BrokenArts on 21/4/2019 at 15:58
Gray, I'm so sorry, I bet your sick of hearing that. My heart aches for you. One thought came to mind, what would *she* want* for you. What would she want you to do with your life. Only you can answer that. Its a daily struggle. Some good days, some better than others. If you don't have a pet, get a pet you can squeeze the stuffing out of. Most people want our loved ones to carry on, we have no choice, but, we can choose how we live it. You'll find yourself again, and I agree with other sentiments, being busy does help.
TTLG - The Therapy Love group! uhuh. Sure. Talking, writing, its a way to release. If you don't, you'll bust.
I mentioned a pet, my sister has her dog Bentley, her husband my brother in law died on Christmas day, very suddenly. Christmas day......*sigh*. I don't know what she would do without that dog. She's alone now, but, she is content, and stays busy.
We're here for you.
Gray on 28/4/2019 at 21:46
What would she want? I think of that every day. She'd want me to be happy, but not too happy. If she had one minor flaw, it was that she wanted me for herself, and got very jealous of any imagined threat to that. No other woman would ever look at me twice, but in her mind, everybody was flirting with me. Not so. I had over a decade of all women ignoring me, I am not someone who is flirted with. I stopped even noticing women after I met her. Her jealousy was quite cute, but pointless. I was hers only. In her will, she stipulated that her flat goes to her children, but I can live in it rent-free for as long as I like, unless I get remarried. Still jealous of something that will never happen. She'd want me to be happy, but that seems quite a far way away just now.
Pets. No.
I'm sure they can be lovely, but I'm very allergic to anything furry. And mushrooms. And dust. And pollen. And people foolish enough to vote conservative against their own interest. I have a lot of allergies.
Jokes aside, she was very fond of dogs, and used to have a few, but when we met, she was done with that, and fed up with the mess they create. She had already decided she did not want another dog in the house, but was very happy to play with other people's dogs. I suppose, if she had any pets when we met, I would never have moved to Scotland, and this thread would be a lot shorter.
[Edit]
We were an exceptionally unlikely but perfect match. I'm a very difficult and annoying person at the best of times. She was loved by everybody who ever met her, but always felt like an outsider, and that's how we connected. We created our own little world of outsiderness. Happy days.
Tocky on 30/4/2019 at 03:21
I hear you. My wife once said she wanted to be pickled in a jar and placed at the end of our bed. That way she could keep any potential sleepovers from happening. I thought when I got old and ugly that would stop but no. She isn't as bad but she still imagines I'm somehow desirable which is laughable. That's love I reckon.
Too bad about the pets. Too bad about the mushrooms and dust as well. I was going to suggest hallucinogenic shrooms and angel dust. I still think some pub friends is a good idea. And exploration. You never know what is around the corner when you explore. At any rate, I wish you luck. Just now I have a craving for a pickle.
june gloom on 6/5/2019 at 21:36
The thing that sucks the most about grieving someone is when your relationship with them was so close, but so fraught, that there's so much resentment and anger to get through before you can ever really get to the good parts.
I loved my mom, but she was a weird, paranoid, fearful woman who did everything in her power (including financial abuse) to keep me trapped here because she was afraid. Living with her was often hell. And now that she's gone... how do I respond? How do I react to the loss of a person I loved so dearly but needed to get away from so badly?
bjack on 6/5/2019 at 22:30
JG - you forgive your mother for her weakness. Not for her benefit, but for yours. You then promise to never replicate her actions toward anyone via your actions. Break the cycle. It sounds simple and it really is. Not easy to come to terms with, but once you do, it falls all into place and you will find some peace. Remember her and love her and promise yourself not to be like her bad side. Celebrate her positives. It's OK to be pissed off at her, but don't over do it. Forgive and move on. Again, the forgiveness is your key to your happiness. Just let it go. The best to you. Good fortune and luck.
Gray on 7/5/2019 at 04:45
I should not post tonight, because I'm drunk. Why am I drunk? Because tonight it's exactly one year since she died. 4:26 am. We were all there. Her children and I, and her granddaughter. I watched her draw her last breath while gently stroking her forehead and holding her hand. I'm the one who called it, 4:26. I was counting her breaths until they stopped.
For a year, I've been too terrified to open the box of ashes I got after the cremation. I didn't know what to expect. I've never done this before. But tonight seemed like a good time. In a couple of weeks, we'll finally have the ceremony of scattering the ashes that we should have had a year ago. I did not intend tonight to be a big deal, but as the clock went past midnight, closer and closer to the time, I knew I could not possibly go to sleep. I opened her favourite whisky, Glenmorangie. After some weepy personal moments with old photographs, I opened the box. It was surprisingly pedestrian. A cardboard box. Inside, a paper bag, closed with tape and staples. It seemed... irreverent. Inappropriate. Like they were trying to tell us we should have paid for a more expensive service. Fuckers. I opened it slowly with my Swiss army knife, just to make sure I remember this moment. Inside was the ashes. I got out a small spoon, scooped up a tiny bit of ash, and poured it into a small pendant, specifically designed to hold a small amount of ashes. Just in case I at some point will have to leave Scotland, I will at least have a small part of her with me. I sealed up the bag and box as before.
I don't want to sound like a whiny miserable bastard, but I will anyway. She was the love of my life. I gave up everything for her. My home, my country, my culture, my language. I moved over a thousand miles to live happily ever after with her. Fuck cancer.
I don't know what the future holds, but right now it seems to involve a lot of sideways rain, misery and probably another 12 years of lonely whiny crap. I'll try to spare you from the worst of it.
On the upside, I've seen the brightest side of love, and how it can completely change your life. I've seen all the lovely shiny wonderful sides of it. I just miss it now. I miss her. I will always miss her. But I'm happy that I got to see it.
I do feel extra sad about the unnecessary kick in the balls. She died on her granddaughter's birthday. Which is today. Which makes it difficult to celebrate. The most wonderful and amazing person on earth died a slow an painful death, on the birthday of her granddaughter. Fuck you, god.
PigLick on 7/5/2019 at 05:11
You cant move back home again? And you dont sound like a whiny bastard, you just sound miserable and sad.
Gray on 7/5/2019 at 05:17
I probably could, if I had half a brain, which I don't. I've had CFS for almost 20 years now, and my wife was the one doing the thinking for me. I could never have moved to Scotland without her. I can't imagine how I can possibly move back to Sweden now, when there are NO functional brains in the near vicinity. My stepkids do their best, but they have their own lives to deal with.
bjack on 7/5/2019 at 23:04
Gray, hold on man. Hold on. You have love to give and some of that love you need to direct toward yourself. Live for her and yourself. Dude, I am a guy 3000 + miles away and I care if you are doing OK. If I were were you, I'd go to the Azores. Sun, fun, and nice people. Get away from the grey skies. Celebrate her life in living yours to the fullest. I think she would would like that. Appreciate the little things that make you happy. They are the important things. Don't give up hope. Please. Don't give up. You loved so much. It will come back to you. Find it and rejoice. May peace be with you.
Gray on 8/5/2019 at 03:36
I know I often sound like a miserable whiny bastard. I know. I'm sorry. But, despite my grumpy nature and all the misery I've been through, I want to post something positive.
Love.
It is greater to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all. No? Yes? The jury is still out on that one. I know both sides pretty well. I'll explain.
I've mentioned many of these things before, but I've not elaborated. I'm a pretty old man by now. I've been through a lot of things. I've had a few failed relationships. I've also known what it's like to be alone, for years and years. And years. Many years. What I did not expect was to ever find true love. I didn't. It found me. It dragged me kicking and screaming into it, trying to fend it off as best I could. I failed. Dammit.
I'm a very difficult, generally unlikeable person. I have very strong opinions that clash with most other people. Everything you like, I probably hate. I'm grumpy and miserable. Very leftist, egalitarian, anti-capitalism, anti-waste, anti-fashion, anti-stupidity, anti-racist, pro-eco, pro-minimalism, pro-equality. I hate all the music you like, and all the shit you like to watch. I'd rather punch myself in the face than to ever hear about some Kardashian idiot or their idiot fans. Twitter is a black hole of moronosity. I hate advertising in all its forms for a very long list of reasons. You know, I'm one of those annoying bastards that tend to smoke weed, grow dreads and knit their own sandals, except I've never smoked anything nor knitted, and I shave my head. I despise almost everything of almost everything. This is my personality, I can't change it. I'm not a happy fun guy. But I am full of love. Even towards the clueless idiots. I'm polite and kind, and keep my stupid opinions to myself, most of the time.
Added to which, I'm quite ill. I've had CFS for almost 20 years now. It severely limits what I can do, physically and intellectually. It's still getting slowly worse over time. I used to be pretty strong, now I'm weak as a kitten. I used to be pretty clever, now I'm dumber than Forrest Gump. This is why I had to stop moderating TTLG. I'm almost stupid enough to enjoy Adam Sandler movies, but even that is still beneath me. With my progression, perhaps in a few years I'll think he's awesomely clever.
For many years, I've used all of the above as a shield to push people away. I'm not part of society anymore, I just live next to it. I can't deal with it. You go on with your happy little lives, and I'll stay over here on my side, ignoring you completely, smiling politely. I'll sit quietly on my side and curse under my breath about all the stupid shit you happy people do. I'll never be one of you.
But life has a way of fucking with you. It's not fate. It's not divine intervention. It's not karma. It's not a part of god's great plan(*). All of those things are just names you put to describe an event after it happened to try to make sense of it in your own head. It's just random chance.
Since I'm quite ill, I have lots of time to waste, just waiting to feel slightly better so that I can deal with all the stuff that needs to be dealt with. One way to waste lots of time is video games. That's why I picked World of Warcraft. I specifically chose it since it seemed like a massive waste of time. I couldn't do another 1000 runs of System Shock 2, I had become too stupid to use ShockEd anymore, and I could not be arsed to play anything challenging or stressful, so I chose Warcraft. On purpose. I did my research, and it seemed like such a massive timesink, which is exactly what I wanted, after trying half a dozen less interesing RPGs or MMORPGs.
On week two, I had just figured out how to do fishing. I was standing at Lake Al'Ameth in Teldrassil, trying to catch fish to feed my nightsaber cat, when some night elf woman swam up to me, like Ursula Andress. She asked what I was doing, and I was, in my most polite language trying to tell her to please kindly piss off and leave me alone. But she kept asking questions. I had only been on the game for a couple of weeks, but I've learned a thing or two, so I tried to tell her what little I knew. She kept pissing me off with follow-up questions, so I decided to show her how to do things, and ran her down to Darnassus, where the fishing trainer was. Apparently this was not sufficient. She needed help with some quest or other, so we teamed up for that. Damn annoyance.
This kept happening, for weeks. We became friends, despite my strongest protests. We joined the same guild. Then we left it to make our own guild. She was quite keen on travelling, she'd been to loads of countries, and asked if she could come visit me for her next trip to Europe. I said sure, as long as you understand it's as friends only, and nothing else. She agreed. Well, we fucked that up on day one by falling in love. Whisky probably helped.
Over the next couple of years, she'd visit me 2-3 times a year, a week or two at a time, and I'd visit her in Scotland for about 2-3 months at a time, spending most of 2012 over there, if not all. At one point, probably in the winter of 2011 while she was over in Sweden, she asked me to marry her. I was stumped. At this point I was very much in love with her. I loved her. But it was crazy to think that I could give up everything I know and move to some rainy shithole a thousand miles away, no? Well, perhaps, but I decided to do it anyway. I accepted. Probably the best decision I ever made in my entire life.
In 2013 we got married. I wore her father's kilt. We were both quite old at this point, I was over 40 and this was her second marriage, so it was a pretty cheap event. Maybe 40-50 people, mostly Scottish, but my parents and brother and his family came over from Sweden. It was the happiest day of my life. Or so I thought. Little did I know. We went back to Sweden to empty my flat, and get rid of all of my stuff. It was like a purge of all of my life up to this point. What little I kept could fit into a few boxes, some of which I could take with me to Scotland, but I essentially left all of my previous life behind. All 42 years of it. A bit sad when you're that age and your whole life can fit into a few boxes, but, with my mind being non-materialistic, also somewhat of a relief.
Turned out, my wife was a lot more clever than I had realised. Every day, she kept surprising me by doing new clever things, saying clever things, absorbing all the music and movies I liked, falling in love with some of it, then pimping her stuff to me which, some of it, I also loved. Every day, I fell more and more in love with her. Every day was happier than the preceding one. I forgot about that nagging feeling about having made a huge massive mistake of giving up everything in my life to be here, because being here was so wonderful, and she was so wonderful, clever, smart and beautiful in every way. Many times did I have to reevaluate what the happiest day of my life was. So many things happened. Average, boring, pedestrian, non-dramatic yet wonderful things. Every day I loved her more, every day I was happier. It was like staring directly into a big warm sun, just radiating happiness and joy towards you. It was like our minds were directly connected, no barriers, just pure love flowing between us in every moment of being near each other. I'm sure this is why poetry was invented, because I can't describe with words just how happy I was. I had found the one. The impossible one. The one that couldn't possibly exist or be more perfect for me. And what's more, she wanted ME! On purpose! Despite all the stupid shit I told her. I made her happy. That made me happy. And that made her happy.
I am very much aware how much this sounds like a lame screenplay writer's wet dream. The unlovable idiot is magically found by some amazing woman that turns him into a better person. I understand all that. I hate those cliches. Except when it happened to me, I was already old fat and ugly, having lived alone for 12 years. She had two grown children and was not played by Jennifer Aniston, and I was not played by Seth Rogen. Thank fuck for that. If I ever get that stupid, please punch me in the face.
Then cancer.
But this isn't about that. I've told that story before, this is about joy, and happiness. I want to emphasise in the strongest words I can possibly find that she was an awesome person, and love just flowed out of her. She was amazing. She made me the happiest man on the planet. She showed me true, pure love. All of my sarcasm and bitterness melted away. I almost very nearly became a nice person. Almost. She was too good for me. She might not have been perfect, but she was perfect for me. Not even if I made things up could I ever have thought of someone THAT clever and wonderful. We were a perfect match. She was the only person who really GOT me, and my stupid thinking. And I got her. It was an amazing stroke of luck that we even met, but here I am now. In some rainy faraway foreign country with her ashes in a box.
So, there is a lot of pain and anguish of living alone, rejected by society. I know this part very well. There is a lot of joy from love, but the pain when it ends is much, MUCH stronger than the pain from being alone. I have seen both sides. I have seen the detachment you can find in living alone, separating yourself from the world. This can be quite nice, but empty and hollow. It may not be easy to find love, especially it you deliberately try to hide from it, but from what I learned... Maybe Shakespear did have a point. It is greater to have loved and lost. It may be very painful, but it makes you a better person, and you'll have some wonderful memories.
[small](*) If I'm wrong, and there is a god, and this IS a part of his great big clever plan, he's a fucking bastard that feeds on the suffering of innocent people, and in which case he shouldn't be believed in or obeyed in any way, the fucker. Bloody snuff movie weirdo freak.[/small]