Widows and Widowers Group: Messages by Mollie1107

My psychologist told me today that he watched a TV documentary about Centurions. (People who have lived 100 years or more) The narrator of the program asked each one of them what they contributed to the fact that they had lived so long. He went on to say that each one said the exact same thing: "Accept loss as a fact of life and move on"........I guess I'm just a weak human being.....

Thanks JSW, Dorelle, and Kathy and to all others for your support. I feel much better today. I did visit the counselor early this AM and believe it or not you all are right on target.
About my niece, things didn't work out because I don't want to do anything on the spur of the moment. It still is an option however.
And I might be getting a lady from the church that has no place to live for right now. She is trying to get her disability. She has no children. And she is 55 yrs old. That would be good for me and she needs a home temporarily. She is not helpless and can take care of herself. She has Fibro-Myalgia and some disorder of joints. Details will have to be worked out before I agree to have her move in.

Also, after I came home from the pshychologist I had a phone message about a job I applied for several months ago. I had slmost forgotten it. I may have mentioned it. I will be a hostess in a restaurant that is simply beautiful. It is an old colonial house with a porch all the way around it. It will be buffet-style food with real napkins. I returned her call and she said they were waiting on the inspectors to give them the thumbs up.

Thanks again my friends for your kind thoughts and support. I will get there one day and be strong and perhaps I can help someone just like you helped me.You will never know just how much your thoughts and support has meant to me!
I will let you know if the "lady" works out and if I get the job. You are all God sent Angels!

May God Bless you until next time.
PS: The font size is large because of my vision. I am trying to get a grant for a Stem Cell Transplant Research(It use to be supported by Federal Funds but it has all been given to illegals and lazy people)............For one eye the cost is 25K. I have Dry Macular Degeneration. Left eye is bad. Right eye is pretty good at this time.

I went our of town for a week or so to see if I can find a reason to live. He has been gone now for 2 years and I simply can't get use to this lonliness. I have prayed to die. I'm like the lady that said she wished she could curl up in her chair and go to sleep and never wake up. I wonder why our brain brings us so much pain. No one understands except those of us that are going though it. My children tell me I'm having a "pity party". I want to crack their head togher! I really do. It makes me so mad. I finally broke down and I'm seeing a psychologist. I have the option at this clinic to see a psychiatrist if I need medication. I'm to the point I think I will need some medication to even exhist.
Also, I wish there were tv shows for senior citizens. In my opinion they are leaving us out. All the shows are about "young love" and etc. We need real life shows to watch. I'm tired of it all right now. I have to force myself to go to church and could really care less about the activities they have. I still feel all alone. I've had only one visit with the psychologist and he told me not to count on my children for support. He said it is his experience that very few children ever try to comfort or be their for their parent after one has died. Both my children act like they want me to die thinking they are going to inherit something. But someone on this site wrote to me and said he wasn't leaving his children anything. And I'm in the process of chaning my will. If I sell my house they won't be much for them to inherit anyway. I will enjoy it as long as it last. My parents nor his left us anything, because they didn't have it.....So.......

I have 4 cats and my daughter comes over and complains about the cat hair!!! They sleep on the foot of my bed and are a lot of comfort to me.


Thanks again for letting me vent. It's feels so good to say what's on my heart.

I read gnibaby's post and all 13 replies. I have tried to analyze it all and of course there is no one answer. People are just plain SELFISH and GREEDY, and that includes my own son and daughter They are two of the most selfish people I have ever known. They were both raised in a loving home and in church. They were taught to give of themselves from the time of their youth. It was the nature of their dad and I to take care of our family members that needed help and support. And I thought that both of them had compassion and caring engrained in them by our example. They would go with us to homes of the needy and we had on-going projects in the neighborhood that raised funds for needy families. We visited nursing homes and took lap throws that I croched to those that needed them. We took turns pushing the wheel chairs of those that needed to get out of their rooms and we knew from the nurses those that didn't have many relatives to visit them. So I constantly ask myself where did we go wrong? I hate myself at times because I was a working mom. I felt that I always had to work, not only to give them nice clothes, take vacations, but braces on their teeth etc not to mention paying the bills. Then when our daughter left her first husband she moved back home with 2 children, ages 3 and 18 months. We supported her through college by both her father and me working PT jobs in conjunction with our regular jobs. And I could go on and on with always being there for her. And our son's story isn’t any better. His wife has never worked. She uses being deaf in one ear as an excuse for not working. Guess who has paid for every, I mean every, automobile they have ever owned? He has 2 teen age sons and they won't even cut my grass. I have to do it myself or hire it done.(I have 1/2 acre to cut).
Since their father passed, I have paid for my own funeral and made all the arrangements. (As someone else has written about.) And I have a good size life insurance policy and I have made a will. Given all the above and the way I have been “over looked” by my son and daughter, I am tempted to change my will.

I have one niece (my deceased sister’s daughter) that has begged me to move 300 miles south of here and live with her and her husband. They call me daily and in fact are the ones that bought my husband’s old tractor. They have a guest house out back of their home and said they would fix it up for me if I would move. They are so nice to me. They drove up yesterday and spent the night. My daughter also comes over everytime I have company. And she left today when they did going back to her home which is only 25 miles from me. I haven’t heard a word from my son and his wife in over 2 weeks. They also live 25 miles from me.

I have made it clear to my grown adult children that I don’t want them to go out of their way for me. And I have told them that I don’t want to interfere with their lives. That all I want is be treated like they would want to be treated when they reach this stage of their lives. That basically all I want is to be a part of a plan for those years when I may not be able to, nor mentally capable of, making decisions on my own. I guess I have a fear of being thrown into some cheap nursing home and forgotten.

If you were in my shoes, 71 years old, and blind in one eye, what would you do? And would you consider selling your home and moving with my niece and would you change your will? Someone else wrote my thoughts when she said if your own family doesn’t care then I feel I have to move toward someone that does!


Sorry this is a bit long but I had to tell somebody....

Thank you for your comments. While I did not say specifically, "Papa" was my late husband. We were married 49 yrs and 6 months. We acquired the names "Papa and Mama" over the years. He died from cancer 2 yrs and 2 months ago. He was a one of a kind man. A precious human being. The problem I'm having is what will I do with the rest of my life........While I have a son and a dughter, they are so busy with their own lives, they have to time for me. At times it's like I don't exhist. Anyone besiee me relate to this? I am active in chuch and I write short stories but I'm still lonely. I'm praying about joining a missionary team that ministers to the poor in the Apalachian Mountsins of Kentucky. Maybe I'm not ready for the pasture just yet.......

Hang in there one and all. There has to be better day!
Hugs and blessings to you all.
Mollie in Georgia

I sold Paps’s tractor today. I cried. Bitter tears. I saw them drive away with it on the trailer. I didn’t want to look. It looked so lonely. It felt so bad to see it go. The seat and the steering wheel looked so empty. So very empty. I could hear once again the put, put, puttering as he plowed the garden. Year after year the vegetables he grew were his pride and joy. He grew so many fresh vegetables he became known as the “Vegetable Man”. He sold very little and always took them to the elderly, sick and needy. Ah, but that old tractor was Papa in the form of an old engine and its plows. At times I would have to go sit on its seat and have a good cry. Just to touch it brought me some measure of comfort. In my mind to touch it was like touching him for a brief moment. Now that space in the shed looks empty and void. There will never be another garden plowed with Paps’s old tractor. It will now become refurbished and shown at antique tractor shows. I have a feeling that when it is shown, Papa will be right there smiling and ever so proud of his old tractor made new just like he has been!

view link

I hope this blesses you as it did me.

jsw1952, wca1951, wolfit52, cocochoc, and tullip, thanks for your encouragement and messages. We all are in the same boat. Hurting and alone. Nothing could have prepared us for this. I understand about having a rock for a loving husband. I had one for 49 years and 6 months. And while I do trust in the Holy Sprit and I know He comforts me, I know God understands the pain. Folks don't do like they use to when someone died. It use to be that neighbors took care of one another but now I don't know many neighbors. I think I'm going to start a group in my chuch for grieving widows and widowers. I believe just talking and sharing the grief face to face would help. And talking about what we are eventually going to have to do. I live out in the country and this place is too big for me to handle. Even my son and daughter who live 25 miles from me don't want to do much and I don't like to ask them. I gues they are too busy for mama now. But families use to stick together. I remember long time ago my grandmother had at at lest one son and his wife with her all the time until she passed away. Things sure have changed. But the Love of God will never change. He will be our Rock.

Hugs and blessings to you all.

My husband passed away 2 years and 2 months ago. I thought I was ready to handle what ever but since Easter Week-end I have my doubts that I will ever be over losing my beloved husband. After living with someone for 49 years and raising two children, I simply cannot understand who I am. I still love him so much. And miss him is not the correct words to express my feelings. I live alone and hate being alone. There are groups I have joined but nothing has really helped.
I was a member of this group last year and thought I'd drop by again; It has been a long winter for me and I'm sure for you and a lot of others as well. It's been 2 years and 2 months since my husband of 49 years passed away. Sometimes I think I'm moving forward but then of a sudden these memories pop up out of nowhere and I just about lose it. I wonder if we will ever be the same.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a way to be somewhat better prepared for losing our spouses'. I wish there had been some course I could have taken to even speculate what was in store. Or some book, or SOMEONE that has gone through it that might shed some light on what to expect. I know we all hurt in different ways, but we are all in pain. I don't think the Bible says much about the pain of losing a husband or a wife....or any loved one as far as I know. It does talk about the "sting of death" but I'm not sure that is for the ones left behind. We learn Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in school, but no one talks about death and especially from the view point of the ones left behind. I wonder why?
Mollie

Thanks for letting me vent!

While you may know a great deal about nurturing others, advancing your own needs may not be second nature.

It’s common wisdom, for example, that women spend a larger percentage of their waking hours nurturing others than men do. Whether women work outside the home or not, studies suggest they average more time tending house and loved ones. If you’re a woman, odds are good that you provide the emotional glue that holds relationships and families together. You buy the birthday cards, pick up the phone to offer help or support when someone’s sick, and do much of the work or coordination of services involved in caring for elderly parents, children, grandchildren, and spouses in need of assistance. Our culture expects you to be self-sacrificing. Your own needs may take last place; putting yourself first is cast as selfishness.

For men, our society places great emphasis on getting ahead. That can encourage a single-minded focus on career to the detriment of other activities. In this way, men are discouraged from indulging their nurturing side.

Just as women are pressed from the get-go to give to others, men are pushed toward the receiving end. That creates imbalances and potential sources of distress for both sexes. If you’re a woman, you may not feel comfortable taking time to refresh yourself. If you’re a man, you may not have much practice creating your own nurturing rituals and, like your female counterpart, you may feel uneasy doing so. Clearly, women and men can benefit from learning to focus on themselves in healthy, rejuvenating ways.

The art of self-nurture is not a single technique. Rather, it’s an overarching concept for your life, says psychologist Alice D. Domar in her book Self-Nurture. The spark you gain from nurturing your imagination, career, relationships, sex life, or spiritual side amplifies the healing effects of other stress-relief techniques.

Be Good To YOURSELF. It's the next best thing to a hug.