Grief & Loss

Diddums said:
It's not your fault mate and I fully appreciate your situation, I just wanted to highlight that this community is possibly one of the best on the internet, not what you thought it was before ;)

Hope the day's ok, I can't begin to fathom what you're going through.
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For sure.
No where else get support from everything from mental health, to camping equipment, to pension advice.
Moderated well and probably mostly in the 30s-40s age range like myself.

By far the best online community I'm in.

For all the silly threads, when it gets serious pretty much everyone is supportive
 
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So sorry to hear of your loss. Take all the support you can from family and friends. Don't worry about grieving and cry if you have to, don't keep anything bottled up. I know how hard it is to even get through a day but you will, so slowly one day at a time. A big hug to all of you.
 
I am so, so sorry this has happened. It is a horrific shock when something like this just comes out of the blue.

I suppose people that people don’t talk about these sort of things, because there is no magic solution. It hurts like hell and unfortunately the only remedy is time.

Right now, the shock of something so random and uncontrollable will knock your for six and you will desperately try to control everything else in your life. Don’t. You have to try to avoid that urge and seek help instead. Whether that be a home help or go to the doctors and see what local help is available, or maybe family. There are options but you mustn’t try to sort all this by yourself. You need time, and there needs to be others who can take the pressure off.

I know it doesn't seem like it now, but it will get better. I'm not going to lie to you, though, it does take a very long time to move past something like that.
 
Might heart goes out to you, all you can do is be there for your kids. As others have said, take time to grieve, both you and them, and accept whatever help is offered to ease day to day life. It may help to look at family grief counselling, as it may make it easier for you all to process your feelings and come together.
 
This hits close to home. Last month my wife (41) was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer. In the last few weeks she had 2 major surgeries, and spent most of this week in ICU and tuesday-wednesday things were very rough). Luckily she picked up and today left ICU. For the first time I truly thought I would loose her and was trying to comprehend how I would cope. Unfortunately I have no certainty as the next step as some heavy chemo and hopes of no metastasis. None of the specialists really know what to do or what is happening, all I hear is things like "rare", "unusual", "very aggressive", "Significant growth", "we don't know what chemo. Her case is being passed between different specialists across Europe . We have swapped between surgery 1st chemo 2nd, to chemo 1st surgery 1st 3 times. Seemingly the only positive point is my wife being so young and fit the doctors just say to ignore all the survival odds because my wife can deal with radial surgeries and experimental chemo. I guess we are 50-50.

I do share Kid duty with my wife but she has more flexiibiity and my job requires evenings . So the last month has been extremely challenging and I cant keep this job if the worst comes to the worst. I have calculated if I quit my job I can probably survive off savings for 3-4 years depending on benefits and insurance payouts which I hope is long enough that the kids are then more independent.

Edit: I dpn;t want to be insensitive and hijack your thread. Just your scenario is the nightmare keeping me awake all night and making me drink myself into a coma.
 
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I'm very sorry to hear about this, OP.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and when faced with new decisions, seek help and learn and just try do what you think is the right thing at that time.

You're probably doing much better than you think you are right now.
 
Very sorry for your loss Ben that’s absolutely awful to read.

For your children’s sake find your strength through supporting them and keep doing what you’re doing. Take each day as it comes and be there for your little ones.

Make sure to get the support you need to help guide you through this, even if it’s just a coffee with a family member, or time with a trained professional.
 
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Wizzkidy said:
It was a heart attack caused by a blockage
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MY ex wife passed away from very similar circumstances at the start of the year.

I barely ever saw her but it still took me probably 5 months for it to fully sink in.

Must take years when you lose a partner, hang in their OP and surround yourself with friends and family as much as you can.

If you weren't close with relatives nows the time to start for the sake of the kids.


I have a son from my ex wife and she had no family apart from her dad, she wanted to stay up here to be close to him.
What's its ended up doing is basically meaning my sons only family is me and his half brother whos in the RAF, because all my relatives live in another part of the country miles away and he never got to know them.
 
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Well the week has finished and I managed to get the younger ones to school all week and one of the older ones. My 8 year old has football training in the mornings, no one else is going to wanna go but with only me here they will now have no choice but to get up and come, that will be fun.

I am not sure why the just giving link has been removed? I was trying to get the funeral paid for and thought this would have been fine to leave on the page, astounding the amount of support I have seen on this but the funeral is going to cost a fortune.
 
So it's been 5 months give or take. I miss her every single day, the children have been stabilized, although myself I have a relentless task of full time work 9 to 5 everyday and 5 children after work. I have some help from the sister in law but generally every single day is hard work. I'm up for the mornings at 6:30 and don't finish all 5 children until gone 11pm. The main thing is that the children seem happy. The funeral was incredibly hard for all of us, Christmas was very tough. Life will never be the same again but somehow I will bring these kids up in memory of my wife to the best of my ability.

I have managed to keep my job although they want me in 3 days a week 9 to 5 which is hard, it puts a lot of pressure on the sister in law to do two days let alone 3, even though she is great with the children I feel I am asking a lot of her and it's not fair. Work unfortunately will not let me work from home more then two days a week, even though my job can be performed remotely for 99% things required. The house work itself is a full time job.

I still get flashbacks to what I had to do on the night, the ambulance didn't turn up for 2 hours and I have been contacted by the head of the ambulance service around what went wrong, it only dawned on me a month later that if they arrived earlier things might of been a lot different, although maybe not. They sent me a letter which literately apologised 7 times in it. I am awaiting a report on what went wrong and the delay in the coming days with a timeline of events, What I do then....I do not know, nothing I guess....but I do wonder how it would have played out if they got to her earlier.

things still don't feel real, my mental heath is better but the flashbacks to performing CPR for 40 minutes and seeing what I saw, as well as my 8 year old walking in at the time still hits me hard.
 
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Terrible situation for you, I can only wish you well.

Don’t employers have to make adjustments for carers?

I know, you don’t want to but you might be able to claim some state benefits.
 
You're doing amazingly well all things considered @Wizzkidy It's a shame your employer can't make some reasonable adjustments, i.e. full-time remote working or even just one day a week going in sounds like it would be a massive help, even if it was only temporary.

Now may not be the right time, but if it's going to lead to burnout, start looking elsewhere. As above, get all the support you can, you've paid a lot into the system.
 
Slam62 said:
I know, you don’t want to but you might be able to claim some state benefits.
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Not happening, I earn far too much for any of that. This was the reason I was determined to keep the job it pays well and would have been foolish to stop. This is all thanks to the sister in law really, otherwise it would have been barely worth it with childcare costs. I think I can raise a flexible working request with work but they want me to evidence every single part of my role and say why it's possible to do 1 or two days in the office only, I can do that but then I look like a liability to the company then. I am in a senior management role. It wouldn't look good. I have to be seen to be committed to the business
 
Lost my brother unexpectedly to an aortic dissection in July, and it’s been awful. It does get easier even if it’s hard most of the time.

Sorry for your loss.
 
Wizzkidy said:
I think I can raise a flexible working request with work but they want me to evidence every single part of my role and say why it's possible to do 1 or two days in the office only, I can do that but then I look like a liability to the company then. I am in a senior management role. It wouldn't look good. I have to be seen to be committed to the business
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I think you've already shown how committed you are given the circumstances, and what you're asking for isn't much, they can easily measure your performance when WFH to see if it drops.

You need to consider how much longer you can work like this before you burn out, because from your post above it sounds like you're already close to the breaking point. You're potentially putting your own mental and physical health at risk with the stress and not having any real time to rest.
 
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Wizzkidy said:
What I do then....I do not know, nothing I guess....but I do wonder how it would have played out if they got to her earlier.
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Please don't do that to yourself. You can run 'what if' scenarios around your head for the rest of your life but all you'll be doing is beating yourself up over something that can't be changed.

You sound like an incredibly strong individual to be able to hold it all together not only for yourself but also for your children and extended family. It's a shame your employers aren't being more sympathetic to what's going on in your life but I hope it all irons out.

Honestly, I know it doesn't mean much coming from a faceless forum stranger but I admire the strength you're showing and I'm sure your wife would be extremely proud of how you are doing - as we all are

Take care and try to be kind to yourself :)
 
Wizzkidy said:
Not happening, I earn far too much for any of that. This was the reason I was determined to keep the job it pays well and would have been foolish to stop. This is all thanks to the sister in law really, otherwise it would have been barely worth it with childcare costs. I think I can raise a flexible working request with work but they want me to evidence every single part of my role and say why it's possible to do 1 or two days in the office only, I can do that but then I look like a liability to the company then. I am in a senior management role. It wouldn't look good. I have to be seen to be committed to the business
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Don’t forget, family comes first, do the maths. The company could be gone tomorrow or not want you tomorrow.
As someone else mentioned look after your mental health.
 
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