Don't really know where I'm going

LegacyUser

Hi folks,

Well its just coming up on a year since I lost my beautiful wife. She was taken suddenly in an accident, leaving me and our then 2 yr old daughter with a big hole in our lives.

Since then I have felt, and continue to feel, bewilderment, disbelief, loneliness, isolation, anger, resentment (when I see other families), fear. These emotions,to name but a few, occur and reoccur in no particular order.

Since it happened, I have done my best to keep my head down, weather the storm, and hope what I'm feeling will at lose some of its intensity. But everywhere I go, everywhere I look there are little triggers that remind me of her, of what we had and what is lost.
I find myself sometimes imagining her coming through the door, almost forgetting for a moment that she never will.

My daughter is now nearly 3 and is into "Frozen", princesses and all that stuff. This evening, she was on the couch and suddenly started identified the picture hanging on the wall of me and my wife saying "Look, Daddy and Mammy". She then went on to say "I like my Mammy", "My Mammy is beautiful, like a princess". Needless to say this hit me like a sledgehammer and I had to beat a hasty retreat for a couple of minutes.

I guess she is getting to the age where she is starting to become curious of how other children have a Mammy and hers isn't around. I feel a bit useless in that regard because I really don't know how to deal with the subject of her mammy with her, what to tell her, what not to tell her. I suppose that's one of the points of this post.

The other point is that, especially in the last 6 months, I feel like I've adopted a sort of "holding pattern", where I haven't been doing much other than working and being at home looking after my daughter. I find it relatively comforting for the most part to stay at home (I dont have much free time anyway). At the same time I feel like I don't want to be in this position forever and at some point I need to make efforts to start moving forward again in my life. It's just that, just now I can't see any path that leads from here to there.

Sorry this post is a bit all over the place. It's as much of a vent as anything else. Thanks for reading and if anyone who has been in similar situation has any advice of words of wisdom would be happy to hear them

appleb

I have no words of advice, I am afraid- but I did want to acknowledge your post. You sound like a great Dad. Look after yourself and your little girl x

NIMAN

I really feel for you, I can not even comprehend how hard this must be on you and your little girl.

You do sound like a great Dad to her, and she is lucky to have you by the sound of it. Times will be tough for a long time to come but hopefully you will both help each other cope with the loss. Children are incredibly resilient things, and add to this the fact that your daughter will only know her mother through photographs she may be detached from the actual passing.

I have a cousin who lost her mother when she was 18 months old or so, and she told me once how strange it was that she grew up never knowing her mum. But she is an incredibly well-adjusted person now with 3 young kids of her own, and I am sure she smiles when she glances at her mothers photograph now.

I wish you all the best, be strong and take care of yourself and your daughter.

banie01

O.P my condolences on you and your daughters loss.
I have been where you are now, and when I read your post I couldn't not leave a post.
I originally wrote this post a few years ago and despite changes in time and circumstance i find it still rings true.

My Son and I lost his Mam, my wife, the constant I measured everything I did in my life by...
When he was 3 and in my own experience consistency is the absolute key in how to cope.
And recently, we lost the other significant woman in his life(My Mam, His Nana) and I find myself still sticking to the below.

Kids are resilient, and they cope a lot better than us adults at times and more often than not when they do get most upset, it will be when we are at our own low ebb.
They are like little emotional mirrors and sometimes at our lowest it is those feelings that they shine back at us.

But the keys to ensuring they cope and by default that you do too in my experience are these...
1st off, and this is vital.
Look after yourself!!!!!
After a loss like yours it is very easy to slip slowly into the "holding pattern" mode you describe yourself in.
What you need to be sure of is that you don't allow yourself to become isolated, and silly as it sounds focusing your energy solely on your daughter can quickly lead to that.
I know from my own experience that I spent a long, long time just doing the routine of looking after my son and making sure he was ok/he was fed/clean/school and so on and trying my utmost to make sure he was coping and that he was ok...
Because it was just him and me and all we had now was each other.
I did that probably to detriment of myself, I pulled away from my friends and family because they couldnt understand my loss.
It took me a long time and some persistent people to help me realise they didn't need to understand it,
I needed to understand it, and whats more I also needed to understand that all those friends and family just wanted to help me heal, to share my load and make sure our family coped with the horrible reality of being left widowed.
Those friends/family saved my life, because I was being swallowed by grief, by the loss of our hoped for future and often after putting our son to bed I was spending all my time awake trying to relive our past...
And when you have a young kid who needs looking after, no matter how great your past was, you can't live there.
Learning to sleep in an empty bed is a hard, hard lesson, but not as hard as learning that when you wake up and roll over expecting to see the one you loves face on the pillow next to you that you won't ever see her there again....
I spent a long time waking up every single morning hoping to find the loss was a bad dream, that everything was ok.
But every single morning waking up and realising it wasn't just a dream was gut wrenching.



2nd, and this for your daughter as well as yourself/
Openess, honesty and consistency in how you deal with them.
Be as open and honest as possible with your kids when discussing the loss, explain it as best you can and in terms they will understand.
Be there for your daughter when she wants to talk, and encourage her to talk about both the loss and her mum.
Remember that the only way your Daughter will ever know her mum now is from the stories she will hear from you, your families and your friends will tell about her. Share all those happy stories with her.
It is hard....
So hard at the start especially to share those stories without breaking down, but it will get easier.
I made a memory box for my son and to be honest even now, 8yrs after we lost his mum, she is spoken about almost every day and my in-laws still play a big part in our lives.
Use this loss as a chance to teach your daughter how to deal with loss and grief in a healthy way, yes the loss is terrible and it causes pain.
But the pain comes from missing someone you shared memories and so much love with, so focus on those happy memories at the times the grief does strike hard and be sure to share those stories.
Be sure that while you make allowances for her grief, and indeed in how your own grief can cloud your reactions to their behaviour...
That you always try and be consistent in how you react to her, remember even though she is young her loss is great too.