed! With all the ups and downs, but, there it was! I began daydreaming, to find fulfilling feelings! That is short-lived, like having a wonderful dream, that you don’t want to wake up from. I did many things to try to feel fulfilled, a part of things! None were the answer! As a matter of fact, they only made things worse! I was stubborn at learning this, but, I also didn’t know how to make any of this better. When, I lost my son to a car accident, I was thrown into a pit of despair, that I didn’t know existed. At first I slept, rather than feel. This was in April 2001. That state of shock stayed with me, as months began to pass. I found myself driving to the area where his life ended, and I tried to repeat how I thought that night happened. Driving at a high speed, until I got to the curve in the road, but, I couldn’t. Grief took me into a world of lonely, that I couldn’t escape from. Time was the only thing that was going to help the pain from not burning so badly, but, I now had a new kind of loneliness to live with. I felt detached from a loving family, and people were strangers, that I knew! My solace came with my animals. I wrote in journals before, but, now it was my main communication with my son. I created a small world, where I spoke to my son through the words on paper, and to the wonderful, ever listening ears of my dog. This was Linda’s world now! Lonely didn’t leave, it was just part of the furniture. On the worse days, I thought,if I look for the end, I must take my pet(s) with me! But, again, I couldn’t do that! I knew it was what they call, stinkin thinkin, in AA’s. Since losing my son, I have since lost my second husband, several siblings, and so many of those beloved pets, that so willingly listened to my cry’s and somber thoughts, but, the crusher came three years ago, when my eldest daughter passed away from cancer! Loneliness, has to equal lost! I am a stranger in my own skin. I can’t seem to relate to those near and dear to me. I love them, I worry about them, but, I feel like I’m some kind of stranger in my own body. I can’t understand, anymore, how these people so close to me, feel. So, lonely, has hit a new plateau. The pain of my daughter dying is eating away at me, and it feels like I’m the only one it’s affecting. I know this can’t be true, she was so loved by her girls and by all of us, but, it doesn’t change this feeling, that I am mourning her, all by myself. Even before this, social distancing, was necessary, I was doing it, to some degree. It was hard being around people, because I couldn’t understand them anymore or relate in the normal way. I cannot imagine what it is to not feel loneliness! When I write, I go to the place that the words take me, but, it’s not the real world anymore! Loneliness is not belonging, anywhere!

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    • Jan Roney  April 14, 2020 at 6:34 am Reply

      Dear Linda,
      I have found this page (as I sit here crying) and your incredibly articulate letter which has stopped the tears and totally moved me. So much of what you have said I relate to and I am heartbroken for what you are and have been going through.
      My pets have been my saviours after a life of grief and who at different times stopped me from seriously considering suicide, like that wonderful life story told by Joan Rivers about her little dog keeping her alive.
      One of my dogs just died and despite trying to prepare myself by buying a puppy to lessen the grief when she did die, it didn’t work. However I did have nearly 2 years with both of them so despite my grief, this little one will help with motivation and still give me someone to love.
      I have no comforting words to make your loneliness and grief disappear as I feel very similar so please just let me send you my very best wishes for finding peace and acceptance.

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    • d  August 7, 2020 at 10:53 am Reply

      You gave words to my pain. I feel that my sons death (cancer) shattered us, our family. I am so emotional: angry/offended, I don’t want to be with myself! Not recognizing myself! That really put into words my feelings! I would run from me if I could . God is with me and worship allows me to feel the only closeness to my son that I feel right now. His wife and family are grieving and in their own pain. It is so hard. We are living through it, sometimes I don’t know how. It feels like grief will kill me and sometimes, I wish it would.

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      • Matthew Ressler  September 2, 2020 at 3:14 am

        Dear d,

        I realize this is of very little conciliation to you, but I really am sorry for your loss. I sense such a deep pain in your writing. I’ve felt the throes of grief and despair, but I don’t know that there could be anything worse than losing a child. You obviously loved him deeply, I pray that Jesus gives you solace, and the strength to make it through this challenging time in your life.

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    • Max  December 27, 2020 at 4:27 pm Reply

      Linda I hope you are doing the best that can be expected during this time of year. Everyone here is thinking about you and hoping you are doing ok.

  59. merle  March 27, 2020 at 6:11 am Reply

    I’ve been looking for “how to get back my boyfriend after we broke up”, in case anyone is wondering this is the psychic that helped me. (relationship_world@yahoo. com ) . Super helpful

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  60. Brenda  January 21, 2020 at 8:37 am Reply

    I’ve been Crying all night and was trying to find out if my grief is normal. I’m a72 year old woman and I lost my first child 48 years ago on Jan. 18 th 1972. He was 2 years and 9 months old. He had open Heart surgery and never woke up. I was 6 months pregnant with my second son when my first one passed. I thought I couldn’t go on without him, The grief was alful . I raised my second and third sons but nothing can ever take my first little Boys place. I loved them all but my heart aches for him even after all these years I still go all to pieces missing him. When my others were growing up they helped keep my mind occupied staying busy with them and then my Grandkids whom I love just like my own helped me get through til they now are grown and I think about My little Boy all the time and it hurts so bad even after 48 years. I’ll nnever get over loosing him. I just wondered if it’s normal to still be grieving so much. I know I wouldn’t trade one moment I spent with I’m for anything in the world. I miss him so much and think about all the things we missed with him. I feel all of yalls pain. I’ve also lost my Dad and Mother. He was 81 and she was 94. I’m so glad I had them as long as I did, I miss them terribly . I lost one Brother 2 years ago, he was in his 70’s. I had 5 Brothers and one sister and I was the 7th child.. my eyes stay so swollen from crying, but. Can’t seem to help it.. I’m ready to leave this world and all the pain so I can be with my little Boy and my parents again and my Brother. Loosing a loved on does change us because part of us go with them, but They are always in our Hearts. I’m so sorry for all of your loses .prayers go out to you all.

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    • Laurie Frank  January 22, 2020 at 8:04 am Reply

      Brenda, I am in a Grief support group called Grief Share, it’s typically held at a church as it’s a faith based program. This program has bn instrumental in helping me to understand how to cope the loss of my husband, but I’ve also learned abt others grief as well and I believe the intense grief u r feeling has to do w the fact u very quickly hd another child and didn’t give urself time fr grief fr the loss of ur little boy. I’ve learned Thru this program that trying to avoid the intense feelings only makes it worse. I’ve only had relief when I’ve totally allowed myself to feel the intense pain by crying, screaming, until I’m spent. This program has a workbook that accompanies the videos and answers any and all questions abt the grief process thru 13 wks of watching and listening to those who hv what they call: gone fr mourning to joy.. I wd highly recommend u enroll in a similar program to be in a place where u can share ur experience w others who hv also been there, and completely understand with no judgment of any kind.

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  61. Ian  January 20, 2020 at 4:23 pm Reply

    There is a lot of truth to this for me. I’m 26 years old and I lost my mom when I was 21 to alcoholism. What has made things worse is that I found her. For years I have tried to live my life without her and it has been difficult. One thing I can relate to is the idea of pushing people away. I find it difficult to build relationships with people, because most of the people who have come into my life after my mom died have been pushed away by me in one way or another. I feel guarded and I continue to tell myself that I am on my own and I must look out for myself to survive. I harbour a lot of anger which doesn’t help, and I tend to perpetuate my feelings of loneliness in this way. One thing that does excite me is the idea of meeting new people and creating new chapters of my life, filled with novelty and adventure. Regardless of my feelings of sadness and grief, I continue to strive towards bigger and better things. This is ultimately what your loved one wants you to do. They want you to move on and be happy. For me, happiness will come from learning to love and embrace other people.

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  62. Vivian  January 18, 2020 at 2:14 pm Reply

    My best friend and longtime music partner passed away after Christmas. I absolutely don’t know how to navigate the depths of this grief. Everything everywhere is a trigger of sadness. Tears flow and just don’t stop. The only thing that (sort of) helps is to shift the focus away from my loss and remind myself that he was more than ready to exit this earthly realm because his health problems were so awful and only getting worse.

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  63. Mo  January 10, 2020 at 10:57 pm Reply

    I’m only 15 years old. I lost my dad last April. He was the one person who could always make me smile and laugh. My brother is basically nonexistent and my mom, she sometimes likes me, and other times makes me feel so worthless and so alone I don’t know why I’m alive. The only thing keeping me going and giving my life purpose right now is riding my horse. I named him after my dad. He makes me smile and laugh just like my dad did. He actually is goofy and has a light up the room kind of personality just like my daddy did. Without him I don’t know if I’d be here. I don’t really have any friends because I’m ugly and uncool. I just feel lonely on my good days, but on my bad days when my mom is mean to me, I feel worthless, isolated, and so damn stupid I feel like everyone and everything is telling me to just end it. I thank god everyday for the creation of horses, because I tell you what, without mine, and without being able to go to the barn and forget everything, I swear I’d be in the ground right now. I miss my daddy everyday and without him to cheer me up, I do everything I can to avoid any sadness because so far no one can cheer me up like he could.

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    • Robby  January 13, 2020 at 9:46 pm Reply

      I’m sorry for your loss Mo. I lost my dad in July and my Mum last week. It’s definitely enormously sad. I felt compelled to reply to your message because of two things:

      First, I agree, horses are amazing – there is something really special about their nature.

      Secondly – I can tell you now, without having met you, that you are not ugly and the popularity is something that changes. Based on how articulate your message was, and your affinity with your horse – you are clearly a beautiful person

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    • No  January 24, 2020 at 3:33 pm Reply

      I’m sorry for your loss. I’m grieving too and it freaking hard..it sucks the way it feels and we don’t know what to do with these feelings. Can u go to counselling in school? Or church? U would do u good to talk to someone. Time does help altho u will always miss your dad…u learn to cope with it. There is happiness in the future. Listen in my belief u can’t be with your loved one if u kill yourself…so please don’t think about that. Have u just came out and told your mom how u feel? Try to think..what would dad do? How would dad feel about this. He still with you. Talk to him. I bet u know what he would say? I pray u find comfort…keep fighting. ?

      • I  September 11, 2020 at 2:41 pm

        Dear Mo, I lost my dearest son He was 27 on the 22 May 2020 he was my everything now I don’t know what to do, I feel dead I can’t even think It’s to much

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    • Jacqui  April 8, 2020 at 3:03 am Reply

      Dear Mo, I also lost my wonderful dad just three days ago. But it saddens me to think that you don’t have a mom who is loving you like she should. I have two teen daughters and they are my world. If you ever need a mom to talk to, and tell you how wonderful you are, you can always email me. Hugs to you!

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  64. Neil Oakley  December 27, 2019 at 3:26 pm Reply

    I am 46 and I lost my wife to cancer around six weeks ago, She was only 42. We had been married 18 years and have three children 8, 10 and 14. It is fair to say that without them I feel that I would have ended it all. I feel no purpose to my life other than ensuring my children are happy. My life feels empty thou, simple things like waiting for a text from my wife, which will not come, someone to kiss goodnight, a bed which now feels far to big. I feel so lonely without her, even with three children filling my life when I’m not at work.
    A few days before my wife’s death, she told me to go and find the next Mrs O and I feel I need to find someone to help with me loneliness, but I don’t feel like I want to find someone to love, more like companionship (which must seem strange for a 46 year old man to say)
    My question to you all is, should I even look for someone to fill this void in my life without me thinking it will turn into love and how long should I be waiting ?

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    • Orla  January 6, 2020 at 4:13 pm Reply

      I lost my 14year old son and only child October 2019. I’m struggling most days. He got me. We were inseparable. A comedy duo. My life will never be the same. Not one person can fill that void left. Each day is an act, get out of bed & pretend to function & hope that one day I won’t have to pretend. I loved him more than life & find it difficult waiting for my time to be up.

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      • John  April 12, 2022 at 1:17 pm

        Orla
        Me too
        Lost my only son of 22…diagnosed with cancer one month after graduation
        Alone and waiting to go …to him
        We did everything together…eat…travel…everything
        Not a single day without tears…it’s been since December 2020…from living in heaven to a life in hell…
        Just a tiny tip…one day at a time

    • Penelope  January 6, 2020 at 4:18 pm Reply

      I am sorry about your loss.
      I lost my husband six and a half years ago. It has not gotten easier. I wish I had a companion… so that i could stop thinking about him. I don’t believe you should wait. If you meet someone I believe it is best to seek a friendship and see where it goes.
      God bless.

    • Melissa George  January 9, 2020 at 1:10 pm Reply

      I lost my husband 2 months ago. He was 46 yrs old and it was sudden death caused by massive heart attack. I know how you feel and I am so sorry because it is the worst pain and most lonely feeling in the world. I am now a 45 year old widow and have also thought about joining him. My kids are young adults so I don’t have the fear of raising them alone on top of the horrible grief, sorrow and loneliness. I think you should pray God sends you the right person to get to know for you and your family. I am so sorry for your lose.

    • Leslie Toplin  February 2, 2020 at 10:16 pm Reply

      I lost my husband to heart related issues Jan 3rd…he was 54 and I’m 50…the loneliness is brutal
      I can relate to what ur saying about the texts and the kiss good night…it was the little things that made life worth living instead of empty…busy tasks
      I have 2 dogs and no kids

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    • Sian  March 8, 2020 at 7:14 am Reply

      I feel you! Im 41 and lost my husband after 17yrs, leaving me with 3 children wondering whats the point!

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  65. Joseph  December 26, 2019 at 8:44 am Reply

    I feel for all of you . Although I married & it caved 6 years later due to being 18 & thinking we knew it all , life was good . My parents , aunts , uncles , siblings etc were all healthy & we celebrated holidays & spoke a lot to one another on the phone . Suddenly one got sick after another . So it seemed . First our aunt passed , it was long and painful to watch . We miss her . Then our father while drunk, fell , days later he got an anurism that gave him a stroke . He died 5 days later at age 58 . My brother moved in with me who also had a drinking issue & I tried for 6 years to help him by taking him to rehab after rehab . Only helps if the person wants it I’ve learned . One morning we were talking like usual & later that day he died from sorosis of the liver at age 32 . I had to tell my mom in person because I wanted to be there in front of her to hold her when I had to tell her her 1st born child has died . She pushed me away , screaming no ! No !! I didn’t take it personally because no one should lose a child . No one . It’s the wrong order ! I spent as much time with mom as I could to occupy her mind from greiving my brother so much . Heartbreaking ! Months had gone by , mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer . Terminal ! When those words cancer & terminal cake out of docs mouth , it felt as if someone had taken the rug out from under us & yanked it away ! because it was ! They gave her 2 months to live , she fought for me so I wouldn’t be alone after losing everyone else that mattered in my life . She lasted 14 months & passed away in my arms in the hospital . I went out in the hallway , fell to my knees & sobbed until there were no more tears . None .
    This was the first Christmas I have ever spent alone in my 30 years of life on this earth . Sure , ppl invited me & I appreciate it , to have the holiday with their families, but I wanted my family not theirs . It’s all so new and i was once a person who did lots of things that interested me , now nothing interests me . I feel isolated & alone . I must accept the fact the they are all gone , but how does one do that ?!
    The few friends I have try to help , but they still have everyone alive & im happy for them . They don’t understand that a night out will not cure me of this living nightmare .
    Everything seems to be an effort . I’m tired all of the time & cry randomly . I wouldn’t wish this feeling of emptiness on anyone ! I have only 1 living relative left , a sister , that lives in Alaska . She was always detached , so she doesn’t feel the losses like I do . She has a husband & 3 children to occupy her time & everyone in my little section of the world is gone . She always says ‘ move here ‘ ! I know she means well , but I am not , cannot move to those extreme temps & the thought of moving 30 years of stuff right after losing everyone makes me tired thinking about it !
    I pray a lot & aak god to hold my right hand & guide me as I try to get through each new dreadful day . There are no answers here of how to move on & be happy again because no human knows how to do that . All any of us who understand one another on this site can do is push as best we can , and pray that god gives us some joy and peace back . The kind of joy and peace that only God can provide . By the way , I barely answer my phone via text or calls anymore because I have zero interest in doing so . I often think , why do some glide thru this life with few loses , and some get hammered left & right , to the point that it changes who you once were to this daily struggle of the unknown. God bless you all & hugs to you all .

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    • Lena  January 8, 2020 at 8:08 pm Reply

      Joseph,

      I lost my mother recently. I left my life somewhere else to come and take care of her long term. I was with her every single day. She became everything in my life. She’s gone and I’m empty inside. Can’t find meaning in life. I’m still in some kind of nightmare that I can’t wake up from. Nothing feels good. Only intense pain.

      Like you, I don’t have people I can rely on to understand the pain and loneliness. They have other people.

      What if you went to your sister’s to visit? I know she doesn’t feel the loss as you do, but the change of scene might do you good.

      I know you’re tired in every way, I am too. People can’t understand until it’s happening to them.

  66. Louise Ogden  December 14, 2019 at 7:35 pm Reply

    I’m 40 and lost my 44 year old husband in August to kidney cancer. We met ten years ago at a sci-fi club while I was recovering from a mental breakdown in my twenties, got together two years later after making friends, and then married three years ago. We were best friends as well as lovers, and had a very close bond. He had an operation in 2015 to remove a cancerous kidney, then he had two cancer-free years — we got married because I proposed the day he got the date for the operation and wanted to show that I was committed to him. He was diagnosed again in late 2017 with metastases from the cancer and although we found him a treatment that worked for a while, the cancer was too aggressive and we just couldn’t keep up. We got him into a hospice after a week in hospital and he let go when he was finally comfortable. I kissed him goodbye, went home to get some sleep because I was knackered and he basically closed his eyes and left us. I feel he is in a better place, free of suffering, and I’ve dreamt that he’s happy and healthy, and feel like he’s telling me that he has come to terms with his own deatb. I always told him not to stay around just for my sake, and so I feel he was able to choose when to go with dignity rather than clinging to life no longer worth living.

    I miss him so much. He gave me my life back and he was the only person I’ve ever wanted to share my life with. He helped me get over my depression and gave me back my confidence. My mum and dad helped him since his parents were elderly and he lost his dad to cancer six months before we got married, and my mum is broken as well as she treated him like the son she’s never had. I don’t want to go backwards.

    It is empty and hollow. I sleep with a pile of clothes next to me so that when I roll over in the night there’s something there. I have had back pain since he died that won’t go away, particularly when I try to get up out of bed. I am having his lovely family to dinner on Christmas Day and looking forward to hosting them like I have done before, while he was still with us. I just don’t want to lose his presence in my life and despite what he gave me, and despite having other interests, it seems like I’ve been sentenced to a long time in prison.

    I am honoured to have been allowed to look after him but everything seems about a hundred times more difficult without him. I’m tired and lonely at home and the place is a mess — I like having my own space, but I feel like I’ve lost the person who mattered most to me and was keeping me from going mad again.

    I miss him so much.

    Rest in peace, Jeremy love.

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  67. J Dale  December 12, 2019 at 10:40 am Reply

    I am so completely alone now, my partner of 47 years died suddenly and unexpectedly 19 months ago this was only 3 months after my mother died. Since then I have lost 2 close friends who I’d known for 30 and 20 years.
    We didn’t have children.
    My only family are 130 miles away and expect me to be back to my “normal self ” by now. They don’t want to talk about my mother or partner. All they come up with are quick fix solutions – ” go back to work” “move home” ” join a club”
    None of them have any idea how it’s totally destroyed me, or how desperate I feel .
    I struggle through every day , lie awake every night and then get up and do it all over again. I just want somebody or something to put an end to this hideous, meaningless existence I’ve been left with.

    • Pamela Tabor  December 12, 2019 at 2:03 pm Reply

      One thing that my therapist told me when I said that happiness is not there if I can not share it with the person that I lost. She said I have to value myself and understand that having a moment of happiness of contentment can be achieved. Your soul mate or family member would want that.

  68. Daniel Evans  December 7, 2019 at 7:09 am Reply

    Hello, I recently lost my mum 3 days ago and had to put our dog to sleep yesterday due to a long-term illness. My mum went into hospital because of gall stone and had to have surgery – it was a success but took a turn for the worst as she had pneumonia on the lungs and the smoking throughout her life, she just couldn’t fight the battle. I regret not talking to her more during the finals hours as we got a call from the hospital later that night and said that she hasn’t got long left. Hours before during visitation, I was there for around 20 minutes so she can rest, I held her hand and she smiled at me. My last words were along the lines of “I’ll see you soon, just going to get Caroline” (She my sister). Just wished I said I love you or something.

    Now the following day my mum’s dog, our dog Benji. I sat with him late that night and noticed is breathing seems more of a struggle and couldn’t get comfortable. My sister took him to the vets that morning only for them to say that fluid build-up on the lungs have started. Basically the final stages of his illness. We made a quick decision to rather than pay for constant medication and trying to pro-long his life to just let him go peacefully before it got worse.

    These past few days I’ve laughed, cried, whimpered, felt drained, and lost. I just wanna vent out what’s on my mind, we as a family are close knitted. I’m 28 yrs old and still lived with my mum and Benji. It just feels odd that I don’t hear his bark nor my mum shouting at the Benji as he tries to get her attention every now and then. I couldn’t say goodbye to Benji too. It was just too much, he was 9 yrs old which is good age in a dog for his breed. I choked up going to the vets to pick up his hair locket as I’ve paid for his cremation & will get a memorial box. Also my mum’s funeral is scheduled for 23rd December 2019. We as a family decided to have it before Christmas. I’m her youngest son of 6 children. Our dad passed away 3 years ago. I can only keep positive that mum, dad, and Benji are all up there waiting. My heart is due broken. Thanks for reading too.

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    • Glen  December 7, 2019 at 10:13 pm Reply

      My wife and I lost mom in February, I was laid off in March, our kitty of 13 years had a stroke and seizure during her exam and had to be put to sleep in May and my wife was informed that afternoon that her store home outfitters was closing down.

      We lost so much and now her dad has been in and out of the hospital with heart issues.

      We are so lost. This figment of God is no comfort, and people who believe this myth can stop saying have faith, God will help. I believe that our energies are shared and connected, since both matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.

      Yet even with this fact, how do we begin healing? Life feels broken.

      • may  December 13, 2019 at 5:49 pm

        I am crying as i am reading your story. I lost my mom unexpectedly in May this year. I was only able to visit her once a year because of long distance (she lives in Asia). These past several years, my communications with her were through text messages and phone calls. I felt lonely and felt loss. She used to push me to be better. I always asked for her advice whenever I get stuck. She was the only person who knew me very well. I feel like a piece of me was taken away. Then 2 days ago, Dec11, I lost my job not on my own fault. I was being targeted by my new boss who secretly did not like me. I really got caught-off guard. No wonder, colleagues often did not keep me in the loop, but when a problem got bigger, i was asked to resolve. He told me by phone and did not want me to come back to office. I was not able to come take my personal belongings. I have never heard this in my entire life. Losing mom then losing job during the holidays is bad enough, adding insult to the injury, I might lose my personal belongings, too. All these years, my job was always my priority. Looking back, I had regrets…I could have spent more time with my mom…the job does not get me anywhere. I m turning 50 next year. I can’t help but crying since yesterday.

  69. Jess Joseph  November 29, 2019 at 1:38 am Reply

    Thanks for sharing this informative blog about grief. Recently I purchased an URN from this UK manufacturing company called URNS UK- they have a wide variety of creative and expressive urns with eco-friendly options as well. Also another interesting aspect is their ‘memorial jewelry’ section! Check out this interesting brand to cherish the memories of your loved ones for ever.

  70. Tarryn Hendricks  October 29, 2019 at 12:37 pm Reply

    My daughter was 6 years old when she passed away the beginning of this year. She had a heart condition, after her dad and I broke up 3 years ago. I stayed single as she needed me so much. It was only her and me, I lived and breathed for her. She was like my mini best friend, we were a family. I feel like I lost everything in this world. I come home everyday to an empty house. No smiles, no laughs…just me. I never hear the word mommy anymore, my life changed so much without a choice. I loved being her mom, I love her so so much. At my age ( I’m 29) none of friends can even comprehend what I’m going through. It feels as if I’m in this never ending dark tunnel all alone having to force myself to live this life I hate so badly.

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    • mike demartini  November 27, 2019 at 11:51 pm Reply

      hi all yes this life can get really really bad in a hurry im 51 have lost all loved family members in last 7 years most in 3 years and except for my cat im alone i do have 2 good friends but friends are friends and can only compensate so much ive also lost many other friends but not to death but maybe age drifting apart moving away ect. i dont know im really just existing for 7 years now i know things will never be the same for me not by a long shot but hope things get better soon also please dont wait for god to help you as a former 40 year christian i can tell you hes not there never was god dident make man man made god to explain the unexplainable so i dont say to myself oh dont worry god has a plan for me when theres a problem only action by you will solve it if it can be solved

    • Joanne Nascimento  December 4, 2019 at 6:06 pm Reply

      I feel the same way.I just lost my beloved Mother.Heart condition also.I feel ur pain and grief. I am alone as she is the second to last to go of my little family,me being the obvious last now. I was her 24/7 sole caregiver and would have died for her.

    • carla cobb  December 10, 2019 at 5:37 pm Reply

      Hi Im with you sister I feel so bad for your loss.. I have been feeling exactly the same way dince March the 7th when I lost my dear husband of fifteen years.. today suck extra as yesterday I found out my beloved dog needs surgery for a yorn ACI in her knee. Because of all I have been through with my husband and his ailments before his death the thought of losing my dog if things don’t work out overwhelm me.. I cried when I read your feelings.. I feel your loss is horrible because she was your Daughter and that void deep inside our inner emotionis like a bad sickness that just keeps coming up at given times during the day… when my husband died I felt like I wanted to die and jump in the creamation machine and get burnt up with him… life was great because my husband gave me a reason to live… much like I Imagine your daughter did.. I am so very sorry that you lost your girl. Sincerely, Carla Cobb….?

    • Carla Cobb  December 10, 2019 at 5:56 pm Reply

      I am sorry for the typing mistakes in my text to you Tarryn.. my dog has a torn ACL in her knee. take the best care of yourself as much as you can given your cicumstance…

  71. Josh  October 28, 2019 at 10:10 am Reply

    Hi, um my name is josh and Im 15. I lost my dad last year on October the third just a month before my birthday. I did everything I could to save him. He had cancer and I did a stem cell transplant for him but he died a month later. I feel like it’s my fault and I’ve just been so anti-social and happy and ive been so sad and sensitive.

    • Amy Hiestand  October 28, 2019 at 6:22 pm Reply

      Josh, you have been through more at your young age than most adults could handle. I can only imagine how proud your dad was of you. I think it’s very common for those of us who have lost somebody to feel like there was something else we could have or should have done. But what I’m learning is there is nothing we can do to prevent things sometimes and that so much is just out of our hands. Life can be so unfair and that is so hard to accept. Time will help but be sure the adults in your life know how you are feeling. I’m very sorry for your loss.

    • Schelby  December 15, 2019 at 6:03 pm Reply

      Josh, what a terrible burden for you. Lots of people in grief (myself included) say many things about God. I promise you that your Dad knew you loved him and I’m certain he saw you as a hero. I certainly do. You have such a burden but I know without a doubt God of the Bible is real. He meets us in our pain, yes he does. God never says we will not have pain and loneliness but if we truly ask him he will help. I will be praying for you and please contact me anytime. I do work slot but would definitely get back with you.

    • Sean  January 2, 2020 at 8:24 pm Reply

      Hi Josh, I am so very sorry for your loss. When I was a few years older than you are now I lost my brother to cancer. We were very close. For years and years after I blamed myself because wasn’t there at the end when he died. I wouldn’t talk to anyone in my family about it as it was too painful and so I started using anything that would ease my pain . Drink, drugs and women. My life fell to peices as I was so sad and all those things I did to try and forget made things alot worse. I hated myself for many years and it ruined everything I tried to do in my life. There was no one to tell me that I needed the help of a trained grief councillor but I know now that was what I really needed. Please dont make the choices I did and never forget that your Dad wouldn’t want you to feel guilty. you really tried everything to help him.

  72. Carl Ingram  October 23, 2019 at 3:51 pm Reply

    I lost my mom in May of 2019, she had a lung transplant in 2005 and i have been her caregiver for about 5 years.
    I put everything i had into keeping her alive for 14 years, that was my purpose in life at that time because i loved her very much and i was signal so i could make that choice, and i could talk to her about anything and i also lived with her 6 days out of the week. My brother and sister are married and have kids, and now that she has past away i am very lonely and i have this giant hole that i can not fill, i don’t know what to do with myself or how to move forward in my life?
    It is like i stop living for myself when my mom was alive and now i have to find a way to live for myself.
    It has been really hard on me because i do not have a way forward because my mom was my world.

    • Ruth  October 28, 2019 at 4:11 am Reply

      I lost my son in 2015 and have been so depressed and withdrawn since. It’s only gotten harder as time has gone on

    • Tarryn Hendricks  November 13, 2019 at 4:15 pm Reply

      Hey Carl, I know that exact feeling….when you don’t have a purpose or motivation to even live life. The reality is that there’s nothing waiting on the other side. There’s no motivation each time you have to lift yourself up from a very dark place of pain and heartache.
      My daughter passed away 28 February 2019 and she was my life. I found some ways to redirect my hurt into something positive….somehow it helps put me in a better space (it’s still a constant battle with my own thoughts) I know my daughter will be proud. My daughter had an inoperable heart condition, so I joined a charity for children who needs Palliative care. I am helping create awareness and also managing the social media page. I’m involved with a children’s home. I am dreading Christmas without my daughter but I decided to help with gifts for children in a home. I can’t see my daughter smile, but I can put a smile on kids that do not have. It doesn’t take the pain away, but it helps with the no purpose feeling and the feeling like you not adding value. Like you did with your mom in past you had a purpose and you added so much value to her life. Hope this advice can make some what of difference, like it did with me. I know everyone grieve differently, so what might have worked for me might not always work for someone else. In the end we would rather have loved than to not have loved at all. “Grief is the price of love”

  73. CFE  October 7, 2019 at 6:17 am Reply

    In June my father passed away. He was my only parent and direct family I had left. I was heartbroken. I knew nothing of how to make arrangements in a foreign country. My mother died in 1990. I have half siblings where I’m only closest with one. I’m feeling so isolated and alone. Everyday I feel like I’m just drowning in grief and sadness. My mother passing away was like a hole in your soul. What do you do when you have a gaping hollowness already? I hide my sadness but my eyes look so sad even when I smile. I . Am. Alone. It scares me sometimes when I have no strength to get out of bed. I have no desire to go outside. I have insomnia. I don’t know if I’m grieving the death of my parents or grieving just being all alone. I’ve thought about going to see a therapist. This has been so difficult and praying for strength.

    • Florelle  October 15, 2019 at 8:59 am Reply

      Hi, losing someone is like losing a piece of you, I couldn’t agree more. When I lost my dad beginning of this year, not only my world shattered but a piece of me died too, my dreams died, half of me died. It’s been couple of months passed since he was gone but it always feels as if it was just yesterday. The thought of I can no longer see him, hear his voice, his laugh, his singing voice – [coz my dad loves to sing and he’s very good at it] its killing me. They said time heals, nothing is really healing up to this very moment. I shouldn’t be living on my what ifs’ and what should have been but how I feel isn’t comprehending the moving on stage. The process of going through grieving is excruciatingly painful.

  74. Sandy  September 28, 2019 at 4:58 am Reply

    You all have the same emotions and grief as me. I feel I will never get through the loss of my mom, it will be 4 years coming up in November. No suppport from my brothers it’s like the are not having any grief. Well it has Devastated me. Mom and I were very close, I’m her only daughter, and we had a great relationship. Brothers weren’t like mom and I, we did a lot of things together, and talked on the phone every night. I loved her so much she was my best friend. My brother said to me once It wasn’t healthy for me to talk to mom every night W T F excuse my expression it was the healthiest thing a mom and daughter could do. We would share everything. We loved our phone calls. He can be very harsh. My mom was on her own for many years after my dad died when I was young, I’m 57 and I know she loved are relationship. She remarried when she was 73 and had six years with her husband before she was sick with cancer. She wasn’t alone and that makes me feel better. Mom was the type who would give hugs to me and say “I love you all the time she was warm hearted and always had a nice thing to say about everyone in her life, Full of life. And I was going through a bad time with a health issue she was so compassionate and loving, she was really truly a gem. And I cry everyday for her. I have had so many not so nice things said to me through my grief, and through me having diabetes, people can be very cruel, and they minimize what your going through and it makes you more lonely. Some times I really hate people, animals love you unconditionally more than humans. Even doctors can be very insensitive when your going through hell. You don’t move on from a loss, I’m so sick of the cliches , losing a loved one is PAINFULL .

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    • Lawrence  October 12, 2019 at 6:32 pm Reply

      Hello Sandy my lovely Mum passed away a year ago, I never thought it would happen. Still feels like yesterday and my two brothers are selfish gits so have divorced my family. Not easy is it

  75. Warren  September 18, 2019 at 3:26 pm Reply

    I have a question for those who have lost their spouse or partners. I have a family member who just lost their spouse this week. I reacehed out, sent flowers but have not seen him. I told him I am here for anything. I want to support him, either staying overnight as much as needed or he can stay with me or visit. The thing is, as the death just occurred, and he told me he had a lot of family in the house right now, I don’t want to be overbearing with so many people visiting and helping. I’m probably one of the few people that live close to him. How can I be supportive and not overbearing? Should I be messaging him so many times a week or just once a week. I’m planning on being there for him, as they were like parents to me. But I don’t want them to feel bothered by being asked too many times. Some advice would help.

    • Eleanor Haley  September 19, 2019 at 2:16 pm Reply

      Hey Warren. I would suggest letting him know you would rather be too available than not enough, and let him know you plan to check in by text (once a day, once every couple days, whatever feels right) unless he says to stop or ease up. Give him permission to not reply if he isn’t up to it, so he doesn’t feel guilty. Try to make invitations genuine but also ‘no pressure’. Honestly, the beginning is when everyone is around. It is usually in a few weeks and months that people really need support and everyone who was there early disappeared. So the best advice I can say is be around for the long haul!

  76. Anne Clarke  September 15, 2019 at 7:13 pm Reply

    I lost my husband in June and we’d been together 9 years… I see the people writing the same feelings I have… it was soo hard losing my Dad in 2013 but I had my baby my fiancé to lean on and he supported my sadness and now he’s gone and “ it’ll get better” is a lie. My cats understand better than they do. My younger brother lost his middle child ( there’s three) suicide. I can’t help sometimes want to scream at him “you still have your WIFE!!!!” You lucky you!! He stopped at nothing to protect me lifted my spirits always sometimes we argued a bit because we thought so alike..there will never be anyone like him in my life and I will never have room for another partner in my life I can’t survive another heartbreak like this one. How can I ever get through this at all????

    • Jennifer Boles  October 19, 2019 at 12:46 pm Reply

      Hi, i also lost my fiance last sept. 14 2019. We have eaxactly the same feelings as of the moment. So many what ifs, and questions. I even ask God if i deserve all of this pain? The week after my uncle who raise me during childhood past away too. But that one is acceptable since he is old already. But my fiancee is just 44. I really dont know how to start again without him. We work together. We are business partners, parters in crime. Bff. 24/7 buddies. And now i lost him, slowly im teaching my self but its so hard. I just want you to know that not only you on the same situation. Theres me, and somebody with the same situation. So lets try to be strong. If u needed someone to talk. Just msg.

      • Rudy B  November 6, 2019 at 12:13 pm

        I hope everyone in this thread has friends and family so they don’t feel alone. I don’t know if anyone has lived in the Pacific Northwest, but people are up here are generally withdrawn inside themselves. Maybe it’s the weather combined with many activities that don’t require major social skills like fishing, hunting, dirt biking, very competitive or isolating hobbies.

        I lost my wife in 2015. Being 34 at the time, I think I had more hope that things could get better than i do now. Over the last three years, I realized I knew a ton of people who were actually not friends. Nobody offered to hang out with me or keep my spirits up. I had to find my own way to happiness. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to a therapist because I allowed myself to cry and feel sad rather than resisting it. I tried church, I tried talking to a therapist and even she didn’t know what to say because She said it sounds like I know why I feel the way I do. Four years later though, I feel more lonely than I ever have before.

        I’ve watched everyone else in my family (cousins, brother, family members) live with life with someone else in their lives. I give (or try to give) my family the benefit of the doubt that they can understand why I feel so bummed out a lot.

        Now I’m at a point where at age 39, I’m done with PNW. The only thing I can seem to do successfully is work. I have not met anyone who can understand the loneliness I feel. I don’t think it has made me feel less self sufficient, but I’m tired of feeling like this all the time. Like I want to go ride my bike or go play pool or go for a drive, but I’m tired of doing all of that myself. I don’t have any friends for whatever reason I do not know.

        I just feel like I have no purpose now. It’s getting harder and harder to find motivation and purpose. I even wish I had a child so I could be a father, because that would put my existence beyond myself.

        I just really wish I could have companionship and share some direction. Have someone to talk to.

        I do believe a major relocation to another geographic location will be beneficial. Granted I probably should have done that two years ago, but I had found some promising jobs here in that seemed more accessible and was better on me physically and mentally.

        Now though, I have quit my job and am in the process of moving and lining up something else somewhere else like North Carolina (or evening Texas).

        Am I alone for feeling like I’m in a deep state of darkness of sadness and loneliness? I just hope I can make things better for me. Years ago, I felt sure about where I was headed. I was transitioning from being an educator to working in finance. Now I really want to apply my confidence and dedication to working with Apple. I hope that can work.

        I don’t know what I’m trying to get out of this post, but this seemed like the right place to share my grieving experience. The rough part is accepting that my family doesn’t understand what grieving is like. My mom does probably because she was twelve or so when she lost her mom, but everyone has built lives with someone and they all have their purposes in life. I just feel like an outcast that will never know what having someone else for longer than a year. I wa only married for five months. With her more than a year prior. And she suddenly had liver failure and died before we made it to six months of marriage.

        I hope nobody else ever has to experience that. I will not lie that I have wished for me to be taken away, too, but I’m also not a quitter and I just keep going. Lately though, I feel very sad again, perhaps more so than four years ago because I don’t know the answers any more or if I’ll ever get to know the value of having a soulmate and someone to enjoy life with. I’m bored and tired of doing all of that myself.

  77. yang  August 29, 2019 at 4:33 pm Reply

    I lost my father 53 days back.It all happened so suddenly,the three days when my dad was fighting this illness went by swiftly and I couldn’t understand what was happening.in had to leave my mother and my elder sister after his funeral because of my studies.You getc to know the true colours of people when you go through bad times they say and that is exactly what is happening.i have no one by my side whom I can lean upon and it feels lonely

  78. chamini amodya  August 21, 2019 at 10:37 pm Reply

    I have known that life can be this much tougher, I have no idea about my tomorrows. I am just nineteen and i have no one. since I was ten years both my mom and dad were onto adultery. But I had a blind love for my mother that father, I always fooled myself that mother was still good and she loves you more than anyone, but now she is going in her own with another man, father is in abroad and he has his own family, with a good looking wife and babies. i really feels like an orphan,,,beacuse family is something that i never had and it is my only dream still.
    i had a boyfriend at the age 15 and use to date him till i was eighteen but i ended it because i felt like i was detaching from her more than ever. i am still sorry for him, he loved me so much. so i am never good at keeping bonds. i always felt like finding parents to adopt me as a child. i know there is no life without a family, to live alone is something like dying day by day.

    the grief you feel inside is suffocation, i merely cannot breathe at all, i have had enough lying to my friends about my family, i always wanted to share this but i am scared that they would avoid me because of this as all of them have good families.
    one thing i cannot understand is why all parents cannot sacrifice a little bit of their ife to their children? isn’t it the child matters the most? why cannot my mother live without a man and my father a woman? i am noyt praising myself but for all the years i have been steadily confined with them, i have never lied or had being stubborn. i am that good type girl… but still they see no worth in me,…. i always wanted to go a trip, have dinner, have a party but its impossible alone,,,, all i need is a family….

    • Val  August 22, 2019 at 8:26 am Reply

      Sweetheart, I feel your lonliness also and if I could be your mother, I would be in a heartbeat. You are a good soul, just like I tried to be my entire life. When we are in a dysfunctional family all we want is for are parents to love us, so some of us try to be perfect so they will. Other disconnect and learn to not need or want anyone but they can never let love in. They are called avoidants. I am 56 and I tried to be perfect my whole life. I loved my whole family. My mother, husband, 3 kids. I always put them first and tried to do everything for them. When my mother turned my daughter against her family. I learned about narcissism. People who have very little empathy and use people to get what they need. When my sons got older realized that they rarely said or did anything nice for me. I became more and more depressed and started to have very low selfesteem. I couldn’t understand why no one saw me as the good person I tried to be. After much research I realized I married the avoidant type. Could never really get close to him. He is a good person but can not accept love. Since boys mirror their father’s my boys behave the same. I am 56 and feel completely alone even though I am still married and out son still lives with us. I’m hear to tell you that having a family does not mean that you will not be alone and completely lonely. Find your tribe! That is what I’m trying to do. Made a few friends but when we are depressed and lonely it is difficult to make friends. No one wants to listen to unhappy people that they don’t know. After much research, because of our childhoods, the only solution for not feeling lonely is to learn to love ourselves. Until then we will always feel alone and lonely. I’m doing everything I can to learn how to do that, since my life was about making everyone else happy. I’m not sure how this site works but I would love share articles, videos with you that are slowly helping me. If you’d like, you could write to me anytime.

  79. Selina  August 17, 2019 at 8:05 pm Reply

    I lost my mom 3 years back. I came to America as a student 4 years back and it had been almost a year since I didn’t see my mom. And on the 31st of December, I just woke up and everything felt different, then my cousin told me that my mom had fell down in bathroom and was hospitalized. I wasn’t really worried because I thought it was normal fall but later that day my dad who used to work in Qatar, booked a plane home cause my aunt told him that my mom was in an ICU. Then I started to get really worried and when I finally land home. My younger sister who was just 18 at that time ran to hug me and told me, “I’m sorry I promised you I will take care of mom but I couldn’t” My mom had passed away on the December 31st, no one knows what happened, they told me they found her in the bathroom and she was probably there for 3-4 hours on the cold tiles and then they took her to the hospital, the doctor said its too late. I’m the oldest daughter and the only people home were my 18 and 14 years old sister and brother who had to go through it alone. When my dad got home, they had my mom’s dead body outside ready to take her to be cremated and that’s how he found out that she passed away. I reached home a week after that, so I didn’t;t even got to see her or say goodbye. I hated my family for not telling me right away. I hate myself for not being able to be with my mom and how she died alone. Its been 3 years and I cry myself to sleep every night. I don’t know how to get over this. I don’t think I have started to grief yet because I never got a closer or a goodbye. I feel like I’m just stucked and every time I try to get past the fact that my mom is dead my brain just freezes, I get chills and it feels like I can’t breathe.

    • Amrita  September 4, 2019 at 2:30 pm Reply

      Oh Dear. I can understand your pain. It’s hard on u and ur family. Like u me too longing for closure. I lost my mom 6 months back. She met in accident and couldn’t reach to hospital. It was unexpected as she went to the work as usual. I am married and stay in another city . I have been told she is critical when I reached at mid night and saw people I got to know wht has happened . There was not good bye. She struggled through out life and about it retire from job in a year. But ahe could live her life. It was not fair with her.

  80. Parnell E. LaLonde IV  August 5, 2019 at 9:42 am Reply

    It has been one year and five months since I lost my Wife, my partner, my friend, my confidant. The “needs and desires” of having ANYONE, someone acknowledge me is true. I have had EVERYONE, I mean everyone, walk away within the first year. Loneliness ebbs and flows but I ever present.

    • Amy  August 9, 2019 at 11:40 am Reply

      Hi it’s the first time I’ve posted on anything like this.
      I lost my dad when I was 24 to lung cancer it was 18 months of hell watching my best friend take his last breath and seeing my mums world fall apart.
      My mum was so strong I only ever see her cry once but she was broken , she missed him so much, they had been together since she was 16 and he died at 61.
      I had moved back in with her as a single mum with my 11 month old baby and our lives became the 3 of us. I really struggled after losing my dad I was so young and my world fell apart all at the same time, I lost my house, my relationship and was responsible for a child all through no choice of my own.
      my mums strength got me through she never gave up on me and made me the best mum I could ever be.
      I reinvented myself from a hairdresser to the manager of a health and fitness club whilst getting myself a diploma, she was so proud.
      Nearly 10 years on it will be my dad’s aniversay on the 10th Aug 2019. I would say it took me a good 8yrs to finally feel like me again, where i really wanted to do things to make him proud and see a future that looked brighter where I woke up and actually felt happy.
      My purpose in life was my mum and my daughter who is now 10, that’s what kept me going, everything we did we did together. we lived together, I cooked, mum washed up. I took care of the garden and mum did the ironing cus she new I hated it. Holidays, days out , everything was all done together just the 3 of us. We even spoke to each other whilst we was at work, we became so close.
      Then tragically on the 20th July 2019 aged 61 the angels came and took her. They didn’t make a sound she was so well, fit and healthy. she had been to work and just felt unwell with in hours an ambulance was called they took her in, she deteriated and they couldn’t save her. nobody knows why it’s happened we have to wait 6-8 weeks. we laid her to rest on weds 7th Aug.
      we had so many plans we was meant to be going away in a couple of weeks.
      An now it’s just me and my daughter and for the first time in my life I really know what lonely means. I’m 34 and I’ve lost both my parents so young and I’m left here in our home being a mum to my daughter.
      I know i have no choice but to carry on, my mum and dad would never forgive me if I didn’t, so there’s no point joining them if there gonna hate me but for the first time ever I know exactly what you mean.
      life is cruel and to anyone who feels lonley believe me when I say I feel your pain. I know there feels no way out but some how we have to continue on, even to help ease the pain for the one we lost. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get through this but i know I have to try. An one day I’d like to help other people get through grief because it really is such a lonley place to be.

      • Amrita  September 4, 2019 at 3:05 pm

        Dear Amy. U reach a brave heart. I can feel it ur pain. God gives u strength. Count me your friend.. I am also going through terrible lonliness. I lost my mom 6 months back in an accident. I couldn’t meet her.. She was 59 and she too went to work but on special duty that day and in a village away from city.. So she couldn’t be reached to hospital. There is no closure, no last talks. Not expected that mom can leave forever in a moment. Without giving us time to say goodbye

    • Anne Clarke  September 15, 2019 at 7:33 pm Reply

      You then know something of how I am feeling having lost my husband on June, I don’t know how to deal with it and I feel like no one has any use for a sad widow like me I feel too old to start over and too young to be so alone….I talk almost every day to this medium who keeps saying his spirit is very much present in this house and my only hope is to learn to “channel” the way she does I have been contacted by others who’ve past but only a couple of times in my life I’m 57 my darling husband was 58.. I keep feeling like HE was the lucky one he got to go and he doesn’t have to feel so abandoned….

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    • Linda Garcia  October 8, 2019 at 8:26 pm Reply

      Sounds like you’re telling my story I lost my husband last February we were together for 27 years I didn’t need anybody I had him but when he passed suddenly all my family came out from under the ground and just embraced me and cooked for me and pampered me, but once the funeral was done the memorial was done everybody just dropped off like flies and now I am so so lonely oh, I was so stupid because I had received a bunch of insurance monies and a lot of people just latched onto me like ticks. And now here I am all alone with not a friend in the world I’m lucky if I get one text a day from a brother and that’s it. I have a sister that lives about four miles away and I see her maybe every 4 months if I’m lucky, people are out for themselves they’re so chickenshit

      1
    • GaryB  November 25, 2019 at 10:52 am Reply

      1 year and 3 months for me after 38 years with my world-my wife. Sure I have my children but they are all older and moving on in their lives. I am so alone and always nice to know that my wifes family Basically hightailed out of my life after the funeral and I get no calls or anything. my family is my kids nothing more is left for my side and my 2 girls are now more in the family side of their husbands. After my wife passed I have lost all zip and interest-I go through the motions but nobody wants to talk about how I am really feeling. My daughters say “move forward Dad” you have us and your grandchildren and they think my wifes family but the great divide came when she was ill and they knew it was terminal and at the end they left town like they were inconvenienced! The silence and loneliness is the worst and that is most of my Dad- I start conversations with her in my car and when I see things she would love and then actually imitate her laugh as if its her with me. This will never end till I do. I am 65 going on 85 and she was robbed from me at 62 after we had both worked 40 years and had finally retired. Now I await my entry into our companion urn and maybe then I will be at peace. I have run and turned on God for this happening and dont have the desire to reconcile so I will probably go to hell and never see her again for that but I have serious doubts about afterlife now thinking all just goes dark and ends and we are forgot. Oh well we did all we could and sadly its all lost and forgotten- ALL of it. I lost the last person who knew my life story-now I am just a ghost myself in this world -a wandering mist of nothingness day by day.

  81. Sonya  July 29, 2019 at 2:57 am Reply

    Lost my Mother 8 years back, she was 62. There is not a single day when I have not missed her. Whenever alone, I remember her and weep like a child. I feel lost without her. I just want to be with her.

  82. richie  July 22, 2019 at 2:32 am Reply

    its been like 3 years since ………but i just cant move on …i left home my heart filled with hate even to my family members ….i feel like they ddnt put enough effort ..like they just gave up on my my mom ….. perherbs they saw she couldnt make it and the hospital bills were rapidly increasing ……my life has realy changed from loving to hatred…..from smiling every morning i wake up to weeping every morning i think how my day is going to be like without her……for them i think they moved on ….nobody talks about her …………i feel bad my life has been ragged ever since ….i left home when i was 19 now iam 22…..i stay on my own

    • Sheila Gordon  July 25, 2019 at 12:10 am Reply

      I’m so deeply sorry for your loss. Losing your mother must have been absolutely devastating. I hope you can find some supportive friends — someone that you can share your memories of your beautiful mother.

    • Amrita  September 4, 2019 at 4:02 pm Reply

      U can talk to me Richi.. I ve lost my mom 6 months back.. And I feel the same that no one wants to talk about her.. As apart from my father, brother and me she was not anyone’s losss

  83. George A Spalek  July 13, 2019 at 3:07 pm Reply

    I just broke down in tears thinking about how much I miss my husband of 19 yrs. Those years saw many struggles but we finally
    built the family we we’re seeking through adoption. Now I am the single parent of two adolescent girls. It’s been over a year
    and I haven’t moved on in any fundamental way. I also lack support. When I heard about his stage 4 melanoma diagnosis,
    I immediately thought my life was over, I would be lonely and bored and feel like I failed the girls. This has come to pass.
    I appreciate the article and the comments. I feel a bit less alone.

  84. Linda  July 5, 2019 at 4:07 pm Reply

    Lost my only daughter in April 2019. It is so devastating and excruciating pain in the first couple months not accepting she is no longer here. I’ve been reading about grief and only today I told myself she is gone to Heaven and now belongs to God. For me down on Earth I miss her, I cry and try to go on. Losing an adult child is hard, you miss her calls, her visits, her hugs. Talking with other parents who lost a child helps.

    • Tiffany Rose  August 4, 2019 at 1:46 am Reply

      I can’t imagine what it is like as a mother who has lost a child. I have a hard time knowing what to do or so around my mother who has lost two children tragically at different times in her life. I wish it wouldn’t be weird to give you my mother’s info so maybe you can reach out to someone who goes through it every single moment she’s breathing. God bless you and I pray that you are able to find comfort.

    • Sharmila  August 7, 2019 at 3:06 pm Reply

      Dearest Linda, My condolences and very sorry to hear that. I too lost my daughter, which was in April 2018. She was 15 years old. She was epileptic and seizure was the cause for her death. Since then I don’t know how much I have been crying. Its not that I am always crying but don’t know when tears roll down my eyes and I am not keeping a count of all that including sleepless nights. Its my daughter. I miss her. I cry for her. So what? is my theory. Who else can miss my daughter other than me?. I understand how you feel. It reduces over a period of time but I am not sure that you will stop missing your daughter ever. In sanskrit we say ” putra shokam nirantaram”, which means child loss is a permanent grief. You may even stop crying but the grief. Is always there probably in a more invisible manner and may not errupt every now and then. I am with you as I too miss my baby girl. I feel its natural to grieve about child loss but doesn’t mean we pass on the grief to everyone. We do get over that phase and keep our grief within us. Its perfectly ok. This is purely my feeling. Each one of us may handle it differently. Once again I am with you. Please do take care of yourself and listen to songs like ” Breathe” by Sarah Beltran and ” Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton. It really helps.

  85. Devon  June 16, 2019 at 5:45 pm Reply

    Thank you for writing this article…
    … and thank everyone here who commented.
    I needed to hear all of this, my dad passed away April 17th, 2008 when I was 16. I never received the support I needed after that and my life has felt unstable ever since. Grief effects every day of my life and all of my decisions. Loneliness sits upon my heart and weighs heavily. My dad was my foundation for everything. The entirety of my sense of security and a large portion of my sense of wellbeing was dependent on everything my dad held up for me and my brothers. I forget just how much it effects me and have to remind myself regularly. Reading things like this helps me not feel so lonely.

    • Tiffany Rose  August 4, 2019 at 1:52 am Reply

      Oh girl! I know all too well. Girls need their Fathers ALWAYS. And it’s hard. Thoughts like— what if I get married? Whose gonna ya know walk me down the aisle— the father daughter dance— what if I have children? It was hard growing up without someone to be protective of me. Ya know to interrogate the guys? It has been nine years for me and it’s been a ride. However, I guess you get used to it in a uncomfortable kind of way, but be prepared for moments of jealousy or envy when you see other fathers and daughters together. You never know I mean it even comes up in kid movies and on commercials/add. I didn’t mean to be soo like bold I guess. Maybe blunt. But I’m just being honest. Hope I can make you feel as if you may be understood— even just a little

  86. Alan Osment  June 2, 2019 at 2:34 pm Reply

    It’s was 4 years ago last week when my wife of 30 years suddenly passed away. The grief, no matter what I’ve tried hasn’t gotten any better. I’ve resigned to just bid my time till I die. It sucks but sometimes it doesn’t get any better for some people

    • Angie Honaker  June 4, 2019 at 2:44 pm Reply

      I to feel this way. My heart feels like it just cannot go on. I lost the love of my life in Jan. 2019. He was truly my soul mate… Now that he is gone, Its not even like I have life left in me. There is no joy, no happiness, its just pain, and unending longing just to hear his voice, or touch his face. To see him again I would give all. When he passed away My heart died along with him… I have come to the conclusion that I am just waiting my turn to go. I’m not suicidal, I’m just done with life without him. I have wonderful family, and I love them dearly but its just not the same. We built our lives as one, and no matter how I try its just not life anymore. I have good days and I have bad days, but the bad out weigh to good… I will carry on as I have been doing for the last 4 months, day by day going through the motions of life.

      • Jane Hume  June 25, 2019 at 1:27 pm

        I too have lost my husband. We were together for 41 years and I loved him every minute..we were so close and did everything together. He was the love of my life and I his . I understand how you feel, it’s so hard to get each through each day. I take one day at a time and cannot look to a future without him. I still find it hard to accept he has gone. He died suddenly with no warning and left a huge void , that nothing can ever fill. I hope we can both find a way to live along side our grief. I wish you well .

      • Jennifer Boles  October 19, 2019 at 12:54 pm

        I feel so sorry for you. But i feel the pain you are tryng to tell. I am also in the same feelings as yours. But im too young i have 2 kids. But waiting to be with him my fiance. Life is not good without him by my side. No more happiness. I dont know how to move forward. Its been a month. He left us last sept. 14 2019. Cardiac arrest.

    • Angie Honaker  June 4, 2019 at 2:46 pm Reply

      So sorry you are going through this. And so sad for your loss….. I to feel this way. My heart feels like it just cannot go on. I lost the love of my life in Jan. 2019. He was truly my soul mate… Now that he is gone, Its not even like I have life left in me. There is no joy, no happiness, its just pain, and unending longing just to hear his voice, or touch his face. To see him again I would give all. When he passed away My heart died along with him… I have come to the conclusion that I am just waiting my turn to go. I’m not suicidal, I’m just done with life without him. I have wonderful family, and I love them dearly but its just not the same. We built our lives as one, and no matter how I try its just not life anymore. I have good days and I have bad days, but the bad out weigh to good… I will carry on as I have been doing for the last 4 months, day by day going through the motions of life.

  87. Madison C  May 29, 2019 at 11:17 am Reply

    Hi everyone,

    So sorry for the late reply, but first and most importantly, I am sending sincere hugs and condolences and blessings to all of you!

    I am appalled by my lengthy diatribe in June’18, but it comes from a place of truth…now I have to add one more: found out my long-term bf/ex had found a woman immediately after me and now they are getting married. He gave her the same nickname – a made-up word – he gave me. I am a fighter but this news has been a knockout blow. The loneliness and sadness is terrible and I wonder if my worth will ever be appreciated, or is there something intrinsically wrong with me to have ended up as the janitor for my broken family and to be so alone.

    To all of you, THANK YOU for ‘getting it’. If we were in the same town I’d offer to sit with you in whatever space you held and we could go for a hike, plant flowers, find an activity… just to DO something life affirming with someone who understands.

    Huge hugs to all of you!

  88. Vicky  May 28, 2019 at 4:36 pm Reply

    My tears comes every day and night from day I lost my husband 27th.novermber.2017..that night when the doctor told me he is gone to rest with the Lord.. My husband was 32year old we have a son.. He died of kidney failure.. Till date I feel hurt my son of 3year keeps asking where is daddy but I feel tears full in my eyes I can’t answer.. Besides the lost if my guy , my in laws blocked well the resources finances etc I can’t access for either me or my son.. I feel sad and broken lost.. But God has better plans for us a..ets trust in him.. We surrender all to him. May you all be blessed

  89. Sheryl Cvijanovich  May 22, 2019 at 2:34 pm Reply

    Nice to read something that differentiates between being alone and feeling lonely. Since my husband died in July 2017 I often feel alone, but rarely do I feel lonely. I don’t expect anyone to fill the huge gap that he left but there is still room for others to be part of my daily life.

  90. Jack Merkel  April 5, 2019 at 11:28 am Reply

    Solitude is a blessing that sometimes brings out the best realisations

  91. Julia  April 2, 2019 at 5:15 pm Reply

    I lost my wonderful husband suddenly 6 weeks ago, my heart physically hurts with the loss of him and my stomach is in knots, not to mention the turmoil going round my head. I’m angry that he had everything he was looking forward to abruptly taken away, he was a great guy, helped so many and so loved, nearly 300 people attended his funeral, he was that well liked. We had no children and I cannot deal with waking up without him every morning and realising he’s never going to be there again and I am on my own. All I keep thinking is why him and why me? What did we do to deserve this. I’m thankful for the love and care from our friends, they are doing their best but all I want is what they can’t help me with, to have him back loving and living his life.

    • Anne  May 20, 2019 at 12:11 am Reply

      I’m so sorry for your loss. And I’m sorry there are no answers. I wanted my husband to walk back into my life somehow, anyhow, impossibly months after he died. I want him to walk back now, like magic is reality, – almost two years later. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting him to just walk back into my life somehow. But, I know it’s not going to happen. I have, somehow, managed to maintain my sanity. However, I’ll never stop loving him, so I’ll never stop missing him. But I’ve been working on remembering who I was before I met him. Not a whole lot different than who I was with him – we respected each other’s individuality (another thing I REALLY loved about him). But that girl is still who I am, and she’s still here. So, I’m going to continue to be the best me I know how to be without him. We were married for 43 years and I’ll never stop loving and missing him. I wish you all the best. I’ve had a wonderful support system of loving family, friends, and a great church. I pray you have the support you need to see you through your loss.

    • Paul S. Brittain  May 24, 2019 at 9:10 pm Reply

      Julia- I almost felt like it was me writing your vomment. I lost my wife of 37 years on Jan 31,2019 and also ask why us? We had no children. I feel dysfunctional without her and don’t know how to solve this. I send prayers to you and all others who truly know the pain of grieving. Until someone experiences this themselves they have no idea how deep the pain hits you.

  92. Ily  March 22, 2019 at 8:49 pm Reply

    It’ll be 3 weeks this Sunday since I lost my partner of 8 1/2 years. Both 26 years old and had been together since we were 17, high school sweethearts. We have a beautiful 3 1/2 year old and while he was in the hospital in a coma, I found out we were expecting a 2nd. We both knew I was likely pregnant before all this, he had wanted another child so bad and had been pressing on it since October. I told him the news while he was in a coma, hoping the news if he heard, could give him that extra strength to fight.
    He suffered a brain aneurism and had a stroke which then put him in a coma. All unexpectedly and in a matter of hours. He was only 26. In the end doctors told us there was nothing else they could do, and to start thinking about what he would want. We ultimately decided to let him go in peace and with no more pain, as they had kept telling us that he was suffering. I had cried everyday in the hospital, and have not stop crying since he’s passed away. I’m physically present but not mentally here, I try to be strong for our daughter, and for this baby on the way. But no one understands the pain I’m feeling, everyone has theirs spouses and their partners to go home to every night. No one can relate or has experienced loss in their life like this. I lost my best friend the love of my life my everything. I have this feeling of never ever accepting that he’s gone and longing him for the rest of my life. When he passed away he took a peice of me with him. Everyday I ask “WHY” , he was healthy he was young and strong and had everything going for him and for us. It hurts so bad and I will never understand this and never be “ok” with this. I hope I have the strength to keep going.

    • Rae  March 30, 2019 at 9:37 am Reply

      I understand your pain. The love of my life suffered a brain aneurism last month and passed away on February 5th. He was the sweetest man God ever made. He treated me like a queen and was an amazing father to my two children. We are heartbroken. I believe by helping others we help ourselves get through difficult times. I would love to communicate with you via email if you are comfortable with that. Focus on the love that he gave you and the live that will live in through your children. Keep him alive in your lives by talking about him everyday with your children and know that he is always with you in spirit.

      • Ily  April 2, 2019 at 11:27 pm

        Hello Rae, i think it would help me a lot to be in contact with someone who can relate with me. No one knows what to say to me, I know they see me as delicate right now and honestly I am. I can’t speak about him or what has happened without crying in just a matter of words..the worst pain and deep deep sadness I’ve ever had to feel and endure in my life..

  93. Nancy Tannenbaum  February 15, 2019 at 8:47 pm Reply

    Today marks four years since my mother died. I feel disenfranchised in my grief within my family because Mother was 89 years old, I was 64 years old when she died, and my grief seems “foolish” because she was as old as she was and I was certainly not young…losing a parent in one’s senior years is not understood or valued. My grief has been solitary and lonely. I am not angry and I certainly understand what it means to grieve well, and I have done so, but an ignored sadness on a “hidden anniversary of the heart” is isolating and very painful. To be misunderstood is a very lonely path to walk.

    • Conor  April 2, 2019 at 3:59 am Reply

      Hello Nancy, I am so sorry for your loss. I lost my Mum on the 2nd of February last to COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder). I was her primary carer and I am single and childless. I am 45 years old. I think I understand your isolation and I one hundred percent agree with you that society does not “get ” the oft times overwhelming grief of losing your mother. I think they way the world looks on it it is that it is natural for a child to bury a parent – especially if a parent has had “good innings” – God I hate those words! Even if it is “natural” in the sense that it is an understandable part of the human story, I am not at peace with this new world I am now living in. A world without my Mum whom I loved dearly and she loved me – is a colder harsher world.

    • Donna  April 18, 2019 at 10:03 am Reply

      Hello Nancy,

      After reading your heartfelt message about the death of your mother- dated February 15, 2019- it felt as though you validated what I also feel. My dear “mom” died May 29, 2015 and still I am so very lonesome as she and I had a unique relationship. Some things we experienced are only known to us and this has fostered a continual emptiness which permeates into all aspects of my life. I have become a pretty good actor so that no one can identify my sadness because mom was 91 and myself almost 60 and that signifies “you should be over it by now”. I have attended support groups, one on one counseling yet the ache is very deep in my heart.
      Please know that your words comforted me in that they give credence to my feelings.
      Thank you and may your journey ahead be filled with peace of mind and the memories bring you comfort.

      • Galiyath  June 7, 2019 at 4:50 am

        Im thankful to come across this entry. I lost my beloved mommy 3 weeks ago. Im also 45 with no kids. The pain is unteathering . I feel like im in a movie i did not sign up to be in. There is a blanket between myself and the world and i cannot relate to this new reality. We spoke hours everyday, were the best of friends, traveled together, in essence we were soulmates. It sounds like others had this deep bond with their moms as well. I was in such denial in her last weeks because the pain was to great to accept she was so very ill. Also her oncologists were never honest with us or never expressed how terminal her illness was which is infuriating. I will sY this though… the kind of love we share with our mothers cannot ever be destroyed or go away. The body gets older or diseased and the body will go, but the essence and energy of moms soul is forever with us everywhere we go now. Its not perfect and its not ideal but its a truth i find comfort in even if its just a sliver. My heart does feel very full and grateful to have had that love i just wish i was kinder and more caring the last weeks instead of being fearful and in denial. Mom wouldn’t want me to be hard on my self so i will be working on that bit of guilt. God bless everyone who is hurting over the loss in their lives.

    • Mark Fusco  April 28, 2019 at 4:00 pm Reply

      Dear Nancy, I am a 57 year old man whose mom passed away In August 2018, she had just turned 87. She fractured her hip and spiraled downward mentally and physically, I watched her suffer, and she passed away 4 months later. I never married nor had any children. My mom lived with me, she was my mom, best friend and constant companion, and my only source of happiness and joy. Her love is what got me out of bed in the morning. Your grief IS NOT FOOLISH, no one is ever ready to lose their mom. My mom is gone and I am truly alone for the first time in my life. Loneliness IS WORSE when you’re older, because the hope you had in younger years isn’t there anymore. I don’t know if life on earth is part of a master plan or just random. I can only hope that there is something after this, but, sadly, I haven’t seen any evidence and I have my doubts. My heart goes out to you and everyone in our situation who knows how we feel.

      • Rene  June 2, 2019 at 4:38 am

        To Nancy, Donna and Mark,
        Your moving and painful at times, comments about losing your mother said it all for me. I lost my beloved Mom suddenly on October 5, 2018. She was a healthy 96. It was a heart attack. The grief has been awful at times and I can’t stop crying sometimes for hours Even though it’s been only seven months, I noticed that the emptiness seems to be getting worse. The future seems so bleak and foreboding when I think about it. I’m already 66 years old. I have no wife or kids. I’m totally alone! I have a few friends, but it’s not enough to carry me forward. Not even close! When you lose the one and only person that really made life wonderful and tolerable, the future really seems so vast and scary now and hopeless. I refuse to deal with it! I don’t want to create a new life for myself. At my age? What for? So I can eat, defecate, sleep, shop, drive, watch TV, read etc..for the next 10, 20 30 years? Then watch myself grow old in the mirror and decline in health? No thanks!

        We all can make choices. I’ve decided that I don’t want to go on anymore for any length of time. I really don’t!
        At the proper time, I will leave this world and join my mom in the next one. I really want to leave this life. I’m sorry people for saying such a shocking statement to you all here. But I’ve decided to go out “my way.” I expect to wrap things up within two years.

        Perhaps I will post here again when the time grows near. To all of you who are suffering so much, I hope you find the right path for yourselves as you navigate through life and the future. I’ve made my choice. I intend to carry it out. Farewell.

      • Terri  July 6, 2019 at 7:01 pm

        I feel the very same way. I feel better knowing I have a choice. I’m leaving something out because it may not be understandable. I will be 57, never married, and no children. I don’t believe I will want to continue much longer either. It’s just not worth it. It’s not a pity thing either. I truly feel this way.

      • Danny  August 5, 2019 at 1:43 pm

        I`m very sorry for your loss Rene . Consider one thing. How do you know if you will see her again if you do what it is your saying your going to do ? Would she want that ? God is the one who gave you your soul and he may think it isn`t yours to decide what you want to do with it. Its his decision. There is a video on “You Tube” of a Catholic priest named Father Schier. He had a near death experience that is incredible after a horrific car accident in 1985. It may not be the same life experience you have but he describes a judgement. Please view it before you choose your own demise.

      • Terri  July 6, 2019 at 7:06 pm

        This is very accurate to how I feel. I just replied to Rene also. I didn’t realize there were people like us who don’t have a spouse or children to fall back on. I’m not saying others pain is any less. I just don’t (or won’t) have a life without her. It’s not possible for me personally and some people really can’t understand that.

    • Lela  May 1, 2019 at 7:39 am Reply

      Hi Nancy,
      I lost my mum one month ago from heart attack after a brain surgery for glioblastoma. My dad passed away from cancer 9 years ago while I was alone abroad giving final exams for my architecture degree. I am 45, with a useless boyfriend who has come to visit me 4 times in this month, he didn’t even appear in the funeral, I have no children, never been married. The pain is unbearable. I know exactly what you mean. There are people telling me that it is normal to lose a parent who is 75. Sure, fine, they’re giving this useless advice while they are fine with both their parents who are over 80. I want to see them when they lose heir parents too and have nowhere to turn to. They were giving me the same stupid advice when I lost my dad too (He was 79 when he passed away, and I was 36). I try not to blame them for their stupidity but I simply can’t. Losing your parents is devastating regardless your age. Especially if you are old with no family of your own, it is simple hell. People who still have their families cannot understand it. It feels so awful losing your closest relatives, I keep telling everybody that I m feeling like I am Oliver Twist and they think I am joking. They cant understand the pain, they cant understand that I find no motivation to work, there’s no one left for me to care about, there is nothing out there for me anymore. I wish you feel better, I wish I feel better too, I wish everyone in the same situation feels better. Wishing you the best.

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    • Dottie  June 27, 2019 at 5:31 pm Reply

      Hello Nancy, I truly understand your pain. My mom passed away March 15th 2019. She was 89 and I’m 66. She was always in my life. My dad passed away February 2014. I feel so selfish because I didn’t realize the pain she was going through. She must have suffered in silence. I should have been there for her. I feel so guilty. She was always doing something. She loved doing yard work. She also took care of the animals, did housework. I kept telling her not to do anything that I would do it. But she was stubborn.
      It was a horrible accident February 2nd. She fell going into the garage. There was so much blood from her head. She developed a hematoma on her brain, broken ribs and collarbone. She fought so hard to stay with me. But in the end she was too weak. I could see it in her eyes. She was begging to let go. I knew it was time. I crawled in bed with her and told her how much I loved her and told her to let go I would be ok. She worried more about me than herself I cry almost every day and night . I feel I’m worthless. I blame myself. I’m alone and lonely. My heart hurts and is broken. I feel my life is over. I know I have to find my purpose and start my life over. I will never stop missing her. I would really like to stay in touch. I can send you my email if you want to stay in touch. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.
      Take care, you are not alone.
      Dottie

  94. Cat  February 8, 2019 at 12:05 am Reply

    I had lost my mother to brain cancer December, 2018.
    Watching her whither away, never getting to go on the vacation she highly anticipated… I took care of her. By myself. My father passed a few years ago. It’s just me left, and I will be celebrating my 28th birthday (and would be my fathers birthday as well) on February 12th. I feel so alone and disconnected, like a totally different person.
    I’m still working on taking care of the things in her home, the house I grew up in. It’s like a giant time capsule.
    Along with her pets, and bills.
    I can only seem to remember when she was sick, dwelling on those painful moments. Moments she was connected to tubes, and I would give her medicine, and she couldn’t talk or respond at all. The pain. Her seizures… regrets.
    I’m in between getting my own place again, or leaving this state, and traveling the world.
    My internal struggles.
    I miss her…
    This article was a good find. It had helped me gain perspective, and hope, even motivation in a way.

    Grieving is part of the human condition, and one way or another, we will all experience it.
    At some point in time, we must gain our control over our own lives, and begin a new chapter.
    And with this chapter, new beginnings.
    Get the most out of your life.
    Our loves ones wouldn’t want us to be suffering, and would wish for us to find peace, accomplishing our goals, and fulfilling our dreams.
    Stay strong, ladies and gentlemen.

  95. Arpit Tandon  February 6, 2019 at 11:32 pm Reply

    I lost my mother a week back. She was 57 and suffering from multiple myeloma (form of bone marrow cancer). She gave it a wonderful fight having fought this cancer for a decade. Being a single child, I was extremely close to her. Other than being my mother she was also my best friend and confidante. I do not remember a single day in my 32 years of existence when I didn’t speak to her at least once (mobile phones had come when I moved out for college and work). Life seems so meaningless and full of void right now.

    I have a strong family support- my loving father and wife and other relatives. But somehow, I just feel crippled thinking of that I would never speak to my mum again. There would be good and bad days, occasions, anniversaries, birthdays and festivals. Nothing would remain the same. My mother was a super energetic person who would manage all these things in our family. Loneliness is driving me crazy and when I talk to others, I feel irritated that nobody is able to understand me.

    • Deborah  February 8, 2019 at 1:03 pm Reply

      I think you hit the nail on the head when you describe the feeling of not being understood by people. Without people who can understand what you describe as feeling crippled following your loss the resulting isolation and loneliness is horrible and at times terrifying to the point where you feel like youre going mad because of having to hide the suffering. The feeling of irritation with others makes sense because when they cant reach out to you in your grief they start to seem lacking and shallow and the effect is to heighten the loss of the person you really connected with. Finding people who you can have good connection with is difficult but I guess that its important to find those people whether on helplines or in the real world even fleetingly as they can help you restore lost faith in people amidst the solitude of grief.

  96. Josiane Swartz  January 29, 2019 at 12:46 am Reply

    To all the ladies, Connie, Wendy, Pam, Renae, Terry, Carol and others that have lost their husbands I can relate to your pain as I too lost my husband of 38 yrs 3 yrs ago and it is still difficult and painful to move on, and I truly believe that only time will be your friend and ease up your pain a little as years go by. I have noticed that around year 5, it becomes less painful and easier as I witnessed my own mother and friends handled the loss of their spouses reaching year 5, suddenly felt lighter and they finally accepted their loss better and were dealing with it in a much better way. so I am hoping it will be the same for me when I reach that time. I am trying to change the narrative I play in my head by recalling wonderful memories, tell myself more positive messages as our loved ones would not want us to suffer. they are and will always be part of our lives and in our hearts forever. I did go to grief counseling which helped me a lot and I also joined a group MWC (Modern Widows Club) (Founder Carolyn Moore) which provides a wonderful nurturing environment in helping widows move forward while remembering and honoring our loved ones. You may want to find out if there is a chapter near where you live. Sending hugs, please take care of yourselves. Josie S.

  97. Connie Gravelle  January 12, 2019 at 8:06 pm Reply

    My husband if 42 yrs, died in April 2018′ My heart is d I broken.
    I haven’t been able to move on. I long for him every minute of My waking hours. He was the most kind and loving man I had ever known. He told me the first time he saw me he fell in love with me. It only took me two weeks to fall in live with him.
    I believe That God brought us together. My life will never be the same again s in.
    Watching the one you love more than anything else in the world dying from cancer and CACHECIA ( wasting of the body , is gutwrenching , when you know there is nothing you can do to save him. Watching his body looking like a holocaust victim.
    He was skin and bones. I felt so helpless and so alone
    My sorrow was so huge and I tried not to cry in front of him. I did not want him to give up. But he was dying and I believe he knew that, but he never ex pressed his feelings to me. We were both trying not to say things to hurt each other. I will forever live him. We had no children, so our life revolved around each other. We had the most wonderful marriage and I thank God everyday for giving him to me.
    But he had just turned 64 before he had died. Too young to leave this earth. The only thing that keep a me going is to b r liver there us an afterlife and that one day we may be together again. Other than that I do not want to Live anymore. I just try to get through each day The best I can. My heart is so filled with sorrow and sadness and the need to stay away from people has become a daily thing.
    I do not like the things they say to me .
    None of my friends have lost a spouse so it is not possible for any of them to understand the longing that I have for my husband. They do not understand all the crying I do .
    My life just seems like an endless sea of sadness. This is not really living.

    • Julie S.  January 25, 2019 at 2:40 am Reply

      Hi Connie, I read your story about your husband. I wish I had something miraculous to say that would make you feel better but given that it’s 2:18 am and I’m reading articles on coping with grief and bawling my eyes out I’m probably not your best bet. I am however out here twirling around in my own state of grief as are many so I can relate to some of your feelings. I lost my Dad in June of 2017 and my Mum in 2018. Two of the greatest most loving parents and people on the planet…according to me anyway. Sure they were older and “lived a good life” BUT that reality doesn’t help me process the sadness and loneliness I feel. There’s very little friends or family can say that helps. In most cases they don’t say the right thing anyway so why share my grief with them. Geez I’m probably not making you feel any better. I’ve hijacked your grief with mine. When I read your comments I felt I had to reach out. I feel your pain to the extent that I can. We both feel sad, have experienced pain and loss and we have both watched people we love die. For these reasons we have something in common. I wish us both strength and light.

    • Nellie Nair  February 14, 2019 at 8:58 pm Reply

      Hi Connie ,
      I am facing the same problem as you . My husband passed away three weeks ago . I am finding hard to cope , I cannot sleep at night . My life is only both of us without anybody all through the years we been marriage for 45 years. My only hope is to join him fast. I believed in a after life. Every morning I served him my breadfast and talked to him tell him to come and bring me with him.I wish you are staying near to me so we can met.

    • Daryl Descallar  March 1, 2019 at 8:43 pm Reply

      Hello Connie. My wife of 26 years died last Nov 2018 a day after my birthday. I agree with all the things you have said. It is a difficult thing we are going through but God is there to minister to us moment by moment and help us readjust and give meaning to our life. God bless us as we read Psalm 23- ‘tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff they COMFORT me. God cares for the widows.

  98. Joey  December 23, 2018 at 9:46 am Reply

    Hi folks – I noticed almost all posts are female . Not sure if it’s because most men think feeiling sorrow, grief , loneliness after a death of loved ones is ‘ weak ‘ or what . Certainly there are many men out there that have had loses and feel like the rest of us on here . However , I’m not too proud , not feel weak as a man by saying I am struggling like everyone on this post . I lost my mom & dad , aunt & my brother all within a year of one another. Loved them all, the last to go & the one that hurts the most ? My mom .
    Always so strong , she loved life , took great care of herself , was 56, but moved like someone half her age & had a huge , caring heart . Trying to make this brief as possible , just grateful to share with others that understand the sorrow and all the other unpleasant emotions that come with .
    Im 31 , divorced , and caregave for all mentioned above .
    Finally , mom , my world . My reason for surviving the horrid deaths of the others . Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer , passed 3 months ago . She beat the statistics of her type cancer by living a year or so when given 2 months , tops , as the doctor put it . Nothing is the same anymore. After all the loses , friends don’t know what to say , so they disappeared .
    No family left here & all joy is lost . Feel as I’m just existing in hopes I’ll feel interest , joy , peace , anything again … pushing is exhausting & basically you know they aren’t coming back yet so hard to accept that . God bless you , all . I know how difficult it all is & I pray god gets us through this until he takes us home to heaven . Peace everyone.

    • Bernadette  December 31, 2018 at 11:33 am Reply

      Thank you for sharing Joey. I felt your pain reading that. I lost two young very close friends this year suddenly and it’s been a shock to be without them. The unexpected profound loneliness has knocked me for six. Something useful I read is that loneliness tells us something now needs to change so I’m moving back closer to my family. Hopefully will be the silver lining to the recent grief.

  99. Joey  December 23, 2018 at 9:40 am Reply

    Hi folks – I noticed almost all posts are female . Not sure if it’s because most men think feeiling sorrow, grief , loneliness after a death of loved ones is ‘ weak ‘ or what . Certainly there are many men out there that have had loses and feel like the rest of us on here . However , I’m not too proud , not feel weak as a man by saying I am struggling like everyone on this post . I lost my mom & dad , aunt & my brother all within a year of one another. Loved them all, the last to go & the one that hurts the most ? My mom .
    Always so strong , she loved life , took great care of herself , was 56, but moved like someone half her age & had a huge , caring heart . Trying to make this brief as possible , just grateful to share with others that understand the sorrow and all the other unpleasant emotions that come with .
    Im 31 , divorced , and caregave for all mentioned above .
    Finally , mom , my world . My reason for surviving the horrid deaths of the others . Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer 3 months ago . She beat the statistics of her type cancer by living a year or so when given 2 months , tops , as the doctor put it . Nothing is the same anymore. After all the loses , friends don’t know what to say , so they disappeared .
    No family left here & all joy is lost . Feel as I’m just existing in hopes I’ll feel interest , joy , peace , anything again … pushing is exhausting & basically you know they aren’t coming back yet so hard to accept that . God bless you , all . I know how difficult it all is & I pray god gets us through this until he takes us home to heaven . Peace everyone.

  100. Brandy Rice  December 10, 2018 at 9:26 am Reply

    I just lost my mom due to a massive stroke. In the beginning my friends seemed so supportive and now I haven’t really heard from them much, no cards ,no visits or anything. I’m so hurt. My mom passed away October 10, 2018 and I’m so lost and confused. It feels like no one really cares about me.

    • Emme  December 11, 2018 at 7:04 pm Reply

      To me, grief seems like a long and lonely road. If you have family that are sympathetic and one or more close friends, at least you can take some comfort from that and count yourself very fortunate. There are some persons who through circumstances, etc. , do not have that human help and it makes the grief process very difficult and perhaps even more protracted. I know that gratitude is an attitude that we should pray to enlarge, but that is also a hard thing to do when feeling so alone, sad, and depressed. Hopefully, it may help to write one another here in this venue, because walking that long and lonely road does give us understanding of the deep pain and real anguish of grief. I hope you may sense my sympathy and my hope for your mental and emotional to be strengthened and stabilized. With best wishes to you.

  101. Tonia lovett  December 4, 2018 at 2:00 am Reply

    I lost my dad march 20th. 8 months ago. He died in my arms as i prayed with him 8 minutes after being taken from the ventilator. Im 47 and ive never been without him. I cry everyday still and i just cant beat this grief. I am a female veteran and my dad was so proud of me. I feel guilty driving his truck, parting ways with his belongings,…i still have his belongings from the hospital in the patient bag. I go to grief counseling but its not budging this pain im feeling. I want my dad back

  102. wendy scaramuzzino  November 27, 2018 at 10:28 pm Reply

    I lost my husband suddenly after 36 years of marriage 40 years together just 6 weeks it was so sudden one day he was here and the next he was gone I have had so much heartache in my life I am just not understanding why all this has happened to me first I lost my brother only 15 years old from a football injury I was only 17 at the time it was a very sad time than my first husband at the age of 20 left with 2 children to raise than my sister passed from the worst case of rheumatoid arthritis I her hand till she passed I lost a daughter on her 20th birthday and watched as they turned off her life support she was born with heart defects and was just tired from the fight my father died in my arms my Mom had a stroke and lived in Florida by the time my sisters and I got there she couldn’t talk we stayed by her side till she took her last breath and now I sit her at the age of 68 alone I watched my husband take his last breath just weeks ago on my living room floor from a massive heart attack my children and grand children are devastated this is not what I envisioned for the golden years of my life now what??? I’m so lonely and sad without him he was our families rock

    • bridget  November 28, 2018 at 5:57 am Reply

      ooh!i feel how sad you are dear, take heart and stand in the gap to pray for your family

    • Samantha Hill  December 9, 2018 at 6:21 am Reply

      I’m sat in tears reading your post.. What heartache you’ve had to deal with. I’m so sorry you’re feeling like this. I’ve suffered trauma and loss but nothing to the extent you have. I know the feelings will never fully go away but i hope one day you feel content and strong enough to realise what a strong woman you are. Your grandkids are very lucky to have you.

    • Jem  April 20, 2019 at 1:08 am Reply

      Wendy,

      Reading your post, I can’t imagine the torment you go through, having dealt with so much loss. I’m extremely saddened by your story, but also inspired, at how you continue on. I lost my husband and at times, wonder where I find the strength to continue, but losing siblings, and a child, and two spouses… I feel foolish being sad about my own loss. I will pray that God gives you some Joy I’m your golden years. For you are golden, and although we don’t fully understand death, we can live rest assured that your story provides strength for others. ( I know that doesn’t provide you with comfort, and I would be wondering why?) However if there is some connection in the universe as we all will suffer loss at one point or another, I’m sending as much love as I possibly can to you and your family. May your continue to push on. Be blessed.

  103. An  November 26, 2018 at 12:54 pm Reply

    My mom just passed away a little less than a week ago. She was my best friend, my everything. She passed away from a battle with stage 4 lung cancer. I took care of her for the last few weeks of her life (she lived out of province). Going back home to an empty bedroom where I would lay down after a long day at work and just talk to her, pour my heart out to her. I don’t have that anymore and it’s hard to go on. I don’t have many friends or family. The only few family members I began to talk to just before she passed for her sake, don’t even reach out to me. I haven’t heard from them since she passed. This has been the hardest thing I have faced in my life and I just feel so alone and lost. Everything reminds me of her and I don’t know how to get past this.

    • deborah  February 8, 2019 at 1:20 pm Reply

      I have had a similar experience following two major losses less than a year apart. I had no support from family or friends which I found both shocking and depressing. People I had supported through losses in the past were not proper friends so I am still coping with not only grief but feelings of being let down/betrayed by so called friends and family members who I thought would be there for me. When youre feeling so vulnerable the last thing you need is to be effectively invalidated by selfish people. It causes you to question all relationships and to seek out truly kind people.

  104. Kristin  October 31, 2018 at 10:23 am Reply

    My mother passed very unexpectedly 5 months ago and I too feel an open hole in my heart. My father passed many years ago and I have no siblings or romantic partner. I thought I was doing pretty well considering but suddenly the loneliness has kicked in. I have friends but it’s hard for me to be around them for any length of time. I don’t care about their broken washing machines or other trivial (to me) concerns. I believe this impatience with people will pass in time but until then, I’m hiding out in my house. Hiding out doesn’t seem healthy so I’m trying to figure out who I am now that my mother is gone. I’m trying new solo hobbies and just trying to find something that brings joy to my life. Right now I feel like my mom’s dog (I promised her I’d keep him) is the only one who understands…ha…crazy….Thanks for listening.

    1
    • Sarah  March 7, 2019 at 12:53 am Reply

      I just wanted to say that I am so with you on being annoyed when people start going off about trivial concerns. My father died in January, I am DEVASTATED, and to my friends, it’s like nothing happened. I can’t listen to you complain about nothing things when I am just being dragged down by sadness, people. Be grateful that those are the only problems you have.

  105. Jack  October 15, 2018 at 1:32 pm Reply

    “You will never fill your loved one’s void, that simply won’t happen. Instead, you have to work slowly, slowly to fill in the abyss.”

    I don’t get it. You will never fill the void, but you have to work to fill it in? And later you say you can in a way… Can you please explain this?

  106. Terese Backshall  October 11, 2018 at 9:15 am Reply

    I lost my Dad in May this year and my partner 18 days later.I am in a deep hole of despair.I cannot work and find just getting out of bed every day a major achievement. I did have some supportive friends in the beginning but I feel they now find me too difficult and so I now isolate myself.I feel angry that they expect me to just move on.I cannot relate to them anymore and find it is easier just not to bother.This probably sounds selfish but I need to be able to grieve on my own terms and cannot live up to anyone elses expectations of grief following some time line.So all the loneliness of losing my two best friends has now snow balled into me feeling totally alone.I just cannot accept that I am now supposed to feel some sense of shame for not coping.It is a terrible time.

  107. Madison  June 28, 2018 at 11:26 am Reply

    I wish I could meet you guys one by one in person, we could hug and cry, and then go simply DO something life affirming together like a hike or a concert or row a boat or anything of that sort.

    This is the short version which will be told discombobulated style for brevity: 3 yrs ago my best friend died, it was a good death at least. Father got sick and died, it was a terrible death – nightmarish actually as my mother started declining into dementia but was in charge of his health care and kept undoing everything…dad was in incredible pain and I never got quality time with him as I was running around and he chose to ignore me and but chatted happily with my cousins etc.. right in front of my face( we had a good relationship previously ) Funeral/s was a nightmare as well due to mom and another delay for the military aspect of it…( one church one Arlington ) Went back to work and found my favorite client had died and favorite coworker had left. On my dad’s burial day I called my long term partner/boyfriend and he told me his mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and now ‘it was his turn’ . So literally every single day I listened to him and my mom and it was never enough for either of them. Felt awful for my bf but he also had zero comprehension what I was bearing. I could not do enough of what he wanted. Not one friend called me when Dad died, and I DO have friends. Nor a card…people just blurted condolences on Facebook. I got a card from work. During this same period of time an Aunt died, a favorite uncle died, another uncle recently died, and due to the crazy economics of this place my 5 closest and most reciprocal friends ( non of us fair-weathers ) moved far away to separate places. Of course my boyfriend’s mom died in the middle of this and I skipped my favorite uncle’s funeral to support him – not to kvetch about that but trying to do the right thing…anyhoo then all during this time trying to help mom find a retirement place, move her, empty and sell a FULL house – Dad was kind of a hoarder – plus SIX storage units – and this was the childhood home, many memories, etc…BF has to empty and sell a house too and after he realizes he is going to come into money, starts smoking pot ALL day every day and talking about moving out so we could live happily apart?? I figure we’ll have the big talk after my childhood home gets emptied and sold as I was up to my ears…Oh yes and then he wants to scatter his mom’s ashes in another country so I sacrifice my two week work break for that – no regrets there but oi yoi – anyhoo meanwhile tons of mom drama plus she ends up in and out of the ER for passing out…hence delaying the ‘you need to stop smoking so much pot and let’s discuss our future’ talk…during this whole time I got professional help but only helpful family was my mom’s sister who lives 3000 miles away. My own literally insane sister and her husband show up after a 20 year disappearance, ask for and take the silverware, do virtually nothing to help empty the house or help with anything – not even a scrap of paper did they move to recycling – and start having ‘lunch’ with mom and she thinks they’re wonderful!! Longs story but sis has a history of trying to snow relatives for money. So now I have this money grubbing insane sister I’m trying to stave off from ripping of mom’s money and mom with rose colored glasses starts pressuring me to get close to them. Mom also talks and repeats constantly, so she talks about my sister and complains about my dad over and over and over…flash forward cue my boyfriends smoking getting worse, then ten minutes before a meeting with agents about who will buy the childhood home, I find my bf’s lost phone in my car with text messages to some woman…yup he was trying to hook up with someone, it turns out right around the time I was running back and forth to the ERs for my mom. My long term relationship ends. Also during this year I try and fail to get a restraining order renewed ( guy really is insane ) and also get tested for and thank god am not positive for cancer.

    Throughout this time I try to eat right and exercise. I talk to friends and don’t blab about myself – honestly I want to get out of myself. The house sells and passes over, my boyfriend is gone – oh yes he also made me get rid of his stuff as he refused to come in and get it. The guy I thought was a partner for life. I find myself alone in the place where we lived with my family dead or crazy and my support network is literally gone. No nieces or nephews, no children, no husband, turning late 40’s. All this time I’ve exercised, tried to eat right, and lord knows I’m not perfect but I’ve tried to do my duties. I do what you’re supposed to do – exercise, sign up for a kickboxing class, plan activities. Throughout all that time I’ve talked to friends a bit and have not babbled exclusively about myself, in fact I’ve said I would just like to do ‘life’ type things and distractions…truly. Well everyone is gone and too busy even for a cup of coffee. All I want is some companionship. I start sinking. I keep trying to do the right things and reach out and ask literally for what I need. My birthday comes up, after 3 years of skipping it due to someone dying every year that time I tell two friends, look, if we could just have a cupcake with a candle in it, that would mean a LOT. I know it’s ridiculous, but it would really mean something to me. One friend says she’ll hang out with me so I plan a full day of fun. I look forward to it so much. I tell her to please please let me know if she has to work. She promises she’s free and we’ll do cake etc.. Day comes and she flakes for work. I spend my whole birthday alone sobbing. Not one friend calls but people say happy birthday on text and facebook. My mom calls, as do the estate lawyer, financial planner, and cousin to discuss family estate stuff. I still go to kickboxing, cry all day, and literally call several people asking them to call me. I’m not crying when I call. I say I just want to chat. These folks all know my history and about my long term now dead relationship. Nobody. Calls.

    I feel kneecapped. I can honestly say I’ve tried really really really hard not to be that self pitying boob and I’ve REALLY tried hard to reach out but for what. There are goals and dreams in my life too but it seems the only worth I have is when it comes to helping others. Now I am that self pitying leper. I read about support networks and friends and family and how that can help and cry more because all people goddamn do is text. I dream about dead people or my ex every night, or I simply dream someone hugs me. Fyi I do have a counselor who is the only consistent person in my life and it’s hard not to think that’s because I pay her. In fact the most consistent people in my life now are people who get money from me.

    I feel like a textbook case of doing the right self care things, and am failing regardless. This is how I find myself pouring my heart out to total strangers on the internet. What kind of world is this when everyone’s faces are shoved into texting and ‘meme’s and not a 5 minute phone call where it really would just be a chat. What has happened to real life and real company and real sight, smell, and touch? If I didn’t have my pets or knew I’d disappoint people I would kill myself and I’m not the suicidal type. Been strong for so long and now I am crawling through every day trying not to destroy myself. Crying for help to empty air!

    This is why I sincerely send everyone here blessings, and a REAL walk and a real cup of coffee with an actual person while we watch the birds fly overhead. Thank you so so much for hearing me…I truly wish you all the best

    • Vera Bilen  November 2, 2018 at 1:27 pm Reply

      wow i am astonished by you holding up
      what a hell of a ride

      how are you holding up now. hope you have enough madness in you to roll with it a little bit

    • Jay  November 28, 2018 at 8:57 am Reply

      Madison do you have an email?

    • Pam Stanke  December 8, 2018 at 7:44 pm Reply

      Hi Madison, I really enjoyed reading your very well written story. I can identify with many of the issues you spoke about, Stay strong and always believe in yourself. Take care Pam

    • Jennifer  April 1, 2019 at 2:54 am Reply

      Hi Madison.i read your story and I was very touched by it.i have just lost my husband in February 2019 from stage 4 cancer.nice if we could become friends.i live in Australia

  108. Pam  June 22, 2018 at 8:44 pm Reply

    My husband and I married at 16 and 17. Married for 41 years. I grew up with him. He passed away 3 years ago and I still cant cope with daily things. I go to work because I have to support myself now, if that wasnt the case I would be home everyday feeling like a shell of myself, I cry at the drop of a hat sometimes so hard I cry myself to sleep. More often then not I hope I dont wake up. How long does this last, I know everyone has their own way of getting past this, but no matter what Ive done, even been to counseling, moved into a retirement community to try and make new friends and I come right back to not wanting to leave the house. I miss him so much I’m miserable all the time. My kids won’t talk about him, in fact nobody does, why is that? I bring his name up all the time.

  109. Steve Peterson  June 6, 2018 at 6:47 pm Reply

    I have been thinking for a while which word best describes me: alone or lonely. To tell you the truth, you slip back and forth between those to categories. I was married for 44 years, married at age 19. The last 14 years of her life, she had declining health. I was the caregiver the last couple of years since she could not be alone for a very long time. I had to make some brutal decisions after a couple of back-to-back hospital stays where one doctor to the lead to tell me that the care could not continue and to select a hospice person to discuss her care. She had in-home care, and not at a hospice facility. The hospice nurse came out on a Tuesday, and my wife died in bed with me on Wednesday morning. She had awoken at 3:30 AM wanting a sip of water and for me to rub her back. When I awoke at about 6:00 AM, I could see she had possibly passed away. I wasn’t sure at first. I put a pulse reader on her finger and it said “OFF” and I was trying to figure out what that meant. Later, I understood the little machine thought it had slipped off the finger since it couldn’t read a pulse. We have all been through our private hell. It’s been 14 months now. Usually, I would be crying when I write a response like this. Something has changed. I took a 5-week trip to New Zealand. My son is building a new house out in the country. I am taking an on-line course. i drive my grand daughters around to different activities. I remind myself that my wife would not want me to suffer over her passing, and she would not want me to be alone. I plan to join Match.com. I am ready. I can do this. I have hope.

    1
  110. Patty  June 6, 2018 at 3:48 pm Reply

    My boyfriend of 17 years died almost 3 weeks ago. He had not been feeling well for almost 4 months, and was depressed still from the loss of his Mom over a year ago. I went to his apartment on a Saturday, one of our usual “date days” , and found him unresponsive on his bed, unable to speak and breathing with difficulty. I called 911, and he was taken to the local hospital. Backing up a little, the year before, he had a stroke and spent 2 1/2 weeks in a hospital about an hour’s drive from here. The experience was traumatic for a man with social anxiety disorder, and he was obsessive/compulsive “clean and orderly” as well. He was not bathed, or shaven during his hospital stay. When I Brought him home, one of the first things he did was to fill out a MOLST form, stating that if he was ever found unconscious again, he could be taken to the hospital, but only for comfort care. No life giving procedures. I was his health care proxy, and I had to enforce this MOLST paper for him. After almost 5 days in the hospital, he was taken to a local nursing home for Hospice care. He had previously told me on several occasions (we actually talked about it constantly) that he did not want to live. His world had slowly been disappearing, the family business was sold due to his Dad’s illness, then his Dad died and his Mom became ill a few years later. He cared for his Mom, as he had for his Dad, and when the stress of caring for her, and his own illnesses, (he also was severely bipolar) his Mom was taken to the nursing home. She was there for 3 months before being put in the care of Hospice. After her death, he sold the home he had lived in for almost 50 years with his parents. He made it clear to me after his stroke that if he had another stroke, or developed a terminal illness, he would be happy. He wanted to “Go Home”. With his MOLST form, and my promise to enforce it on his behalf, he died peacefully at the nursing home, knowing that he and I would lie next to each other for eternity. ( Some time before his death, we had our foot stones placed in his family plot, side by side. ) There were two plots remaining, we assumed for his sisters. When my boyfriend died, the funeral director was called, and when he got there, the sisters were quick to pull him aside and whisper something in his ear. Then he came into the room where I was sitting with my guy, and bluntly asked, “And who are You??” I told him I was the girlfriend of the deceased, to which he replied, “And how long were you in his life?” When I told him “17 years”, he told me that the second my boyfriend passed, my health care proxy ended, and that I didn’t count anymore. “The control of the body, and the funeral would be in their hands. ” I was devastated. Of course, he had to adhere to my boyfriend’s instructions as to his burial, that there to be no services, no visiting hours, he only wanted to be put into the ground. I asked if he knew about when the burial would be. “He said he would let the sisters know, and if they chose to “invite” me, I could go watch him be put in the ground. They never called, and I wasn’t surprised. My Sweetie had told me for many years, never trust my sisters. They were greedy, and vindictive. Because of his warnings, I had been driving by the cemetery every morning after his death to see if there was a hole being dug. One morning, 4 days after his death, I saw activity in the cemetery. I had missed him being put in the ground, but I got there to see the workers filling in the hole. They stopped for a few minutes so I could say my goodbye’s. Then I was informed that the sisters were insisting on my stone being removed from the family plot. It was their brother’s greatest wish that we be buried next to each other. Now, in spite of losing the love of my life, I am having to battle to keep my stone where it is. This is not over yet. Attorneys are trying to sort this all out, and I feel totally empty and alone. Why do people have to be like this???

  111. Meagan  March 1, 2018 at 11:20 pm Reply

    I never knew loneliness until my mom passed away unexpectedly. Now loneliness is a prominent emotion.

  112. Meagan  March 1, 2018 at 11:20 pm Reply

    I never knew loneliness until my mom passed away unexpectedly. Now loneliness is a prominent emotion.

  113. Terah  December 17, 2017 at 5:41 pm Reply

    My boyfriend just had a stroke and he has congestive heart failure unfortunately his family as in his kids won’t let me go be with him, or see him or communicate with him at all. I haven’t been away from him for 3 n a half years and now I’m so depressed, I feel empty inside almost like I want to die myself I don’t understand and I’m so lost without him

  114. Terah  December 17, 2017 at 5:41 pm Reply

    My boyfriend just had a stroke and he has congestive heart failure unfortunately his family as in his kids won’t let me go be with him, or see him or communicate with him at all. I haven’t been away from him for 3 n a half years and now I’m so depressed, I feel empty inside almost like I want to die myself I don’t understand and I’m so lost without him

  115. Renae  August 7, 2017 at 10:40 pm Reply

    I lost my husband of nearly 32 years about 6 1/2 weeks ago. I have adult children that are trying to be there for me, yet I am still so lonely. I have no one who can truly share the memories we made or plans that we had for the future. My husband and I relied on each other for social interaction because we both tended to keep to ourselves and were family oriented. Now, I must trudge on alone and wonder if there will ever be anyone that I will feel as comfortable with again. There have been moments where I wish my life would just end. How do we get through this? I am glad I have come across this site. Thanks.

  116. kathy peach  July 10, 2017 at 11:34 pm Reply

    My mother died on July 12, 1976. I was 26 years old. My children never got to meet her.It does get easier with the passage of time. So many things she would say to me I CAN STILL REMEMBER TODAY.

  117. Terry  June 30, 2017 at 11:22 pm Reply

    I can’t believe the grief I have. I lost my husband 7 months ago. We were married 52 years. He as my everything. He died suddenly of a stroke. I didn’t get to say goodbye. There is so many understand questions. I have 2 grown married children. Some days I don’t want to go on. All I want to do is sleep. I know I need grief counseling. I can barely function. I don’t eat well. Every night I tell myself that I will do better tomorrow but I don’t. This is the hardest time of my life.

    • Karen  July 30, 2017 at 10:54 pm Reply

      Terry…….hugs to u. I am so sorry for your loss. My husband and I were married 20 yrs when he died suddenly of a heart attack. His death brought me to my knees. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you after 52 yrs.
      The first yr I didn’t leave my sofa if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Finally, after nearly 7yrs, I’m starting to live again. It’s going to take time….a lot of it. Grieve as long as you need. Trust me, it will get better. You will always have days when the grief comes out of no where and slaps you in the face. We have to learn to live w that, sadly. Praying God helps ease your broken heart.

  118. Carol Dague  June 28, 2017 at 12:58 pm Reply

    I find myself contemplating both “the absence of presence” and “the presence of absence” in my grief journey of (loneliness) losing my husband of 39 years. Grieving not only for what was lost, but what never will be. Acceptance is difficult, but necessary. Godspeed to all.

  119. Miss Mac  June 27, 2017 at 11:17 am Reply

    SPOT ON

  120. Tracy Scheel  June 27, 2017 at 10:33 am Reply

    Wow…this So accurately states what I am feeling. I am an unmarried only child(47 years old.) My mom passed away June 12, 2016, and I lost dad January 23 this year. Those 7 months with just dad were a mixed blessing, missing mom, but deepening our relationship. To have him torn from me by a broken hip was heartbreaking.

    Yes, I have many wonderful friends, and cousins, and aunts and uncle, but the mom and dad shaped holes in my life are sometimes unbearable. I enjoy myself at work and running errands, and spending time with others, but at some point, there’s always that time that I have to walk into the empty house. I was a caregiver for my mom’s venous stasis leg wounds for so many years, that it just seems strange to not have to change bandages and DO things for her. And I still havent figured out what is worse…the acquaintances who ask me if I’m enjoying my freedom, or the ones who say “it’s really lonely, I’ll bet.”

    Thank you for the perfect article.

    • Sandy  January 23, 2018 at 6:01 am Reply

      Tracy,
      I understand your pain. I lost my mom on 2/16/15 and my dad on 10/12/17. I took care of my mom alone raising my children also for seven years with stage four ovarian cancer. It’s hard going from having so much to do to nothing to do. My children became adults and moved out and my mom was my best friend. Very small family. Just my sister and I and only one cousin. My sister and I live in different states. So not close enough to drive for visit. I spent last night crying off and on the whole evening. Sometimes I’m ok, and sometimes I’m not. Somehow, we will get through this.
      Sandy

  121. Auggie  August 25, 2016 at 9:48 am Reply

    To My Family / August 15, 2016

    As I try to make sense of what happened in our family and its effects, I wish to share with you my feelings about Ma and Bah Bah.

    Looking back at our parents’ personalities, I can see a little bit of both of them in each of us. The good and the bad. Not only in our basic dispositions, but in how we may respond to the kicks and kisses of life. More significant than Ma and Bah Bah’s inherent traits, I believe, was how they reacted to their lot in life, not only to conditions from the outside, but their interaction with each other in coping with those conditions. Financial hardship seemed to reign and we had only glimpses of their true selves. What if Ma and Bah Bah had similar life conditions and experiences to ours? They had only basic education in a faraway country and alien language and had to toil and sweat to make a living in this country. But what if they were able somehow to get higher education and become professionals, like we were? Bah Bah surely would have pursued his interest in the natural sciences or technology rather than having to work in laundry sweat shops; and Ma had a dream of being a nurse or a teacher rather than working long hours in the laundry and later as a seamstress (although she derived great pride in her reputation as an excellent worker and the shop owners’ reliance on her expertise—I still have her work logs reflecting the minimal pay she got for a day’s work). But, alas, Fortuna dealt some pretty tough blows. Yet, perhaps we can say that Fortuna showed mercy to them after all, through us. Ma and Bah Bah both found solace through us. “Look at our children, they all went to excellent schools and they are all successful at their jobs because of our sacrifices,” they both said at one time or another.

    Their lives were filled with hardship: an early impoverished existence, a long stressful time of hand-to-mouth existence, and, sadly, the seed of love for each other (as I looked at a long-forgotten studio wedding photo of them facing an uncertain future) never had a chance to blossom, only to be slain by the hand that Fortuna dealt them. And so they didn’t have the tools to do other than take their life’s frustrations out on each other and, sometimes, on us. I accepted this in Ma and Bah Bah and since have forgiven them. We all saw and heard the dark side of their souls, the hatred and bitterness that manifested itself each to the other and to us, which pushed us away from them. Later, after Bah Bah retired, I noticed his hatred and much of his bitterness towards Ma had dissipated, but by then it was too little too late to garner forgiveness from Ma and ameliorate his lonely existence (I tried to help by providing him and Ma with funds for summer trips to various places and so did Mike with his family by their visits, having restaurant meals, and Ma’s vacation cruise). Woefully, Ma never lost her bitterness, especially while Bah Bah was alive.

    But why was that for her? I believe her early childhood experiences, without a living, breathing model of this newfound unfamiliar Christian religion adopted by her mother that had the martyr Jesus at its center (which really could have helped), molded her into an unforgiving person who would hold on to grudges and only remember the mistreatments. Her mother was not loving toward Ma, despite all the responsibilities Ma took on for her; so, Ma deeply resented that. Her siblings behaved thoughtlessly, as any youngsters do and, at times, and from her perspective, whether it was reasonable or not, she felt mistreated and suffered from feeling they treated her like their personal hired maid. For the rest of her life, she would rather not have any dealings with them or even be reminded of them, for only thus could she forget the past. Her demons would come out, though, when her memories were dredged up. I knew those ugly demons were always lurking there, just below the surface, and she knew it, too, and she tried to keep them at bay as best as she could. She told me she prayed that God always protect her from harm. She believed that God was always there for her because she survived it all. Those feelings allowed me a glimmer of a frightened little girl inside her, yearning for love and protection (I’m tearing a little bit right now as I remember those fleeting moments when I perceived that little girl. If only she knew enough to pray for delivery from the burden of those dark feelings).

    Despite the dark and gloomy years, she did have fond memories of her kind and loving uncle (from whom she often told me that she had learned a lot), her father (who loved her), and her high-school friend (one of the few who treated her kindly; I think she was the one who died from an incompatible blood transfusion.). I vaguely recall seeing her once when I was with Ma having lunch at an air-conditioned restaurant in Hong Kong; I still remember the cold air and the smells of the food. Ma ordered a dish of fish with tomato sauce for both of us; I don’t remember what her friend had. They talked and then we went back home (in San Tin or her parents’ apartment where we all had lived before moving to San Tin).

    My last five years with Ma were a blessing. After she was in the hospital a couple of years ago from a bout of very high blood pressure and she was put on medication for it, I think she realized that when she started all the negative talk (and thinking) about the past, she was riling herself and her blood pressure up, and so she eased up on that and was more able to enjoy the present moments. She would always make known to her apartment neighbors that, “He is my son!” I was not embarrassed at all by that because they understood she was proud. I’m glad that she was able to support herself comfortably without financial worries and that as long as she lived she saw us all still well employed, hoping and praying that our jobs would last till our retirements. I spent as much time with her as I could. Before moving to New London because of my job change, I had visited her almost daily because we lived only a few blocks from each other; after the move, I visited her twice a week: taking her blood pressure and eating meals on Wednesdays, and delivering groceries and medicine on Saturdays. “Here’s some money for the take out,” she would say when I brought her Singapore lo mein, or she would ask what I would like to have, “Rice porridge or Chinese seafood with ramen noodle?” “I feel like having rice porridge and please make enough for my next day’s lunch,” I would say and always thanked her for it. She made quarts of red bean drink for summer days; I brought her dumplings and chicken feet whenever I came back from Boston Chinatown, roasted chicken legs for the last few years’ Thanksgivings, and this Chinese New Year we had seafood hot pot with lobster. These small moments I wish you hadn’t missed with Ma are what I treasure. So it’s not surprising that I cried inwardly when I finished the remaining portions of her cooked rice for my lunches last week. I poured out a small portion of iced tea that she had made for me and went outside the office building with it; while standing in the hot humidity, staring at the summer sky, I cried inwardly as I gave thanks to her for my cold tea. There’s still a half a bottle of it in our breakroom’s refrigerator.

    The year before he died, I once saw that Bah Bah had tears in his eyes while he was looking up at the Brooklyn blue sky. I didn’t ask why and to this day I wish I had. I saw a tear in Ma’s eye while she was in ICU; I didn’t ask why because I sensed that she knew she was dying. I fervently held on to her hand and brushed her tear away and told her I was there with her. I was so glad for that. I share in Mike’s grief that Bah Bah died alone.

    As I was wheeling her into the Emergency Room for her workup after she had already experienced the cardiogenic shock, remembering the ER visit a couple of days before having to wait for hours and hours before seeing the doctor, she said to be sure to buy sandwiches for both of us from the vending machine because we hadn’t had our lunch yet.

    And those were the last few words she said to me.

    So, under sad circumstances, we came together. The four of us were with her at the end, holding each other’s hands, and for that I am very grateful.

    In the end, I pray that Ma and Bah Bah forgive each other, as they are joined for eternity.

    Oh, life. We think we have all the time in the world. But, now I am more aware than ever that we don’t. And with these thoughts of all of us, Ma and Bah Bah, and with prayers and hopes, let us go forward in peace with the knowledge that life is short, a new sense of compassion and love for Ma and Bah Bah, a more objective understanding of our upbringing, a deeper appreciation of the love in our lives, for our spouses and kin; and our own softening remembrances of things past.

    Love, Auggie

    As a follow up message to my family on the passing of our Ma.

    Wednesdays have become something of a melancholic time for me. That’s not so surprising because that was when I would usually go and visit Ma after leaving early from work.

    So yesterday afternoon, I took a break and brought my last cup of tea to go outside to be alone and feeling the last bit of summer heat. I thought about Ma while drinking the tea and then I suddenly realized that I already drank half of the last remaining cup of tea (a bottle of tea that she had made for me). After walking around outside my office building, I went back and put the remaining tea in the freezer.

    I was mildly depressed for the rest of the afternoon, while still working on regulatory rules against the deadline.

    While driving home, I had an epiphany. That inner voice that, once in awhile, made itself known and then carried on a conversation with me (and no, I’m not crazy. That voice has been like a guardian angel that reassured me on those occasions that things would be alright and not to worry about those major events.).

    It asked me to think about what actually happened from another perspective. Didn’t it gave me a chance to take Ma to the park on Thursday that she usually didn’t want to go outside for the longest while? Yes, we went out to the farmer’s market in the park that warm summer afternoon. Weren’t we happy? Yes. Didn’t she greet her neighbors who were sitting outside the Roger’s House? Yes. Didn’t she hear one of neighbors who saw us and said what a good son I was? Yes. Then that Friday, didn’t it allow Ma to have a transient coronary blockage and thus allowed us to spend more 12 hours together in the emergency room? Yes. And then afterwards, didn’t I sleep in that old bunk bed in her apartment before heading out to pick up our McDonald breakfast and her weekly groceries? Yes. Didn’t we have the Saturday breakfast together? Yes. Didn’t it allow Ma to live to call me that Sunday afternoon after she had her profound cardiogenic shock? Yes. Didn’t it allow her to live long enough to know that we were all there with her in ICU and that she didn’t pass away alone? I said yes. So, what more could it have done for me? And finally I said thank you!

    With love,

    Auggie

    • Jan Rake Hernandez  June 30, 2017 at 7:17 pm Reply

      Auggie, I do not know you obviously, but your outpoured honesty about your relationships with your parents struck an entire chord of notes deep within me. My parents were raised during the Great Depression, and suffered many hardships at young ages from which they never recovered emotionally as well. Then my father fought in the Korean War, during which time his younger brother, also serving nearby, was killed. These traumas necessarily took their toll on my parents and marred their emotional lives together…. things I, as an only child, only began piecing together in their last years when cleaning out their home for them to sell, and discovering that each had saved love letters from the other from decades before — most likely unbeknownst to each other.

      It was in these final 6 years of life when I came to know my parents as people, and to embrace them as they were… And now, grieve their absence, as well as grieve that it took me so very long to “truly see” them for their true worth.

      Thank you for sharing your heart here. May the Lord bless and keep you, until the time we can be finally reunited in wholeness.

  122. Amanda  August 18, 2016 at 2:17 pm Reply

    I have been looking for an article about just this. I lost my mom about 15 months ago. At that moment my life stopped, my mom was my better half, my soul mate my best friend. Since loosing her, I have felt that apart of my soul died with her. I am married and I have a very supportive family, however I still feel very alone, I haven’t been able to open up to any one of them like I did to my mom. I know this is just the new normal, but its not fun, it sad.

  123. Marisa  August 4, 2016 at 1:44 pm Reply

    Thank you. Your post (and the comments) make me feel a little less alone in this. My mother was my everything- my best friend, my memory, my protector, my champion, my confidant- and now she is gone forever. I have no family now, and while I love my friends, they are not enough. “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone”, and she’s never coming back. It’s been three years, and I am trying so hard to find some sense of meaning and joy in my life, but I have yet to find anything to fill the void. I’ve tried to explain this is my friends, but I don’t think they “get” it or, maybe they do, but there’s just nothing they can do to help. And, after three years, it feels like everyone thinks I should be “over it” by now.

    • Sandy  June 17, 2019 at 3:30 am Reply

      I totally get you. I don’t know if your still on this site, I see this post was from 2016, but if you are, my mom passed in 2015 so it been a little over 31/2 years and my friends didn’t seem to understand where I was coming from either and it was fusterating. I think grief is never ending and as time goes by it feels worse, the longing starts the loneliness for my mom really came on this year. I long to talk to her on the phone. Make plans to go for lunch or shopping. I miss her so much I get an ache in my throat. When I cry my daughter says what’s wrong they don’t remember your still grieving or the you just think it should be over I don’t know. The thing is people who haven’t lost there mom or there dad can’t relate even if you explain it to them. They are not on the same page as us. But when it happens to them they will get it. They will go through what we’re going through, they won’t have a choice it is normal feelings, sadness, longing, emptiness,forgetful, feeling anxious,crying, seeing others with there moms you feel a bit envious, then the lump in the throats comes trying to stop the tears when your in public, for fear that ppl will look at you and wonder what’s going on with you. The first few years was it didn’t feel real, I don’t think the true grief sets in till the 2 and 3rd year, because when they first pas on that day it’s shock, and you feel numb, then you cry, then you get up in the morning and for that split second as your crawling out of bed you think they are still here then reality sets in then you cry they really are gone. It’s horrible, then you get anxious, kind of a panicky feeling, hard to explain. My husband well I had to ask for him to hold me while I cried, wished he tuned in and came to me, it hurts to cry alone, you kind of feel abandoned, what you really want is mom there to get you through losing her. I know that sounds a bit odd but that’s how I felt, she was such a loving mom, she would know exactly what to do, she protected me, I could tell her anything, she used to use words like sweetie sweetheart, my nick name was dolly, she would say you will always be my dolly. When I was little she said I looked like a little dolly, so cute. That’s what she said, I cherish that so much. It brings tears to my eyes and my heart ponds when I think of this. She was an amazing mom raising three kids on her own, worked a full time job to look after us. I am very proud of my mom and love her dearly.

  124. Tom Tweddale  August 3, 2016 at 3:44 pm Reply

    Wow. This is right ON. Today is the 4 month mark of my wife’s death. April 3, 2016 began my horrendous sense of loss and LONELINESS. Although I have three grown children who love me very much, the emptiness I feel for my wife of 27 years haunts me. I feel like a leg has been amputated, and now I must adjust to limping through life. The Bible says, The two shall become one.” How devastatingly true that is. A big part of me has been cut out. Thanks so much for clearing my mind about the loneliness I am feeling each day.I look forward to reading more of your messages. Thanks.

  125. Della Sacco  August 3, 2016 at 3:07 pm Reply

    This is very much how I now feel. My lover husband and best friend of 52 years died in September . I can’t seem to resolve the loneliness without him. With children and grandchildren around me I can’t reconcile myself to the emptiness and loss I feel. Your article really resonated with me. Thank you.

  126. Cindy  August 3, 2016 at 12:07 pm Reply

    This is oh so true. I lost my 30 year old son just 3 months ago and have a husband and another son that I love deeply, but they are handling their grief in an entirely different way, so it is lonely for me. My husband and I are able to express our grief with each other, but I am so worried that my oldest son does not reach out to us at all. I know he is lonely and I pray everyday that he will come to us in his grief. Thank you for this.

    • Laurie  August 11, 2016 at 10:37 pm Reply

      I so understand where you are coming from. My 21 year old son died 4.5 mos. ago. My husband and I do grieve differently and my second son, is a typical boy and doesn’t emote much. He leaves for his first year of college next week and I worry about how the grief will impact this big transition.

  127. Liz  August 3, 2016 at 6:39 am Reply

    Oh so very true…
    Very worthwhile for me to read this, as it so accurately describes my current state. My 27 year old son’s life was taken 2 years ago and I & my family still struggle immensely, have come to the realisation that I am now a changed person, which increases the loneliness. I very much like the term grief friends as well. I feel closer to them than I do to my friends of long standing. I have learnt that I will have to learn to live without my son, but it will be a different me and not the me that I had always thought of being. Thank you for this article.

  128. Melissa  August 3, 2016 at 5:38 am Reply

    This is the most gut-wrenching, yet accurate description I’ve ever read. After he died, I filled my journals with these exact words. Not as neat and concince, nor legible of course. But they were/are there.

    Nicely done.

    Cheers.

  129. Eileen Rennie  August 3, 2016 at 3:56 am Reply

    Thank you for this. It could have been written for me. Although I have always been a bit of a shy introvert I never ever felt lonely until I lost my lovely husband Peter late last year. He really was my best friend, confidant and protector as well as a truly loving husband. Your words today have got to me more than any others and I am so grateful for them. Thank you.

  130. sue  August 3, 2016 at 1:45 am Reply

    I miss my son more everyday….11 years after his decision to end his life…grief never stops for me….

  131. Jeanette Winkelman  August 2, 2016 at 10:46 pm Reply

    I truly did not understand that sadness and joy can exist at the same time until recently. I find joy every day when I spend time with my loving friends and family, but so long for my loving husband. Maybe my “hole” is slowly being filled.

  132. Andrea  August 2, 2016 at 10:34 pm Reply

    I am shocked at how your words express myself. I have been pinning for my son and wondering if it were normal. So thankful to read that my slow process of yearning is working towards acceptance, using new resources and that I am not alone in this endeavor. So appreciate you.

    • Eileen  August 3, 2016 at 12:18 pm Reply

      I agree completely. Just recently I was thinking that after 1.5 years of grieving for my son, I’m trying to hide my grief from people so I don’t make them uncomfortable anymore. I realized that I do feel alone in my grief, that maybe I prefer it that way.

      1
  133. Rhonda Grundy  August 2, 2016 at 10:05 pm Reply

    My husband took his own life 4 years ago after we had been married 32 years. We were childless by choice, but sometimes the loneliness I feel, the absolute lack of that person to connect with, is almost unbearable even after this much time. I enjoy my friends who have been wonderful, but most of them go home to spouse or kids and I face my solitary life. This essay is spot-on about how it feels.

    1
    • Terri Tarango  August 6, 2016 at 3:04 pm Reply

      Wow….Rhonda Grundy, my sincere condolences. I think your loss must be the toughest…..w/that extra complicated layer of sadness and lonliness. My loss not quite 2 yrs yet, but due to move to a new city which I love, still surprised @ how lonely life still feels. 21 yrs together, no kids. ( So much so I am back in hospice grief group). Blessings to you…..hang in there…..

    • SS  August 17, 2016 at 12:24 am Reply

      I am so very heartbroken for you. Thoughts and prayers for you Rhonda.

    • Ntuthu  October 18, 2016 at 10:51 am Reply

      You know exactly how grief does after losing the one who was close to your heart
      7years down the line my 15yrs old daughter took her life she was the youngest of the 5 children.They all grown up leaving in their own homes because she was the baby I presume she will be home right now. The gap she left me with nothing can fill it up. My hubby passed on 12yrs ago .Um just trying to survive this life but emptiness is above me

      1
      • Marianne Guzzardo  October 25, 2019 at 2:03 am

        I understand the words you say, of course no one is exactly alike but I ‘get it”. ..how you feel losing your dear daughter.
        My son died of an overdose 18+ months ago.
        I’m seeking psychiatric and in therapy as I really have no desire to move on, I try though.
        He was my only child…kind of how you feel even though you had 5, just like my beloved mother had.
        I’m just muddling through life with zombie like affect…and want to be alone
        Loved ones say “help others ” it’s hard to even get my act together and out of bed to even do that! My memory from teh shock of it all is like a PSTD.
        I took care of my dad who I adored and he died 4 months before my son.
        My mom not even 4 years before all of this. I cared for her too…thought she was the hardest loss now it’s my son I long for every day. I was a hospice nurse and at almost 63 I am not going back to work after caring for mom, then dad then my sons death. I can’t think — I can hardly function. I’m just so sick of this life, everything is changed I’m no longer myself. I pray and have some decent days, but they’re so short lived. God Bless you and I will keep you and all of us in prayer for healing.
        Take care, Marianne

    • Bev  November 15, 2019 at 6:23 am Reply

      I’m 42 and have also lost my husband to suicide 8 weeks ago. We’d tried for children but had not been blessed. We’d been together for 18 years. The loneliness I feel is overwhelming and have no idea how to cope. We spent so much time together. People offer to visit or for me to go out but they don’t understand and think it’s a quick fix so that I won’t feel lonely but they don’t leave an empty house or return to an empty house or can’t talk to their partners or have someone to tell the little things that have happened. I’ve never felt so isolated in my life.

      1
      • Jim  September 27, 2020 at 10:17 am

        Bev, very sorry to hear what happened to you.

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      • Wayne  September 28, 2020 at 3:41 pm

        So sorry to hear Bev. I had lots of friends and family, but cos I was shy up till about 30, i never had a girlfriend until 53, I know what you mean about being lonely, I just dont know how I stuck it. then I went out with the girl I had know from 16 and always had a crush on her. We got on like two teenagers in love for 2 years, then she just went. that was 5 years ago, and I cried so much an hour ago as I miss her so much, life is so cruel.

        Wayne

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