Author Topic: One year anniversary  (Read 1368 times)

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Offline DaveP

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One year anniversary
« on: May 29, 2018, 06:16:33 PM »
This weekend it will be one year since my wife Helen died.  Without doubt it's been the worst year of my life.  We were together a long time (33 years) so there is this huge void in my life where Helen should be.  I still feel lost and disorientated without her. In a long relationship you get used to dealing with problems and challenges together -- I so miss talking things over with her. Also I miss sharing memories and all the little things that develop over time, like the daft jokes and catch-phrases that no one else would get. I miss hearing her singing, I even miss the crap tv shows that she liked to watch but I always laughed at.

From June to December last year I was in a daze, like I'd been hit over the head with a baseball bat. At least I was lucky to get good support from CRUSE and bereavement counselling. I thought I was almost getting used to the new situation,  but things really crashed for me at the New Year. I couldn't believe that Helen wasn't going to be around in 2018. It seemed like she was slipping further away from me -- I'd been saying my wife died a few weeks ago, or a couple of months ago, now suddenly I was saying she died last year..

I was so down in January that my GP advised me to go on anti-depressants. I started taking sertraline. It was great for me in some ways. When I came up on it, I found that all the anxiety I'd been suffering since Helen's last illness just disappeared. I completely stopped drinking. I finally got around to sorting out my finances properly, which I just hadn't been able to face. I even cleaned and tidied the flat thoroughly. But, there was one big drawback -- I suddenly realised that I had stopped grieving. Sertraline just seemed to dry up my emotions. I can see how this would be good in some situations, but to me it felt like I was shutting Helen out and distorting my memories of her. I hated that feeling and decided I would much rather go on grieving, as this is my last real link with her, so I stopped taking the sertraline after a few weeks.

So now I'm back to just trying to get by. It's true that some days are better than others, but even the good days are tinged with sadness and a feeling of something missing. The worst days are just crushing.