Mourning lasts forever.

Tomorrow is another "8th". She died on the 8th. Tomorrow is a Monday. She died on a Monday. Tomorrow is 14 months. And all I ever seem to do is reflect on my life. On all of the reasons I am miserable, and how much I want some closure. I'm trying the hardest I've ever tried. I'm trying to remove, or replace the loss, trying to fill it in anyway I can. I hate this. So, I'm trying, but even with all of my effort, I still feel empty-handed. This unparalleled fear courses through me, a fear that this grief will stick inside me forever, and I'm not naive.......I know that this will remain inside me with everything else for all the time that I'm alive, but I, and this is as honest, and as true as I can be......I'm afraid that I'll always feel like a piece of me is dead. It's amazing how sad my words are still, how I still feel so sad. I don't believe in karma. I used to though, I used to think that good happens to good doers. So, I did my best, but all I have been handed is crap. And it's left me bitter and cynical......emotionally stunted. I'm still so desperate to find some answers. There is so much feasting, and clawing, but I'm trying. I focus on the quiet now and occasionally I'll fall asleep somehow.....and for a little while there's just emptiness before the nightmares start and emptiness has its solace, in that there's nothing left to take....It's come to this....wanting some emptiness.....but when emptiness comes and there's nothing left to take what's the point in anything?

It can feel like mourning lasts forever but it really ebbs and wanes. My dad passed in 2005 and his birthday would have been on the 4th. That day passed by like any other which surprised me the following day when I realized my dad's birthday passed. The hurt will be there but it will lesson, you have to fill yourself and your life with the living it helps.

I'm so sorry that you're in pain. I understand what you're saying, I recognise the emotions, i can't take that away.

I would like to say though that you have come a long way, you have processed the loss and it has become a part of you. You're hanging in there, and god knows that takes courage, stubborness and sheer bloody determination.

It sucks, it really does. But I do think that so long as someone is alive who mourns the person who died, they have not truly died while they live in someone's memories. Not much comfort, but you are getting there, even if you don't recognise it.

There's a quote, “In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer”. I like the image of a snowdrop - everything seems dead and cold and hopeless at this time of year, but the brave little snowdrop will still grow no matter what. And you WILL heal, no matter how bleak life seems in the depths of winter, both physical and emotional. You have the capacity to grow and flourish again, and you will.

But I am heart sore for you right now.

Hi Storeys

I'm so sorry for what you're feeling. No one knows the pain, and the struggles that you go through each day.

My thoughts are with you, and hopefully in time you can find peace.

Take care...

I'm so sorry stories

Losing Someone we love is the worst type of pain a person can experience. It's something most of us do experience at one point or another. Have you been to any support groups with people in the same situation? To move on you don't need to let go of her, but you need to let go of the guilt, the "whys", and what could have been. That is what is holding you back. She will always be a part of you and your life. You have come so far, and you have so many people here that care for you. I hope one day you will be able to celebrate her life that she lived, and look back at the good times, and smile.

Mourning does last forever.

I have only just made it to four months, but already I know this to be true.

I'm proud of you for making it so far, Storeys.

And your fear of feeling as if you will always feel a piece of you is dead...I can relate. A part of me died along with Michael. We were connected and he took a part of me with him that I can never get back until we are reunited. And that's how it should be in a way. I wanted to give all of myself to him, and that's what it is to love someone. Unfortunately, for whatever reason we have our own paths to live out here, our own destinies to be fulfilled and sometimes we have to go it alone even though we so wanted to share the whole way with that one person whose soul entertwined with ours. I wish so much it wasn't so. I have to believe that there is still meaning to be found though, still purpose to be fulfilled. I believe it is true for you too. This hurt can be so cruel though. It isn't fair.

Just want you to know I'm standing with you in this dark journey. You deserve more than emptiness, and I believe you will find something more, bits and pieces through out your life, even though I know it can't compare to what you had. Living a life that would make them proud is all we can strive for sometimes.

Storeys, love to you. I also feel a part of me has died. I agree with Melly I don't think we can get that back until we are reunited with our loved ones again, it is a special place just for the love the two of you had together, it is something that cannot be destroyed, but it also leaves an empty feeling too.

I think there is a point, Storey's you have helped many on here, giving heartfelt advice for those who want to take their own lives and I think if you can just influence one person in life or help them in a time of need, than you have given a gift of love and your life was well lived, and you have done that. If everyone all just helped only one person than we will eventually help the whole world, Love and Life are contagious. Sometimes it might not be enough but at least we tried and that is all we can do.

The struggle seems to be never ending but I hope one day we will realise the struggle was worthwhile.

I have fears. Fear that I will always be in love with Lisa and that I will never be able to move on from that, fears that I will always have this memory in my head of when I tried to save her and I couldn't. Fear that I will forever have a void inside of me and that I will forever wonder the earth never replacing what I had lost and craving her forever.

All those fears are true, every one of them but instead of trying to force them not to be true I just accept them as being part of who I am now.

Storeys,

You'll have to trust me on this...it does fade. The love for her never does, but the pain will begin to cease. I too did not believe it. It was impossible. It would never happen, period.

But here I am 19 months later, and am functioning at about seventy percent. For me the date is the 27th, and that hits hard every month. I know she would want me to live life....so I do, because to not would be cheating her of her wish for me.

You will get through this...I promise.

KG

So....today is another "8th", another "monday".....I've spent the last 13 "8th's" getting completely wasted and laying on the bathroom floor where she died. Tonight....I'm having a few drinks but not enough to get wasted.....and I've decided to put up some Christmas decorations like Cass used to do.....I didn't bother last year...this year, it seems like I should do something.

Thanks for all your replies.

That's good to hear, mate.

Forgive me for being late to your thread...

I'm still so desperate to find some answers.

I know this feeling so well...

But what are the questions?

(Other than the last sentence which is clearly a question.) I've already got a lot to go on with your OP, but until I can type up a proper post...how about this?

And that's the right call, that you've put up the decorations. Good for you. She would love that. The place will be looking righter this year, as it would with her touch. This is a sign of healing, even though you are decorating with a heavy heart.

Also, for keeping the drinking curbed when usually you go all out on the 8th...way to go, that is also most impressive. Give yourself every bit of credit for that. You're being so brave.

And that is not going to come to nothing.

I promise more is on the way...

(((HUGS)))

Storeys,

So GOOD for YOU! On many fronts! Your place will seem cheerier, and will serve her memory.

BRAVO for being so brave.

You are stronger than you know, my friend.

Right then.

(BTW and FYI, the question I asked in my previous post was not rhetorical.)

You’ve brought up such major issues — closure; karma and your sense of futility; feeling a part of you is dead and it will always haunt you that way; and what is the point in anything when there is emptiness. Each of these in and of themselves could be full-length dissertations, really. They are about the most difficult questions we are asked to confront here on this plane — some of us more glaringly than others.

So I’d like to break the topics down into manageable pieces (thus, this title and subsequent titles, if I may).

Starting with this bit:

And all I ever seem to do is reflect on my life. On all of the reasons I am miserable, and how much I want some closure.

I know what you are saying about the lack of closure. There are so many, many details and pieces of what occurred with Cassie that you will never find a place for. And many of the questions you asked in a thread long ago, nearer to the beginning of this painful journey, are still eating away at you. I really do know how that would be and how it couldn’t be any other way. And the problem is that your mind is fighting to finally have something to grab onto, something lasting that makes you sigh with some sense of relief that there is a method to the madness. But you grab and your hand keeps slipping off, because the fact — the hard fact and I don’t have to tell you — is that there is no such thing as finding sense, reason, or method to the whys and hows and what ifs here. Your hands will forever be slipping right off that attempted grasp. And the leaden reality is that there isn’t just a lack of answers to the particulars, and thereforee no sense of closure — but how can you find the peace and grace of closure when such an end to a life really doesn’t even lend itself to closure? How can you “close” a book on open questions and tragedy? Finding closure in the actual train of events and the story is a losing battle, and always will be, I agree. This is so terrifying and endless of a sensation.

But then closure must come from a different direction. Not the one you are looking for it in.

And I believe maybe it starts with this, that some of the most potent truths in life come as complete paradoxes: in this case, that the closure is in knowing that you can never get closure.

I know that sounds a bit absurd, and maybe even glib, but let me try to break it down a bit, into affirmations you might tell yourself, to demonstrate how that actually might sound in your head, as opposed to the endless spinning reel that seeks some finality in places where there is none to be had:

1. “Life is staggeringly mysterious. This here, this life, and why it is the way it is (or even THAT it is), is more mystery than knowable. So be it — this is going to forever be a mystery. I don't have to dissect it anymore to see that in the end, it all concludes in: mystery. Which is just a force that is out there, like gravity, or change. It's just a law of Life. Life has demanded that I submit to its mysterious and unfathomable nature with this experience, to understand that I can’t have clean and clear answers to everything. I’ve been forced to see the nature of this part of reality. I can start to allow that Life is mysterious as well as ambiguous and that often questions must be left unanswered. Why? Asking why is exactly one of those questions. I allow for mystery to be what it is, in this world. I allow some doors to remain closed. I can stop frantically jangling the handle and searching for the keys, and remain ignorant to some things. But I can open the door to learning this lesson without fighting it anymore.”

2. “I brought who I was to our relationship, and she brought herself. We were together because we fit, just the way we were. We would not have been together had the dance been any other way. And that remained up until the end — she did and thought and behaved as she was designed to; and I, the way I was designed to. We were true to who we were right up until the end, both of us. She did her best (as she saw it) and I did my best (as I saw it). Each of us felt the other deeply, that is for sure. We did not lack in exquisite sensitivity to the other even when things were so hard then. And we brought to the other the best of our ability at that time.”

3. Forgiveness. I think maybe more than anything, forgiveness for the entire situation is the closest feeling I can imagine to closure. Forgiveness above all, for yourself within the situation. Forgiveness for not being omniscient in being a mindreader, or omnipotent in knowing how to handle the situation in any other way than you did (which I do believe was as good as it gets, I honestly do think you were what the doctor would have ordered for anyone). Forgiveness for the fact that you were limited to what you had and knew, for what wasn’t available to you and what you couldn’t do. Forgiveness for Life being mysterious (as stated above), and not under our control sometimes when we need that the most, because that mystery feels very cruel and thereforee is asking for your forgiveness. Forgiveness for human fallibility in general. Forgiveness for human imperfection, in thought or deed (which was no more on you than her.) Just a sense of overarching forgiving of Life for doing the unthinkable, for being the beast it is. But it is good to have things to say to yourself when you are leveled by the sadness and recounting of everything. Stand back...and in those moments, replace the rehash if you can, even just a few times when you become aware of them; try to say, “Wait. I forgive myself. I forgive the situation. I forgive life for its mystery.” When you fall into despair over specific little recollections, expand back out with these thoughts going through your head, and let them sink into your abdomen and heart, and just let them spread gently there. Breathe them in, let them drop down within and let them stay a while. Be aware when you are starting to contract back into the “what about this, and what about that” gnawing, and soften yourself back out again to this other diffuse feeling, like a soft light that permeates and dissolves hard, sharp black nodules of fear.

So what I'm saying is that closure here is more a matter of a very broad totality about the nature of life, seeing that for what it is, and allowing that to be the way it is, rather than trying to "fix" the story.

ToV has brought a lot of good advice and support in her posts on here.

Storeys I feel for everything you are having to go through. I always just want to reach my hand out to you and help you with your struggles. You always have a friend in me whenever you need someone to talk to. You are always in my thoughts.

Putting the tree up was a good thing to do. I know it had to be hard but I am glad you found the strength to do so.

You ar such a good kind hearted person and I wish so much hat I could take every ounce of your pain from your broken heart away. Just take it one day at a time. *hugs*

Hey J,

Long time since I've been here and written anything, but I've been watching from afar, seeing you help others with your gift of communication and care. I see change in you...maybe I see it because I was there way back in your lowest days. You will always love her...but the pain will leave you one day...mourning can take a very long time, but it's what we do with it that can count.

You have taken your experience and helped others. And whether you will ever see it or not...something good has come from this time of sadness and reflection...you have helped other people to heal and move on with their lives.

You are stronger than you know. Good on you for letting some cheer into the house. It's a very good thing.

xx

There's an old Zen koan that goes, 'Ashes my burnt hut, but wonderful the cherry blooming on the hill.'

So in the midst of sadness and loss, you have to raise your eyes whenever you can to look at the blooming cherry trees all around you. Life has some very big sorrows in store of all of us at one time or another, but there are so many wonderful joys big and small out there that you have to lift your eyes and look for them and let them expand your heart and soul whenever you can.

You can't have back the exact precious thing you lost, but there is so much beauty life has to offer and you need to take time and effort to go out and seek it in order to give your life meaning.