THANK YOU FOR CARING. GORDON DIED A WEEK AGO TODAY AND I FEEL A TINY BIT OF CONTROL.WHEN SOMEBODY CALLS I LOSE IT. I AM LOOKING FOR SUPPORT GROUPS, AND MAY OF FOUND ONE  AT HERITAGE HOUSE IN SEATTLE. GORDON WAS SICK FOR A LONG TIME.I WAS IN DENIAL,INSISTING HE WOULD GET A LITTLE BETTER, AS ALL HIS PROBLEMS ESCALATED. WE WERE ALWAYS TOGETHER EXCEPT WHEN I WORKED, I RETIRED IN NOV.,AND SPENT MORE TIME WITH HIM. IT IS SO LONELY THANK GOODNESS I HAVE THE CATS. WE'LL TALK AGAIN, THANK YOU.

Dear David,

I'm not sure how to navigate this site either.  How do you find and read each other's stories....the story that brought them, us all here?  Seems like there should be a place in my profile where Mine and my husband John's story would be so anyone could find, read, and maybe understand us more.  I've not found that yet...and perhaps it doesn't exist here.

When did David die? My husband John died here to the left of me in our bed the morning of September 18th, this year (2017).  I have his side of the bed covered in pictures, our two stuffed animal cute monkeys named Boo Boo and Lucky, lay on his pajamas on his pillows and beside them keep a portion of John's ashes I kept for myself to one day be mixed with my own when I'm buried under the same marker in the same cemetery....next to him.

Every day is a bad day.  Purpose is gone.  Work is gone or impossible.  And I've been shocked to find how seemingly impossible it has been to find any human grief support what so ever. 

When I sign on here I'm almost always the only person online.  This is making me feel more isolated more alone so far.

Have you found a more active support community online?

I'm trying, I should get out of bed it's now eleven am where we live.  I should take advantage of the dry day (it typically rains here all fall and winter) and rake leaves then go out to our studio and work on some project.  But as you know possibly there's no point.  I really wanted to go with him and not be left behind.  Together we made one.

I have another appointment with my doctor on the thirteenth for one more try to find real in person help....and possibly one last option through the sexual minorities veterans affairs officer.  But exhausting that I'm left with shockingly only this sparsely used online place that's a desert every time I come here.

Has this place helped you David?

I feel more alone so far.  But I will keep trying.

Thank you for listening and if you know of other online communities please let me know

Sincerely,

David Wishart x

Hi David...it’s me, Mary Jane..I guess I should have added something about myself when I friended you...I am old..lol 70 years old. I am little, 4’9” and am 120 lbs. I live near Tulsa , but spent all but the last 13 years in the SF Bay Area. As soon as I can get my brain and energy back I plan to move back there. I don,t know how to drive..yup..it cripples my life as I have to depend on friends to drive me to medical apts or to the store. I thought about learning, but I need to be much more focused than I am. 

..I live in Oklahoma...but plan to move back to the San Francisco’s Bay Area as soon  as my brain function returns. Lol. I was married 4 months shy of 49 years to my  soulmate..who died feb 2016. I have one married daughter, no grandkids, non expected...she is 47 been married 25 years..so that ship has sailed. LOL

imam in relative good health..except arthritis in every bone in my body which limits even changing lightbulbs, and I also have a nasty little thing called Epstein Barr Vius which sucks the life out of me, and requires at least 10 hrs sleep each night and usually a short nap in the afternoon. It usually goes into remission in the colder months..but not this year so far.

ok, yesterday I met a new member who was worried you DIDN,t get his message..David Wishart. I told him his message was on your page and u probably haven’t had time to respond yet. His grief is new like yours, and he is having a lot of trouble navigating this site...I also urged him to join bereaved spouses, as the gay site doesn,t seem to have a lot of people on it and he might not get replies as soon as he would on Bereaved Souses. I assured him that nearly 50% of the members are gay...it doesn,t matter...which is how it should be. 

Ok, your turn! Actually I think since you are new, I know more about u than u did of me...so I will end this really long message. Have a wonderful day, my friend. Bye for now

M.J.

Dear David, 

Thank you for your kind words, you were the first to welcome me to this site.  I tried immediately to respond to you but I'm new and still unfamiliar with this site and your message vanished.

I remembered your name, same as mine same as your spouse.  I'm so sorry for your loss.  

I read an entry somewhere on this site called "bad day".  I believe you authored this letter.  In it you wished as I desperately wished that my John and I would go together.  He understood this wish as we shared everything and never hid our thoughts or feelings from one another.  

I want you to know I understand this cry and I find myself saying this aloud to my Johnny and to an empty house to please come for me.  We were supposed to go together.  

My John wrote and left letters and journals for me to find and read.  I never read any of his private journals during our long marriage.  I've read only a few and perhaps it is too soon.  But there was something he wrote over and over in different forms that while reading your letter "bad day" I believe might feel familiar to you and David.

John wrote "Together Dave and I make one".

Half of me is now missing.

Forgive me if I've spread more pain it's not my intention.  My intention is to let you know your bad day is something I experience every day. You are not alone feeling this way.

Again forgive me if I'm speaking too familiar, I'm new here, I know I've snapped or changed in my heart, mind, and soul and am now unsure of most everything.

I did what to thank you for your kind words David

Sincerely,

David Wishart

Dear David. I will definitely be your friend. I'm in therapy as I stated but really don't think it will do any good. Die of a broken heart? Oh yes. This is so unbearable. I just want to die and as for seeing how this life plays out, no thank you. What is the purpose anyway. Unfortunately the women in my family live long healthy lives. I will not. I actually pray that the lump in my breast is cancer. I have no intention of having it checked let alone anything done. I know my resistance is low and I pray to get pneumonia. This new normal is anything but normal. I'm sorry for being so negative but I'm broken . I will bake a pie tomorrow to take to my stepson house for thanksgiving. I always loved thanksgiving and cooked a big dinner. This pain cannot even be described there is no joy no laughter only heartache. I will never get thru this. Misery loves company? There's a lot of it on this site and maybe just maybe someone will be helped.   Love Chris

The dating question is a tough one.  For any of us who've been in successful relationships, it's one of the things we probably didn't miss (!).   There's no good answer - we're all rusty at it.  I can honestly say I completely screwed up a few dates that had serious long-term potential, but perhaps that's how it's supposed to work.  I found it was important to understand you can't just go out and find what you had before.  Nor can you look too hard (but you can't just stay home either).  Bigger picture is doing things that are important to you - and those might be things your other half didn't want to do or didn't care about.  Each step is part of the journey.

Yes, the 4 years was surprising to me; at first, it seemed every day was a struggle.  Here's the benefit to this site - anonymity and a shared experience.  It takes longer to heal than your friends expect - they will try to listen but it doesn't work.  With this site, you can rail, you can post, you can share, and everybody's got a similar experience and as hard as it might be to imagine, there's always a worse story out there than yours or mine.   Some folks will have helpful comments; some might not seem helpful, but that's OK too - it will get you thinking.  It's a dark place where you're at, at first.  What you have to do, and it's so hard because a relationship works when both people sacrifice a bit of themselves for the greater good, is to become self-centered.  In other words, you have to take your life back over.  I was lucky - we had two homes (a city place and a country place, which was my house before we met) - so I could leave one and retreat into the other.  But many of the decisions we'd made in this house, I redid.  Where I acquiesced, I now reinforced my own view.  I had to make the house mine again.  Yes, there are touches, memories, shared experiences; but rather than a shell of what I once had, it's a house of many and layered experiences.  Life is very much like a book: it's chapters, some longer than others, about the different periods in our life.  It only moves in one direction, and that is forward.  And it will continue long after all of us are gone.  So you need to think about what this next chapter will be.