Thank you, Greg, for your advice. I have tried to open up, but I find that very few people around me can really understand what I am dealing with. I can be doing fairly well one day and the next I am back in the dark place where everything feels wrong...just horribly wrong.

You sound so much like us. Ben worked too much and too hard. Not for money, really, more for my security. He didn't want me to have to worry about things. We both grew up very poor and he didn't want that for our children. The result is the same, though. We didn't get to do all of the great things we were going to do 'someday'.

My husband was a motorcycle rider. His one big selfish purchase in our marriage was a Harley he bought a few years ago. He loved that stupid thing and I am grateful that he got it. It makes me feel good to remember how happy he was in the last few years riding on the weekends. I don't ride but we were talking about building me a trike and we were going to trade our family camper in on a small motorhome and tow our bikes all around the U.S. I was plotting out courses to all the different state parks. But, here I sit staring at that bike that no one rides anymore. I just can't get rid of it.

I have thought a lot about finding another church, but my husband was our pastor. He was a great leader. 

I looked for signs that I might have missed, but there is just no way to predict what happened to him. I couldn't see it coming. But, I don't know if I would be any different now even if I had known it was going to happen. I would still be angry. I would still feel lost, I think. He was my partner. We were a team. I don't want someone else, I want him. I know people mean well when they say things like that to me, but I also think they didn't understand that he was more than my husband. He was my partner and my best friend, my true 'one'. There is a reason why the call them 'the one'.

I am still looking for a counselor. The last one I went to barely spoke during our sessions. He just kept making noises, like 'hmmm' and 'ohh'. It really started getting on my nerves so I stopped going. I will start looking for another one, today.

I don't think about hurting myself, I just find myself thinking that I don't care if I never wake up again. But It isn't in me to give up, I am too stubborn for that. I know that God will make a way for me to get through this.

Women don't have the same symptoms as men do when they have heart trouble. It can be very tricky for us. But, that doesn't mean you did something wrong. My husband never went to the doctor, he didn't often need to. I don't think we could have prevented what happened to Ben, but it's hard to stop wondering if I had done something different maybe it would have changed things. But that isn't what I truly believe. I know that God has laid out the course of our lives long ago. Our time is already chosen, nothing I do can change that.

Thank you for your encouragement. I tell my oldest daughter all the time, "I will be okay. Just not today." I will get better, in time. We all will. I will never stop missing him, but I will get to a place where I can function without him. I hope you are getting there, too.

Take care and God bless.

Melissa